Day 2 Of Step 2, Day 25 Of The Challenge 24/04/2020

Games Played: 53
Performance: 9
Starting Bankroll: $1272.09
Ending Bankroll: $1318.30
P/L: +$46.21

Summary

So guys today was a great improvement for the start of Step 1!
I played alot of nice Sunday micro MTT's, had alot of deep runs and nice opportunities and took down a few MTT SNG's to go with it!

I pretty much played my A game throughout all stages and I started to run pretty hot during my last couple of SNG's which was awesome. Playing as well as I did and running hot meant only one thing, profit!

Out of the MTT's I managed 2 deep runs. One in a $1 6 max $3k gtd hyper where I think I busted around 30th and another in a $2 turbo with like 6k runners where I busted around 90th I think. Both of these runs probably paid for majority of the other buy ins for MTT's so my MTT SNG's where all profit!

I had so many deep runs to remember in the SNG's. Off the top of my head there was a 1st in a $1.50 90 player knockout, a 1st and 2nd in the $1.50 45 player turbos and a 5th in the $1 180 mans.

Altogether the Stars bankroll went up by $46.21 profit! Great session for a $1.50 ABI!

Graph
Here is the graph which shows the strong start for the start of Step 2! Remember this graph already had around 1030 games on it from Step 1 of this challenge.


So as I said at the start of this post I had that written this out while playing my last tournament but I didn't post it here as I was too tired once it ended so I just shut the laptop and went to sleep.

Today its a new day and I am fully ready for some MTT's and SNG's! I am looking to play a nice amount and I am extremely keen to play my absolute A game and hopefully take down some tournaments! Lets see how it goes..

Sick graph. Keep pushing!

Have you noticed a big difference in play since the breakeven point ended around game 500 or do you think it’s mostly better run?

Thanks again bro i'll try!

I think some of it was down to run bad of course but I think when i'm playing my absolute A game with no connection issues or anything else I tend to cash quite a lot in the games I play which makes a big deal in preventing any downswings even when without any big scores so I think the main reason its been smooth sailing after the first 500 games is that i'm playing very strong and even with bad luck i'm finding it hard to swing down at the moment. I am sure it will come but hopefully if I continue to play as good as I am, it will keep going one direction!

Day 26 (Step 2 Day 3) 25/05/2020

Games Played: 38
Performance: 9
Starting Bankroll: $1318.30
Ending Bankroll: $1317.55
P/L: -$0.75


Summary
So today I got quite carried away with studying Poker wise so ended up starting a little later than usual. Being super critical of myself since the start of this challenge I am trying really hard to iron out any potential leaks in my game and I have spent several hours today studying, revising and making notes today which I think is going to help my game A LOT.

I still managed 38 MTT's and SNG's and it turned out to be almost break even again.

I did very well in the $1.50 45 player turbos and had plenty of nice cashes which basically paid for my roughly $20 worth of MTT buy ins but unfortunately I ran pretty lowzy in the MTT's and failed to cash any of them.

That advice from you guys about mixing in the SNG's have worked wonders and today is a clear example of why its great to mix them in. If not for those SNG's I would have had a bit of a downswing today so its holding the balance up and its keeping the graph looking sexy!

Even though I broke even its still good progress made as every time this happens I am still having plenty of shots at these juicy MTT's i'm playing where the bankroll could potentially be doubled even tripled!

Day 27 (Step 2 Day 3) 26/05/2020

Games Played: 28
Performance: 9
Starting Bankroll: $1318.30
Ending Bankroll: $1344.75
P/L: +$26.45


Summary
So today was a pretty good day for the challenge.
The reason for me playing less games is that I had 2 deep runs while mass tabling and decided to focus primarily on them and stop opening any new tables which actually worked out to be a great decision!

SNG's
Once again I did great in the $1.50 45 player turbos with many great scores! After my first 45 games in the challenge of these I think I am running at 60% which is incredible! I don't know if I can sustain that kind of ROI but I will try.

I am not doing good at all in the $1 180 mans or the $1 90 turbos and have lost around $25 from these so far. I am certain its down to variance but I am patiently waiting and hoping that this turns around. I am very confident a big win is due in both of these formats very soon!

MTT Deep Runs
I ran deep in a $1.10 6 max hyper with I think around 2k runners. I got down to the last 30 I think but something ridiculous happened.

