Need to stop bluffing fish

Had an amazing day going, until I tried to push a few fish off some hands... not a good idea. So I finished up for the day but only about 1/3 as much from my high point of the day.

I really hate looking at my daily results but I'm seriously addicted to checking HEM and I can't restrain myself. It really puts a damper on my play when I'm focusing on how much I'm up or down. I need to knock it off.

I'm going to play a ton tomorrow and maybe enter the Sunday Million using some FPPs, as I could really use a big score... so I might give it a shot. If Seth can do it, anyone can right! :D

Back to the basics

Played 4 tables of $2/4 NL 6 Max today, ran like shit, and got crushed.

I even had one of my friends, Bryan, sweating me while I was playing and basically did horrible. I don't think I made any huge mistakes, although I definitely shouldn't have stacked off JJ vs a regular who is a giant nit pre-flop.

I'm really struggling now and I don't even bother going into the office anymore because I always seem to be there all by myself. All it does is burn about 1 hour out of my day, as it takes approximately 30 minutes one way to get there from my apartment. I really am thinking that getting a poker office was a terrible idea. I add over $12k in fixed overhead costs per year which cuts into my yearly income with minimal benefit. Having any unnecessary overhead for an online poker business is completely and utterly unnecessary and retarded.

I've gotten some lessons from Nute, don't get me wrong, but they just don't seem nearly as focused, helpful, or tailored as my lessons did when I was paying by the hour and we were doing video reviews. I'm not really sure why it feels that way, but before when I took a lesson I'd always play super well afterwards and crush... now I just continue to break even. A lot of the blame is on myself too for not being in town sometimes, not being as proactive as I can to send HH's, make vids for reviewing, etc. But I'm really goddamn frustrated right now and it seriously life tilts me.

Pretty frustrating how I get worse at poker when I move to a city with the main purpose of getting better at poker. FML.

Think I'm going to start doing more sweats, HH reviews, etc with my friends so I can start improving my game. Lots of my friends are really good players themselves, but are also kind of struggling (relatively speaking).

I'm just going to keep playing, doing my best, and see what happens I guess.

Another Rush poker experiment

Seemed to start out well, but I appear to be really inconsistent in my results... It's pretty fucking frustrating. I just had to end my last session after some reg 3-bet/5-bet shoved on the button with K2soooted over my 4-bet when I had AA and flopped two pair. It's impossible for me to tell which players are playing like retard monkeys who think they can get away with anything and the players who are nut-peddling.

I also can't play for nearly as many hours in a day as I can normally obviously... even with shortening up my playing sessions to 1 hour, I was pretty much shot after 3 sessions.

Office day today

Back to the office for the rest of this week. Tim started off the day by showing me some cool hands he played yesterday and I've played one session so far and broke even.

Tim is running like shit today so hopefully that turns around for him.

Off to Jimmy John's for a bite to eat...

Back in Chicago

Sorry for the lack of updates. I ended up being pretty busy in LA with all the poker stuff and going out on the weekend.

My trip to LA was awesome. I stayed with my friend Adam for the first night I was in town and we ended up just playing some online poker and going out to eat. Then I went and stayed with the 5 clowns in the Mansion, who I stayed with last time I was in town. I reviewed some HH's with Sparks and talked to a few of the other guys in the house about my poker game and I think I kind of figured out where my major leaks are. A lot of it has to do with not paying enough attention to situations and making them too complicated by occasionally throwing in retarded bet sizing.

I had pretty good results when I was playing online in LA and at the airport. Not sure exactly how much I won, but it definitely was more than I had won for the month up to that point. I now have pretty good confidence in my game and I think the only thing from holding me back now and being able to crush again is volume. Volume is an easy fix: I'm just going to work like CRAZY in May and try to get a ton of hours in while playing my best.

Adam and I also hit up Hollywood Park Casino to play some live NLHE cash on my last day in town. We ended up playing some $5/5 NL and I finished up about $300. I was up quite a bit more but doubled up some fish and lost $400 when I open raised to like $60 from EP with AK and he called from the blinds... flop T8X with a flushdraw and I checked behind... he led an A turn and blank river and I called him down because he had been bluffing a ton earlier in a similar fashion... this time he had a set of 8's. I like the way I played the hand and Adam agreed that I played it fine against that particular player.

In LA for 9 days

I decided to make the trip back to LA to visit my friend Adam and the guys in the poker house (Seth, Sparks, Craig, Jason, & "The Captain"). Should be a good trip and I plan on doing a lot of poker playing, sweating people's sessions, talking poker, and hopefully improving my game. I'm sure we'll find some time to go out over the weekend though, so it won't be all work and no play!

New day

I didn't end up downing shots of Patron last night after my session, although I sure felt like it.

Basically, what I learned from yesterday, is that I can't allow myself to look at the HEM results during a day of playing poker. Not even between sessions. I must wait until I'm completely done for the day, or, better yet try and wait until the end of the month. I'm going to take small steps to rid myself of this continuing bad habit so my goal as of now is to not peek at it until I'm finished playing for the day.

Grinding all day today, we'll see how it goes.