Hellmouth's Journey to NL50 Glory - Looking for Partner/Coach

[Hellmouth]

Hey Guys,

I have made some decisions about poker recently that have drastically changed my poker outlook. First a little history.

I am a marginally winning player over the last two years. I played LHE .25/.50, .50/1 on Paradise then Party. I won consistently over ~30K hands with a good win rate and bonuses. I never much worried about rakeback and always was overrolled for the games that I played in. I basically won by playing a tight game PF and betting made hands. No real reads etc. My hand reading at that point was nonexistant. I moved up to 1/2 and could not beat it consistently.

At the end of last year I got bitten by the Short Handed Bug and played a lot and lost a lot at 6max on party. Even though I lost a chunk of my BR I still ended up for the year about $2500. I set a goal this year to double that in income. I was increasing the number of tables I was playing even though I don't think I was skilled enough to play and beat 6 max. I hit a great upswing and then gave it all back at 6 max, going from .50/1 to 1/2 then losing and going back to .50/1 and losing some more.

I finally decided that LHE was not for me and decided to move to NL. My hand reading had improved only marginally, however armed with NLT&P was well as being a member of a NL video tutorial website called Card Runners, I decided I would build my game. I had had marginal success playing NL sit and go's prior to this and felt that I could at least beat NL25.

For a while I seemed to win building up about $400 playing NL25 multitabling, then moving up to NL50 with the minimum 20 Buyins. I ran hot a little while playing extremely tight and winning another 4 buyins before I lost then tilted all the way back to NL25. By the time I really started to lose and realize that I was losing due to suboptimal play I knew that I was really far from my money goal for the year which caused me to tilt even more.

I moved back to limit holdem thinking I could easily beat full ring .50/1 multitabling 4 tables or more. I got setup with RB and a big bonus. I thought that if I could just grind it out there that I could still make my year goal. However my interest in full ring LHE has disappeared. I moved to the 6 max tables and tilted away all the $$$ I made playing limit since I started at Full Tilt. I am no good at 6max LHE and I know it. My hand reading skills are not good enough, I make bad reads, I am terribly tight passive when I am running bad since that is my natural style (even though I am trying to overcome it).

I have completely given up on my yearly goal of making money. At the beginning of the year I remember reading the January issue where Ed Miller talked about our number one goal is to make money. Everything else is secondary. Well I have come to the realization that I am not yet where I want to be. I am not yet good enough to make the money and play the levels that I aspire to. Money can not be my only concern. I must learn to play optimally. Then the money ought to show up.

So I set a new goal.

I will only play one table. I am currently playing NL25 6max on Full Tilt. I have $600 which should be more than enough. I have decided that I will play every night, but that I will not play until I have reviewed my entire session from the night before in PT. This should cause me to be more focused on not making mistakes. I will post more hands to try and learn as much as I can about NL and my leaks. Most importantly, I will only play one table and work my ass off to develop reads and make notes. This should be easier since there are only 6 people.

So far I have been doing this for about 1 week. So far it has been going pretty well, although I only have about 1000 hands and I am currently in the Red.

I would like to post regular updates of my quest and ask the forum if there is anyone who is interested in some sweat sessions or hand history review swaps.

If you are interested send me a PM. I feel like I could at least use a partner. I have some one sided coaching from Cardrunners and I think I can get more than enough feedback here. However if there are any coaches out there who would like to take on a charity case (I would even be willing to pay if it is not unreasonably expensive) please let me know. My style tends toward the tight side and Cardrunners teaches a very LAG style. I read somewhere that until you learn to play TAG you can not play LAG. I agree with this and want to develop a very strong TAG game.

My goal is to single table 10-20K hands at NL25 6max then rinse and repeat at NL50 6max. By one year from today I hope to be a better player and be consistently beating NL50. Playing and analyzing 250 hands a day for 300 of the 365 days this year should yield 75K hands so even with some setbacks I think that this is a realistic goal.

This may be a little bit meandering so thanks for reading and any feed back.
Greg

[CrustyFace]

If you use AIM then add me and we can discuss hands...

Username is CrustyFace1984

[Tickner]

You sound like you are ready to the game seriously and you seem to have a good outlook on it. The only thing I would suggest is that you sould consider multi tabling. Start off single tabling for a few thousand hands, but once you get the feel of things, and seem to be making better plays than your opponents, and when you start noticing the bad things they do, add a table. It takes a little adjustment at first but I would think that most players could probably learn to play up to 4 tables without it really affecting their winrate a whole lot, and the more hands you play, the faster you learn. Good luck. AIM: LegoPoker if you ever want to chat.

-Tickner

[EMc]

For future reference, posts like these are microbrew material.

[Hellmouth]

Ec,

Sorry, I didn't want it to get buried in a OT/NC thread. I was also hoping to get some real discussion about methods for self improvement and don't necessarily think it is totally off topic (except for the first 3/4). If you need to delete it I understand though.

Greg

PS: Thanks for all the great responses so far. I will be contacting a lot of you by PM tonight when I get off work. I guess I need to get AIM set up on my computer. That seems to be the predominant way that people chat I guess.

[Supwithbates]

Add me on AIM too, I'd love to discuss some hands anytime.
Alt1695

[orange]

Chatting with other 2p2ers on the same skill level is a great way to improve. I know that I have definitely gained tons when discussing hands with friends via AIM and stuff like that than posting. Posting on 2p2 is a vital resource as well. Sounds like you have a decent plan for improving. I think that one tabling can be somewhat boring, but thats jmo...I think you can probably still gain great reads while 2 tabling at the very least.

[littlebu]

This sounds almost identical to what I have been thinking after a recent downswing. I guess I need to get AIM on my comp as well. Feel free to pm though.