Hello all,
I am a 19 year old American with a dream to play poker professionally. But in the beginning of July, I entered a terrible downswing that crushed my mental game, "preventing" me from playing until today when I returned.

Reasons for starting the challenge/blog:

1) Accountability.
2) I love poker and talking about poker
3) I am only half-way done with my yearly rake back grind (elite benefits)
4) I need to break my TFT addiction


Goals:

1) Win at 4/bb EV
2) Play (at least) 1k hands every single day for 100 days
3) Study 1hr/day
4) Make the $250 leaderboard reward tier every week
5) Meet people with a similar love for poker as me


Thank you for reading! I will try to answer all questions.

Day 1:

Not sure how often I will be updating this blog, I kinda want to do it daily but people may not be too interested in that much spam so I don't know. Dug out of a 400BB hole to end the day +95$. Happy with how I played, mental was good even after losing 3 BIs to variance. Here are two my favorite hands from today:
I'm not sure how to explain it but I'm just so sure that this line is over bluffed massively
I have so much 5x here that I thought I could be quite liberal with my bluffs but the fold equity seems awful so I think I should just only shove value and occasionally hands with a high club

P.S. why are 95% of recs either American or Canadian lol

Hey man!
GL with everything.
Imo you should prioritise studying over volume especially at the start of your career
AJss just fold flop no? We probably have a bottom 10% hand in our range, no redraw no nothing

Playing these stakes and games at your age is very impressive. Whats your previous results? I'm not super in tuned but for 200blitz it sounds very high with 4evbb pre rb. GL with your goals

In that second hand, how much 5x can you really rep? Since you raised first? Idk you’re never really folding out anything there I think but I’d love to hear someone better than me to explain since im a nl5 spewtard

Yea I probably should spend more time studying, however, I simply enjoy playing a lot more and do not want to risk burn out. AJss is just a flop fold. Most of my studying is in late position configurations and I tend to be inelastic towards position shifts (AJss would be a defend BTNvsCO 4b)

I ran up a decent bankroll playing private app games, then transitioned to 50nl online a year ago. I was about breakeven for a month before investing in coaching that took me to a winner at 200nl the next month. My results are about 100k hands 200nl winning at 14bb with decent table selection, 2bb on ACR 200z (40k hands) and 8bb on Ignition 200z (30k hands). About breakeven at 400nl (low sample) with unsuccessful shots at 600-1k. 4bb pre rb is quite high esp. for zoom but I think it's quite possible, considering I'm winning at 2bb already without taking the studying/personal hand reviews too seriously. And thanks!

I think that up to all of my 65s 54s A5s that 3bets pre flop can reach this river. I only said that I think fold equity is so low here because when people block this river the plan to me always seems to call a jam with all pp that includes a club.

Really interesting, where did you get coaching from? What did it consist of?

Good luck OP

Got private coaching from a nl1k reg. Consisted of database reviews and mastering a simplified strategy that still currently crushes at nl200 and below. This strategy certainly accelerated my progress to winning at 200nl, but hinders my advancement beyond 200 because my game is currently so simple and higher stakes regs punish it so much harder. I'm now working independently to complexify my game.

will be following, glgl op!

probably because people bet their strong hands too much when oop when they are supposed to check decent amount?

Days 2-4:

Total hands : 4780
Total BB/100 EV: 0.79

I have switched to mainly playing regular tables and only playing zoom when I'm waiting to sit my 6 reg tables. Historically I have preferred zoom because I enjoy the freedom to take breaks whenever, but I can't ignore the difference in strength between the zoom pool and reg table players. Not only are there significantly more fish, the regs are also a lot softer. Honestly I feel like I'm not running great apart from winning a few flips, and certainly not concerned at all about the win rate over this short stretch. Obviously not going to complain about the green line.


Ran this one in solver to make sure it wasn't an obvious answer before posting, and the machine is indifferent on river. I felt like villain had a lot of combos of bluffs to choose from like Kx with a heart, A8, K8, and random Ahx.


Was looking through my database for river x/r Allin and I have taken it down 9/9 times with 8 folds and once when I had the goods. In this particular hand I felt like IP never ever has QQ, JJ, or 88 after flop x and I did not expect this winning reg to be flatting 22 on the BTN so I felt he was giga capped vs my uncapped range and I'm not certain BTN will have a single call in his range except for A8dd IF he flats pre and checks back flop AND takes this weird turn/river size.

Also thanks for the support! It actually motivates me a lot even if it's just a few comments.

Days 5-12:

Total Hands: 17,193
Total BB/100 EV: -9.56

It's been a really rough week. I only won money on 1/8 days, and it felt like I was in bottom 2% card distribution. Every session seemed to be decidedly losing, but my mental game stayed relatively strong. I only got tilted twice and insta sat out both times. On a more positive note, I just moved into my apartment at University and ended the week swinging up 3 buyins.


Not sure about this one. I think combo selection is fine because SB 3b range is linear and I expected him to range bet this board so he would have not much 7x to bxb bluff with, as well as a bunch of AK no d and KJ no d. Villain actually max tank called this river too, so perhaps an overfolded spot.


