I was sorting out my old laptop early and saving anything I wanted before I got rid of it. I found this "blog" I'd started in Word back when I'd literally just started playing NL. I can't even remember starting this. I thought I may as well post it here as it's kinda cool to see my thoughts when I'd only just started playing NL.


"I’ve been meaning to start this blog for the last couple of days. I recently started out on the $100NL 6-max tables at Party Poker and this is my way of keeping track of how it’s going and any targets I have.

Targets

My initial target was to prove that I could win at the level. I’m currently at 1 PTBB/100 over 10,000 hands. I’m sure I will win at $100NL now. The first so many hands were littered with poor plays and I lost $400 fairly quickly. The last couple of days have also had some very poor play / strategy (e.g. 4-tabling). I think now that I am finding my feet and style at the level I should be able to look at a win rate of somewhere around 4 PTBB/100.

My first goal is to get to $4000 in my Party account. Once I hit this I have the 20 buy-ins for the $200NL game and I can begin to take some stabs at that. I may decide to have a few stabs earlier than that as the bankroll isn’t a huge issue – I’d like to move up as soon as I think I’m ready. I know in the past, and with other games, I have been in positions where I should have moved up and I never did. I don’t want to do that this time – I want to build my way up as quickly as possible. Hopefully I’m looking at somewhere around May to move up. I’ll update my goals as it becomes more apparent where I stand.

The ultimate goal is to be in a position come July to be able to support myself from playing poker. I think I’ll need to be making a minimum of $20 per hour to do this. If I can build up to 2-tabling the $200NL game by that point I’m sure that will cover it. If I can get higher than that it would be better.

Moving Up

First of all I want to talk about why I made the move up. I’ve been playing the $25 tables for a while as I hadn’t really played NL much before. I started by playing limit and then move to Pot Limit Omaha. After going to Vegas last summer I decided I wanted to learn No Limit as I felt there were big profits to be made. A few weeks back I went out with some work mates and they were asking me what I was going to do after I leave (I recently quit my job). I really have no idea what I want to do, but I do know that the thing I enjoy the most is playing poker. I also think that I have the potential to earn enough to live off it. So I decided the first thing to do was to get on the $100NL tables and see how we go. Bankroll isn’t an issue as I’m working and I also built up a good roll from limit and PLO.

The first few sessions didn’t go particularly well. I had a friend helping me out and giving advice on hands but it wasn’t really clicking and some of my judgement was certainly off. I learnt so much in the first 3 days playing the $100 tables that I honestly think it was more than I’d learnt about NL in the past 3 years! Anyway, things started looking up and I started playing better and understanding situations better. Then I decided to join Cardrunners as I’d heard about it a lot from forums and it seemed a good group of people to become involved with and learn from. I also really like the idea of watching videos of their sessions rather than just reading articles and forums.

The first 2 days after joining I had a fantastic run and everything I was trying new was working amazingly well. I was getting loads of action due to the new style they advocate, and I was hitting hands too – a pretty lethal combination! Then the last 2 days I’ve gotten a little over confident and pushed it too hard I think. I’ve found my VPIP/PFR is higher than normal, and consequently my results have suffered badly. I’ve also run into some difficult situations (which was bound to happen as I’d had such a good run of cards)."