THE BACKGROUND
What's up? I have always been passionate about poker ever since I was underage. I remember playing the WSOP video game on PC like 15 years ago. Man, that game was fun. A couple years ago, I started getting into online and live cash games and I have been playing semi-consistently for the past year or so.

CURRENT GAMES
Live: 1/2, 1/3, and 2/5
Online: 50nl and 100nl

IDEAL GAMES
Live: 10/25 (or above)
Online: 500nl (or above)

PLAN OF ATTACK
Consistently play and improve on a daily basis. Simple. Taking few breaks from playing and being persistent with study.

CHECKLIST
[ ] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week OR [ ] Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week
[ ] Study for at least 7 hours per week

PURPOSE
The purpose of this thread is accountability and inspiration. Having simple targets to meet each and every week and documenting my adherence to said targets will help me stay consistent with the habits required for continued improvement. I believe looking back and seeing past improvements before my eyes will help motivate me in times in which I am lacking clarity of mind.

SIDE NOTES
-I plan on updating this thread once per week (Sundays or Mondays). Nothing too excessive as I don't want to put unnecessary pressure on myself, but rather feed on the extra drive and determination that documenting my journey may bring.
-Thanks to RoadtoPro for inspiring me. I really like the format and organization of his thread. I have been following his thread off and on over the past 18 months or so, so I would be very pleased with myself if I could be as consistent as him with respect to updates and invest even half the "Productive Poker Hours" he does.

WED. MAY 25/22
Dammit, I can't delete this thread. Right away when I posted this thread I wanted to delete it. There's this weird pressure that came over me upon creating this thread. I really didn't want to play today as the pressure was getting to me. Perhaps, it's the idea of public failure that's getting to me or perhaps it's the constant urge to check this thread to see if anyone responded. Or...Perhaps, it is just grains of unexplainable irrationality that have leached into my thought. At the end of the day, who really cares? It's all just useless thought that I enters my mind from time to time.

Today was a win and a loss. I'm happy with the fact I played today, but unhappy with the amount I played today. I ended up playing around 600 hands in online (which is probably nothing to a lot of people) and getting around 30 minutes of formal study in. Of course, I would have liked to get more but onwards and upwards from here baby!

SAT. MAY 28/22
Alright, I just watched an interesting video about how to approach strategy-building in poker. It shed some light on the benefits of simplification, particularly the fact that it leads to greater clarity of one's own (and villain's) range. I do notice in-game, due to my complex strategy, I often have poor clarity of ranges on later streets and thus fail to act correctly on such streets (esp. on board-changing streets. Fixing this issue would likely do more than compensate for the loss in win-rate that simplification leads to. So perhaps in the future, I may simplify my strategy in order to achieve this clarity. Additionally, I also took away that I should devote more time into thinking about how to execute in different games. For instance, I tend to struggle when I'm splitting my time between playing live and online. This is likely because these games play very differently and my strategies and such games isn't reflecting such. As a result, I should likely take some time to think about how I should approach each game, individually, and how my strategies should differ in each setting. Also, I should probably put more emphasis on developing heuristics, since it is impossible to study every spot in every node individually. Finally, it would likely be beneficial for me to find a way to notice population tendencies and exploit more.

Sorry for the rambling, but I thought noting down some of my takeaways from the video would be of benefit.

Over the last couple days, I have kind of been slacking a bit. I have been unable to play live and it's been difficult to maintain the frame of mind to do all the playing and study I want to do each day. I have to improve upon this. Over the next few days though, I plan on getting some solid hours at the cardroom, and I am pretty excited as I haven't played there in about a week I believe.

Hey man, really appreciate the kind words.

Feel free to message me if you need anything.

GL!

Same to you man. It's been nice following your journey over the past two or so years. If I ever go to LA, I'll be sure to pay a visit haha.

WEEK 1 SUMMARY (MAY 23-29/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (0) OR [X] Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (5,300)
[X] Study for at least 7 hours per week (4)

I didn't reach my goals, but it was a good start. I was breaking even for the majority of the week, but then had a huge day today. Here's how we did this week:


Of course it is only 5,000 hands, and thus, means very little in the grand scheme of things, but it is always nice to get closer to moving up in stakes.

I didn't play any live, however, in this upcoming week, I plan on mainly playing on the live felt. I'm not sure whether it'll mainly be 1/3 or 2/5. Ideally, I'd be playing 2/5, but I think being a bit more conservative with BRM at this point may be smart. It'll likely be a combination of both to be fair.

Over the next week, I want to complete my checklist. I feel like I'm improving at a good rate, so hopefully this fact pushes me to get the hours in!

