I disagree.

My opinion is obviously going to come across as biased, as I am personally backed by ImaWhale and also work for them as a coach.

However, we back many successful professionals, up to the highest limits, and I have seen firsthand time and again people achieve much more success on the stake than off.

Having a sense of community and team is very important in poker. The better your support system, the better you will do. Being staked adds a level of accountability that is not otherwise present. Also, when the inevitable "run worse than you ever dreamed possible" phase hits and you're on a 10k+ downswing, knowing that you have a backer to support you and reload you as needed without having any hit to your personal finances is crucial. When things are going great, it's very easy to underestimate the value of a top notch backing team. When things go off the rails, it's not a good situation to be in on your own.

Anyways, everyone is different, and every situation is different, but there are many players at all limits that benefit from a staking arrangement. We can agree to disagree, and I don't want to derail this thread into a debate on the matter, but I did want to voice my opinion.

This is true. You both have really good points, but at the end of the day I think we can all agree that's it's player dependent.

Personally, I don't enjoy being staked because I'm young, don't need financial stability, and have a big enough roll for 400nl. I've also played around a lot with variance calculators; basically when you have a 1 ish bb winrate, life isn't good and downswings will be very frequent, but when you're an 8bb winner (which is what i'm guessing my WR is with some table selection), poker is damn fun. If I was grinding 200z or something, there is no version of me that wouldn't want to be staked.

Just to illustrate my point:



I used a stdev of 94, though true stdev is probs lower since my sample includes around 40k hands of me not doing any table selection for 200nl.



After 2 months worth of volume, 95% confidence interval is [-560 BB, 6960 BB], so I have 2.5% of losing more than 5.6 BIs over 2 months. Probability of loss is 4.4%

Most of the reasons you state are just mental leaks and ppl like that have no chance of success in the long term. There are a few reasons to get on short term stakes but guys on long term stakes who play ssnl or msnl are giving up way too much ev for it to be justified.

I would prop bet my roll that there is no way you are a 8bb winner at 400nl in the longrun

I'm probs closer to a 3bb winrate at 400nl. With some selection it's probably 6.

8bb is my what I think my WR is when playing and selecting both 200/400.

In gl dude!

subbed

Definitely ran above EV today.


Anyway, life's been pretty whack ever since I started playing poker again. Less meditating, bad time management, not exercising, always in a rush etc. Yesterday I tried to sleep early to fix my sleep sched and hopefully start turning things around, but then I caught a fever. :/

Anyway, probs gonna take a day or two off poker so things become less hectic, playing too much B and B- game, and also not having enough time to do other things.

Best thing for me after I found out poker was consuming my life when I tried grinding tough. I wrote down a schedule for me to maintain and keep in track.

I have a white board in my room and I write my day before bed for the next day. It works .I find its best to gym in the morning then eat then poker for about 90 mins take a break go back at it etc.
I also meditate right when I wake up as it clears my sleepyness and my mind

Meditate when I wake up = I sleep sitting up...

GL OP

Coming from a former staked pro, there are advantages IF you can find the right deal that works for you.

Personally, in the games I was playing at the time, there was no way I would have played at half thr stakes wi th out a staking deal and my stake was 80/20 split (my 80). It didn't involve any coaching though as I was pretty much the top coach in those games at the time.

It was a game with a much much lower WR and disgusting variance though.

If you can find the right deal, it can be great for your mental game, and TBPH OP, just reading through this thread makes me doubt you'd handle 4k swings in a week very well on your own roll (even if properly rolled). Your comment about wanting to quit after a 2 buy-in downswing to start your session @ 200 NL made me chuckle a little bit.

I mean no offense by this at all, just want to make sure you understand where you are mentally before going out on your own.

Agreed, both schedules and meditation help big time.

80/20 for a game with "disgusting variance" is a really good deal, not something you'll find from the stables on 2p2. I'll be looking for a similar deal, with no coaching.

Regarding the mental game stuff, no offense taken, really appreciate the advice. I think I've said this before, but I'm a lot more result orientated than a MSNL reg should be, that part of my mental game has always been weak. But it's not a huge concern for me because I've done a lot to make sure that it has little to minimal effect on my volume/quality of play.

