Yeah, actually kinda surprising to me, too, since I feel like I've been doing pretty well since about mid-June and assumed I was further ahead. A closer inspection of my records, however, revealed that I wasn't as far ahead as I thought.

Jan/Feb were abysmal, down $1400. Whatever, those were bad months, as I was still working, stressed, whatever. March was huge, as I won big playing live. The another huge downswong in April through JUNE actually, as I had several big live losses before recouping online in late June. July was a good month, positive, but it was interrupted by my losses in Vegas, which were still quite large relative to the stakes I'm playing online at this point. But it wasn't until yesterday that I actually got positive for the year (actually I was positive at beginning of April before downswing started again).

In terms of buy-ins relative to stakes, I am doing great, though. Up 20 BI at 25 PLO, and now up 12 BI at 50PLO (good day today, +4 BI). I plan to keep grinding 50PLO for awhile though, probably until I have at least 2K on Stars to take shots at slightly larger games. Bankroll is kinda relative to me at this point, since I'm paying for rent, food, school, etc, but everything I will have online AFTER I redeem my bonus will be completely Poker profit, so I can at least gamble with that.

Also, decided that playing pure Triple Draw really isn't that profitable against guys who have a clue what they're doing. And the variance is brutal. Games like Triple Draw and Badugi aren't really about getting a huge edge anyway--mostly, they play well as a rotation in part of a mixed game, because they have a tendency to liven up the game and tilt the bad players. Hopefully, with Stars introducing some new games, it won't be long before we get some mixed games like BOTE (Badugi, Omaha-8, Triple Draw, Stud-8), which can be a lot of fun.

Goals for the rest of this month are to maintain GoldStar (not too hard), make points to cash out my bonuses (also not hard), and earn enough FPP's to play the Turbo Takedown at month's end again (again, not too difficult). Other than that, I plan to just keep grinding it out, trying to move up gradually in PLO. I might try adding some PLO8, but the rake makes it tough to beat at the low limits.