When covid-19 hit, it didn't effect me all that much, after a few month's I started to see the shutdowns, first wave hit, and I were forced to lock the doors at my own gym.

I surrived, second wave of lockdowns hit in December 2020, i surrived the first 3½ month's, but only by putting my self into further debt, bank, draining all funds, selling my car, selling everything i could while keeping the bare minimum...

I had to close the doors for good today (dissolved the company), there simply wasn't any way to keep it open for atleast 2 more months while under lockdown. So the dream of owning my own gym died after 4 good years, because of a pandemic that was impossible to forsee. (I spend most of my gyms savings in late 2019 on new equipment, and some renovations at the gym). So it litteraly hit at the worst possible time.


The dream is to reopen whenever im debt free, and my life is settled, until than i will work my ass of, to rebuild my life litteraly being 50 yd behind the starting line...


Where am i now?
I have a debt of aprox $155k - most of it is in loan to a friend (about 114k of it), to where i have a fortunate deal, i work for him now, and slowly pay it off over the next 1-2 years, depending on how much work he have for me. (Construction company).

Rest of the debt is to taxes, a bit to some equipment companys, etc, to where i pay whatever i earn doing PT work and what i can scrape together every month.

I have $394 to my name, im 31 years old worked and educated as a personal trainer for +5 years, amateur powerlifter, with a debt of $155k, i have 50$ on PS and 50$ on party poker. Im living at a cozy 60 m2 apartment for free (i do all the outside work for the owner at this place, and a few other apartments he have).

I have a table, my pc, a chair a matress on the floor, and a bit of gym equipment so i could maintain & get more clients.

Since construction work is sporadic and never planned (he calls me 1-2 days in advance, and let me know when there is work), and right now im not allowed to have PT clients unless we go outside, and mostly working with powerlifters / people who want to be strong, not possible to drag around 220 kg for a client to DL outside, but im sending out flyers monday, and starting to hunt for clients at home, and online, just gonna have to do the work of dragging around equipment, need to dig deep and grind!.

WHY Poker?
I figured why not try to use the money i still had left online, to use my spare time in a productive way? rather than sit in misery and think about the debt, watch tv shows etc. I have always loved poker & betting, never had a losing year in my 14 yrs of playing, even though it's not really amazing either since i never put much effort into becomming good.

It might seem like a time waste to grind NL2 (i can't redeposit) - But if the choice is between watching twitch / YT / Tv shows vs grinding NL2 now, NL5 / NL10 aaaand moving up hopefully, why the **** not!


This post is already too long, most likely no one will read it, sorry for the length, im quite emotional at the moment... So my thoughts are a bit scattered, will post April goals (poker + life) and a detailed poker plan for moving up in post 2.


This is just another hurdle in life, I see this as an opportunity to show my resilliance and grind my way back!. Now life (pandemic) desided to sucker punch me

Hope everyone is staying safe, and surriving the pandemic both mentally as well as financially.


TLDR:
-Covid-19 made me go broke and $155k debt
-Dream reopen own gym
-Work my ass of construction work + PT clients
-Play poker instead of waste off time, to speed up debt payoff.

Poker plan:
The 2 rolls will work individually, since my action will be kinda split for now. (not knowing what site is best for me).

So im slightly conservative, with how things will be done. I have HM help evolve my play,

BRM will work seperately on the sites for now (so if i move up on one site, i won't automaticly do it on the other site).
NL2 until i have $75 -> Take a 5 Bi shot at NL5.
NL5 from $75-$250 -> Take a 5 Bi shot at NL10.
NL10 from $250-$625 -> Take a 5 Bi shot at NL25.
NL25 from $625-$1750 -> Take a 5 Bi shot at NL50
NL50 from $1750-$4500 -> Take a 5 Bi shot at NL100

Im increasing the required roll going up, because after NL25 i highly doubt im a winning player, without having studied alot more, so im fine landing somewhere around NL10-NL25 for a few months while i up my study time with GTO+.