Also, agree with the falling asleep sitting up lol


Took 2 days off. Life is still meh, a bit unbalanced, and generally getting distracted a lot.


Today:
Knew I'd be putting in lots of hours so handled my pregame very carefully. A to A- game throughout. Ran suuuper good, so tempted to look at EV line but doing something turns it into a habit, so no.



H1: Literally my first hand at table, and yes he had AA.



H2: Bink, ugh expected fish to call most of his range there.



Favorite hand of the day:



I raise,
Villain:
"i know u have TT"
*calls and shows a flush*
"u cant make this **** up"

And then 30 minutes later after I mock villain about this hand, he says "I only lost the minimum"

H4: ughhh, would have called but then worst possible river in the deck


H5:
Vil had T7s

Busy with school, will update in a day or 2.

small update:

-lost 800 ish other day
-didn't play for 2-3 days cuz of school
- played 2-3 hours today, up 1.7k ish

no time to post hands, heres monthly graph



want to hit 20k hands this month, we'll see, school's been pretty brutal lately. I'll try my best

Running hot? lol

Too hot



150/hr ez game

V nice, hope the sun-running continues

well damn



Very very very unhappy with myself today. quality of play was ok, prepared well though i did let myself distracted more than i should have, b+ to a- game throughout.

Today was friday, and a holiday as well, so I naturally thought that the games would be very good. Traffic was actually pretty bad, and the games were pretty damn dry. I should have mixed in 200/made a better effort to table select but I stayed for hours at some of the worst 400 tables possible, thinking that it's friday and I shouldn't be playing 200.

Obv ran pretty horrid too, or I wouldn't be pissed. When I behave unprofessionally and produce terrible results, I'll be really disappointed in myself. If I broke even today for example, I'd post in here about me doing a bad job of table selecting, tell myself I have to improve it next time, and that's that, but when it's combined with bad results it makes me feel really ****ty about how I conduct myself.

Subconsciously I sorta knew that I should be selecting and not staying at those tables, but I didn't, it's such an amateur mistake and I'm really sad mistakes like these keep popping up occasionally despite all the work I've put into my mental game/being logical and rational. I know the steps I have to follow to print money, and yet somehow I still slip off that route occasionally.

On a more positive side, looking back at myself 6 months from now, my mental game was a complete mess, your average microstakes dummy. I still make mistakes, though the rate at which I do has gone down considerably over the last few months, and I will do my best to make sure it stays that way. I have sort of a personalized document that reminds me what the perfect mindset is when playing, (it's not rocket science or anything, it's just very simple stuff e.g do not open social media), if I followed all the easy steps on that doc I would be such a successful player yet for some reason I can't follow them sometimes. I think that change is something that never happens instantaneously, but over time, and as long as I keep learning from my mistakes and making an effort to improve, things will go well for me.

Calling it a month.

Didn't reach 20k hands, but volume was by no means bad considering I had my account locked for a week. (And have full time school). Definitely ran very above EV. Maybe I'll check my EV once when the year ends.



December is my last month on stake, then I'll have to start thinking about if I want to play on my own dime, stay on, or maybe something else.

Goals for December:
-20k hands of the highest quality poker I can play. Absolutely no doing stupid things, no playing anything below B+ game, no staying at bad games, no getting distracted by social media, etc.
-Backer said I might be allowed to shot take 1k at the end of the month if they feel I'm ready, so that's something to look forward to.

Amazing results, wp man! GL w December, it seems like you should play on ur own after finishing stake

wp

Thanks! That's what I'm leaning towards right now, but you never know.

Thanks!

wp man, goodluck with december

Is there a reason why you aren't looking at your EVbb/100? Or is it just personal preference? Just asking, as I've recently started to completely ignore the evbb/100 too, unless someone asks for it.

I always feel angry/frustrated when I run substantially below EV and that I'm entitled to get it back. Instead of putting in high quality volume like I should be doing, I just starting blaming luck as the reason I can't win. I try not to look at anything outside my control and instead direct all my energy towards playing well.

I would only look at my account balance at the end of each month if I could (not an option on stake). I'd advise most people to do the same and not look at anything irrelevant unless they have rock solid mental game (which a lot of people think they do, but in reality they come nowhere close)