Summary
27 y/o currently playing 200nl 6max on Ignition for a living. I play live as well, but less often and very sporadically - the online/casino split is ~80/20. I currently live in LA, and was born & raised here. I graduated college in 2010 and worked in corporate America until early last year. I live w/ a roommate and have no wife/gf or kids at the moment, so def living & enjoying the bachelor lifestyle to the fullest when not pokering.

Purpose
I plan on posting regular updates, hand histories, and general musings on poker theory for discussion. Looking forward to the feedback, exchange of ideas and perspectives, & general networking with others who take the game seriously. Also for motivational purposes as a constant reminder of my goals.

Results:
Last 200k 6max hands:






Poker Background
"Discovered" poker a few years ago after a buddy took me to play at a casino. I ran hot as molasses that night and was instantly hooked. I'm sure many of you can relate with what followed; I completely immersed myself in poker: played every chance I had, read books/forums, listened to audiobooks on my LA commute - you name it.

After leaving my job early last year, I found myself w/ a decent chunk of savings to live off of and with all the time in the world, so I spent much of the year polishing and working on my game to get the point where I could make a decent living playing cards. And while this past year was by far the biggest in terms of my development, it was also pretty humbling. A year ago today, I thought I was hot **** at poker (lol) Looking back, the me today would call that guy a "weak reg," as Polk-a-dot might say. And I know there's elite players at certain higher stakes that would label me as such (or worse) today! But the humility I acquired over the past year also allowed me to open my mind to new ideas and perspectives, and propelled me to work harder than ever. I'm confident in my game right now, but I know there's a loooooong road ahead still as far as being the best version of me I can be. I'm ready and excited for the journey that still lies ahead.

Below are my goals. I know they seem lofty, especially the long-term goals, but as the saying goes - "you must conceive before you can achieve." You can't reach the top if you don't try!

2017 Goals

• Move up to 1knl Ignition by year end
• *Play more live poker (tied in to the 1st goal due to needing larger bankroll for live stakes)
• Branch out & extend poker network
• Work out - get fit & stay fit!
• Bonus Goal - play this year's main event

Long Term Goals

• Win at Ignition's highest stakes (1knl & 2knl)
• 500z Pstars
• 25/50 Pstars & live HSNL

Study
Currently:

• Review hands daily w/ other online pros
• Training site videos (~3 hrs/week)
• Independent hand review, esp w/ Ignition where you can see holecards after 24 hours due to being anonymous poker (~4 hrs/week)

I would like to maintain current study schedule but would also like to start doing wayyyy more analytics, i.e. CREV/Flopzilla, running sims, etc


Work Out
Pretty out of shape at the moment, 25 lbs more than my ideal weight. I have a 6 month plan in place to lose those 25 lbs which involves going to the gym 5x a week (1 hr cardio, burn 700 calories per session) and eating healthier. I am on week 3 right now. One big thing that I want to be different this go around is that I want to keep going to the gym & maintaining healthier eating habits even after I hit my weight goal. I also started incorporating watching 30 minutes worth of poker videos during my 50 minutes of cardio. Since I go 5x a week, this gets me 2.5 hrs of study time during my workout.



*for those who don't know, the $1/$2 @ LA casinos are a max $40-$60 buy-in, which is obv terrible. As far as I know, the lowest stake where multiple LA casinos offer a 100 bb buy-ins for nlhe is $5/$5. Based on the average/standard open size of 5x-8x that I've observed for those games, they play more like 1knl online, where standard open sizes are 2x-3x. Thus, they require a much bigger roll than 200nl online

I want to do exactly what you did lol. Just haven't taken the jump yet. I'm sick of my job!! What stakes did you start playing online and what was the starting roll? If you don't mind me asking.


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Hey buddy I'm a 100nl / 200nl ignition player, feel free to dm if you wanna skype. GL with ur challenge!

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dunno why you want to play 500z on stars, 4 tabling 2k on ignition is going to print money at like 12x the rate.

yada yada wanna be the best ect... i get it, and not trying to be a downer, but 2k on ignition is ~200nl on stars, so without a ton of studying or wasting a **** load of time playing for 1/5th your hourly, it will be hard to jump onto row even after you reach the top here

also la offers 100bb 1/3 games

That is a real downer.