I will be allowed to play MTT days if i feel like it, following a 100Bi rule though, and max 5% Total roll in play, so lets say at $600 i want to play a tournament day, i can buy in for a maximum of $30 in tournaments of no more than $5.5 Bi.

When i figure out what site to play on, i will withdraw what's hopefully +65$ from the other roll for GTO+ (or when i hit 350$ on one site if still playing both). So i can use that to study!


April Goals
Life / work:
Pay off +$8k debt (kinda hard to estimate, since work is random, but unless its a slow month that should be doable), for now im working off my tax debt first due to it having the highest interest.

Get out flyers for clients, and pick up +6 new clients (online & live).

Complete 1 level of duolingo daily (still want to learn new things, even though life is stressful and i need to grind). Aprox 6-8 min / day

Do 1 ''lecture'' of khan academy daily (again, i want to keep becomming a better version of my self daily.) Aprox 15 min / day

Poker:
+50k hands
Review top 10 won & lost pots every session


Thread:
Post atleast weekly about debt + poker update, and the other goals, to track, might also include some fun life / clients things.

GL, sad story with the gym, hope it works out for you and you will get it re-open.

Following, I'm in a similar spot poker-wise - started a month or two ago with 75$, now playing NL 10 / 25.

brutal

is playing nl2 going to help you rebuild your businesses though? seems like it'd just be a time consuming distraction

gl though

Thanks for the positive words!

That's a nice progress you have gotten, keep up the good work!

Not really that much, but if the alternative is to use my free hours watching youtube / browsing / tv, it will atleast help me rebuild at some point.

Not gonna need my poker roll to help in theory, but hoping to hit NL25 within 3-4 months, and allow it to fund my monthly living costs (aprox 200$).

So as i see it, it's either $0 from spending free time doing nothing, or playing poker, and in a some months, hopefully help me out a little, or just keep climbing to NL50 / NL100 (to infinity and beyond).

Also I love the game, so it's not really something i feel is 'work' or an attempt to pay off debt, i find playing and studying poker very relaxing.

Thank you

Time for a little update, sorry for it being kinda late.

These past 10 days have been rather hectic, im trying to sort the last things with my business, while still working quite a bit, and playing a decent amount.

I put most of my volume on party, which sadly isn't trackable, so i decided to keep a log over my hours played, number of tables, to have an idea of my bb/100.

Partypoker:
Im up 42$ over aprox 21k hands according to my calculations, played roughly 850 hands / hour over my 3x zoom and 1-3 norm tables for 25 hours.

Which is a ~8bb/100 which is fine.

Pokerstars:
Im up 3.59$ So i played ~1700 hands on NL2 where im up roughly 10$, but i lost 1 Bi on NL10 (random setup, QQ to JJ on J45 in on the flop with a SRP of 1.5). Due to a promotion, i decided to take a shot at NL10 for 1 Bi. -I will be updating my BR strategy a bit, i've realised a few things, which will be made more clear soon.

Life:
I've been solid with my personal routines, even though i have lacked on protein intake, which isn't good for my training, but strength is finaly coming back slowly but steadily, all this lockdown combined with stress of all the bullshit have had my strength be reduced by like 20%. So we building, it's not big lifts, but it's honest work.

Work / Debt:
Managed to work quite a bit the first 11 days, have gathered up $4.5k to pay debt off, which made one small bill of 500$ go away, and another of 3.8k, which is nice, since it was a few of those with high interest.

April goals:
Debt: 4.5/8k paid off (so we should be okay here, even though i still can't control how much extra work i get) - Next week there is something tuesday, and otherwise most likely im off the rest of the week.

Didn't get out the flyers, some covid restrictions, made it so that if i don't get tested every 2nd day, i will risk getting fined 500$ having clients, and it's simply not worth the risk, and it's not worth the time since i have 1 hour each way almost to a test center. So for now no clients.

Duolingo goal is on point, i usally do 3-5 lessons every morning with my breakfast before work.

Khan academy goals, i decided to scratch these, i have a tendency to stretch my self too thin, as you can see here, duolingo, poker, work, for me to do things fully, i shouldn't stretch my self with something that might not even have a payoff for me.

