I never posted but I'm following this blog from the beginning. Very happy for you about that last graph, just keep posting more of those. 
You always analize and I very much like your approach to being pro. Hope you will make big bucks in the future. Good luck!
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First, thanks for all the kind wishes - makes it all worthwhile. Actually, that's not entirely true - the $ make it all worthwhile, but the thoughts are a bonus
Speaking of $, I had another unwelcome visit from Mr Variance today:
Today's highlights:
QQ AI pre vs TT... flop Td6d5d (not even a flush redraw)
Squeeze AA, villain 4b calls with 66... flop 6KQ
Villain squeezes QQ vs my utg AA. we get AI pre... flop 9c4c7s5cQc (no 
in my Aces)
And my favourite (cooler, not a suckout, as I was behind all the way)
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($65.90)
BB ($51.30)
UTG ($81)
Hero ($50)
CO ($80.80)
BTN ($60.85)
Dealt to Hero 8♥ 8♣
fold, Hero raises to $1.50, fold, BTN calls $1.50, fold, fold
FLOP ($3.75) 7♠ 8♠ 6♣
Hero bets $3, BTN raises to $8.50, Hero raises to $25, BTN raises to $59.35 (AI), Hero calls $23.50 (AI)
TURN ($100) 7♠ 8♠ 6♣ Q♠
RIVER ($100) 7♠ 8♠ 6♣ Q♠ 6♠
BTN shows 5♠ 4♠
(Pre 22%, Flop 68.6%, Turn 79.5%)
Hero shows 8♥ 8♣
(Pre 78%, Flop 31.4%, Turn 20.5%)
BTN wins $97.75
For a moment, I thought "paired river - I win..." 
Played a few nice hands though, including this one. Villain so full of sh*t...
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
Hero ($104)
BB ($51.95)
UTG ($77.95)
UTG+1 ($58.20)
CO ($137)
BTN ($45.85)
Dealt to Hero K♠ 9♠
fold, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to $1.50, BB raises to $5.50, Hero raises to $12, BB calls $6.50
FLOP ($24) 5♥ J♠ K♣
Hero bets $11, BB raises to $39.95 (AI), Hero calls $28.95
TURN ($103) 5♥ J♠ K♣ 5♠
RIVER ($103) 5♥ J♠ K♣ 5♠ 7♠
Hero shows K♠ 9♠
(Pre 73%, Flop 90.9%, Turn 95.5%)
BB shows J♣ 9♦
(Pre 27%, Flop 9.1%, Turn 4.5%)
Hero wins $100
Oh well... whaddaya gonna do?
As someone who has problems folding, I set myself this task today: open fold AA.
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($50)
BB ($50.75)
UTG ($56.35)
Hero ($59.25)
CO ($55.90)
BTN ($50)
Dealt to Hero A♠ A♣
fold, fold, fold, BTN raises to $1.50, fold, fold
BTN wins $1.25
Completed.
A bad call:
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($36.65)
BB ($37.85)
Hero ($57)
CO ($57.30)
BTN ($77.95)
Dealt to Hero J♣ A♣
Hero raises to $1.50, fold, fold, fold, BB calls $1
FLOP ($3.25) Q♠ J♥ 8♦
BB checks, Hero bets $2, BB calls $2
TURN ($7.25) Q♠ J♥ 8♦ T♠
BB checks, Hero checks
RIVER ($7.25) Q♠ J♥ 8♦ T♠ 2♦
BB bets $3, Hero calls $3
BB shows Q♦ K♣
(Pre 38%, Flop 79.8%, Turn 88.6%)
Hero shows J♣ A♣
(Pre 62%, Flop 20.2%, Turn 11.4%)
BB wins $12.60
I can only beat a bluff. Is this a bluffy bet size? No. So, fold.
A good fold:
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($19.10)
BB ($12.90)
UTG ($47)
UTG+1 ($84)
Hero ($57.90)
BTN ($40.65)
Dealt to Hero 9♦ 9♣
fold, fold, Hero raises to $1.50, fold, fold, BB calls $1
FLOP ($3.25) Q♣ Q♥ 2♥
BB bets $0.50, Hero raises to $2.20, BB calls $1.70
TURN ($7.65) Q♣ Q♥ 2♥ 5♣
BB checks, Hero bets $4, BB calls $4
RIVER ($15.65) Q♣ Q♥ 2♥ 5♣ 3♥
BB bets $5.20 (AI), Hero folds
BB wins $14.90
What does villains hand look like on the flop? Qx or a flush draw or air.
When we raise and villain calls, can he have air any longer? No.
On the river villain donk shoves the flush card? Can we beat anything? No. So, fold.
Originally posted by Tim64
As someone who has problems folding, I set myself this task today: open fold AA.
