Marten Roosileht

The Journal: Session Notes from a Grinding Poker Player

An online poker player who logs sessions consistently builds a record that memory alone never manages. This archive collects every entry I've written since I started the habit, and this page is your map to it. If you're already an online poker player hunting for the entries themselves rather than a definition of the game, you're in the right place. I'll walk through how the journal is organized, what each entry contains, and how to read the results as they stack up across months. Some players lean on a spreadsheet, others keep a notebook by the keyboard — I use a dedicated log, and honestly, tools like The Poker Diary have made that part painless, though it's just one option worth exploring.

Online poker player reviewing session notes at a quiet desk setup

Why Keep a Session Journal at All

Every online poker player who's put in more than a few hundred hands knows how one session blurs into the next. Variance is loud, and memory is a poor narrator of what actually happened at the table. A journal fixes that: stakes, hand count, result, and the one decision that mattered most. I write an entry after almost every session, win or lose, because the losing ones usually teach more than the winning ones do.

How This Archive Is Organized

Entries are tagged by stakes and by month, so you can scan a stretch of NL200 sessions or jump straight to a specific week without digging through everything else. Each entry follows roughly the same shape: session context first, then the hand or moment worth discussing, then an honest read on what I'd change next time. I don't smooth over bad stretches — a losing week gets logged exactly the same way a winning one does.

Stakes and table size at the top of every entry
Session length and buy-in count for context
The key hand, played out street by street
An honest verdict on the decision — right, wrong, or close

Reading Results Across Months

A single session tells you almost nothing about how an online poker player is actually running. A few hundred entries start to tell a real story. I'd rather you read six months of entries than one highlight-reel hand, because that's where the real signal lives — win-rate drift, stake changes, and the moments tilt started creeping in. If you want the distilled version of how I actually make decisions at the table, that lives on the strategy page rather than here. And if you're following the monthly bankroll challenge specifically, its rules live on their own page — this archive just links out to both when it's relevant. (see glossary of poker terms).

How to Read the Archive

Read entries in order where you can. Skipping straight to dramatic hands misses the slower story — how a losing stretch eventually turned around, or didn't.

Low Stakes, Low Pressure

A lot of entries here come from online poker low stakes tables, and that's deliberate. Low stakes sessions are cheap to log, cheap to review, and forgiving enough that one bad night doesn't sting the bankroll. If you're newer to tracking your own play, starting small keeps the habit easy to sustain. Apps like The Poker Diary can handle the tracking side of things if building your own spreadsheet isn't appealing, but plenty of players do fine with a simple notes app or a dedicated poker tracker instead.

That's online poker explained the way it actually happens session by session, not the highlight-reel version you'll find elsewhere. Whether you journal by hand, in a spreadsheet, or with software built for it, the habit matters more than the tool.

Want an Easier Way to Log Sessions?

A simple session-logging tool built for players who'd rather track hands than spreadsheets.

See NZT Poker

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Is online poker good?

Online poker can be a good option for players who enjoy the game and manage their bankroll sensibly — it offers more table volume and lower stakes than most live rooms. Whether it's good for you depends on your goals, discipline, and whether you treat it as entertainment or a serious pursuit.

How many online poker players are there?

Estimates vary by region and platform, but industry tracking suggests tens of millions of people play online poker worldwide, with several million active on major sites in any given month. Exact figures shift with regulation changes and new market launches.

How much does it cost to play online poker?

Costs depend entirely on the stakes you choose — micro and low-stakes tables let you play for a few dollars or less, while software or tracking tools are typically free or a small monthly fee. Rake, the site's cut of each pot, is the ongoing cost to factor in beyond your buy-in.

Is online poker legal in the US?

Online poker's legality in the US depends on the state — a handful of states regulate and license it directly, while others leave it in a legal gray area or restrict it outright. Always check your specific state's current gambling laws before depositing on any site.

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.

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A Hand I Won on a Tell, and One I Lost on a Fake One

Poker tells in action: a timing read that won a pot, and a fake tell that cost one. Real hands, honest hit rate, from a live session.

poker tells

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Forty Days of Running Bad: Notes from a Poker Downswing

Thirty-eight days of red: the full log, the numbers behind a -4.1bb/100 stretch, and what a variance calculator said about it.

downswing poker

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Moving Up Stakes: The Night I Sat at the Bigger Table

The night I clicked from NL50 to NL100: the nerves, the stop-loss on a sticky note, and the first pot at the new stakes.

moving up stakes poker

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Poker Bankroll Management: The One Rule I Broke Once

The bankroll rules I actually obey: 30 buy-ins full ring, 40 six-max, a 5% session cap — and the night I nearly broke all three.

poker bankroll management

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Poker Mental Game: My Pre-Session Discipline Ritual

The poker mental game isn't theory for me — it's sleep, stop-loss, and a quit trigger. Here's the routine, honestly logged.

poker mental game

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Poker Tilt: The Session It Cost Me More Than the Pot

The cooler that put me on tilt, the three hands I played to get it back, and the two-buy-in stop-loss rule that came out of that night.

poker tilt

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Reading My Own Graph: A Week Inside Poker Variance

I ran 42,000 of my own hands through a variance calculator to find out whether a 6 buy-in week meant anything. It did not.

poker variance