Poker:
Played roughly 23/50k hands, which is fine, having next week off, i should be able to put in a few hours.

Study wise im doing alot, not really reviewing that much (can't on pp), but im doing **** ton of work on developing my own style, and getting back to my old roots, will talk more about that at the month's end.

I've decided to scratch pp, so im gonna withdraw my 92$ (didn't even take a NL5 shot as planned there), right now they will go to either GTO+ or Snowie, not really sure about snowie, i've read alot of great things about it, and i think it might be more valuable for me now, than what GTO+ can provide me with.

So starting tomorrow, all my volume will be on pokerstars, which mean i can start posting graphs, with some decent samples. Im still confident at making it to NL5 easily on PS this month, and hopefully get in atleast 10k hands at NL5.

I know it can be hard to ''follow'' things like this, i will try and find a better way to keep goals tracked Best of luck on the tables everyone!

What country are you from and where was your gym located? This is an absolutely brutal situation hope you make the best out of it.

I have not used GTO+ but I have heard good things about it (do most of what Pio does at a fraction of the cost). I would not recommend Snowie. If it is a choice between nothing and Snowie sure go for it but the solutions are NOT GTO and the sizing they use are suboptimal.

No idea what country you're from and what COVID restrictions you have, but couldn't you do something like run some outdoor group fitness classes? I guess this wouldn't require that much equipment + you can get more clients at once. Or how about getting a job working for another gym?

What's your focus with the Khan Academy/Duolingo? I think it's great that you're still trying to work on yourself, but probably best to make sure it's something that will help you either gain clients or find work in another industry. Trying to turn poker in to a profitable side hustle is also good, but you're probably going to spend at least 6 months getting to a point where you're making even a decent wage from it

Denmark, and thank you, im feeling alright even in this situation, perhaps i shouldn't, but no point whining about it. Just gotta put on the grinding shoes once more, and get things sorted.

Yea i was kinda scared that snowie would be more of a ''fun'' tool, than something that relevant to improve. Guess i will take a look at it, during the 10 day trial atleast, to see what i think about the ranges, sizings and how it interact.

Otherwise GTO+ is most likely the go to, it's so cheap, and very easy to use, and to play against the solves.

Im from Denmark, well the restrictions was kinda weird, and the gym doesn't have an outdoor area connected to it. So would've had to take equipment faar away, and comparing to what i could make doing other kind of work (was doing a bit of misc work, for random construction companys, while fighting), i simply couldn't have put up the same amount of cash keeping the doors open, for the limit of max 5 people groups.

Khan academy is mainly to improve my biological understanding, which will help me not directly at my job, but atleast give me a better knowledge of how the human body works, and it can afterwards be combined with deeper courses regarding medicin / recovery etc, and who knows if i one day want to supplement my current education with more on top.

Duolingo is kinda more ''for fun'' - It won't really directly help me, but Im doing spanish courses atm, but imo it never hurts to be able to communicate in multiple languages.

Im aware that poker wont make me big bucks anytime soon, to be fair, even at NL100 it would probly not without a **** ton of volume.

5bb/100 -> 50k hands a month, would make me $2500, which i earn in 4 days of construction work, with some very long days.

So it's not really in an attempt to make money from it, nor an attempt to get 'rich' -> Its simply a better way to spend my off hours, lets say i didn't play poker, and spend the hours watching tv. Im on average off 3 hours on work days, and 8-10 hours (lets say 9) on days off.

Which in 1 week is aprox ~33 hours roughly put, if i spend those hours watching tv i get 0$ in return.

If i spend those 33 hours playing poker, i can get in around ~20k hands a week, or roughly 80k hands a month. For simplicity lets take NL25, and say i beat that for 5bb/100, thats 800*1.25 = 1000$, lets say i average of 8k debt pay of a month.

So if i watch tv i pay off 100k debt in 100k / 8k = 12.5 months.
If i play poker instead, i pay off 100k debt in 100k / 9k = 11 months.

