microsteaks

I need to work on my mental game a lot I think. I just finished a session out of frustration after playing like a moron. It started out with a suckout in the first couple hands then I opened more tables up to 10 (super stupid idea). HM2 was giving me trouble because I had too much other shit open and that made me want to punch my monitor (I get the most angry when technical shit isn't working; wifi problems, RAM problems and timeouts all bring out some kind of rage in me). Then I made some super dumb calls and jams (I think I 4bet jammed an oesd/fd against a set on the turn, b/b/c'd some schmuck who'd nfd made and ace on river, and worse was 77 calling an overbet shove on a 679 8 T board woops he has JJ). Looking at my graph for this session what really bugs me is that it would have probably been about breakeven if I had kept it together

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Hey all, this is my first blog post so I'll make it long, give my background, and put in a bit of an effort.

I started playing poker with my family. It was just an around the dinner table affair, we had a poker set and none of us were any good. I saw the WSOP ME stuff on TV and I thought it was pretty cool, but I was still completely clueless about poker. The hands and poker speak would go in one ear and out the other. All I could see was who had the best hand and I'd think exactly what the announcers said (after they said it of course). I think a couple years ago my friends and I would play some SnGs for a bit of cash. None of us were good at all but it was still lots of fun. The poker was mostly something to do while drinking and smoking.

I heard more and more snippets from the poker community. A lot came from TL and rekrul's posts there. I think I remember reading about Isildur or someone else running a few million under EV. It blew my mind how much money was being played for and also the fact that lady luck could fuck with someone that much. Eventually I started to watch Poker After Dark and High Stakes poker a bit, and learnt more about online poker. I looked into depositing on PS but decided against as I was 18 at the time. That was a couple summers ago.

I forgot about playing poker for most of the year after that, but last summer I had my interest reignited. I don't know what it was, I think it was EVE Poker (EVE is an mmo renowned for its spergy players. One or some of these spergy players made a browser client where you can play for the game's currency, ISK). Everyone on there was fucking terrible and I yo-yo'd my account for a few days until I busted (because I was fucking terrible as well). Around that time I started to browse LP and 2p2. I figured with the beginner guides on both sites I had enough to make it online, so I put 15$ on PS and grinded that down to $0. I got frustrated, said fuckit and gave up... for a week when I couldn't help myself but play the play money games on PS.

I enjoyed the shit out of those. I think it was just because I liked to play poker, and I liked to win, and everyone on the playmoney tables were bleeding their playmoney welfare cheques away. After a while I decided I should play for money again, so I deposited another 25$ on PS around October. This time it stuck around for a while and I'd grind and make my account yo-yo between 20$ and 50$. I hit 90$ some time in November I think but spewed it back down to 20$. Up until around March this was the state of online poker for me. I'd yo-yo around slowly getting VPPs and mostly wasting time and putting aside school work (not a good idea tbh).

This took a turn sometime in March. My game had gotten a lot better than it was before (it's still shit tho) and I would slowly make $$ from microstakers fishier than myself. One night I came home drunk and played PLO and made like 40$ or something. The next day I decided to get HEM2 and since things have been looking nice



I'd play PLO every once in a while again and I think I've given back all I won playing drunk, and I'll also play when I'm bored or tired. It takes a decent chunk out of my balance that I'm working to only play when I want to play my A-game, not just see some cards.

So, to my milestone. I started playing today with about $170 in my balance. I ran good for a couple hundred hands and had about $185.

I told myself I'm not getting up until I hit 200$. A couple hundred hands more and I'm at 199.15$. Sooooo close. Then two gross hands happen in quick succession and I'm back down to 190$. I did not give up and I played and played until I was finally at 200$. Here's my graph for the day:



And my graph for lifetime with HEM:



I know it's super bad to be results oriented and think about how much money you have in your balance, but it's nice to see $200 sitting in my balance when I've been so used to double digits for a long time. I also know these winrates aren't that sustainable and I've ran like a horse on crack I'm still learning though and while I feel good when I win hands, I feel better if I felt like I made the right decision (especially if I win the hand).



Cliffs:
-At some point in time I started playing poker due to various circumstances
-I bought HEM2
-I hit $200 in my balance for the first time
-I've ran very well over a ~25k hand sample

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