July Nearly Ending

Need to catch up on a few things. May was a really good month. I can't remember exact numbers but I think I finished up around 13k to 14k. The entire month of June was essentially a vacation, as I spent 22 days in Vegas, staying in a house with a bunch of cool guys. It was an awesome trip overall, even though I didn't do much grinding. I didn't play much online or live, though I still made like 5k on the month I think. I also played my first and only session of table games, winning 300.00 (ship!) at Ultimate Texas Hold'Em at Paris on the strip. The trip was fairly expensive though (somewhere around $3500), and I definitely didn't break even on the trip, especially as I was paying everything for both myself and Lina.

It was my first time at the WSOP though, and I even made the rare decision to play a tournament, event 28, a $1500 event. I busted like 3 hours in. My first table was insanely soft, but somehow, in a 2600 person field, I ended up at the same table as RDog, who doubled through me after I had chipped my stack up nicely. I was up to 7k from 4500 chip starting stacks, when Rod doubled his 3900 chips through me to knock me back down to just under 3k. I was pretty card dead for the next hour before getting a double from ~2k up to 4500, and then knocking a player out with JJ vs KQo to chip up to 7k. Not long after though, I ended up busting in a weird spot vs an aggressive player at 75/150 blinds, where I squeezed AQo in the small blind to 1500 after a CO raise to 450 and a monster stacked fish button call. He tank shoved for like 5400 effective (~3900 more) and I had to call. My AQ failed to improve to his AK and I was out. I think I played fairly well for my first significant live tourney. I definitely played very well at my first table (which apparently had Alan Goehring sitting in the 8 seat, and I didn't recognize him and thought he was pretty bad). My bust-out hand might have been a bit rushed, especially for a weak field, and I will definitely learn from that in the future.

July is nearly ending, and it's been a long time since my last update. I'm having a pretty solid month, with two days left in the month. Not entirely sure what the results are though. We'll see in a few days.

My laptop's power connection finally shit the bed, so I had to get a new laptop (while I try to get the old one repaired, as it's still under warranty). New laptop is alright, but not amazing.

I've really attempted to increase my hand volume lately. I created a self-incentive plan to help me try to play more. Basically, once I reach 1300 hands played in a day, I start paying myself a certain amount of money based on the number of hands I've played. This money will be used to buy whatever I want. It might sound stupid, because I can buy whatever I want with whatever I make, but I'm trying to stick to this plan so that I can grind more, as well as feel less guilty for spending on luxuries. Ideally I want to be grinding 40k hands a month while playing no more than 5 tables, and I should be able to do it in August. I'll be going on vacation in mid-August, likely back to Florida, and I'll be attempting to continue putting in the hands while there.

I've really been in a nice groove at 2/4 the last few months, but I've begun to feel like I've become too complacent, and I need to take more shots. I've been mixing in a lot of 3/6, though it hasn't been a large sample, and I haven't ran great there. I'm sure I've made plenty of mistakes in the games, but I'm also taking a fair amount of coolers there this month, despite only playing in good games. I'm just going to keep mixing in good games from higher levels, rather than trying to plunge into 4 tabling a higher limit like I had in the past. Even if the shot taking goes poorly, I'll always have 2/4 to crush.

Here's a graph of my last two days grinding, as that's all I have saved on this computer until Full Tilt sends me my requested hand histories. The first day, I was on fire. Today was pretty frustrating, as I just couldn't win many pots: