Hi everyone. 1st time posting on 2+2 but been playing poker +10 years. Recently got back into it this year and thought this would be a good idea for accountability/motivation and just to talk hands. So in a nutshell I'm going to try grind 7/8 hours per day with 4 25NL zoom tables on Pokerstars (I might consider adding 2 from a different site but unsure). Along with grinding I'll be aiming to study/review hands 3 hours a day and my overall target is 5bb/100 hands. If my calculations are correct I could make $1500+ from rakeback on top of this so hopefully $5k profit. I'll include my results from 25NL so far this year, winning at 4.4/100 (EV ADJ) over 100k hands so the challenge seems achievable. Or possibly it all blows up and I go broke, which would also be entertaining I guess.

So yeah I'll be posting results probably every night along with 1 big hand review, any advice is welcome. I have big ambitions for poker this year so more challenges could follow, but I'll start with this.

Thanks for reading!

Danny.

In my experience adding multiple sites at micros/lowstakes is just a waste of energy and makes the grind annoying, stick to the one u find to be best value / nicest to grind long hours on imo

GLGL!

Day 1 Update: Shaky start!

Day 1 off to a terrible start, 1 of the bigger losing days playing 25NL but thats the way she goes. Forgot to mention my bankroll in intro, so after todays results my bankroll is $1475. I'll try get into the habit of sharing some hand reviews most days. Upgrading to a bigger screen tomorrow so that's fun.

Danny.

Yeah you might be right, best not to fix what's not broke. Thanks man!

Day 2 Update: Massive Heater!
Bankroll: $1746

Big grind today, playing 7200 hands is not so easy. Makes me realize how difficult 300k hands in 50 days is but it's doable I guess.

Following mate, what sites you play? Reg or zoom? Playing 25 too. Are you from Lugo?

4 tabling Zoom Pokerstars, it's just handier and still lots of fish. I'm from Ireland!

Day 3 & 4 Update: Heater continues

Didn't get a whole lot of volume, had other plans this past 2 days but will make up for it the next few days. 300k in 50 days is still the goal. The tables tonight were ridiculously soft even for 25NL. Been meaning to start some solver study, bought the basic PIO solver so going to try run some SB vs BU 3-Bet pots tomorrow.

Day 5 Update: Poor play today
Bankroll: $2038

Focusing towards the end of the day was a problem, but still turned a small profit. Maybe a bit more emphasis on a solid morning routine will pay dividends throughout the day. Still moving foward, unlocked a chest today for $250 too. I didn't play a lot last month so I'm getting $2 weekly bonus challenges for this whole month, sucks.

Next week we play 50k hands. bb/100 is sitting at 4.41 after 120k hands.



Full 25NL Graph (will post every sunday)

Day 6 Update: Long Grind + Tourny win!
Bankroll: $2854

I played pretty long hours today at the cash tables booking a very small win. I don't play many tournaments but was in the mood for a $33 HU tourny late and ended up taking it down for $900! We have the bankroll to move up to 50NL probably but I'm going to continue smashing 25NL and work on some fundamentals using PIO solver for a while.

Please include hands played in your posts, that's the key part of the challenge..

Yeah you're right, I've been lazy with it. Aite from today onwards I'll be sure to include 1 hand analysis. Thanks for input

Hey good luck with the grind 1

no no i mean total hands played

Ok gotcha. Bear with me guys I'll figure out a good format for this. Ok so I'm thinking I'll try update the results in the morning/early day with total hands, hands from yesterday and current bankroll. Along with goals for the day. Then I'll try review a hand later in the day in the middle of my sessions.

Day 7 Update: Bankroll almost doubled
Bankroll: $2967

Got my 6k hands in and it went very well. I think 1 key part of success in 25NL zoom is building big stacks throughout the day and knowing how to use them. It just adds EV when a whale is going crazy and you have his 300BB stack covered, played a few $100+ pots yesterday.