Have to say, a better place to learn to fold Aces is postflop. Get that right, and your on the way.
Lol, Rush quickfold clicking madness
No, entirely intentional - for the reasons stated. I'm open folding KK today.
Proof of the psycological value of folding AA preflop:
Originally posted by Tim64
Lol, Rush quickfold clicking madness
No, entirely intentional - for the reasons stated. I'm open folding KK today.
seems like a solid plan
Now running 38bi below EV at nl50 since 11 Dec 2010. Todays best:
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $0.50(BB) Replayer
SB ($45.35)
BB ($53.50)
UTG ($96.75)
UTG+1 ($41.15)
CO ($59.90)
Hero ($163)
Dealt to Hero A♣ A♠
UTG raises to $1.25, UTG+1 raises to $3.50, fold, Hero raises to $9, fold, fold, fold, UTG+1 raises to $14.50, Hero raises to $163 (AI), UTG+1 calls $26.65 (AI)
FLOP ($84.30) 7♠ Q♣ A♦
TURN ($84.30) 7♠ Q♣ A♦ 9♠
RIVER ($84.30) 7♠ Q♣ A♦ 9♠ Q♦
UTG+1 shows Q♥ Q♠
(Pre 19%, Flop 4.3%, Turn 2.3%)
Hero shows A♣ A♠
(Pre 81%, Flop 95.7%, Turn 97.7%)
UTG+1 wins $81.30
The last couple of days in poker have gone quite well. I put this down to 3 things:
1. Flopping hands. There's no two ways about it, if you are hitting the board and managing to extract value, everything is better.
2. Table selecting. Taking the time to try and find those few tables where there is an obvious soft spot, as well as trying to ensure you are not sitting out of position to an aggressive regular who is going to make my life hell, seems to be working. Of course, it would be nice to actually be one of those good, aggressive regulars and make other people's lives hell for once, but realistically at the moment I am just a weaktight tagfish - what can I say?
3. Folding top pair. There's something quite liberating about just folding your top pair when you get action. If I could just find the folds on a more consistent basis, I might be on to something.
Originally posted by Tim64
The last couple of days in poker have gone quite well. I put this down to 3 things:1. Flopping hands. There's no two ways about it, if you are hitting the board and managing to extract value, everything is better.
2. Table selecting. Taking the time to try and find those few tables where there is an obvious soft spot, as well as trying to ensure you are not sitting out of position to an aggressive regular who is going to make my life hell, seems to be working. Of course, it would be nice to actually be one of those good, aggressive regulars and make other people's lives hell for once, but realistically at the moment I am just a weaktight tagfish - what can I say?
3. Folding top pair. There's something quite liberating about just folding your top pair when you get action. If I could just find the folds on a more consistent basis, I might be on to something.
@1.st:
No one ever has anything (unless they play 6/5 with 1% 3bet). Check out your W$WSF.
@2.nd:
Only reason to ever play a cash game is to have an edge on people. Why wouldn't you maximize your edge? There's a lot of improvement for us all to make just by learning how to exploit fishes harder. If you disagree, check out TLN's only video published for PS.
@3rd:
If you're beat, why you should you still be in the hand unless you've got solid implied odds? I mean, you're good enough to know you're beat, so why you don't want to use that to your advantage?
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $1(BB) Replayer
SB ($100)
BB ($86.40)
UTG ($112)
UTG+1 ($83.85)
Hero ($257)
BTN ($62.85)
Dealt to Hero J♦ K♦
fold, fold, Hero raises to $3.50, BTN calls $3.50, fold, fold
FLOP ($8.50) T♦ Q♦ A♦
Hero bets $5, BTN raises to $14, Hero calls $9
TURN ($36.50) T♦ Q♦ A♦ 6♥
Hero checks, BTN bets $45.35 (AI), Hero calls $45.35
RIVER ($127) T♦ Q♦ A♦ 6♥ 2♠
Hero shows J♦ K♦
(Pre 51%, Flop 100.0%, Turn 100.0%)
BTN shows 4♣ 4♦
(Pre 49%, Flop 0.0%, Turn 0.0%)
Hero wins $124
After villain raises my cbet, I have that awful sinking feeling again: "Really? Again?" Sometimes, though, you just have to go with your read. Villain seemed aggressive and he is not full stacked so I just decide to pay him off if he has two pair or a set.
The Tilt Hand
Yesterday, I watched a video by a well respected CR coach who analysed a session where he realised he was starting to tilt. He narrowed it down to the exact hand where he established he was tilting, and examined the decisions he made during the hand and how he felt after the hand.
Over the last few days I have realised that I tilt more than I think I do. But it tends to be an insidious, creeping sort of tilt rather than Insta Monkey Tilt. Either way, the effect is the same: sub optimal plays, bleeding blinds by being overly passive, and light call downs with no justifiable reason to believe opponent is in fact light.
