July results...

... in a word... not good. A good number of swings in both directions, but mostly downward. I finished the month down 11.5 buy-ins; it ended with an 8 buy-in loss immediately after a 12 buy-in heater. Even after rakeback I am down $90.47 (it's hard to see an upswing at the very end of the graph) for the month.

Graph:

I don't think I ran well, but I'd be being ridiculous if I said I played perfect and ran horribly. That clearly isn't the case. However, I finished the month a lot better than when I started, without a doubt. Playing 40k hands and watching a ton of poker videos will do that. There are also a number of things I am/will be doing to improve as well. I'm also starting to talk poker on AIM more, which is great. I've been making a point of going over hand histories even more so than I did in the past (lately it's been every single session, which is a good thing, but might not be realistic to continue doing). And I finally signed-up for coaching (TubaSteve's group coaching), which I'm pretty excited about. So, despite losing a lot, I'm kinda excited for poker in the future.

There were also some upsides for the month. I had a lot of fun in non-poker. I also went to Atlantic City for 4 days and made a decent profit, though I was ridiculously card dead for the last 2 days and cut my profits in half. Being card dead live is horrible (only 20-30 hands an hour), but playing one hand at a time definitely lets you think through all of your decisions and think through hands more deeply. I also managed to make Iron Man on Full Tilt Poker (it's their frequent player thing) for the first time ever, which I thought was cool. And, as I said, my poker playing improved a great deal. A big part of my improvement, I think, came in my mindset. I tilted much much less, and was generally okay when I had took a nasty beat or had a horrible session. I attribute a lot of this to The Eightfold Path to Poker Enlightenment. At the start I think I was... skeptical. I was excited when it was announced, but wasn't really impressed initially. I wasn't really taking it seriously. But somewhere along the way I started picking out little pieces of information and ideas that really sunk in. I'm definitely going to watch it again after the final episode comes out in 2 weeks.

Hopefully August will treat me a bit better, though. I think I will be a bit more busy so 40k hands might not happen, but I will still be aiming for Iron Man on FTP again.

Wish me luck,

Jacob Negley