I want to take some time and clear up some things. First, I have not lost over these last 6 months. I simply haven't made enough to cover my expenses. With rakeback, custom development projects and donations from PA Hud, I am still down a significant amount compared to my monthly expenses. This is mainly due to my monthly expenses being way too high. If I only needed $1,200-1,500 per month, I would be fine. I needed to make $3,000-3,500 to cover expenses and grow the bankroll a little bit. At $3/6, I would need to win at 2 BB/100 over 30k hands to earn this. While not impossible, it's never a good idea to rely on achieving a high winrate to meet the minimum dollar amount needed. Second, how I deal with bad beats. I know that I come on here and post an emotion filled post after having a terrible day. However, you would be surprised to see how little I let the beats affect me while I'm playing. Sure, I bitch about them, but I don't carry a grudge against a suckout artist and I don't let a beat change the way I would play a hand. Even after losing to set over set, I am still able to lay down a pair of Aces when I know I'm beat. I make those posts because it makes me feel better. I keep the emotions in check while playing, and I use the bitching as a means to release those emotions. Third, the negative variance. Variance, luck, call it what you will. Compared to the period of time I played before going pro, I would estimate that my suckouts and missed draws increased by 75-100% since then. You don't have to believe me, and that's fine. However, in the several instances where I've had people shadowing my sessions to try to help my game, each time that person has commented on how bad my luck has been while they were watching. The interesting thing is that those sessions were what I considered to be average (where your average session may be a slight winner). I'm a smart guy. Take that as arrogance if you wish, but I feel it's true. I'm certainly not the smartest, and I know that I'm not the best poker player in the world, but I am a winning player. I understand the game and I know what it takes to win. When I started all this negative variance, the first place I looked was at my game. I reviewed hands, I reviewed stats, I read and reread books and articles. I did everything I could to improve my game. I feel like my game has improved a great deal and once things even out, I'll continue to win and do well. Like I've said before, my biggest problem has been my enormous monthly expenses. I have a lot of debt and should have paid it off before attempting this. That's where failure happened. If I had no debt, I would've been fine. I'm going back to my original plan. My original plan was to play through the limits until I was playing the $15/30 game. I'm going to change a little bit of the plan though. I'm going to start out at $3/6 6 max and go from there. I'm going to cash my bankroll out to 500 BB. I'm going to play $3/6 6 max until I have 600 BB for $5/10 6 max. Then, I'll move to $5/10 6 max until I have 600 BB for $10/20 6 max. Then I'll go from there. This time around, I'm going to enjoy my winnings. At the end of each month, I'm going to withdraw 25% of my profits, in addition to rakeback. I will use this money to buy nice things for myself. One of the first things I'm going to buy is a plasma screen television, which is something I've wanted for a long time. I'm also going to put a good amount of time in PokerAce Hud. My little application has grown into quite the beast over the past couple months. A lot of people are using it and loving it and new people discover it day after day. It felt really good when a few of the people who originally doubted me when I first announced it sent me messages apologizing for doubting me and telling me that PA Hud is a good application. I've had a ton of people tell me that I should charge for it and I've even read messages saying that they can't believe that I'm giving it away for free. I can't deny that the thought of making a little money off my hard work is appealing. I'm still a good ways off from being comfortable with the application enough to charge for it. Who knows, PA Hud might make me rich! Haha, that's very unlikely, but it might help me pay off some of my debt. It's certainly something to think about.

Source: PokerAce's Poker Blog