THU. JUN. 2/22
Just finished a session and I am pretty tired. I realized even 1 hour per day of high-quality study a day is difficult when grinding live. As a result, I am highly considering dropping the study goal to 5 hours per day. Today, I was making simple errors regarding miscalculating the pot and as a result betting more than indented in multiple spots. A couple silly mistakes made today, which is unfortunate but somewhat expected. In these moments, I try to just focus on maintaining a good mindset, understanding that I still have a reasonable win-rate in these games even when making these miscues. Overall though, I have been doing and playing relatively well this week. I am also right on pace for 40 hours played this week and I feel like I've been doing everything right in terms of structuring my day. That is, except for exercise. I need to find time to exercise.

Anyways, just a short mid-week update. I will likely not post again this week unless something of note comes up.

Well, I'm late on the week two update due to a combination of low discipline and getting home late over the past few days.

WEEK 2 SUMMARY (MAY 30-JUNE 5/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (23) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (73)
[X] Study for at least 7 hours per week (2.5)

To be honest, after my last post I got lazy

That being said, I did profit quite well over the 20-25 hours I did grind.





I've been splitting between 1/3 and 2/5, preferably 2/5 when it's running. I have found it particularly difficult to get 40 hours of high-quality live poker in per week. I think it has literally been a year since I last accomplished this. My main goal at this point should be controlling the mind, as I would be lying if I said I handle pressure well. If anything, I create pressure and then succumb to it. I need to work on becoming more strong-minded.

This weeks' update will be coming on Sunday or Monday. Hopefully, we end it well.

Alright, here is the week 3 summary!

WEEK 3 SUMMARY (JUNE 6-JUNE 12/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (19) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (300)
[X] Study for at least 7 hours per week (0.5)

Let's see how we did:





This was the first week in the red. And I'll be honest, quite a bit of our losses are due to bad play/mentality. In fact, the last few days were mentally difficult. My sleep schedule had been later and later so on Saturday, I couldn't play a proper session of poker due to other commitments. During the night, I had trouble falling asleep. Consequently, I wanted to keep myself occupied with something so I decided to grind online. I had played nearly no online poker over the past 10 or so days, but I wanted to get some volume in. I had played and beaten 50z before, so I wanted to play higher so I went for 200z, despite not meeting my goal at 100nl regular tables that I made before I could jump in 200nl. Right away after loading the tables, I realized I made a mistake. Not only was I playing 200z laying down in my bed at 5am, but I was too attached to the money. I just could not accept a losing session. After losing a couple significant pots, I decided to play one table of 500z just to make a mountain out of a molehill. The 500z table was 3-handed initially and then became heads up soon after due to a tiny 5am pool. I still continued to play, despite almost certainly having a negative win-rate in the game (I am not very good heads up whatsoever). Following a big losing hand, I felt disgusted with myself and decided to stop playing. Good decision! It ended in a loss of around $550.

At the end of the day, that's not an insane amount of money, but it is significant to my bankroll. This is not the first time I have made a very ill-advised decision to play higher than I should, but I want to make it the last.

I am travelling to Las Vegas for the first time in less than a month and I want to set myself on the right track for this experience. I think I should put additional effort into cutting out bad habits which are setting me back from reaching my goals. In order to achieve such, I think I need to more clearly define my goals, priorities, and daily schedule. So, I just recorded this information in my journal and I am looking to execute it.

After a bout of consideration, I have decided to lower the study target from 7 hours per week to 5 hours per week. Some nights, I just don't have the energy to get a 30 minute study session in so even if I was very disciplined, I would still have quite some difficulty reaching 7 hours per week of study time and I believe it could lead to some "junk" study volume.

If I'm being honest, my self-esteem poker wise has diminished a bit, since when I made this thread I was hoping I would improve upon my bad habits, but it doesn't seem like that has happened.

If I just keep approaching the right direction, I am bound to improve.

Week 4 is in the books!

WEEK 4 SUMMARY (JUNE 13-JUNE 19/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (7) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (0)
[X] Study for at least 5 hours per week (0)

Let's see how we did:



Ahh, relaxing week of not much poker. I felt like I needed this in order to recover from the poor decisions of the prior week. Week 4 was essentially a break week, in which I barely even played and did not study.

As I mentioned in my last update, I will be going out to Las Vegas for the very first time in a couple weeks. I will be grinding 1/3, 2/5, and perhaps shot-taking at 5/10 while I am there. What poker rooms are good? I'll probably be exploring all of the main properties, but having never been there before, I don't really know what the pros and cons are to each room. The priority now is to develop good habits prior to Vegas so that there is less pressure to perform when I actually get there.

That's a wrap on week 5.

WEEK 5 SUMMARY (JUNE 20-JUNE 26/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (18) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (0)
[X] Study for at least 5 hours per week (0)

Let's see how we did:



Damn, this was a tiring week. As a result of attempting to get my sleep/wake schedule back in order, I felt SUPER tired most days this week. As a result, despite being more adherent to my daily routines, sessions were cut short as a result of this lack of energy. In fact, on more than one day, I effectively got no volume in since I felt too tired to play.

