Hello there!

I decided some weeks ago that I will be streaming a challenge where I would start to play Rush & Cash, starting from NL2 and then move up every time I could win 100 buy-ins on the limit. I am currently at 23% of the goal on NL2.

If you would like to follow how it goes, just hit me up on twitch:
https://www.twitch.tv/3nduranc3

I am normally an NL50+ player, but decided to go back all to the basics and implement a new framework in my poker carreer. I will be writing also some blog posts here, mostly about what tips and tricks I use to keep my winrate running.

So if you are new to poker, GTO or just want to see how I am doing in the challenge, I hope I can give you the content you wish.

I hope we can meet in the chat!

I will be streaming the $150 GG Master also today! So join up!

Hi, 3nduranc3!
GL in your challange!

What are some of the NL2 pool trends that you noticed compared to your usual stakes?
What exploits would you identify in order to quickly pass this limit?

If you're planning to keep a written journal of your progress here you're fine, but maybe you don't know that there is section of this forum dedicated to twitch, youtube, etc streamers. If your plan is just to post links to your streams you might have better luck starting a thread there. Good luck.

Streams section

Assuming you're a 10bb winner and don't experience any big downswings, it'll still take you 100,000 hands at each limit to win 100 buy-ins and progress. If you're 2-tabling RnC, that's something like 200 hours at 2NL alone.

Wouldn't it be more productive to lower the requirement for moving up to winning 30 buy-ins or so? You're clearly crushing these stakes anyway, seems unnecessary to play hundreds of hours at each limit just to prove it.

I would rather just write a big rush of mind down here in one post, and I hope all will get an answer.

My way to redefine Poker for myself.

First of all, this challenge is a journey for me, and also the framework of my newly defined Poker Framework. I did originally play pretty much mindless grinding on various limits for a long time, and altough I did make some money, I was never ever deeply satisfied with my knowledge, why and what I was doing. Leaderboard grinds, constant stress about need for winning, tilting, etc. I have a friend, with whom we always share our experiences in poker, and we do talk about it a lot, and watch streams together. And in one the streams of Ceegee we were running for some giveaway for 1 hour coaching. My friend won it, but eventually gave it to me, since his PC was rather weak and couldn't record and comment his play properly. This was an awsome gift, I am forever grateful. I really look up to Ceegee and think he is a really good expert in poker theory, and I really learned a lot from him. I did basically prepare 1 week for our session, recorded a play on 4 tables of rush NL50, and we dived into it really, it was at the end rather 2 hours. Also gave me a lot of advice of stream heads-up, which inspired me a lot and helped me get some thing about poker in their place. So I decided I will study al lot more, and I will also start streaming. I have seen a lot of challenges being streamed, but I never ever thought that people were really beating the limits, just having good runs. I think its non-sense to say you are doing a 1k to 50k challange, win 2 bad beat jackpots and you say youre done. Its like winning a tournament and then you say you completed a cash game challenge. My vision was always, that someone should be able to beat the limits with real winnings, meaning only counting net EV profit, since that is the real deal, when you can say, you truely a winner on the given stakes. So all in all, I came up with an idea, that I start this challenge, take back the number of tables, and will use the time always to become a better streamer/content creator + will really explain what I am doing at the tables, so I am always having a learning process. Off stream I still play my higher limits, where I already enjoy every minute that I learned so far during and off the stream.

I don’t really care if my challenges takes 2 years to get to NL200 or so. If I am able to do it, I can say finally that I am beating these limits. And the most important thing is that I can say this to myself. I am listening to many different books nowadays, and had a lot of thought about what poker means to me.

Poker and me.

I was never a quitter type, and if I do love something, I will not be able to quit it before I reached a level in it with what I am happy with. And this goes for poker big time. I have never ever played Poker just for fun online, I always wanted to make some money from it. I did not have high expectations from it, like turning pro etc., but still some nice reward for the work I put in it. Altough I was totally looking on the wrong side of it. I thought if you play many many hands these rewards would come. But it’s not like that, this is only true if you already mastered the skills, than you can up the amount of tables etc. I do tend to do stuff backwards, but not likely to run away from them if I can’t complete it.

I’m not a professional poker player and hardly can think that I would ever be one. I have a very steady and good job in the field of IT and this helps me solve a lot of problems, especially fear concerning losing money. However, I almost experienced all other forms of tilt, like despair, frustration, disappointment, entitlement etc. These are always there, just because I put a lot of time into poker and then you get nothing in reward, if you lose or are break even. Combine this with variance and running bad, and you are one emotional wreck in no time.

So I decided to play only 2 tables from now on, still have sometimes the feeling I would play more, but can manage it now. I already read 2 books, and I have a list of another 10 to come up. I started a healthy diet, organized my days, so I can also be with my wife and son. But I had a lot of arguments before I took it seriously enough. It was never about money, I just figured it out that if I can’t reach the “good” poker player level (Like net win on NL200), I will never forgive myself that I put so much time in it, and will not overcome my disappointment.