And thats assuming i stay on NL25, and ''just'' grind it out.

Im aware that it's a huge waste of time on NL2 / NL5 / NL10 even, but i should make it to NL5, and closing in on NL10 this month, and if i keep the volume at just 50k hands like my goal is, i will be able to make NL25 (without a too bad of a run out), within 2 months.

My plan isn't to cash out, but to keep going, until i hit NL100 (minor cash outs from NL25 / 50 forward, i think, to cover my living expenses food etc, so i can pay off a bit more agro).

Same setup on NL100, 4bb/100 = 4$ if we just say 60k hands, thats 600*4 = 2400.

100k debt without poker = 100/8 = 12.5 months.
100k debt with poker = 100/10.4 = 9.6

So yea for me the math is simple, if i can even take off 1 or 2 months, using my free time on poker instead of watching tv, it's a huge win imo.

Sorry for the long explanation Hope it make sense, and im not just rambling.

Minor update, since i wanted to play a bit tonight.

I decided to 4 table, it isn't gonna really get me ''better'' or back in old shape, atleast not at my best level for now, but doing it on NL2 and NL5, to speed up the process.

Im certain the minor drop in my game sense, will be perfectly fine and made up for with the added volume.

So I decided to play a few days without checking results, feeling im down like 2-3 Bi's today, over ~1.5k hands.

Had my only work day of this week, so time to take advantage of the off days, and hopefully hit NL5 when i check results on thursday.

What i did learn though, is that people do not fold, got called 5 times for stack caught with the fingers in the cookie jar, im very fond of bluffing whenever i sense weakness.

TT calling 3 streets on Q43tt, A, Q -> Called a 130% Pot on river
AJ called me down on JT8tt, i went for a x/r on flop, turn 4, i fired 108% pot, and jammed river for about 90% pot.

So lesson to be learned today, was people would not ****ing fold, i shall teach them to fold!!!!. >,<

Hey man sad to hear the story, hope you crush the games and move up fast! Gl with everything

Yea it sucks, but having life hit you is sometime also a valuable lesson, who knows in a few years i might have learned something i otherwise wouldnt.

Thank you

Time for a little update.

Life: Training going well, Duolingo i've slacked a bit this week, Work sadly only 1 day, so barely any additional payoff. (400$).

Poker:


The graph is PS + Wpn this month, basicly i played aprox ~6k hands this week, which sucks, but I've been rather busy, the owner of the place im staying at atm, he told me he always wanted to make my apartment a 2½ rooms, just didn't have the energi to do the renovations him self.

EDIT: I found like 12 bucks on Wpn, and decided to add some tables there from time to time, so 2 zoom on PS, with 2-4 reg tables on Wpn, feels rather good, very comfortable slow tempo for now.

So he offered to pay for all the materials, and not change our deal, if i would help him make the extra room, which for me will be a gym with about 35-40 m2, so i can take clients in, and actually have a very good space for it. Will toss some pictures of the renovation in a few weeks, right now we are doing the early work, so i spend most of this week with a shovel in my hands digging up the foundation.

Im alright letting poker come 2nd to a potentiel bigger income source in the gym, so i''ve been too tired to play alot, but i have studied alot, mainly by watching previous streams from Epiphany77, i really like his style, and his coaching of his student is very good. So trying to impliment a few of the things, i have learned from him.

Mid week i suffered a downswing (didn't take Ai ev with it, but like -6 Bi), but that wasn't really the ''real story'' - Lost a **** ton of non showdowns, where i was betting TPTK on FD boards, and they just bombed the river, sadly on NL2 people don't randomly bomb the river without a decent hand when a flush comes in, not like they play around bluffs & blockers, so yea, i played bad, and ran quite bad, but it's such a micro sample, so it's all good, im gonna get on the grind next weeks, since we are at a point where we need to do the concrete for the floor, and it's ordered for April 30th, all i need to do from now till than, is to lay out isolation, and put in the heating etc, so like 2-3 days of work.