Yesterday's Tilthand:
Grabbed by Holdem Manager
NL Holdem $1(BB) Replayer
SB ($128)
BB ($226)
UTG ($139)
UTG+1 ($155)
Hero ($120)
BTN ($121)
Dealt to Hero K♣ K♥
fold, fold, Hero raises to $3.50, BTN calls $3.50, fold, fold
FLOP ($8.50) 2♥ 5♥ T♦
Hero bets $5, BTN raises to $14, Hero calls $9
Flop thought process: "damn, I've been raised by an unknown player. I have an over pair and this is the point of the hand where I need to give him a range and then probably fold. Okay my main worries are sets - the most likely of which is TT (since no one is folding that hand pre) and flush draws. Okay, well I will just call one street, see what the turn brings and probably fold if the flush comes or he continues the aggression."
TURN ($36.50) 2♥ 5♥ T♦ T♥
Hero checks, BTN bets $21, Hero calls $21
Turn thought process: "Hmmm, the ten of hearts. Interesting card. So the flush came in but now a set of tens no longer possible. Of course he might have raised AT for value on the flop but that's not that likely. However the flush did get there so I really ought to fold since I'm not beating anything. But wait a moment: I have K :heart:, with a flush redraw. Okay I don't think this is very good play (especially as I'm out of position) but I will just call one more time in case I hit my flush." [Hero doesn't think about likelihood of flush being no good since board is paired].
RIVER ($78.50) 2♥ 5♥ T♦ T♥ K♦
Hero checks, BTN bets $62, Hero raises to $82.35 (AI), BTN calls $20.35
River thought process: "Wooohooo! Gin! Now I beat everything: bluffs, 22/55/Tx/flushes - EVERYTHING. Okay well just in case he's randomly spewing, I will check to him again to maximise EV. Excellent, he bets big - now let's stick it in"
BTN shows T♠ T♣
BTN wins $240
Showdown thought process: "Oh... Quads. F*ck. I am such a retarded whale."
I don't think it's possible for me to have played this hand worse. In the words of the aforementioned CR coach, I "butchered" it. This is almost in a nutshell why I never really get ahead.
The only good thing to come out this hand was the realisation that I was tilting (because when I am playing well I am always folding by the turn at least). So then I took some deep breaths, regained my composure and managed to finish the day up.
I might experiment with posting each day's Tilthand. Maybe if I try really hard I might be able to eliminate the Tilthand entirely.
I don't think the KK hand was as bad as you described it to be - I think your judgement there is a bit clouded by the fact that he indeed had quads.
Vs an unknown it's tough - you don't know whether he's semidecent and raising with overs+nutFD or valueprotecting AT or he can also have JJ there.
But yeah, turn indeed is the ugliest card ever and this is the crucial spot where ur current mindset plays a huge role - when u're playing A-game, you'll be thinking "boats/trips/nutflushes = I beat nothing but the rare JJ" and you could fold.
When you're playing ur B/C-game, thought process will be "He could be fish raising with any PP there for no reason and even JJ I beat + I have FD vs trips + boat outs - I call and see what he does on the river"
And well ... as played on the turn, obv there is no other option than going broke on that river.
Thanks, Static, as always. You are right but the bottom line - for me, at least - is that unless I know someone is capable of semi/bluff raising the flop I need to be folding my overpairs, esp oop.
So this means just folding vs unknowns.
Originally posted by Tim64
Question: How many hands does it take to break even at NL 50?Answer: 16,698.
That's right. After playing 16,698 hands over the course of 60 hours (2 and a half entire days of my life - or the equivalent of 4 days if you count waking hours only), I have achieved a winrate of 0.04BB/100 for a total profit of... wait for it... $3.54!!!
That's 6 cents an hour, I'll have you know.
I'm not much a blog reader but I got up to here, which you were playing SSS which must of been some time ago.
This quoting sounds familiar tho, maybe "the micros"?? haha
btw, thanks for doing some hand evaluations. You have some good thoughts.
January wrapup:
Poker profit (inc R/b and Iron Man bonus): $1912.55
Total Hours: 118.87
$/hr: $16.09/hr
6 Months As a Poker Pro - Doughnut or Hole?
I have reached the halfway point in what I now anticipate will be a year-long experiment into playing poker professionally.
There are two ways of looking at the first six months:
1). A gruesomely soul-destroying way of earning a little under the minimum wage.
2). A promising journey of discovery; a learning curve pointing to financial independence.
It would be hard to find two more different characterisations of the same period of time and yet that is the beauty of the human mind's ability to entertain such different perceptions of the same facts. Let's look at both characterisations in more detail...