I had a pretty tight image at my table and shipped in 20 BB's (ALOT in a Hyper) over the top of 2 limpers for 210k chips. At this moment I was one of the big stacks and was roughly 6th place. One of the limpers who just about covered me and was the other big stack at the table along with me snap calls me with 10 8 off! I mean wtf was his thinking in that! He seemed to play pretty normally up until that point but that was certainly not normal! The whole table must have knew I had a BIG hand so I was completely gobsmacked by that call but I guess its what we want in those spots right? An 8 hits the flop and I fail to pair up the entire board so he ships a huge 400k pot by snap calling an all in from a tight 20bb shove. How does he get rewarded there...

I also ran deep in the $0.55 bounty builder. I finished 26th out of 7300 entrants for around $4 and $7 in knockouts which is a great ROI result. It was a little anti climatic in the end as I shoved KQ on a Q high flop into KK for a final table stack which felt a little sickening considering the build up. I was left wondering if I could have made a tight lay down and going back I probably would so I will learn from it as always!

Conclusion
All in all $26 profit from playing 28 games with a $1.50 ABI is fantastic and I am well happy with it!

So I have found that since increasing the stakes and playing more tables consistently I am getting more and more mentally drained each day I play towards the end of the night so I think its a very sensible decision to say that after every 3rd consistent day of playing, I am going to take 1 day off to relax my mind and do some studying! I think this will keep prevent me from getting sick of the game as I have done before when playing way too much!

Today is that day for me so I am going to spend the day chilling with my girl! I think its well needed and well deserved! I will be grinding again tomorrow and will update you guys on the night time with what has happened. For now, peace out and GL to any grinders!

Yea mixing is a must imo it helps levels out some of the crazy variance with MTTs like I said if your printing money in one specific game type you should keep that going. My MTT friends give me **** all the time for playing sngs saying I play for pennies but think about how many sessions they break even or lose money. Lotto style.

we want some pictures!

I gotta agree with you there. I am so glad I took the advice given in this challenge as I probably would have just gone straight MTT's as I am primarily an MTT player. So far since upping the stakes I haven't managed anything decent MTT wise on Stars so without playing those SNG's, my graph would be swinging down and instead its going up!

Coming now bro!

Day 27 (Step 2 Day 4) 28/05/2020

ANOTHER AMAZING UPDATE!

Games Played: 8
Performance: 10
Starting Bankroll: $1351.55
Ending Bankroll: $1492.96
Profit/Loss: +$141.41

How This Happened
So guys, as the title suggests, today was a great day for the challenge!

I spent most of the day 2-4 tabling MTT's on GGPoker. This all started when I decided to play a game over on GGPoker last night while relaxing. As I said in the previous post yesterday was my day off from grinding and I wasn't intending on playing but I fancied giving GGPoker another spin mainly for fun. I bricked one or two tournies before going deep in a $1 T$ Builder and ended up finishing 4th / 140 for $11.20 in tournament $$$. I enjoy these tournaments a lot as I believe they are rake free and really soft and as I will be playing GGPoker a lot in the future due to my $600 bonus yet to be cleared, winning tournament cash is essentially the same for me as real cash considering im always going to play more tournaments in the future.

That bit of profit made last night has been added to the starting bankroll for today in case you guys are wondering why it has increased without a post.

Today
So I was planning on grinding plenty on Stars today and also decided to fire up another two tournaments on GGPoker this morning while having my morning coffee and getting ready for the day again mainly just for enjoyment and not so much for grinding purposes but I was keen to test my skills and put in a solid performance.

As said I tried very hard to play an amazing game and that's exactly what I did. Being very self critical when it comes to Poker I have to be proud of my performance in these tournaments. I played every hand amazingly IMO and made no mistakes equity wise in any of these tournaments!

For more clarity, here are the results for all 8 tournaments I played today.

Tournament Results
$1 Phoenix Rebuy - 1st / 242 - $109.15
$2 T$ Builder - 1st / 76 - $36.48
$1 T$ Builder - 9th / 106 - $3.28
$2 Starter - 51st / 1914 - $6.70
$2 Daily Hyper - 49th / 257 - $3.28
$2.10 Bounty Hunter - 1 KO - $0.50
$1 T$ Builder - DIDN'T CASH
$2 Daily Hyper - DIDN'T CASH



Summary
2 tabling the $2 T$ builder and the $1 Phoenix rebuy and taking them both down feels crazy! Once I had won the T$ builder and still playing the rebuy I added another table each time so that I was always 2 tabling and I just seemed to run deep in almost everything! I didn't exactly run amazingly hot to win these two tournaments and in fact in both games I was playing a shortstack through most stages and eventually started crushing on the final tables! It just goes to show that when i'm on my A game and only playing 1-2 tables, I really am capable of some incredible things. I have proved this to myself in the past many times over and this is surely a good sign of things to come!