Hope you all are doing amazing, Im feeling really good, even though i wish i could report more or better news about poker, it will come as i keep studying, and get more volume im sure!.

Oh yea and work for next week, right now i got something Tuesday, and maybe wednesday, beside that nothing planned just yet, so sadly another quiet week, with very little debt payoff income.

That's what I call an underdog story. It's when your back is agaisnt the wall that you have to dig deep and show them.

haha yea, I'll try to make it more poker going forward, right now life have taken the upper hand for the first 3 weeks.

Alright so a minor update about last week

Pokerwise nothing exciting, played 4k hands, down 0.25Bi >< Went up ~8 Bi today on WPN in no time, from alot of donations, just to give 200bb back with 2nd nut house vs nut house, and playing a dude who NEVER folded (as in never), opened to 10bb whenever he would play (40% VPIP) - And open jammed 50% of the flops, and the rest he check called his way to the river.

I legit didn't hit a single pair vs him, not even a 2nd pair, i mean i would've gone broke SOOOO light against him, but calling his jam's with ATs etc just didn't seem like it, and i might have deviated too much from my PF strat, i didn't 3b hands i normally would, because i would have had to 3b to ~22-28bb PF, and on a 6max table where people still can wake up, it felt dumb to commit.

Oh well, im getting into a good rythme, and still studying alot, still havn't invested in GTO+ but will most likely soon, I really need to work on my postflop play, i feel like my PF is quite solid at this point.

Life:
Worked 6/7 days, but some weird hours, like 3-5 hours, being called at random times during the day ''can you come help with x'' - So it kinda messed with playing poker, and getting a good routine this week.

Which also meant that workouts sucked, and i pulled my ****ing groin for the 6th time this year, so no more sumo DL for me, back to conventional again.... I should just stick with it, im just super weak in conventional so it kinda sucks.

Down 3.1 kg this month, trying to do a light cut of 0.7-1 kg a week (been slightly over the mark, but so hard with work to figure out my maintaince.)

Managed to pay off another 2k debt tho, so $6.9k/8k paid off this month, which is quite freakin nice, hopefully in a few months, im down to only having my 2 big loans, and no more small random loans for equipment i returned and still owed a bit etc.

Next week looks so faar like 3-4 work days, but not at the job (so no pay), but at home making my homegym, getting it ready for the concrete.

Hope everyone is having a great time at the tables!

hi ,

hope everything goes well to you.

I would say play as well all the freeroll it is risk free and do not consume much time as hyper. ( partypoker, pokerstar and 888) (just push or fold in beginning premium)
zoom is nice for volume but if you play on normal table you can table select +
the problem of playing zoom nl2 is that your rake paid will be higher than your winning.

i am doing currently a bankroll challenge but as i have a job on the side doesn't feel the same as you.
watch the below from Bencb ( reference number one in poker)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7qa...=RaiseYourEdge

if you try the sit n go take normal speed no turbo, take note and follow strategy of sit n go strategy book. ( you can find it for free pdf online) + you can tag fish people with high VPIP > 25 from 25 hand played

For tracker i would advice you hand2note as it is for free for the basic version. it is more than enougth for the micro and low stack.

i hope it will help you.

cheers

50bi for cash game always. even if it is micro you will have always downswings and + rake is eating a big part of your winning.
sit n go are better i think + open bar on freeroll you can ship $5 - +$100
ticket with some luck and boost your bkr

Hi Blast, thanks for stopping by, it's very kind of you to give advice.

Im a cash player, and a zoom player at heart, for a few reasons, but mainly because it's easy and don't take alot of planning. Right now my life doesn't fit around MTT's, and STT's for me is very not fun, since it's 99% nash ranges very quickly and some ICM calculations when we hit the last 4-5 ppl in a 9m.

That being said, I would at some point play more of them, to develop my MTT understanding, and 18 / 45 / 90 / 180m is a great way to do that, so when the roll is bigger, i will most likely whenever im off, do some grind sessions in these, but right now the swings are massive in them, and i can't control the flow as well.