THE HOLE
The minimum wage in the United Kingdom is £5.93 (i.e. it is illegal for an employer to pay any employee less than this amount). After spending 679.11 hours playing poker over the last six months I made a total of $4909.85, for an hourly wage of $7.23, or £4.52. And let's be absolutely clear: this is recorded poker playing hours. It doesn't include thinking about poker, posting hands, watching videos, reading books or anything else of that ilk. I would estimate that the number of hours somehow engaged with poker is closer to double the total given above.
After playing 377,743 hands, I am down -$655.78 with an overall bb/100 of 0.14 (EV bb/100 is 0.19...). Those of you quick on the uptake will have realised that all of the money I have made is, therefore, rakeback.
Below is a graph showing the awful truth:
If you are a pessimist you see the hole, and trust me, from where I'm sitting it looks pretty deep. If this were the only way of looking at the last six months, I would stop playing today (and any other course of action would be ludicrous).
THE DOUGHNUT
I'm going to be honest with you. I don't want to stop playing poker. The thought of going back to full-time work in an office fills me with dread. So I need to find a way of looking at the last six months that doesn't make it seem such a total waste of time and that justifies deciding to extend the trial for a further six months.
Here goes: I would say that from halfway through September of last year (and in particular once I moved down to nl50 and reduced the number of tables from 8 to 4 or less) I started to play reasonable, winning poker. Trying to 8-table nl100 before I had really got to grips with shorthanded poker was a pretty crazy endeavour and never likely to succeed. It was only because I ran stupidly well in terms of AI EV that I managed to keep afloat for so long. It would probably have been much better if I had actually got my EV because then I would have realised how out of my depth I was and moved down earlier.
The graph below shows my winnings, measured in bb (not dollars) from 25 September - i.e. 1.5 months into the trial - up to the present. It also shows my red line. This graph, I hope you will agree, paints a very different picture:
For one thing, the red line goes more or less straight up. If you read my review of December you'll know how disgustingly I ran. The graph shows that instead of winning over 6000bb during that period, I actually won only 2500bb. Is the difference between 0.88bb/100 and 2.16bb/100. And that's over the course of 275k+ hands. That is some pretty significant variance. Now, 2.16bb/100 is of course not a winrate to be excited about, nor one to be proud of. But it's a positive winrate at least. (For reference, the dollar cost of the variance over that period is about $2400, or around $500 per month.)
Here is the important bit: I'm not complaining about running badly. I ran so well (while playing so badly) at nl100 that I don't feel I am owed any Sklansky bucks. But the reality is that having begun to play better in the middle of the second month, I have not yet received the amount that my improved level of play correlated to. That's just bad luck of course and no one is to blame. But knowing this is the case and knowing that I have somehow come through that with my bankroll intact, still playing, is an achievement I am proud of.
I'm never going to be a sick genius soul-reader, but right now I think I'm playing decent poker.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Mrs Tim64 and I sat down and had a chat the other night. I was honest and she was understanding. I admitted that things hadn't gone the way I had hoped or imagined they would. And I also assured her that I didn't plan to continue playing so many hours a day for such little financial reward. Standing in her shoes, it's pretty frustrating to see me working such long hours without any assurance there will be money at the end of the month. She also, quite justifiably, finds it difficult to deal with the fact that even when I'm not playing poker I am usually thinking about it. She tries to speak to me but I'm not really listening because I'm still churning through some hand or other in my head. Well, that's not fair.
So I am giving myself six months to turn things around (or, depending on how you look at things, to continue my progress) and after that I will call the clock on myself. I really need to make a consistently decent hourly wage of $15+ over that period otherwise there is just no point continuing. More importantly, I'm going to set myself reasonable goals, keep healthy and fitter and be a better husband.
"To infinity... and beyond!"
-Tim64
On ocassion I checked your blog, so I know how you run, ( FT owes me alot of bucks aswell due to doomswitch ) but I didn't really know that ur so down in winnings..
One thing that will make you play worse is giving urself a command like this xxx$/h or quit... It wont help you, it will make you think about the money way more then the hands itself..I know coz I think the same whenever I need that money urgently..
I hear people say FR is low variance, why dont you try that ? allin ev is a big killer for u...ur the one who knows how you play the hands, you know urself enough to say that you played good but ran bad or you played bad and sucked.. if you believe you played find whats the leak.. but I do believe you dont play bad (i checked some pages with some hands here)
Will follow up on this, GL man.
good luck in the next 6mths tim. its tough to find a partner who is so supportive of our adventures in poker. try and focus on leaving poker 'at the office', i struggled with that for a long time. but my relationship is so much stronger now that i can separate work from family.
You can count on me for advice and support if you need it. As always, I wish you all the best.