Marten Roosileht

About This Poker Journal

The Poker Diary is a first-person record of what it actually looks like to grind poker over the long run — online and live, cash games and tournaments, told session by session as it happens. This is about us: who writes this journal, why it exists, and how each entry gets made. Nothing here is a highlight reel; it's the honest middle of a long grind, kept in public.

2016
First real-money deposit at the micros — no tracking, no plan, plenty of tilt.
2018
Started keeping records
Began logging every session after a brutal downswing forced the question of whether I was actually winning.
2019
Moved up to mid stakes online after six consecutive winning months.
2021
Bankroll bust
Took three months off after a serious bust to rebuild bankroll rules from scratch.
2022
Started playing live tournaments regularly alongside the online grind.
2024
Began publishing this journal publicly instead of keeping it in a private file.
2025
Crossed a full year of consistently tracked sessions across both formats.

Our Mission

This site exists because most poker writing online skips the part that matters most day to day: what a downswing actually feels like, how you talk yourself back into a session after a bad beat, and what bankroll discipline looks like when your hands are a little shaky at the buy-in screen. The Poker Diary is built around publishing an honest, first-person session journal about grinding online and live poker over the long run, rather than another strategy course dressed up as a blog. It's written for players who want to see real decisions made under real pressure — not a highlight reel and not a marketing pitch. If you've ever wondered whether one losing month means you should drop stakes, or whether a downswing is normal or a warning sign, this journal is trying to answer that in public, one session at a time. (see online poker).

What We Cover

Entries here cover live and online session logs across cash games and tournaments, hand-by-hand breakdowns of specific decisions that actually swung a session, and honest stakes and bankroll-management calls made in the moment rather than justified afterward. There's also a running strategy section where sessions and hands get discussed in plain terms — how a decision actually got made at the table, not a theoretical framework applied after the fact. What this site does not cover is solver-chart theory for its own sake or product marketing dressed up as strategy advice; the focus stays on the lived, sometimes messy side of the game.

Our Process

Every entry follows the same basic discipline: session details — stakes, length, rough sample size — get logged right after playing, before memory or ego can rewrite what happened. Hands get replayed the way they actually went, including the ones that were misplayed, and losing sessions are written up with the same honesty as winning ones. The goal is never to prove any particular result was correct in hindsight; it's to show the decision-making itself — tilt, stakes calls, and bankroll discipline included — as it really occurred.

Our Team

The Poker Diary is written by a working poker player logging real cash-game and tournament sessions, hand histories, and results — not a content team assembling secondhand advice. Every entry posted here reflects a session that was actually played, tracked, and reflected on before it became public writing. That firsthand basis is what separates a session log from a generic poker article, and it's the standard every entry on this site is held to. Every entry here is written by me.

Transparency

This site is supported in part through affiliate relationships, and some pages mention poker tools, trackers, or other resources that come up naturally while playing and writing about these sessions. Where a product or service is mentioned, it's noted as a factual part of what gets covered here, not a recommendation shaped by any payment arrangement. Editorial judgment on sessions, hands, and strategy is kept separate from that funding model. Affiliate links are always marked as such.

Get in Touch

If you spot an error in a hand history, disagree with a line taken in a session, or just want to talk through a rough stretch at the tables, I'd genuinely like to hear about it. Contact us — I read every message.

♥

Online Poker Winning Strategy: What Actually Moved My Graph

Strategy

Marten Roosileht Mid-Stakes Online Grinder & Diarist

I'm Marten. I play mid-stakes online poker from Tallinn, and this is where I write down what actually happens — sessions, tilt, money, and the long flat stretches nobody puts in a highlight reel. I started at twenty-two, badly, on a bankroll I had no business risking, and spent about four years learning the same lesson repeatedly before it finally took. Two years in Malta taught me that moving somewhere for the poker does not fix the poker. I came home, cut my stakes, kept a spreadsheet, and got boring — which is roughly when it started working. What I write about here is the part of the game that isn't strategy. How I decide whether a bad week is variance or a leak. What tilt feels like from the inside, thirty seconds before I do the expensive thing. The bankroll rules I keep, and the two I have broken. What playing alone at three in the morning does to a person, and what I do about that now. When I play live I write about reads, carefully, because I think most tells content is confident nonsense. I'm not a coach and I'm not selling anything. I'm a working player with a decent record and an unremarkable one, keeping an honest log. Some entries end with me getting it wrong.