First session of the day is in the books. Felt like I did almost everything right. Would have been a monster session if two pots where I got it in with +75% otf and ott where I did not manage to hold.

Seems like the rake is lower than I expected, I hover around 9bb/100 where I expected it to be closer to like 13bb/100. Keeping that in mind I have to acknowledge the fact that I have been sunrunning pretty hard. I'll be happy if I can keep my evbb at 6+bb/100 over a 100k sample. Also hope to hit my 1k starscoins soon, so I can buy the 10$ cashback and shottake 5nl .... lol never expected to ever say that in my lifetime!

your gonna shottake 5nl with $30 ? im confused.

I have 964 starscoins right now, and with the ****ty new system I get about 14 starscoins per day. So if I keep up this pace I would expect my br to be around 25$ before buying the cashback. I only two table, and would jump back down to 2nl as soon as I lose 2 buyins.

I just want to keep a pretty aggro BRM as I need to build it up to a level where I can make rent and groceries out of my grinding. So sticking to 2nl for at least 200k hands is just not workable for me. Also got a message from an old time backer who recognized my writing and the life story. He asked me to come back on his stake. For now I want to try and make it on my own first, but if that fails I can get back on the team, play 100nl and 200nl with a 75/25 deal in my favor and I would be coaching the lower tier guys to make for a nice monthly salary.

Put in a small 1 hour session after a short break. But noticed that nearly all tables were filled with these eastern european grinders. So I decided to just chill till around 2am and pick on some Brazilians. Hah bumhunting 2nl, how low can you go

if you have a 10$ roll lol why not work for 1 8 hour day and you can 8x your bankroll and go from there?

If you have a legitamate backing process then just take it, the ev of being your "own man" when starting with 10 bucks has to be so much lower than taking this.

Don't really understand why you ask a question which has clearly been answered in OP.

It's not about the ev. In just over 10 years I've had a backer for like 10 months. I am absolutely not against taking up the offer if I need it. But I want to try building up on my own first. I could also start the backing deal if I've proven to myself after 300k'ish hands that I am able to build up again.

Don't forget that I've basically been a break even / slightly losing player for the last two years. Call me crazy, but I need the ego boost that I can still do it.

When u have a $10 networth poker isnt a skill game anymore, its gambling. You will need pure luck to ensure you dont bust your bankroll.

75% cut at 200NL versus playing 2NL with the intent of paying rent and you're thinking about it?

I would have to do the math, but I am currently on 10bi br. Considering the fact I am playing with full focus on only 2 tables vs absolute tards I am pretty sure my RoR is way lower than you would think. When I was grinding midstakes NLHE I rarely ever had >10bi downswings. I believe my first 20bi downswing was at either 1k NL or 500PLO. Either way, I know what I am doing, and I know that there is a real chance of going bust.

For now I just need it to kind of repair my self worth. Having been totally excluded from any form of social life, while withdrawing off of painkillers .. and that all after years of abuse to my body and a serious lack of effort in anything I did. This is just wat my mind needs at this time.

I am pretty positive that I will take up the staking deal in a month or two, regardless of my results. But I want to start this whole thing on my own. Prove to myself I can still put the work in. I could have easily just emailed some various staking groups with my past results and get picked up by just about anyone. This decision isn't about the EV, it's about restoring the trainwreck status of my ego right now.

But he's going to stay fed for at least another 10 days before prostituting himself to stay fed!

if you are pretty sure you are taking up the staking deal in a month or 2, why are you wasting 2 months of your time if you only paid off rent for x amount of months? Say you did good at micros, what does that accomplish? proves that you beat the micros? ok now how does that help you at 100nl/200nl? it doesnt, so the only thing you are doing right now is wasting your time while accomplishing nothing. You are simply doing this for your ego, as you have stated. Ego doesnt pay the bills. If you are serious about becoming pro, grind the staking deal, save up some money, then go on your own when allowed. Anything less than that is just pointless.

whatever gets his rocks off imo

Well technically I did go for three rounds and ate a girl out for at least 20 minutes after she cooked for me. So in some way, shape or form the hookin' as already begun.

