Now this is going to be a story in the making so hopefully eventually this will become a thread that everybody will be able to benefit from.

First, some things about me:

I am a 20-year-old german student who, what a surprise , has come to realise that if I could make a living from poker i would be much better off than working a 9-5 which simply put is not the lifestyle i am looking for.

now, i do know that anybody who comes across poker and does not instantly dismiss it as a gambler's game leading to ruin and addiction will hope to achieve that. i also know that most people fail at this and end up as either prey for the sharks or hopeless stagnant massgrinders failing to improve their game.

i want to show that it still is possible to make poker a job startig at the lowest stakes available and hopefully progressing through the limits into the mid/hi stakes constantly working on all aspects of my game, at which point, given i reach these stakes as a winning player, the winnigs should be sufficient to live from.

i am in no way a professional player at this point. as most people i have started out as a casual tournament donk winning some and lose way more not really realizing what the game is all about.
over the last two years however i have started taking poker more seriously, soaking up all information available in books and strategy sites, but essentially this has caused a huge overload as too much strategy and not enough practice will simply screw up your game.

having tried out most forms of NLHE i came to realize that tournaments and sngs have a bit too much variance for my taste and NLHE cash games suit me a lot more. so i have decided to give this a more professional approach for the next 14ish months to see what happens and document it here so that i stay focussed and hopefully also to impove my game and fix the numerous leaks my game is still certain to have at this point.

to let you see that i am not just another donk looking for attention, here's how i have been doing so far at NL10 both full ring and six max since late july:



i intend to post the most interesting hands i encounter and my graphs and overview of my sessions as often as possible and i will post strategy questions and other issues coming to my mind as frequently as possible.

i hope this journey will be a fun ride!

LOL'ed at your use of "hopeless stagnant massgrinders"...

now some specifics on how i am going to approach this:

-i am always going to play a very VERY conservative bankroll as this is the only money i have available to play and i do not want to keep moving up and down in limits all the time, therefore i will be playing with at least 100 buyins at any given time. i am starting with $2000 as of now so i will move up at about $2750 to have a little room should my NL25 experience start out worse than i hope for. (i have taken a couple of shots at NL25 before and, frankly i got crushed so i will spend a bit more time grinding the 'easy' games before going back to analyze what went wrong at NL25 so far and taking shots again in about 4 weeks time if all goes as planned.

-i play at least 6 tables of 6max. (up to 12 but this tends to lead to bot-mode which overall lesssens my winrate; 9 tables is optimal for me)

-most of my sessions will be at least 3k hands. however depending on the situation, i may quit or extend the session.

-i play on stars so most of you will know the rakeback system there. with the volume i intend to put in, i can expect to reach goldstar 100% but not platinum until i move up. so i will save up all my fpp's for the $300 bonus.

-i do not intend to play tournaments as my mtt game is by far worse than my cash game. ( i may take a sunday off and play the sunday storm donkament just to see if i can luckbox myself a huge roll , who doesnt, but i will focus on 6max cash for the most part)

-i will actively try to discuss what goes through my head, be it tilt, be it interesting hands or whatever else may or may not be playing part in my poker-related life.

- if anything else comes to my mind i will add.

- Feel free to comment but please dont spam as i really do take this seriously. if you have any tips, ideas or anything that my help me or the community, please post!

so, first session in about 2 hours! gl at the tables

btw, to explain the bankroll approach: i played 8k hands of 25NL a couple days back and ended up losing like....$750 or something insane running about $350 below EV. i simply want to avoid these downswings to hurt my roll this much when they happen, so no nit-alert

i just think poker is a game that has too many great things about itself. playing like a robot on autopilot just takes away the beauty of it

I agree completely. You Germans always have the best way of saying things.

Alright first session done. sadly i only played 701 hands so cant really call it a session but i HAVE to quit: One of my fav movies is about to start on TV haha (will smith's public enemy #1 )

BUT i have tried a little bit of a laggro style that i have read about here n the forums to improve my redline which as u may have seen has been going south from about hand #80 which is exactly when i started playing 6max. before was fr. obv. lol

anyways for the first 700 hands it has worked. my redline (green until i switch from poker copilot to PT) has been going up while i kept winning my showdowns. somehow i still managed to end up $20 below EV but who am i to complain about a winrate of 70+bb/100 haha




two somewhat interesting hands came up. so voila my first two posted hands:

#1:

SB: 38/18/0,5(100)
CO: 53/7/1 (23)

so both opponents seem to have very lose passive tendencies. while sample size for CO is by far not big enough i tend to stick with first impression until proven otherwise.


