Start from scratch again

I managed to kick along a little bit more last night. I can't say I had terrible luck for the most part, because I actually had some good luck tonight. I guess now I've dropped 80% in the stakes I play I'm going to get the luck come back :) Anyway, I played a bit of NL10 6 max and $11 HU, and won a little.

I'm fairly comfortable that I'm going to grind my way back up now. I played some NL10 6 max, and even though I didn't play optimally for that level (it's all value bet to death, fold when you don't hit), I can start to see a plan to come back formulating. The plan is to 4 table for 1 hour a session. Then spend another hour analysing my play, posting hands, reading forums, watching videos. If after all that I still have time I can grind another hour or however long I have. The important bit is to not spend every free moment playing poker. I need to invest time in learning, and joining a community again. I'm going to start posting more on the 2+2 forums, as I think that's where the highest volume comes in, and I'll aim to post one or two tricky spots as well as answer/read a whole lot of other posts.

This is exactly whats needed to succeed at poker. I've realised I'm not ready to give up all I've learned, and that even if I'm not earning the big dollars, doesn't mean I can't be improving my game quicker. I've always had the expectation on myself to just get there one day, without putting in all the efforts required, but now that it's not working that way perfectly, I have to question what it is about my game that doesn't allow that. And the truth is, when I'm sitting down with 6 players, even at NL10, I can't easily say where all my money is coming from, so I'm going to start looking for spots I'm throwing my cash away, and focus on winning plays at each level I play. My lack of skill comes down to a lack of knowledge, so I'm going to look to fill that gap, and come back stronger than ever. I'm fairly certain after doing this for a bit, I'll be moving up to NL25/NL50 etc with ease.

Monetary goals. This isn't so much a September goal as it is a moving up goal. So it shouldn't be affected too much by luck, as it will even out over time if I'm playing well enough. I don't want to move up unless I'm smashing a level, so I'm talking about getting above 10BB/100 hands. Also I want around 30 BI's at the next level, but will relax that a little for NL25, so I'll aim to get up to $500 at this point and start taking shots. I'm currently just under $300, so that's $200 or 20 BI's or 20000 hands at 10BB/100. Given that I'm aiming at about 1 hour of 4 tabling a night now, that's going to take about 2 months of playing solid poker. It sounds insane to be honest, and I'd actually hope to reduce that time by making sure I can beat that winrate, take rakeback into account and maybe put in some more hours here and there. But the main goal is to really get into the whole forums culture again and work hard at becoming one of the main contributors at the micro limit forum. I might actually set a goal of posting at least 50 posts a week, so that I know I'm spending enough energy there to improve my game a lot. I'm pretty certain if I do all that I'll be cruising back into NL25 by November, and will set a higher bankroll goal for NL50, like about $1250. So again, to be beating NL25 for 10BB/100, that would be about 30000 hands. So there is very little hope of me playing NL50 this year, but a lot of hope of me improving my game heaps if I stick to my goals, and I think I should if I'm serious about playing.