Graph Containing All 3 Accounts Used This Challenge So Far!


I have been wanting to post a graph that includes the Betfair win from earlier in the challenge for a while. Finally this graph has every game played during this challenge so far! I have not included those dreaded GGPoker games from the start of Step 2 that all ended up being paused/cancelled. I have booked that as a $30 loss on GGPoker's part but I don't feel adding those games into the graph would do the challenge justice so I reset my stats to the day after this happened. Lets call it a fresh start for me on GGPoker. What an amazing start!

Conclusion
2 wins, 3 final tables and ITM 5 times from just 8 MTT's is totally epic in my opinion and I really am thrilled. Its not really about the profit its more about the achievement but of course those $$$ will help the bankroll and of course most importantly, this challenge!
I have finished playing now and will take the profit and run for today. Tomorrow will be back to Stars grinding the MTT/SNG mix as usual which is also going great so far. Time to chillax with the wife and watch movies with a joint. Perfect way to celebrate in my eyes!

Sick run man. Keep it going!

Thx bro! Will try!

This is amazing inspo! Keep it up!

Thanks man, really appreciate it! I will try my best!

sick!! no better feeling in poker then winning the whole thing :> keep it going bro

05/06/2020 Update

So guys firstly apologies for not updating in a while. I have had a few issues regarding setting up my new PC and have been a little tied up with things outside of Poker. I am a little disappointed to have not made more progress with Step 2 since ending Step 1 but as I have said many times over I am in no rush at all with this challenge. I would really like to get it completed before the end of the year and there is no reason why I shouldn't but for any reason I don't, its perfectly fine as I have all the time in the world to complete this and I want to make sure I do it right. I have rushed these challenges many times before and I have found when you try to rush building a bankroll mistakes will eventually be made.

I guess alot of players will worry about an hourly wage when grinding and building a bankroll but really, building a roll and having a good hourly should be two separate things. You can't expect to have a great hourly when building your roll from the absolute bottom as who on earth is going to make $15/hr playing $0.50 games?


I have had more trouble then first realised with this new PC and I am currently waiting for a few parts that I need before I can start grinding again properly.

In the mean time I have been playing on GGPoker primarily for enjoyment purposes and to keep my game fresh so I don't get rusty again. I played around $100 worth of MTT's 2 days ago and only managed a few deep runs making back around half so unfortunately the bankroll has taken a slight $50 hit which is no problem and will be made back super quick!

I have also had a dabble with Spin and Golds given I am achieving almost 100% rakeback in these games due to my deposit bonus and the weekly leaderboard promotion. I have never really played spins in my career so I guess to start with I kinda sucked but I have played around 500 in the last 2 days to try and build a good winning strategy at the $1 stake. I am actually currently 9th in the leaderboard. If I can hold that position until the end of the week I will make $85 just from the leaderboard. Currently I am around break even on the spins and I am still contemplating whether or not they could be for me but it would be great if I could crush these $1 spins as the rakeback would be insane. I have also done a ton of studying for everything MTT wise and I feel my MTT game is getting very very strong. I cant wait to put it to the test once I get my new PC sorted and begin finally grinding across all the networks!

Today I am going to attempt to smash out a decent volume of spins to see if I can hold my position on the leaderboard and also clear some more of my bonus. I will let you guys know how it goes but bare in mind I am certainly not a spins player so I cant promise it will go to plan!

If anyone else reading has played the spins on GGPoker could you please let me know your experience and if you find them to be easy games at the $1 level. I just want to know if it would be a good decision to smash out a number of spins to clear this bonus as I would never be able to clear it playing just MTT's. Also the insurance offer on the spin and golds seems an interesting concept but I don't know if it benefits us players or GGPoker so if you guys could let me know your thoughts on the insurance, please let me know as it will help greatly!

Peace out for now guys and good luck any grinders out there!

09/06/2020 Update

So guys apologies for not posting for a little while. I have been busy with some other personal things outside of Poker and didn't really have a solid day of grinding worth posting but finally yesterday I managed to get some games in. After taking a little break my mind felt fresh on the tables and I really enjoyed playing. I also made some deep runs detailed below.

Spins Leaderboard
I attempted to hold my position on the GGPoker leaderboard for $1 spins at 8th place for $88. I only gave this a shot as I wanted to see if it was worth trying to clear some of that $600 bonus by playing spin's. I eventually started doing OK in them as I started learning how to adjust and I managed to clear $60 of my bonus and in doing so I made around $40 profit from the actual spins which is great! I also landed 8th on the leaderboard for $88 profit which again was awesome!