Thanks for the advice with Hand2Note, i did not know it was free, that being said im quite happy with HM2, even though they don't update it anymore, for now im fine with it, but i will be trying to setup Hand2Note, so i can transition the second HM2 doesn't work. Thanks alot!

Regarding the BRM, right now im being somewhat agro, but only because i know that i can beat NL2 for 12-15bb/100 so if we toss that into primedope's variance calculator, (12bb/100 over a small 10k sample) - The biggest loss is just around 13 Bi or 11.5% Chance of loss over a 10k sample, if we toss in 20k hands, the worst case scenario is around 29 Bi, so unless it's a disaster run, i would never really go broke on NL2.

Regarding moving up agro (75$ for a 5Bi NL5 shot), well come back to the above, if i lose the 25$ the likelyhood of me losing the next 25 Bi on NL2 is close to 0% ROR.

Hope this explains it a bit

Post some hands my man would be curious to take a look.

Might post some hands later today, had a little 4 hour session that was quite nuts, holy heck i had many bad runs.

Ended up with some kinda big stacks at the end.


Okay so couldn't get the HH coverter to work, so here is old school mode, todays biggest pot.

PokerStars Zoom Hand #226297413599: Hold'em No Limit ($0.01/$0.02) - 2021/04/29 11:29:59 CET [2021/04/29 5:29:59 ET]
Table 'Halley' 6-max Seat #1 is the button
Seat 1: SeolSong ($2.99 in chips)
Seat 2: balbes770 ($0.90 in chips)
Seat 3: ultra1950 ($4.39 in chips)
Seat 4: Hero ($2.03 in chips)
Seat 5: punki6 ($2 in chips)
Seat 6: stoicpoker24 ($2.31 in chips)
balbes770: posts small blind $0.01
ultra1950: posts big blind $0.02
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to Hero [Qc Qd]
Hero: raises $0.03 to $0.05
punki6: calls $0.05
stoicpoker24: folds
SeolSong: raises $0.15 to $0.20
balbes770: raises $0.70 to $0.90 and is all-in
ultra1950: folds
Hero: raises $1.13 to $2.03 and is all-in
punki6: calls $1.95 and is all-in
SeolSong: calls $1.83
*** FLOP *** [Ts 7h 8h]
*** TURN *** [Ts 7h 8h] [5d]
*** RIVER *** [Ts 7h 8h 5d] [2d]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
Hero: shows [Qc Qd] (a pair of Queens)
SeolSong: shows [As Kh] (high card Ace)
Hero collected $0.06 from side pot-2
punki6: shows [9d 6d] (a straight, Six to Ten)
punki6 collected $3.19 from side pot-1
balbes770: shows [6h 6c] (a pair of Sixes)
punki6 collected $3.49 from main pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot $6.98 Main pot $3.49. Side pot-1 $3.19. Side pot-2 $0.06. | Rake $0.24
Board [Ts 7h 8h 5d 2d]
Seat 1: SeolSong (button) showed [As Kh] and lost with high card Ace
Seat 2: balbes770 (small blind) showed [6h 6c] and lost with a pair of Sixes
Seat 3: ultra1950 (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 4: Hero showed [Qc Qd] and won ($0.06) with a pair of Queens
Seat 5: punki6 showed [9d 6d] and won ($6.68) with a straight, Six to Ten
Seat 6: stoicpoker24 folded before Flop (didn't bet)

Graph for today this faar: (Might do another session later, really feeling good about my game today, Variance just caught me in a bad way.)

Very interesting story, best of luck with your plan. You have a great attitude, seems unlikely you won't succeed if you maintain your constructive/positive approach to this unfortunate situation.

Thank you for the kind words, I just always thought, that we earn nothing by dwelling in our misfortune, beside sadness and misery, so why not look at it like an opportunity to grow, and show misfortune how strong we are!.

It's more important than ever, with how hard so many people are hit by covid, Im in a way very fortunate, that i have the abilitys to do this, and the opportunity to do a different job, which pay quite nice towards paying off my debt.