Today Greg and I had a lesson that took an unexpected twist. He became my financial adviser/poker mentor today. Kind of funny, but a testament to his ability to read people and see what the situation calls for.

My progress HU has been less than superb for a few reasons. I am a slow learner, I have not put in hands due to tilt/frustration, I care a lot about money right now.

I have not been very happy about playing HU since I am well on my way to my first losing month ever (maybe second). I was willing to stick with it though. I did not want to let Greg down, or admit to myself that it was not the best course of action. Greg obv read my mind and knew what would be best. It was a little hard on the ego to get pulled out of the game, but it is the way to go.

I am very excited to go back to 6 max and start generating revenue again. I am beating 1/2 (which is what I will be playing with Greg) for 7.88 ptbb over the last 60K hands (need a brag after all this stuff above) and can't wait to see what happens when I get to work with Greg.

I just spent 3 hours trying to figure out what the hell went wrong with my internet after Comcast went down last night. Comcast can suck my balls, and Linksys will get the sloppy seconds.

Those linksys bastards. I call, we go through steps. Lady says "reinstall this blablabla and call back". I call back "we're sorry, your warranty is only good for 1 service call. We can extend it for 6 months $39.99, are you interested?" Oh, so I can pay 1/2 the price of a new router to get a 6 month warranty? "Yes, that is correct. Would you like to be transfered?"

Well I got a new router (Netgear) and everything works again.

I did miss a lesson and had to cancel another due to being tilted over this whole issue, and not having eaten anything all day. GG productivity.

Just a reminder that this is going on tomorrow between 2 and 4pm my time.

and got busted. won around 3k though, so w/e.

Is there any interest in group sessions that would reduce the hourly rate you would have to pay me personally. I am thinking about doing a six hour course with four people. The price would be $150 ($30hr) per person. Sessions are likely to run over, and would end up being over six hours of instruction total. I am interested in hearing any ideas on what type of format you think would be most effective. Options I have thought of so far include...

Pre course I would send a brief questionnaire to get an idea of where the group is as a whole. In order to determine what to focus on, and not waste any time once we begin.

hour 1: Go over the questionnaires and discuss what our focus is going to be over the next 6 hours. I assume this will take up at least an hour, if not more.

hour 2-5: One hour sweats for each student. I think this will be good for students that are not playing as well. Having a four way discussion while one person plays should be great for everyone. You will obv have a positive expectation during the hour that you play to help recover some of the cost of the lesson.

hour 6:Options here... Me playing. Me talking about concepts that the group feels need more discussion. Going over some of my HH's, or HH's that members the group have.

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This is the type of format in envision although I would really like any input you guys have. I must admit this is largely based off of Greg's group coaching session that I took, and felt was very effective. Although everyone did not play in his course, (there were ten of us) all other ideas are basically stolen.

The first group study will be on Sunday the 21st at 2pm PDT – Pacific Daylight Time Time zone offset: UTC - 7 hours (San Francisco time).

Be there, or be square.

Going to start having the group study session on either Sundays or Mondays (21st or 22nd will be the first), at a time that is best for as many people as possible. PM, IM, or email me a preferred day and time (go ahead and convert the time to Pacific standard for me).

This offer is good for any student that has had a lesson. If you got one lesson, you may come to one. If you bought a package you may come to as many as you want, as long as we are working through your package in a timely manner.

This will last for 2 hours and will be me and the other students sweating you for an hour. Then we will switch and you will sweat the other students with me. You can also send me HH to your hearts content during this period, which is normally limited to < 9 a day that are vaguely interesting .

If your the only one that shows up, you get a free two hour sweat session. Since I only have six of you guys, and your scattered around the world, I assume only a couple will make it each week. We can switch times now and then to make sure everyone gets a chance to take part.

I was reading through a 2p2 thread that was started by a winning 3/6 regular last night. It had a lot of good information in it, what I got out of it was this... A lot of players have the concepts down, but not the emotional control. I realize now my emotions are getting the best of me.

Emotions are a big part of whats holding back my poker development. I could learn to play middle pair on a two tone board in a more +ev manner, sure. That would not make me anywhere near as much profit (or give me as much happiness ev) as learning to control my emotions.

When I am emotional at the tables, I let everyone down, me, my girl, my family, Greg, Nute, my students, anyone that ever sweats me or helps me to improve my game in any way. I do not feel pressured by all the people I would let down if I continued to be emo. I am ashamed of my behavior however, and realize it needs to change. It needs to change for me to reach my maximum potential in poker, and life.

When the lessons started with Greg I thought I would learn a lot about poker, which I am. He is a great teacher and incredibly observant. I feel the biggest lesson, and surprise, was the speed and accuracy with which he accessed my mental condition. He articulated things that I often thought, but had never spoken about.

End emo fanboi blog post.

EDIT: 2p2 thread

HU is not hard, I just need to improve at it.

Well, I played some HU and did not have great results today. I made errors in a lot of spots.

I need to get better at identifying what type of player I am playing, and how to exploit him. Quickly.

I need to be able to adjust to his adjustments, if he's making any.

I don't need to adjust, until he adjusts.

I don't need to worry about getting owned.

I need to be confident.

I do not need any sort of emotion to be an effective HU player.

I need to be patient.