With the new framework I work with, I am almost certain that I will reach my goal, probably in 2 years. I wanted to start this journey and it is a great content (although I might be not that entertaining). If I do accomplish it, I could show myself that I am a good player (on my expectations), and shown to many others that you can reach this level.

I guess you can be right, but I already designed the framwork that should work good for me. I think as soon as I change it, I will just fail. It is all about patience, dispcipline, thus ... endurance.

It is very hard to say anything without a HUD on GG and after 16k hands, but I feel that I am surprised how much NL2 is overfolding. It is very easy to tell from their stats what to expect from them. I still handle every single player differently and I hate to talk about population trends, to be honest.

One of the biggest exploits to use is your time bank. Lower limit players believe it far more often that you have a strong hand if you just use the clock right. Also getting paid with value hands after waiting a lot helps also.

Also, it looks stupid at first, but having a proper check range, even with strong hand on lower limit is very much profitable. Many players can't handle "passive" play, and they feel the urge to bet with worse hands, even talk themselves into spewbluffs, saying "I started it have to finish it". This is a huge EV +, and I also hate theories saying on low limits you should always bet big. That is just stupid, and will in the long run just make you stick on that limit, because you play unbalanced.

I must also say that a good chunk of the pool is watching streams, picking up stuff from GTO, starting hand ranges etc. So generally the whole pool is getting stronger.

I prefer to write down my thoughts here. Thank you very much for the good lucks!

Hi OP, I think we played a lot on GG together ( I was „geduldbitte“ and am now „butanxietyknows“) Being a net winner on low stakes on GG is close to impossible. I dont have the exact numbers but I guess you know that. Its an open secret that pretty much all players up to NL200 are only grinding for LB‘s and RB (and obv Jackpots). Why dont you grind on Stars, where there is way less Rake and nowadays often even greater Rakeback than on GG.

Amugy magyar vagy?

I'm not complaining, it'll be a great challenge to watch. GL!

Hello there, I would argue your comments, and I must prove you are wrong. Otherwise, I can not finish the challenge, since it's all about net win. I remember geduldbitte, and I also like the name selection you make, they are funny and reflecting some good relationship with tilting. I am happy you found my forum here, hope you stick around to see the challenge. I do show it from time to time what we have our profit from, and since we hit a BBJ also some days ago, our "rakeback percent" is running great.

Amúgy igen, magyar vagyok. Csak Németországban élek, ezért is mond többet a neved. Angolul kezdtem el streamelni, nekem jót tesz, gyakorlom is, meg a szakzsargon is fejlődik, szóval szerintem maradok is ennél. De nyilván válaszolok szívesen magyarul bárhol.

We had a great day yesterday! Played the planned amount of 1k hands, won 5 net EV buyins. Running hot! This makes us now 26% completed on our first limit. GTO % was also above 95%, so yaay! Also, forgot to post my BBJ hand from the last session, so you can check it out here:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1433250493

POGGERS!

We had a rather unlucky session yesterday, gonna make up for that today! We are going to try 4tabling now in this great friday pool! Check it out live:

https://www.twitch.tv/3nduranc3

You are welcome to chat and ask questions, can answer those in English/Hungarian/German!

I will be giving away my starting roll in the streams, which was 50$! Starting today, giving away 2x5$!

What tool do you use to check GTO % ?

Also, how much are you trying to adjust to exploit mistakes your opponents make, or are you strictly trying to follow GTO?

Im using the analysis in GTO Wizard, checking each session, and most of the times we are rewieving some the biggest -EV hands on stream.

Most of the time I want to practice GTO play, so I can get it more onto uncounscious comepetence level, but I am pretty much adjusting to the limit, especially when I see how much they are overfolding in spots. Turn overbet is almost unknown for them.

We had an awsome session tonight. I was 4 tabling, so I can somewhat speed it up a bit on NL2. I was afraid of explaining all the stuff, had some trouble with the time banks, but in the end we managed to build up 3x 450BB+ stacks even. Won like 7 EV net Buyins, so we are at 30% of completing the NL2 level. Check the progress here:

https://gyazo.com/61015ca9f3610998045169f8b76ed436

I felt pretty confident playing 4 tables even. I think I had a slight decline in non-showdown winnings however, don't like that point. Made 3k hands in the session tough.

To be honest, I just miss the viewerbase of the stream still. I did giveaway 2x 5$ today, both draws had exactly 1 person in it, so they didn't have to make sweat to win. Gonna give away 2x5$ next friday also.

I am trying to stream more, to get some volume done here.

We had an awful session yesterday, setting the challange on NL2 back with 10%. I did the analysis, 4 tabling still 94.2% GTO, -0,02 avg EV loss. Although I was tired, this did not play a big role in the session, it was just a pure bad run. You just simply couldn't win a showdown, this is what a bankroll must bear. Variance is a *****. Losing one pot after another didn't change anything in my playstyle, I sticked to the strategy, and I did stop at 2k hand played as planned.

The positive side was that I had the most viewed session ever on Twitch, I am very grateful for that. I am getting close to affiliate status each day, which is my big goal at the moment.