I have started playing BTN flats bc many people do not know how to play vs them. In this spot (like most boards) OOP PFR has to check range which most people are not doing. It is feasible that OOP just 3b blasted with JJ or TT but I would expect these hands to mostly check flop.

If anybody on here plays nl200 on ACR feel free to pm me I have not talked to any others at the stake lol.

Nah brah, he will not bet the river with this sizing with KJ with no diamond there... Maybe if he is a super aggro player... Even the solver is not doing it playing against himself. There are some AKo that he would bet, but most of them have a diamond.

When i read this hand for the first time i really disliked it, i would never do that unless for a very specific reason (if my opponent is ******ed and folds everything). The solver folds 77 on the river after this bet, he only calls 2% of the time and the EV of shoving is -1.28.

I think that consulting the solver for this spot is not helpful because we never know the exact frequencies villain is giving up his non-diamond high card hands. If villain goes for the bluff with AK KJ no d 10% of the time, our hand is indifferent between call jam fold, AND that's assuming villain is giving up every combo of AJ A9 A5 A4 K9 no d. If villain bluffs all these hands 20% of the time it would be a MASSIVE mistake to fold, becoming indifferent between jam and call. And villain considered folding Ad in this hand, although he may never have, it is safe to assume that villain would fold Kd at a decent freq, making the shove even better. I guess we just fundamentally disagree about the freq at which villain will give up. IMO it is <90%.

Impressive to be where you are at with your age. When did you start taking poker seriously?

Thanks for sharing your hands!

For what its worth, I would not overcall AJo in this spot, unless one of the players is a very special rec. That hand is dominated by a lot of 3bet ranges on Ah boards which is one of the more common ones. Do you mind sharing why you believe that line is massively overbluffed? Is it just your intuition or something more?

First hand, its important to bluff with board pair here imo, alternatively low pockets. It doesn't look like much when you bluff jam 77 here but you have many better hands to do it with, and a somewhat narrow value range

Second hand, sick fold wp

GL in your journey,

but 4bb on nl200blitz is unfortunatelly not possible

Thanks for the kind words! I started taking poker serious last June and came to realize I want to play professionally this January. IMO it's always profitable to call AJo in this spot bc of rec BB cold call + SB will be handcuffed double OOP in many post flop spots. My intuition tells me there are two reasons why this spot is over bluffed: 1) SB has a ton of bluff candidates to choose from and 2) SB thinks I will be very capped. After I x back flop and bet small turn SB (IMO) will think the majority of my range will be 1p Ax hands or bluffs. SB then (IMO) can choose to raise all of his 1 club hands that are losing to and Ace, (KK, KQo, KJo, JJ,TT,88, 21 combos). Also I feel like two club hands may bet flop or turn, whereas the hands above will almost always check both flop and turn. In this case villain chose a non-club hand, so perhaps we can even add KJ KT JT, etc. combos with no club.

Yes I agree I think Tx makes for way better bluff here, although a part of me believes boats will bet small to induce, x river, or jam and pray.

Day 13: (updating just bc yesterday was so interesting)

Did not play the full 1k hands bc I had a deep run in the Sunday $95 beast satellite... and cashed!!!! for 2650$ unrefundable ticket. Satellites are so funny and I have gotten a lot better at them as I play this tournament weekly. I had a top 3 stack with 50 people left (20 paid) and I folded every single hand (including KK in SB). If you do not play in the Sunday beast thingy, it has to be like +200% EV to register, my first table was me and some mega whale + 6 people who were afk folding every hand, and after the other guy busted I was just raising every hand and started with 10 stacks in level 3 effectively. Will definitely be out of my element come tournament, but looking forward to playing on Sept. 19. Going to try to sell 1.65k worth of action to friends at no markup. I mostly try to post "controversial" hands bc hands where I play good are kinda boring (IMO), but yesterday I ran so insanely poorly (in cash) that I just need to vent:

With the way this pool plays, I think any spot that requires them to turn sdv into bluffs is being optimistic. Unless this is a known good player, this is a fold, IMO.

Villain is a winning reg. Looking back at this hand now, I think it is a fold. Had I blocked river then call is a lot better I think...

Days 14-18:

Since beginning of challenge:

+ $501 rakeback + $375 leaderboards + $2650 tourney ticket + 2x $95 tourney ticket
= -$503 green line (+$2840 in tickets)
= $101 EV line (+2840 in tickets)

After a -$3750 start, today is the first day we are ending the challenge with a positive yellow line (post RB lol). I was losing confidence at 200nl although I was in a bottom 1% variance for the first 10k hands, so I decided to step down to 100nl to rebuild the confidence (5 tables 100, 3 tables 200 mainly). I cannot emphasize enough how much easier 100 is than 200... there are infinite recs and the average reg will not fight back in pots, always size for hand when value betting, and range cbet every board. Of course I do not think 20bb is sustainable, but for the past couple of days I have been crushing it with my B+ game because my University classes just started and I am exhausted by the day's end.