Journal of A Professional Poker Player

Despite twenty years as a professional gambler, I still need to remind myself not to be results oriented.  What does it mean to be results oriented? And why is this such a bad thing? A winning gambler judges a play based on its merits or its long term expected outcome.  For example, I recently played the following hand: Villain was a mega whale, even by the standards of PLO $25. The preflop action went like this : I opened to 85 cents, he three bet to $2.80, and I four bet to $8.65. He called with $9.53 behind. Now investing half your stack with Kh4h33 is not usually a great idea. He is in particularly bad shape against my hand because I have a three. Of course, Omaha being Omaha - and my own hand being a very weak category of aces - he still has a decent amount of equity. We are 70%-30% in fact. Actually, that isn't far off from where he should be. Against a 4% range he would have 32% equity. Still, you definitely do not want to be putting in half your stack with such a subst...

 Today was a bad day. Not in terms of results - I broke even. Certainly not in terms of volume, after a heroic 3500. That's what happens when you 8 table reg games and 4 table zoom simultaneously. no, today was a complete mental game breakdown. It started off reasonably enough. And then somewhere along the way it went off the rails. Hard. The good news is my bankroll is intact. However, if I don't make some big changes I will go bust. Here is what I need to do. I need strict session discipline. Plan in advance what I am going to do. Don't deviate from the plan. Business Plan  My bankroll is $3,900.  That is 80 buyins for PLO $50. At $5,000 I can start adding in some modest $100 volume. Right now I can play up to 8 tables of PLO $50. At $2,000 I will start adding in PLO $25 tables, dropping to PLO $25 entirely at $1,000.sA

Goals. Short term - 6/5 to 6/12 10,000 hands  That's an aggressive goal but very achievable. 1,500 hands a day. A good starting point. +$200. Not very much money. But some progress. Study. Medium Term Move up in stakes. Get better at PLO. Long Term Financial Security Transition into Economics / History Right now I am grinding PLO $10 and PLO $25, with the majority of my volume being PLO $10. To grind these limits I need a bankroll of around $1500. Alright.  Pre session journaling. I am about to fire on a 1 hour? Session. Playing PLO $25 and PLO $10.  Areas of my game to work on. The mental game. Consistency. Note taking. Lets do it. Let's have a good session. Session Notes : 3 $10 + 2 $25