All too familiar w/ the feeling man haha. I started playing 10nl and starting roll was ~few hundred bucks. I lived at home these years and jobs were decent paying so I employed a rather aggressive strategy moving up stakes (<20 BI) early on knowing that I could easily refuel a roll for 25nl or 50nl. In general I recommend 40 BI roll out of general br management advice and from personal experience - this past November I experienced a 3 week period where I ran ~20 BI below all-in EV which was part of the 7 bb/100 over last 200k sample that I posted above. So def a lot of nasty **** that can happen in a limited timeframe w/ even a decent overall wr & wanna have the cushion to weather the storm

Will do!

Yeah you def bring up some valid points here man. I'll address this briefly because I think a full-on detailed discussion is probably best saved for when/if I'm crossing that bridge - hopefully down the road in this very thread.

Reason would def be "yada yada wanna be the best" haha. But one thing I that I disagree with is that 2knl Ignition is ~ 200nl Stars. From talking w/ other Ignition pros who play higher, there is a much larger difference in skill from 1knl to 2knl than you would expect. There's a lot of pros who are solid winners at 1knl that don't play 2knl bc of this. Also 500z is, allegedly, leagues tougher than 200z. The other thing regarding Pstars is that I live just a few hours from MX, so I would never at any single point need to fully do 100% Ignition OR 100% Pstars. It would probably be a slower transition involving frequent trips to MX and still playing mostly Ignition. For sure see what you're saying overall, though

AFAIK, the only 100bb game in LA lower than $5/$5 is the $2/$3 at the Bike with $100-$300 buy-in. I used the word multiple in the OP because it's just that 1 right now unless there more now I'm not aware of?

Why do you only play 1/3 live and not the bigger LA games? Surely if you can beat 200nl for 7bb you can also beat those games.

Bankroll limitations basically. When I do play live it's $5/$5 but like I mentioned in the OP, those games std open is 5-8 big blinds compared to 2-3 online so on top of already being more than double my online buy-in, they already play bigger than the same stake online would. From what Ive seen in player pool at 5/10 in LA and from the times Ive jumped in, I'm v confident I would be a winner at them but just not rolled atm to regularly play a game that plays higher and deeper than 1knl online

As my roll grows from moving up online, I'll def start incorporating more live and hopefully playing 5/10 live by end of year as well

i've played midstakes on stars and have been playing up to 2k on bovada for the past few years years, 400+ has gotten tougher the past 1.5 years for sure and it's not like there's super juicy 2k running all day every day, but if you're smart about it there's not a chance in hell anyone could make more on stars so i think your friends are just plain wrong, but it's an opinion tbf.

also yes i was talking about the 2/3 at the bike my bad, i only played it one time in college but didnt remember the sb

in fairness to my buddies they've just said that there's a big diff between 2knl Ignition and 1knl Ignition - not that someone would make more on Stars vs HSNL Ignition. they actually probably agree with you on that, esp given how teeny tiny the edges seem to be at 500z+. I think if anything for me personally just really the idea of eventually working my way up & testing myself vs the best and battling vs them that's super appealing, even if that would be less USD/hr than Ignition. just as a competitive thing. so ya most likely that would be in a temporary or intermittent (traveling LA --> MX) fashion while still mostly grinding Ignition and LA live poker - the most +EV of all 3 imo!

when did you transition from Stars to Bovada/Ignition - BF?

alriiiiight... first update! & not a bad one

in the spirit that prompted me to start this thread yest, I decided to shot take 400nl again for the 1st time in a few months (results below).

In this session, I'm proud of how I battled & remained stoic. Being down $900 to start in 2 hrs really ****in sucked, especially in the context of $ lost relative to the 200nl sessions I'm so used to. But I knew it was mostly due to variance BS and horrible runouts and I didn't let it affect my psyche or confidence and kept playing my A game. Tilt has been one of the biggest areas of focus for me this past year, and I can guarantee you guys that me 1 year ago would have gone on tilt after shot taking and immediately encountering BS beatings to the tune of nearly -1k

and as y'all can imagine, when you start off ~-2 BI and end up ~+5 BI, there's quite a few doozies. will be posting some of those hands later today cause now it's time to grind some MLB The Show 17

move up from that live 1/3 brah. Live games in USA are way to soft (and rake too big) to be grinding away at those stakes.

