Full Tilt: www.fulltiltpoker.com Bonus: $40Poker Profits: $62 Poker Plex: www.pokerplex.com Bonus: $50Poker Profits: -$11 Caribbean Sun: www.caribbeansunpoker.com Bonus: $40Poker Profits: $464 Will Hill: www.williamhillpoker.com Bonus: $25Poker Profits: $4 Poker Stars: www.pokerstars.com Bonus: $0Poker Profits: -$303 Hollywood: www.hollywoodpoker.com Bonus: $50Poker Profits: $674 Party Poker: http://www.partypoker.com/index.htm?wm=2576581 Bonus: $100Poker Profits: $10 Absolute: www.absolutepoker.com Bonus: $120Poker Profits: $614 Full Tilt: www.fulltiltpoker.com Bonus: $80Poker Profits: -$254 Absolute: www.absolutepoker.com Bonus: $120Poker Profits: -$505 Hollywood: www.hollywoodpoker.com Bonus: $50Poker Profits: $986 Interpoker: www.intercasinopoker.com Bonus: $100Poker Profits: $253 Empire: www.empirepoker.com Bonus: $100Poker Profits: -$36 Poker Room: www.pokerroom.com Bonus: $200Poker Profits: $525 Absolute: www.absolutepoker.com Bonus: $50Poker Profits: $80 Full Tilt: www.fulltiltpoker.com Bonus: $20Poker Profits: $759 Paradise: www.paradisepoker.com Bonus: $10Poker Profits: $296 Ultimate Bet: www.ultimatebet.com Bonus: $15Poker Profits: $434 The Gaming Club: www.thegamingclubpoker.com Bonus: $50Poker Profits: $378 __________________________________________________Money made off Bonuses: $1220Money made off Poker Profits: $4430 The final numbers for August: $5650 Well, that looks pretty, doesn't it? It looks even prettier when you consider that I pretty much took an entire week off playing to go to Vegas and I'm not counting my live wins. If you do that, the number goes slightly over $6000. Pretty much doubling my best month ever up to this point. The biggest change I've made is switching the game. When I got home from Vegas, I started playing NL games almost exclusively while clearing. So far, the NL experiment seems to be a rousing success. I owe a lot of this to scan and Watson. Watching them play has been very instrumental in the learning process. It's one thing to watch just highlighted hands, it's entirely another to railbird someone through an entire session and see how they switch gears, handle the different personalities and generally take control of an entire session. NL fits me better than Limit in some ways. I struggle with some of the more marginal situations and decisions in Limit. In NL I can throw them away and just wait for a better opportunity to come along. Also I struggle with playing overcards in a multi-way pot in Limit. In NL, for a significant bet, it's almost never correct so that makes things a little easier. I've always felt that my ability to let go of a big hand is a major advantage of mine and in NL this advantage is definitely much more important. So far, I've avoided a lot of the crippling errors I've seen and even though I've already felt some of the swings of the game, I've generally avoided pushing too many of my chips in when I was clearly beaten.But on the other hand, NL worries me a little also. Comfort level and the speed of losses is something that worries me. I lost 3 buyins at NL $200 on PokerRoom a couple days ago within an hour. All 3 hands I was all in with 1 card to come and the other person was drawing to 1 out or less. 1st hand was set vs. lower set and he pulled out a 1 outer to make quads and bust me. About 10 minutes later I had a set of 3s and pushed all in and was called by a gutshot (AK on a JT35 board). About 45 minutes after that I flopped a set with JT and still had the nuts when pushed all in by an AK. Only thing to sink me is an A or K on the river and he connected with the K. These are all ideal situations with more than a 90% chance of victory for me, but I managed to lose them all. I know my emotional makeup and know that even though I've been pretty good at avoiding the tilt monster so far in the 8 months I've been doing this, it's still out there and I have to be careful. To try and counteract the problem I've started setting stop loss limits on myself and making sure I don't play out of my bankroll. I've also decided to increase my bankroll dramatically. I'll be using a large chunk of this month's earnings to pad my bankroll to a comfortable level for the NL games I'll be playing. Also, I don't want this to sound like I'm running from my problems at Limit and/or not willing to fix them. That's not true at all. I'll still be playing some and reading/working to improve my game. I want to become proficient at all forms of poker and moving into NL while this is the hot game in a lot of places is in no means an abandonment of Limit poker. Who knows, I might not even be sticking with NL next month, I may get off to a rough start and drop back to Limit and grind from there. Self-improvement is my main goal for the next month. I don't know how realistic or unrealistic these kinds of numbers are; I'm simply too green to know if I can repeat this or if this is some kind of freak combination of hot cards and beginners' luck. So my main goal isn't going to be monetary or results-oriented. I want to study the game in more detail. Already I think a major advantage of mine is that I keep better notes on my competitors. Other people have remarked that they NEVER take notes. I want to work harder while I'm playing and not just fly on autopilot. I have to improve my table watching skills. I learned how useful hand reading can be in my live forays; some hands it felt like the other people were playing with the cards face up. I'm nowhere's near that comfortable online, but I want to become as good a hand reader as I possibly can. But for now, I'll take the rest of the day off and allow myself some time to be content and feel good about myself. Tomorrow it's back to work and hopefully the good times will keep rolling.

Source: Vanity and Poker