The structure is completely nuts on these spins though and at times they are a complete headache to grind and I can safely say now that spin and go's are definitely not one of my favourable games to play! My bankroll on GGPoker was swinging around like crazy which is completely normal for these games but as I knew while I was playing that I currently hold $85 of value from the leaderboard if I can hold the position, I just battled through them and cleared some of the bonus. Now that the weekly leaderboard has been reset and I have been paid, i'm heading back to MTT's.

The Next Step
So guys with the time I spent away from the tables recently I have been planning what to do next with the bankroll. I want to work out what would be the most convenient and the least stressful way I can turn my current balance into $10,000 to complete this challenge. I am currently engaged at the moment to my fiancee I met around 3 years ago. We are really great with each other and she is fully understanding in terms of Poker and she is fully up to date with this challenge.

The important thing and the main reason I brought this up is that she has never played poker and does not have an account with any Poker network at all. I am going to get her signed up to them all and will take full advantage of every bonus there is on offer, starting with Stars! I know Stars do not allow user's to use multiple accounts which is why im going to "help" her to play through these bonuses! Very soon I will make a full plan of which sites I will be using first and exactly how I will spread the bankroll across these networks on my fiancee's accounts so she can make use of these bonuses.

I have been bonus whoring ever since I turned 18 and have already exhausted every possible bonus on offer. I also know how to extract free bets from bookmakers and turn them straight into cash. For example William Hill offer £20 free bets for all new customers, I know how to extract this £20 free bet and turn it into roughly £18 withdrawable cash. This is just one example and there are a crazy amount of these free bets on offer going right up to £200. If any of you guys would like to know how I can do this just let me know and I will make a post specifically on making money from sports bets. I can make around £500 by doing this on my fiancee's name also which can all be added into the bankroll.

Back to Step 2
So guys I haven't been playing much Poker last week but I have made progress with a lot of other things non Pokerwise and as usual I have put in a ton of hours of studying my hand histories and watching some good knowledgeable content on Twitch and Youtube which I hope is going to improve my game immensely going forward.

09/08/2020 Day 27 Step 2 Day 5

Games: 39
Performance: 9
Starting Bankroll: $1679.44
Ending Bankroll: $1716.64
Profit/Loss: +$37.20

Summary
So guys I was writing this out last night while 1 tabling my last mtt which is why i'm posting it today.

I have been playing some MTT's on and off since my last update and have made a little profit since the last update with a few deep runs but nothing major.

I really gave GGPoker a solid grind yesterday with the MTT's and played around 40 games at stakes ranging from $1 - $5. I made a few deep run's and cashed almost 50% of the games like the last time I did this which was great.

I managed 2 final tables.

A $2 T$ builder I finished 8th I think but I landed on the final table by some miracle with like 2BB's as the players in these games are completely insane and don't tighten up near the FT bubble at all! I managed to make some sort of come back and laddered to 6th when eventually busting for around $17 in T$.

The second final table was a $2.10 bounty. Again I didn't run great but made use of ridiculous play from the guys in these games and coasted my stack through the final table. I busted 6th again when I jammed JJ in MP and got snapped by the BB with AA. I only managed $1 of knockouts which is a joke but altogether $23 from this is not too bad I guess.

Altogether at the end of the day my GGPoker balance went up by around $37 so happily another profitable day for the challenge!

BR looks nice! keep going

Thanks bro I will!

Quick update guys just fancied two tabling some MTT's on GGPoker and managed to FT one of them again! I played a $2 T$ Builder which bricked and this ..

I was one of the shortstacks through this entire tournament and again by some miracle right before the FT i ran up my 2BB stack and laddered nicely to 4th. I shoved Q9o on the button 4 handed with 5BB's and got called by the guy tied with me in last place with AJo and lost the flip but I gotta be happy with that result.

I don't understand the currency at all but what I do know is that after these 2 games the GGPoker balance went up by $45! I am going to chill out for a bit have some food and then most likely fire up another couple of MTT's. I'll update if anything happens...

I wanted to read this all but I am tired so I just post in here:

avoid GG if you are not having a suuuper computer.
I am having a 2016 - 900€ laptop and my stars tables freeze when I am running just two GG tables. Def not worth it.

also 1$ 45man are better than 1.5$ KO 90man rake wise as you pay less than 9% on the 1$ but a whopping one on the KO. You also should "already" mix in some 2.5$ 180man in (not too many, just a few) because you are losing so much EV by skipping them in two ways
a) your game is good enough to beat that game
b) your BR is big enough to add these games

best wishes, you definitely got this <3