Nice little session you had there. congrats!

I don't think anything is wrong with that. I live in LA myself as well and if I didnt have obligations (married, have a kid), I would def. drive to mexico and test myself vs OTB and co. Obv not for money, more for my ego/challenge. I think there's nothing with having a little bit of it. I might even have an edge on otb (lol?) just because I studied every single hand that went to showdown from the hand history I bought until solvers were made available. Btw, last statement is a joke, OTB doesn't lose no matter what.

cool results subbed

Also an ignition reg in LA, going to start playing 200nl soon, have the BR for it but want to make sure I am beating smaller before I move up... used to be an MTT/SNG reg but don't have the time for it anymore.

HMU for my skype if you wana talk strat wether it's live or online.

Either way subbed

Nice start to the thread. GL! Will be following.

^lolll.

btw to those following the thread, ill take a moment to mention that +rep_lol is a G. we linked up about a year ago through our mutual interest in one of the non-poker related "Other Topics" threads here on 2+2.

+rep is a v strong Ignition reg @ higher stakes and the first person I ever started reviewing hands and regularly talking poker with. He's one of, if not the, biggest infleunces to how I approach the game and his insight has contributed immensely to my improvement, esp at a time when things were kinda rough for me. a cool dude w an interesting story/background, he's mentioned he might do a PGC thread himself one of these days

quick update:
played a few hours yesterday mixing up 2 tables of 200nl and 2 tables of 400nl, which will be the main layout I'll be doing in any shot-taking until I'm settled in. anyway, +$783 in that session. would of been longer than few hours but I went out in DTLA @ night to celebrate a buddy's bday - dining, drinking, and macking, it was my kind of night. anyway, this morning I stopped by The Bike on my way home and lost -$629 in a short session there.

about to hop on Ignition and try to play a long session. hand histories to come tomo. good luck tonight everybody!

results for last 3 sessions:









thoughts on this fold? I had pretty aggressive image & had 3bet quite a few times. Villain was 30/20 reg (just 21 hands) and nothing in particular stood out in the rest of his stats.

Good fold. I think it's unlikely Villain is taking a 1 pair hand and turning it into a bluff. You block NFD and Villain has so few hands he can be bluffing with (67ss,89ss)

My thinking exactly. The fact that we have the As seems to be v key here blocking most of villain's potential flush draws otherwise. At the time I thought aside from the (3) 67ss - 89ss, he might be taking AJ, which we also block, and turning it into a bluff some X% of time. but so many value hands he can have, esp as UTG raiser: all flopped sets, 9Ts, QJs, KQs, KJs. has KTs ofc but that's almost always gonna be x/ back on this riv. KK sometimes esp w our aggro image.

I checked later (for those who don't know, Ignition lets you look up holecards after 24 hrs bc it's anon) and he ended up having JThh for indeed a pair turned into bluff in the way I thought AJmight be doing sometimes. seeing that obv sucked but I stand by the decision overall given villain's range getting to the riv.

If, however, we had AA without the As, that makes this a call imo since we are getting close to 3:1 and that frees up a lot more bluffs for him to have. Even A2ss-A5ss is gonna be in villain's flatting range here quite often. AA without the As is probably not a bad sim spot to get a clearer picture

One interesting thing to contemplate is how often do y'all think the population here will be turning AJ/JTs into a bluff? And what are your thoughts on taking that line on river vs x the pair of J SDV if you're in villains shoes here?

I don't think a large % of players are turning hands AJ/JT into a bluff.

If we're in V's shoes we should have a 4-5 combos of bluffs and if we bluff with AJ, JT, and our missed FD's then we will be overbluffing. If we take out our NFD bluffs and add AJ or JT it could be better. This is also a spot that I think we should err on the side of underbluffing. What hands do we hope to fold out that beat us?

aces?