In January, I have played 30,000 hands at 6bb/100 playing the 25NL Ignition Zone Poker pool. It hasn't been without it's ups and downs, but based on the types of plays people are making in this pool, I feel that it is reasonable to assume that I have an edge.

I will be 2-tabling, and seeing around 700 hands per hour. So I will play around 35 hours per week. Mostly I will play weekdays between 5 PM PST and 3 AM PST.

I will post my progress once or more per week and check the thread a few times a week to respond to questions as well. I am open to responding to all types of questions: about me, about Zone generally, about my experience, etc.

About me: In January, I quit my job making 180K per year to pursue poker full time in the LA area. I game select live games by essentially just playing Friday nights and weekends and table selecting aggressively (I end up at 1-3 casinos per night). I live with my lovely wife in Orange County, who is being encouraging and very supportive of the transition.

(In my opinion, Zone is providing me with a unique training opportunity. I can analyze hands to exploit general player pool tendencies, and fine-tune my theoretical understanding by balancing my range in spots where the player pool isn't deviating too much from solid play. In that way, I am learning the process of devising a general strategy that both defends me from unknowns and exploits unknowns. Since I record a hand history for every showdown at my table in live play, I can repeat the process by looking at the live LA player pool generally as well. Not to mention getting the experience of playing 100K hands against much better opponents than their live counterparts.)

Disclaimer: Not to copout of the challenge, but should I lose $500 from where I am currently, I will be moving down in stakes, and closing the thread.

So here we go - My goal is to earn over $1,000 and play over 100,000 hands at the Ignition 25NL Zone Poker game. I am ready to be the most committed grinder in the 25NL player pool and to invest in myself to improve my understanding of poker!

Regards,

Mysterious

gl!

How the hell do you get 700 hands/hr with two zone tables?? Im pretty sure I get about 225-250 per table.

[IMG][/IMG]

Graph doesn't include the last couple days of January.

I appreciate the question. With Hold'em Manager and Ignition Hand Converter, I am able to find out exactly how many hands per hour I am getting. In Hold'em Manager, it is listed per table.

If I am getting more than usual, it is probably because I play a tight style, mimicking Pokersnowie's style until there are limpers and/or blinds with <80-90bb stacks, where I'll start to play exploitively. Of course, there is still a limit to this in Zone.

Thanks!

GL man! Very realistic goals aswell.

I just and I was wrong I am averaging 315 hands per hour over 80k hands, more than I thought. Good luck

Appreciate all the good luck wishes!

I've decided I will post results on February 10th, 17th, 24th and March 3rd. This will allow the hand histories to be available for the first 5 days played, 10 days played, 15 days played, and 20 days played.

I am up just over two buy-ins at this point (of course I realize this is meaningless).

Just had an interesting hand (variance post, but feedback is more than welcome):

UTG folds
UTG+1 folds
CO ($64) raises to $0.75
BU folds
SB folds
Hero ($31) calls from BB with QJ

Flop: AJ4

Hero checks
CO bets $1
Hero calls

Turn: Q

Hero checks
CO bets $2.85
Hero calls

River: T

Hero checks
CO bets $8.50
Hero folds

I think this is close to standard. I maybe could have bet small/folded on river (something like $2.75).

Important to note is that my database suggests that players with greater than 120bb stacks steal from the CO 25% of the time. I haven't looked into it further, as I am not looking to try to play exploitively against deep stacks...but perhaps I can or should.

From experience alone, I think Villain's range after this river bet does still included the occasional sets and two pair hands, plenty of Kx, and an occasional bluff. However, I just didn't think there were enough bluffs in Villain's range for a call here, especially since there are no missed flush draws, but I could be mistaken.

The challenge continues...

Any updates? Bust? Give up? Just curious because ive thought of trying 100k hands in a month in ignition zone.

anon zoom poker is aids, just play regular tables

Sorry for the late reply, but I thought jumping back in for an update would be valuable for the community. I took a break from Ignition shortly after I started this challenge - there were a few reasons, but one of them was that Ignition had an issue with player balances that caused me to focus less online for a bit.

In February, I played 43,000 hands for $635 in earnings. I saw 808 hands/hour 2-tabling, and averaged 5.82 bbs/100 or >$10/hr.

I only play between 4 pm and 1 am (next day) PST, and then only when the average pot size is greater than $2.75 and players/flop is greater than 25%.

Below shows my entire sample of 25NL Zone. All stats are based on 1 table at a time, and I am always 2-tabling, FYI:



Let me know if you have any questions. I am definitely curious to hear what others may be beating the 25NL Zone game for.

Some lessons learned through this experience, which involved a lot of active work on my theoretical game:

-I learned to embrace the swings of adopting a theoretical style and realized that 6-8 buy-in swings were very normal and seemed to be constantly happening.

-I had difficulty adjusting my play as much based on player pool reads as I was comfortable doing based on player-specific reads. Range analysis was much harder because of how difficult it seemed to accumulate a meaningful amount of data against anonymous opponents, e.g. I don't trust that I have enough data to know what percent of the time I can expect my opponents to 3-bet/spazz with garbage.

-Gaining an understanding of how profitable a play is against a well-balanced and tight player is the first thing I learned to consider before deciding how much of an adjustment to make. When my play seemed to be marginally profitable against strong opponents, I would make an adjustment, like under-calling down when an opponent barreled a dry Ace- or King-high board, as an example, or under-defending when a short-stacker potted it from the button or 3-bet me in a not-so-obvious steal situation.

While many on these forums are further along in their careers to the point where beating a $25NL online game is not really an achievement, this was a fantastic learning experience for me and has allowed me to grow more as a player than any other experience so far. I will continue to play and work on my game to be more than a marginal winner at 100NL Zone as well.