No Limit Hold'em $0,05/$0,10
PokerStars
6 players
Formatted by pokercopilot.com - Mac OS X hand history analysis and tracking

Stacks:
UTG - provenmac ($10,00)
MP - Hero ($31,40)
CO - Balsa39 ($10,08)
BTN - portexik ($10,00)
SB - Thulsadoon ($45,11)
BB - erikkke ($19,51)

Preflop: ($0,15, 6 players) Hero is MP with J♠ A♣
1 fold, Hero raises to $0,30, Balsa39 calls $0,30, 1 fold, Thulsadoon calls $0,25, 1 fold

Flop: A♥ 4♦ 7♣ ($1,00, 3 players)
Thulsadoon checks, Hero bets $0,70, Balsa39 calls $0,70, Thulsadoon calls $0,70

Turn: 3♠ ($3,10, 3 players)

Thulsadoon checks

now to me this is a thin valuebet spot even against two fish. since slowplay is pretty unlikely i can put both on a range of Ax, 7x, 22-TT, and random gutshots and straight draws which they will chase by all costs. if i check i simply let them get there for free and if they miss they are not putting in a penny. if they do i am the donk paying them off.
do you think its a bit too thin? i figured i would fold to any raise and hope to check down the riv unless i improve myself.



#2:

CO is another tasty big fat fish 67/27/1.3(30)

No Limit Hold'em $0,05/$0,10
PokerStars
5 players
Formatted by pokercopilot.com - Mac OS X hand history analysis and tracking

Stacks:
UTG - avrrr ($10,00)
CO - 9.PlanDental ($6,92)
BTN - Hero ($10,00)
SB - njbrox ($19,24)
BB - jhendrix113 ($16,51)

Preflop: ($0,15, 5 players) Hero is BTN with A♥ K♦
1 fold, 9.PlanDental calls $0,10, Hero raises to $0,40, 2 folds, 9.PlanDental calls $0,30

Flop: J♥ 6♥ 8♠ ($0,95, 2 players)
9.PlanDental checks, Hero bets $0,70, 9.PlanDental calls $0,70

Turn: K♥ ($2,35, 2 players)
9.PlanDental bets $0,30



now here's my thinking. i am playing a pot in position against a fish who called my cbet. so his most likely range is any jack, any 8, many decent sixes, any flush, and random stuff that turned into 2pair, though the latter is unlikely since i expect him to bet more with stronger hands. however his bet looks like he is ready to put more money in the pot if i raise with plenty hands that i beat. plus, if he were trapping i have at least 7 outs to the nuts, sometimes as many as 17. however i expect to be good here the majority of the time. and since he is calling at least this turn with most of his holdings and i have millions of outs if raised, i believe a bigger raise close to 80% pot is in order.
any objections? now that i wrote it all this hand doesnt really seem that hard anymore but hey, we all gotta start somewhere right?

to hand #1 i have to add that the 3 is somewhat ****ty since the most obv draw did come in. still i gain a lot more ($$ and info) by betting

Gl op,

Ak hand i would raise more pre.

you mean increase standard raises in general or just iso one limper to 5x?

iso raise more.

damn i screwed up with the hh's

here s the real tricky hand of the session:

MP seemed to be a taggy regular nothing fancy but i had been going fairly crazy at this table. i was there for only about 40-50 hands and up to this point had not folded to a single cbet and made lots of 3bets etc

No Limit Hold'em $0,05/$0,10
PokerStars
6 players
Formatted by pokercopilot.com - Mac OS X hand history analysis and tracking

Stacks:
UTG - hh 1854 ($12,97)
MP - 307th ($14,62)
CO - erikkke ($10,10)
BTN - Hero ($10,18)
SB - Respect_AKs ($10,00)
BB - Habrahabra ($10,00)

Preflop: ($0,15, 6 players) Hero is BTN with J♥ A♥
1 fold, 307th raises to $0,30, 1 fold, Hero calls $0,30, 2 folds

