The pokers!

I've been a break even/slightly losing poker player for about a year now. Actually, I only started playing a year ago, and have only been more "serious" about playing for about 9-10 months.

I've primarily been a tournament player in the past, mainly because I didn't feel comfortable enough in cash games, something I really do want to change. I have had moderate success in tournaments, but really have never had a "big" score. The biggest I've had to date was qualifying for the $1k stimulus event at last years WSOP, which was huge for me at the time. I played in a $5 super satellite, qualified for the $30 satellite and finished in the top 80 (out of 6500 or so) to win a $2500 trip to play in the event, which was huge to me at the time.

I have played in cash games before, both locally and in Vegas. I haven't kept accurate enough stats to know how well I'm doing in those games, but I'm guessing with the limited amount of times I've played them I'm probably break even.

The past few months I've been trying to play cash games online, which has not gone fantastically for me. I switched from trying to grind sit'n'goes to primarily playing cash, and had a hard time adjusting, most of that due to some tilt and shot taking, which I run really bad in. Like last night, losing a 350bb pot ($172 @ .25/.50) to a 2 outter (my set vs overpair). I don't mind if this happens in the stakes I'm really comfortable in, but when I'm taking a shot and trying to boost my BR a bit more, it really hurts. That pot would have really helped. Of course, after that hand I go on insane monkey tilt and blow a bunch more trying to recover. I'm probably down lifetime about $200 online, but have more than made that up playing live tournaments and doing a job on the side dealing. Thankfully the $500 isn't hugely important to me, although it would be really nice to have back right now :)

I guess the main reason for me starting this blog is to try to make sure I stick to some kind of BRM rules, and to be honest with myself about my progress. I'm going to start with $200 on full tilt, and will try to work that up to $2500 by the time I head to Vegas this summer, probably the start/middle of June.

I feel I really need to outline my goals here to ensure that I have something to look back on and really make sure I stick to a proper strategy to make this work :

- Don't take shots without having the BR to sustain the hit that could happen
- Don't move up in stakes trying to recover daily losses
- Make GOOD poker decisions at all times, no matter the stakes
- Be able to make big laydowns in tough situations
- Realize a losing day is OK to have, and don't chase trying to get back to even
- Stick to games that I know I can beat
- Don't run any crazy bluffs at the micro stakes

I'm still unsure if I should 6 table ring games, or just 2 table rush poker. The volume of hands in rush is insane, but I seem to get myself in a lot of cooler situations that I can't seem to get away from. Those situations are going to continue to come up, but its important that I be able to focus on making correct decisions to minimize the losses in those. At the same time, I need to ensure that I get the most value from my own hands, something that I've struggled with in the past. 

I have about 3-3.5 months to build up any kind of BR to take with me to vegas... I'm still going to be going either way, but would really like to have a comfortable BR that allows me to play in the 1/2 (or slightly higher) games while I'm there, as I know that I play much better live and the play in some of the hotels in vegas is extremely weak.