I played a 18 hours and played alright. There are definitely some spots I'd like to clean up and become more confident about. But overall, I can't be super upset since I take off to Vegas in 1 week!!!

We in Vegas baby!

Arrived in Vegas a couple days ago, which is why this update is a bit late.

Last week was one of the worst weeks over my poker career results-wise.

WEEK 6 SUMMARY (JUNE 27-JULY 3/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (22) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (0)
[X] Study for at least 5 hours per week (0)

Let's see how we did:



Honestly, I'm not too upset with the week as a whole. $1700 is only 350bb at 2/5 and I do play 1K deep sometimes.

It's time to focus on bigger and better things, like being in Las Vegas. Over the past two days I've been exploring much of what the city has to offer, but tomorrow I will get my feet wet in the waters of LV poker.

This is the mecca, the place I have waited my whole life to travel to. And now I am finally breathing in the dry air of the city I used to dream of going to as a kid, staying up late to watch poker on the television. Here it is so let's make the most of it!

I have just completed my first two weeks in Vegas.

WEEK 7 SUMMARY (JULY 4-JULY 10/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (32) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (0)
[X] Study for at least 5 hours per week (1)

Here were our results for Week 7:




WEEK 8 SUMMARY (JULY 11-JULY 17/22)
[X] Play at least 40 hours of live poker per week (18) OR Play at least 7,000 hands of online poker per week (0)
[X] Study for at least 5 hours per week (0.5)

And here are Week 8's results:




Overall, my results haven't been very good so far here in Vegas. In fact, I have posted three consecutive losing weeks, two of which were in Vegas. I have noticed that I've been making some silly errors recently and this has likely negatively impacted my EV. Also, I have been struggling with the mental side of the game, particularly this week. It has been hard to maintain focus as I've been constantly questioning plays from prior hands.

In this next week, I want to put an emphasis on the idea that, "Every hand is independent from the last." Specifically, I want to treat every hand like it is important and deserves attention. This means I should be following the action perfectly in every hand, regardless of whether I am in the hand or not. I should stop sending in hands for review in the middle of sessions as it takes away my focus toward the game, and brings it to potential mistakes I may or may not have made in past hands. This upcoming week, I plan on being the most attentive player at any table I may play at.

I haven't written in here in a while. Despite initially feeling attached to providing consistent updates as a means of accountability, I felt a small degree of unwanted pressure for one reason or another. As I result, I discontinued the thread for a while. That being said, I do enjoy providing an update every now and then as it will give me a place to look back at my poker journey as I continue to improve and move up in stakes. Anyway, enough of the jibber-jabber.

Despite taking the L in Vegas, I rebounded quite well in Florida, resulting in a reasonable profit on the year playing live. Two months ago, when I finished my trip to the US, I decided to get back to the online grind continuing my 50nl and 100nl play. Looking to fast-track my path up the stakes, I got in contact with multiple coaches and strongly considered entering a CFP deal. But, I had second thoughts before coming to a realization: I've never truly tested my limits in poker. I've never played a large sample of hands in which I was unprofitable. So, I decided to temporarily dismiss the idea of getting coaching, and instead, move up to 200nl and get a sample going. I am glad to say that I have been performing and running quite well at 200nl so far.

Here is the graph at 200nl thus far:



Definitely a blue-liner haha. But, the green line is all that counts at the end of the day (and the yellow line to be fair).

The plan at the moment is to reach 40K hands and if I am satisfied with my results, I will then attempt to move up to 500nl.

Currently, I am in a very good place in life. I'm not so focused on forcing self-improvement, but rather have been putting more of an emphasis on living in the moment while following simple habits to improve my quality of life.

Now, for my goals for 2023.

2023 POKER GOALS
-Play 350K Hands Online
-Get to 1Knl Online
-Play 500 Hours Live
-Get to 10/25 Live

As I see it, 2023 will be the year of online prowess. I will go from a very low-volume small/mid-stakes player to being at the brink of high-stakes success. This past year, I played only 75K hands online primarily putting my focus on live cash. This year, that will likely switch as I plan to ramp up my online volume and put less volume in at the live felt. The key difference will be that this year, I plan on aggressively moving up to try to find (and raise) my ceiling within the poker space. Perhaps, my current ceiling is 200nl, but I will not find out without trying to reach it.

That is all for this update. HAPPY NEW YEARS!!!

Hey man, great thread, will be following throughout the year!

Where do you plan on putting in most of your live volume given that you are going for 10-25.

Thanks man!

It’s nice to become active once again on 2+2 after my hiatus.

Great question. Over the last couple years, I have taken a long trip to the U.S. (mainly Florida) each year to grind live as the games are good there and Ontario was slower to reopen than many U.S. states.