Flop: 6♣ T♦ J♠ ($0,75, 2 players)
307th bets $0,40, Hero raises to $1,20, 307th calls $0,80

Turn: A♦ ($3,15, 2 players)
307th checks, Hero bets $2,15, 307th raises to $13,12 (all-in)


now my thought process was something along the lines of: against most regs or at least abc regs this may be a fold, had i not created such a table dynamic. however a good player will know that i will barrel turn 100% of the time since its scarecard and opens fd's n stuff. anyways had i been playing tight and opponent was unknown i may find a fold as KQ TT and 66 become much more likely. in this situation it becomes a call imo

played another session of 1.9k hands
won $16 after being up about $50 at on point. ran into some coolers in the end but i think i played fairly well. increased the tabe amount to 9.

No Limit Hold'em $0,05/$0,10
PokerStars
5 players
Formatted by pokercopilot.com - Mac OS X hand history analysis and tracking

UTG seemed to be somewhat of a regular: 33/29/0.5 (52)

Stacks:
UTG ($13,53)
CO - Hero ($10,50)
BTN ($5,00)
SB ($18,19)
BB ($10,15)

Preflop: ($0,15, 5 players) Hero is CO with A♣ A♥
UTG raises to $0,30, Hero raises to $0,90, 3 folds, tonytw calls $0,60

Flop: 6♣ 6♦ 3♣ ($1,95, 2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $1,40, tonytw calls $1,40

Turn: K♣ ($4,75, 2 players)
UTG checks, Hero bets $2,90, UTG raises to $5,80

this spot sucks because his minraise really screams strength imo. the flush came in and the board is paired. i am not sure he is crazy enough to call a 3bet oop with many sixes a flush is very likely. the king is not really in his range much since its a club. 33 is also possible. however i have the A of clubs so i believe my draw to be live a high % of the time. given he has a flush i have plenty of outs to improve so a call is fine.





(however i messed up and called his AI on blank riv. fml )

should i check the turn in a spot like this to pot control? essentially i am not scared of any cards on the river and getting value from 44-JJ should be much easier that way. not sure if the turn bet was a mistake

played another session of 1944 hands and won $52.

the whole session was an absolute heater just like the first one. no tough spots, every table seemed to be an ATM

should actually be $72 but lost w/ JJ vs QQ on Jxx flop on last hand... owell cant win every single one

upswingaments

graph since hand #1 :



profit so far: $122

played 2455 hands and won $36. 4th winning session in a row. no real tough spots but went up and down as coolers were all over the place. total profit: $158

make that another $10 for a total of $46 in another 1k hands

subbing this looks promising! glglglglglgl!

thx i ll be trying my best to keep it up

just realized that i need some more defined bankroll goals for climbing limits so voila:

as of now, my br is $2178 (made $8 playing the humongously soft NL2-6max games while setting up my new HUD from Pokertracker )

$2.75k+ NL25
$5.5k+ NL50
$11k+ NL100
$22k+ NL200

i will be taking shots at higher limits when i feel comfortable enough but these will likely be while 4tabling to get a feel for the limits. the above numbers are minimum amounts for starting grinding the corresponding limit at 6-9 tables full time.

the second goal is the number of hands i want to put i an a daily, weekly and monthly basis:

3k per playing day, 5 playing days a week makes 60k hands a month.

starting next year i will be shooting to make supernova for the first time and hopefully make supernova a couple times to get max value out of the vpp system.

i hadnt really concidered them so far but as of today my live winnings seem to have reached a point at which they become significat. i have been playing $10PLO and $10NL with a friend and during the last few weeks i ve been crushing him to the tune of $200. i wont include them in my online bankoll but i ll be keeping track of them here as well. gonna start my online session now...

Nice work, good job! Keep up the hard work!

thx


just finished the 3k hands session. lost $11. session was up and down all the time. probably didnt play too well. i will review tomorrow and post some hands then as well.

total hands played: 12266
profit: $165

bad play was partly due to distractions i guess since i was palying at a friend's place. will switch to playing in a quiet place.

hands played: 2.2k
profit: -$7

played better than yesterday but was just one of those days. ran pretty bad. a couple tricky hands as well

total hands: 14463
total profit: $158