"table selection"

Hi guys,

hope things go well with your grinding. I am still struggling to find more free time to play and the games to be good at the same time.
For instance, I had an hour spare this morning and without second thoughts I loaded stars and start looking for games.
Ermmm, yeh Monday morning, every recreational player was at their 9-5 jobs and only regs were at the tables. I did some hand review during that time but it is a bit annoying to want to play and know that you can play well and being unable to find a decent table.

That's my monthly graph so far. Volume wise it sucks i know. I am playing regular tables, and lately I find it difficult to open more than 4 good tables at the same time.

I have been told a couple of times that my table selection wasn't that great and I am trying more to find the best seats etc etc. If I am lucky enough I might find a table with 2 bad players(1 is always shorty), 1 unknown and 2 regs. Once the short stack losses their money and the other bad player double ups and leaves, the game breaks (instantly sometimes) and I have to start checking the lobby again and again to find new tables.

I might sound like I am complaining but I am not really. Just I don't like that my free time doesn't sync with the good games all the time.

On Friday I decided to play Zoom and I asked for some advice from a 25nl zoom reg. He gave me a couple of tips and bad players names that were playing at the time. I loaded 2 zoom tables and soon I found out that my HUD wasn't running. He said not to worry as I don't have stats from the zoom pool anyway. But honestly, I was feeling clueless. It was folding to my button and I couldn't check the blinds fold to steal stats and I was like "now what to do???"

I know that you have to have stars running as an admin to make HEM working for Zoom and I have already set that. I don't know why it wasn't working but I just decided to stay at my regular tables that I am more comfortable with. After all, I have stats on these players.

Mental..intrusion! 

 I want to make a reference to something that happened last week and it did really affect me. I had a conversation with a poker player (experienced but with "old school" thinking) about ev and how ev evens out in the long term. I don't want to get into details but we end up having a decent disagreement that day.

He managed to convince me that I am wrong ( when in fact I wasn't) simply because he was strongly supporting his opinion. And I went home feeling terrible and that I am a really bad player that I will always be losing. I spent that day searching math theories, messaging some math-wizards poker friends only to have them verifying that I was right.

I am only mentioning the above story because it is really important to find the right people to talk with (lesson learnt). I don't mind that I wasted a day to search and learn some math theories.  But I do mind that I didn't play poker that day and I do mind that I was feeling that all the effort that I have put in poker is not worth it. Everybody is not an expert in every topic so next time I ll find myself on a "similar spot" i will not get involved. Talking with the right people is as important as the table selection I mentioned before.

There's always a "but" and the good outcome of all that is that recently I have been introduced to some people that play the same stakes as me, we think quite alike and so far we have a very healthy discussion over hand histories and lines.

Sorry for the long post :) I have to run to bed as I have to be up early tomorrow.
Gl at the tables.