On today's session(s)

First session was insignificant, second session went really well and quickly won 2bi. Take a short break for lunch to get back to battle right afterwards. Lost a few midsized pots then ran QQ vs a very suspicious minraise/min4b fish. But he started the hand with 50bb and there is just no way I am folding QQ for 50 bigs vs a 2nl fish. What do you guys think?




Believe I just got a bit unlucky here. Don't really see much merit in raising turn as it effectively turns my hand into a bluff. Dude checking back his rivered straight otr must be seeing some ghosts on the regular, because I can't for the love of god find a reason not to bet there.



We made our first real hero fold on 2nl. Villian is a decent reg. Played against him quite a bit these last few days and have never seen him turn over a hand that didn't make sense.

x/r bluffs are not a common thing on 2nl as far as I've seen so far. Since there were no straight draws and two pair combos are also unlikely given the preflop action I decided to just give it up on the flop. What do we think? Nice hero fold, or was I just the one seeing ghosts here?



Alright, that will probably be it for today. I'm happy to end the day on a winning note and am gonna have a second look at my ranges from the blinds. Also pretty exhausted and have a big day tomorrow as my little kitchen princess wants to have a fun day out and about.

Fun part is she knows the full 100% of my story and more or less opted to be my sugar momma because she likes my determination. So I am having a fancy sushi dinner at a beach club tomorrow! Da rungood is real broz.

Anyway, so here's the stats so far. I am beginning to think I need to adjust my WR expectations upwards. I understand things have been going well so far. But I am beginning to think I should be able to maintain a 10evbb/100 WR on 2nl. The only thing I am considering is switching over to 888. But not sure about the rake there, and afaik they have a worse RB system than stars has.



And obv the graph:

I get your point, I just don't think you get mine.

I have been playing this game for a living for over ten years now. I know without a shadow of a doubt I crush microstakes. I am also pretty confident that I will do well vs the midstakes field on the "untracked" sites. Can't really say anything about 100NL+ on stars as I haven't played those games since like 2010.

If I had to make a rough estimate, I've made somewhere between 1.5 and 2 million dollars playing poker. Paid off my parents house for them, put my little brother through school and pretty much blew the rest on drugs and hookers. The last two years of my life I was nothing more than an addict. My dedication to the game was at a bare minimum and I was getting by mostly on the savings I had built up. Had a few winning months here and there, but they wouldn't be enough to put a dent in my spendings.

The backer I am talking about is a good friend of mine. That offer will stand basically forever. It is a friendship thing, not a business thing. Hence the super favourable split. I still have just over a week of groceries left and have booked another 4 coaching sessions which will put food on the table for at least another 2/3 weeks. I want to use that time to appreciate the good ol' hard work and dedication method. I don't want to put myself back in a position where I have the feeling I can lean back. It has also been super rewarding for me to really look at my game as if I am some complete noob that is just starting out. I am absolutely confident that ego plays a big part in the succes of a poker player. How you feel about yourself and your game is almost as important as how good you / your game actually is.

Just understand that my gut feeling tells me I need this. It could be for another 2 weeks, or for another two months. I don't know, and I don't care. I have felt happy waking up these last few days for the first time in a very long while, so I am just gonna keep on this route and do me.

good luck. i dont like seeing people fail thats why i push for taking better routes. but if you really want to go at it this way then all i can say is good luck. not trying to be a dick, sorry if i came off that way.

Nah you weren't being a dick. Plus the fact that I opened this topic up to open myself up to other points of view. Your opinion is correct in the sense that what I am doing now is not max$EV. My point was that my decision to make this run at micros wasn't based on $EV. But more on going through the "crawling, walking, running" phase again. Hell even if I was somehow against receiving backing, I am fairly sure that with my credit I can easily find a few people willing to front me 10/20k to start grinding on my own and just pay off the loan against a decent enough interest.

Back on the study grind, I adjusted my BB ranges after digging through my immense 3k hand sample. I put the A5s back in as a 3 to 5 bluff, just because I wanna be a badass. Other than that I have nitted it up quite a bit. I will just go by what I have set now, and reconsider after like 30/40k hands if my WR from the blinds hasn't improved. Anyway, here it is ... lemme know what you guys think.

Well today was a very lazy day. Spent most of it on the beach stuffing my mouth and it felt like absolute heaven. Went home and wanted to put some volume in despite being quite drunk. Resulted in the most ABC poker session of all time. After an hour or so I just couldn't keep my eyes open and decided to call it quits.