Yesterday results:


Total results:


Goals for today:
- Set up a RNG and start using it (Vs regs) for SB vs BU 3-bets. I want to incorporate some things that will pay dividends when I'm eventually playing 100/200NL (which is the goal), and I think getting familiar with mixing my 3-bets vs Regs is a good start. if anyone can recommend which RNG app is best let me know.
- Create hotkeys for playing. I don't use any shortcuts/hot keys/whatetever they're called and it'd probably just be better to get used to them rather than using mouse for everything.
- Review 3 SB vs BU 3-bet using PIO solver. I've created an excel spreadsheet with 74 flops and I'm going to try build a library of GTO knowledge on the common spots, starting with SB 3-bets.
- 6-7K hands.

if you play on stars you can use starscaption, I currently use Jurojin but both give you some nice integrated rngs for each table that change on hero action. they also help set up table layouts, hotkeys, bet sizings etc

gl with the challenge

for RNG i just use the seconds hand on the clock, simple & easy

Thanks very much I started using JuroJin and it works a treat. Clock seems like a reasonable system too, especially for live Poker.

Day 8 Update: Study Day
Bankroll: $2792

Part of this challenge is to build great habits that will serve me throughout higher stakes, learning to consistently focus is one of them. I'm trying to create as many good habits that will help this as I can, such as; Morning sunlight, cold showers, running daily, decent diet, regular sleep routine etc. Also experimenting with some nootropics, today I got some "four sigmatic" coffee (has lion's mane & chaga mooshrooms) & L-theanine, which I'm going to replace regular coffee with. Lifestyle hacks like these interest me and I was wondering if anybody made any changes like this that significantly helped their mindset/cognitive function.

Taking a day off to really tackle PIO solver and creating a routine for studying. I keep procrastinating getting into it, I get easily frustrated by technical things like this but I need to push through and get good at using it. Also considering buying a bigger monitor for playing, had a Mac but it was slow so had to go back to the laptop. If anybody could recommend a nice monitor for poker (maybe curved) for around $200, that'd be great.

I appreciate all of the feedback and advice. I hope it doesn't seem like I'm making this blog my own personal search engine, but it is cool to get advice from people doing the same thing.

Yesterday's results:



Total challenge results:

I too, am looking for a second monitor. Here for the recommendations lol

You are doing well, I don't see you dusting your roll at this point.

I believe you are capable of playing 50NL and that you should flee as soon as possible from the 25NL rake.

So some added information on my year in poker:

I started mid January after having quit poker for about 4-5 years. I put in about $300 and played 25NL until $2000. At that point I binked 3 tournaments in 2 days for a total of around $3700. Tournaments are not what I want to focus on but I keep managing to take down the HU turbo tournaments on Pokerstars, I really can't tell if its extreme variance or maybe I do have a knack for them, but either way I want to stick to cash. It did give me a $6000 bankroll and I started playing 50NL but quickly moved to 100NL where I did very well. My bankroll hit $10000 and I took shots at 200NL. Every stake went well at first then I had a $6k downswing which came from a downswing at 200NL, then 100NL, then 50NL. Also this year I've withdrawn about $5k.

So I'm going to show you my disgusting graph for ALL stakes this year:


Here's tournaments this year


Of course rakeback helped a lot so it's still like +4k in cash for the year despite the loss on the graph.

So in summary: I'm using an extremely nitty bankroll strategy while focusing on improving GTO knowledge so I can defend myself against the top regs, which will increase win-rate and decrease downswings. A slow and steady approach I guess after an extremely stressfull year.

replace all your monitors with a single one of these imo, it's what I did and have never been happier with a monitor setup.

https://www.samsung.com/us/computing...c49g97tssnxdc/

Nice graph. Its totally possible that in the next 1k MTTs you end up break even or down, but even with that i would keep playing it.

Honestly I want to stay away from tournaments, I restricted them for a while might do it again. I think it's something maybe in the future I'd like to get into but I'm trying to pick the route with less variance for now. Also cash is what I study every-day. Although by looking at the graphs you would say otherwise ha.