I had a good night sleep now and gained a lot of energy, going to widen my brain with some postflop thory while taking a big walk. I wish all of you a great weekend and see you at the tables later!

Looks like an exciting challenge, I'm struggling with microstakes so I'll definitely watch your streams.

Good luck

Thank you very much I appriciate it! Join the stream when you feel like.

We had a 2nd day of bad run, still playing around 95%, and then yesterday, finally got a + session once again. It was an interesting experience, to have a bad run on NL2, this should never affect our playstyle, strategy, approach to poker. We have to endure every sutiation caused by variance. What does help us in this? Learining, improving ourself and sticking to the beliefs we have in our self.

New graph here:

NL2 -19%

Short mindstorm about GTO

I can barely imagine that you haven’t bumped into ‘GTO’ when you play poker actively these days.
So what is this GTO and why do I always see this coming towards me? Do I have to love it or hate it? Do I have to understand it?
Let’s just put it this way, lets assume GTO is 50 cent (yes the rapper), and he is just coming against you rapping:

Hate It or Love It, the underdog's on top
And I'm gon' shine, homie, until my heart stop
Go 'head envy me, I'm POKER's M.V.P
And I ain't going nowhere, so you can get to know me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuMBmK5uksg

And whatever you do, you can avoid GTO, you can hate it, but if you don’t really start to understand it, you will never be a winning poker player in the long run.
But why is that? I have very good intuition, I just made 10 BB/100 on NL200 in 100k hands without GTO! The whole GTO is bullshit!
Let’s start clearing up some things, and get rid of some scam ****, before we advance just one step even talking about GTO.

Is there a better strategy then GTO?

NO! There is simply never going to be any better strategy for poker. If someone is explaining you, that exploitative play is better, run away! He/she clearly does not understand the principles of game theory and what this means in poker. GTO cannot be exploited. However, you are not a machine, and you will never be able to play GTO perfectly.
You will understand this by definition:

GTO – Game Theory Optimal in poker means, that you will take the best mathematical decision in every situation, based on ALL of the available information that you have in the spot, taking all possible strategies into consideration.

This would mean that you play a perfectly sized bet on the flop, and when the “Exploitative” Player raises by 140%, you still have another GTO response to that action. But I can tell you, people who think attacking with aggression is the key, they will most likely see a fold too often, or just simply bump into some better hand time to time, and they will not be able to fold, and end up losing in the long run, thus making -EV decisions or favoring EV decisions, that are not the best in the situation (we will talk about EV next time).

Take the following points with you today:

1. This is of course impossible to implement as a human being, we just thrive to come as close as possible to this. To do this we set up boundaries, we are simplifying situations, so that we can understand them and implement them into our game.

2. We are humans. We make mistakes (except Russians playing with RTA, they don’t make mistakes KEKW), and these are the spots which makes us vulnerable against GTO. GTO is not about winning always, or showboating with great hands, explaining yourself you are the best player in the world because you won a tournament, or a big hand with K8o. It would only explain you that you are great, when you played more then a million hands, losing as minimum -EV as possible. Poker is not 1 tournament, not 1 hand. It takes patience, dedication, thus endurance.

3. If two players would play perfect GTO against each other, that means, they will never ever earn money on playing each other in the long run. This means one thing! If 2 players play 100% GTO against each other, who wins? The poker platform! And this is because of RAKE. So let’s just destroy one of the most ancient bullshit:

“The poker platform is cheating!”

Why is this just a myth? Because if you lose and never play again on the site, the poker platform loses the rake, meaning he would bite his own hand. The poker platforms biggest interest is to keep you playing on his site, and pay him more than what you would ever imagine. You are not even feeling it, because you only pay when you win. 😊

What is EV, what are solvers and how do they come together with GTO? Find out in the next short mindstorms I write.

Well yesterdays stream was just awful, had continous streaming problems. I decided to find a solution for this once and for all. I just found that the 50 Mbps connection is just simply not enough for streaming without having buffer problems, since after testing only 2 Mbps of upload speed can be realized. This is, altough better then nothing, an optimal upload speed of 5-6 Mbps would be advised. Now I upgraded simply to 1000 Mbps, meaning up to 1k download and 50 Mbps upload speed. Of course you have to hate this prefix UPTO. It needs some time to take effect, but I hope soon I will be able to stream with maximum capacity. The modem and my Laptop can all handle 1k Mbps, thats also quite important.

See you on the next stream!

Ok, now this should do the tryick hopefully:


New Internet


See you tonight!

I agree that GTO is a good starting point, but isn't this taking it a bit too far? Let's suppose I'm playing 2nl and I find an opponent who has 85% fold to cbet over 10,000 hands and they are inelastic to cbetting sizing in that stat.

Would you not start betting 1/4 pot or some other size against them with a really high frequency? Or maybe even just at a slightly higher than GTO frequency until you can confirm that they're not going to adjust? (although if their fold to cbet is 85%... are they really going to adjust?)