So, I will likely take another trip to the U.S. and grind some 2/5 and 5/10 to reach 10/25. Additionally, I see myself playing the Match the Stack 2/5 at Brantford (which often is 2/5/10) as well as going to Niagara, which runs 5/10 every night. I would like to make about 4K more before shot-taking 5/10, which should take around 50-200 hours, depending on variance. Then, I see myself playing 5/10 for around 300 hours before being comfortable shot-taking 10/25.

However, these are just the plans and are not set in stone. I am heavily focused on online poker right now and my goal of reaching 1Knl so I likely will not be playing live much, if at all, over the next couple months.

That seems like a reasonable plan. I am assuming the games in Florida are much softer than Brantford? I was shocked by how much better some Calgary rooms are, and it made me realize Brantford kind of sucks for live action.

Yeah that seems reasonable, I have super nitty with BRM, so I will always support having a healthy roll. I even feel like my roll (around 22k) is small for the regular Brantford 2-5 1k cap game, but I suppose that might just be me not wanting to face huge swings when putting in super low volume.

Hmm, I find the Brantford games to be quite soft. Tons if limping and cold calling with weakish hands. Of course there are better days and worse days, but overall I find the action to be pretty good. From my experience, Vegas seems tougher and Florida seems pretty similar. I'm not sure if Florida is softer than Brantford, however, the lower rake and the extra action added by double straddles, BTN straddles, and bomb pots likely leads to greater caps on winrate.

With respect to BRM, I see it as a personal issue. Personally, although a 22K roll isn't tons for a $1K cap game, there likely isn't much harm in taking a 5K shot at 2/5. If you lose the 5K, you just move back down to 1/3 and rebuild from there. As long as you are prepared mentally and have your ego in check, I think this approach is quite a good one.

I went on around a 5K downswing between Brantford and Vegas and just moved back down to 1/3 and 1/2. No harm, no foul. I adjusted a couple things in my game, made a few thousand in those games and moved back up.

Aggressively discipline is how I would describe my desired approach to BRM. The key is to be willing to always move down if needed. By doing this, the risk of ruin is dramatically reduced to practically zero, assuming one has a very good winrate.

You can also split your time between 1/3 and 2/5, depending on when games are good and how you feel. This will lower the mental variance of not playing as much volume as you get the experience of 2/5 with lower variance. Additionally, this will ensure you play when your winrate is highest and that you don't play too differently at 2/5 and 1/3 (as some have an exaggerated view of the game at different stake levels).

There are many approaches to this but the main point is do not be afraid to be a losing player at a stake level so long as you are always willing to move down.

Sorry for this drawn out reply. That is wuite often my style haha.

JAN. 14/23 UPDATE

I am shot-taking 500nl!

After a relatively successful 40K hands at 200nl on Bodog, I have decided to take a shot at 500nl.

Here is the graph of 200nl:



We ended up with a profit of $8300 (41.5 buy-ins) and a win-rate of 8.52 All-in EV Adjusted. Our largest downswing was just under 11 buy-ins. The vast majority of hands were played in the Zone format (85% of hands).

Now, the course of action is to get 40K hands in at 500nl and re-evaluate thereafter to see whether I should take a shot at 1Knl, stay at 500nl, or move down. I have dedicated 10 buy-ins toward the shot so if I drop 10 buy-ins, I will immediately move back down to 200nl and likely focus on studying (and perhaps dedicating 40K hands to mass grind 200nl). While playing 500nl, I think the majority of hands will be played on regular tables. 500z does not run consistently and I expect the games to be considerably tougher than reg tables. However, I do expect to continue to play a bit of 200z to maintain decent volume. Additionally, I think I'd make more $/hour playing three 500 reg tables and one 200z than just playing four 500 reg tables, as I get more hands in per hour this way.

Actually, I started my shot at 500nl yesterday and have played 2K hands thus far. During my first session, I was very confident as the games seemed quite soft. But, in every session since (I usually have 2-3 short sessions per day), I've noticed a very large difference between 200nl and 500nl. There seem to be way fewer fish and people put you in tough spots a lot more frequently. Last night, I felt like I was getting mauled as people seemingly always had it when I'd bluff-catch and would always make the right decision when playing against my aggression.

Through 2K hands, I am down just over a buy-in which feels quite good as I was really trending down after last night's session.

Wow, those are sick results at 200nl! Goodluck and hope you run good at 500nl.

Thanks for your thoughts about BRM, I read it when you posted it but forgot to reply.

Thanks man! So far 500nl has been going mediocrely, but I won’t provide an official update until I get more hands in.

hey
cool thread! wish you all the luck in the world and discipline to achieve your goals!

I appreciate the well wishes. Same to you with your goals!

gl subbed. Great results so far.

Thank you very much man!