Just before logging off I noticed I won another chest. Where I normally get 7 or 8 starscoins per day, I now got 42. Which resulted in me having enough starscoins to buy the 10$ cash rebate. Stats and whatever else look like this now.







You can clearly see alcohol has a weird effect on my play

Owh yeah, and just for the lulz. Did not expect villian to turn over this hand.

No idea why, but the HH converter isn't working. So I'll just post the txt version.

SB: $1.72 (86 bb)
BB: $2 (100 bb)
CO: $5.93 (296.5 bb)
Hero (BTN): $3.50 (175 bb)

Preflop: Hero is BTN with 9d 9s
CO folds, Hero raises to $0.06, SB raises to $0.20, BB folds, Hero calls $0.14

Flop: ($0.42) 3s Jc 9h (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $0.18, SB raises to $0.56, Hero calls $0.38

Turn: ($1.54) Th (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $2.74 and is all-in, SB calls $0.96 and is all-in

River: ($3.46) 6s (2 players, 2 are all-in)

Results: $3.46 pot ($0.12 rake)
Final Board: 3s Jc 9h Th 6s
SB showed Jd Jh and won $3.34 ($1.62 net)
Hero showed 9d 9s and lost (-$1.72 net)

Must say I can't remember the last time someone x/r'ed topset on such a dry / rainbow board. What a nice guy, doing everything he can to make me fold.

Yes mate, in a similar situation to yourself. Just got laid off and grinding it up with my pay-off.

Let me extend my best wishes to you, on and off the tables!!

Thanks man, you too!

Up "early" today for a full day of grinding and studying. Got the Bill Perkins podcast up as some background noise. Remember meeting him for the first time while playing a private game in London. To this day he's probably the most interesting and intelligent man I've ever met at a poker table. It's a shame he hangs with guys like Esfandiari and Bilzerian. Never understood why he hangs out with that crowd, but to each their own I guess.

Gl op and I am indeed interested about picking bill Perkins mind of friend/who you hang out with gto

Is this against a 2x sizing? Against bigger sizings I would drop the weakest offsuit aces because at 2NL you're going to be dominated too often.

Hardly ever see 2x opens, some regs open 2.5x on the BTN and CO. But in general it's 3x or more. I have also moved away from my standard opening sizes. So I based my ranges on the average 3x open.

These ranges are obviously not set in stone. I'll defend tighter or looser in spots where I think it is correct. So far I have no reason to believe people at 2nl are too tight to defend weak offsuit aces. But then again, I have less than 5k hands vs the field so I might run into problems further into my "challenge".

I think it partly has to do with the fact that as Bill Perkins, it's not easy to find people that you can hang out with, without having to pay for everyone while still doing the stuff you want.

It's not easy finding a bunch of guys that will go out on a yacht somewhere with a bunch of girls and play poker. Or go out to Burning Man and do a bunch of drugs.

So where most people have a pretty wide range of people they can hang out with, that range is more narrow for Bill. On the other hand it might also be that he doesn't care about people's behaviour towards others as long as they are "good" to him.

Either way, I think it's a bad choice. I do not respect a trustfund kid who's father has stolen millions. There are also plenty of reasons why I don't like Esfandiari, but those are more personal and in the past. I think the dude is already not really known for being the most likeable character out there. So no real explanation is needed.

So I've pretty much crushed the day. Spent about 4 hours working out some flatting and 3betting ranges which I think will work well against the field. Also went through did another coaching session with a SSMTTer.

Also put in a reasonable amount of hands, and did very well. Played my A game from start to finish and also ran like Usain did not have **** on me.

Stats for the session, besides having a pretty awesome evbb. My actual bb/100 is even nicer ofcourse still lol_sample but let me be happy.



Which makes the graph look like this:



Now I will have to lay the poker to rest for today, as Ms. Tinder is coming over for a late night snack.

Anyway, if the beginning is any indication of how the rest of my poker life will go. I am one happy camper! It's been a long time since I enjoyed working on my game and putting in hours like I have these past few days. So thank you all for following along!

Miss lady friend was stuck in traffic and I had 15 points to go for my next chest. Open up two tables, second hand I get in QQ vs JJ pre and hold.

The rungood is strong with this one!