hi all

i am clicking cards since 2012. I will share a lof of insights in near future hear.
but before, i want to welcome the active and non active readers here on my blog.

my life has changed a lot in the last years. trust me when I say, I have seen a lot the last ten years.
my life in a nutshell

-**** up school
-work as a mechanic
-build family
-build career
-loose family
-figure out that career is not worth it
-turned 30 and figured out what is important for my life and what is matrix bullshit
-try to enjoy life as simple and healthy as possible, building habits and the life, i always wanted.

for every point above, i can and probably will share some stories of my experience, hoping that my failures can add value to some of you.

I have seen some blogs here, they usually start with a very big first post, huge like the bible.
So basically, for my first post, this will be it. Just to make sure what topics will be next here

Next posts in the waiting line:
- my poker introduction, since 2012 and what did change to make me finally win (graph included)
- what i aim for to become (semi) pro, format and site
- my daily study / grind routine, volume
- grind results 2024 so far + goals for 2024!
- mindset topics (most interesting!! what works for poker, works in life!)

+ my main motivation to be active here is to get in touch with like-minded grinders! come say hi!

gl!

MY POKER START IN 2012 AND WHY EGO IS SO DANGEROUS ON THE TABLES

hi all

before writing about my 2024 grind, i want to share some insights of how i started playing poker in 2012.
on a cosy evening on the couch at home with the girl, that pokerstars advertisement popped of.
in that time i was stuck in my mechanic apprenticeship and had a €5/hr pizza driver / kitchen cleaner job.
making some easy cash playing online poker at home got me hooked from first moment, i started the client!

what i really was hooked about was railbirding the dudes who 20-tabled high stakes sit and gos.
names like jorj95, 1_conor_b_1, slayerv1fan, MouldyOnions, scossett, czechpro, sup-sport777, andyafc#1,
Pokerger1337, calvin7v, smokrokflock, fricirics, SkaiWalkurrr, River Prayer, $kill Game, MASURON1KE, tonkaaaa,
shabalinvlad, wtfgmon, MAPA3MATuK, poker_in_pb, Azntracker...

i enjoyed watching the guys battle each other for thousands of $, it felt like it was peanuts for them.
when i figured out, that there was sites who tracked the results for the grinders, i was completely blown away
by the numbers and the whole eco system.

also i realized, what the guys were grinding for:



i started understanding that they would make 100k a year. even if they just broke even in results.
what i did not know back then was the idea of rakeback grinding and the fact, that most grinders was -ev pre rakeback.

day in day out, i was watching who was grinding. i checked how many tables they clicked at the same time and
i enjoyed the humor when one of them added new avatars to their account.
not did i just railbird the sng lobby, also i marked the players and tried to catch them playing mtts to see what they do.
there was always this feeling like: this must be some math student nerds not really very older than me,
clicking buttons for monthly saleries and be good at it.

I WAS HOOKED AND WANTED TO BE ONE OF THEM.. so the failure began.


i started playing some $1.5 full ring sngs. without ever thinking about good and bad strategy, i felt comfortable just playing.
also i remember that i was very ego driven in the sense of opting in my active tables so that anyone could see my table count.
what is funny today: ppl be like "oh anybody won in poker back then"... yeah, anyone but me.

it took me like 5-7 days to throw away my $50 bankroll. the only feeling i remember was "oh come on i can not be that bad"
so i charged my roll again. and again. and again.

without ever thinking and reading about strategy, i blew away much of my hard earned apprentice money.
while railbirding results of my high stakes idols, i failed to review my own results. maybe i was scared to face reality.
after months of losing but still being excited about the poker environment, i finally checked my own sharkscope entry.

10k games, -$1k, OUCH.

to this day, i grinded 140k sit and gos and 20k spins. graphs coming soon.

also, i will soon explain how my poker view has changed.

WHAT I DID AND WHAT I DO NOW (+GRAPHS)

hi all

besides the existing buzzwords in poker like mindset and bankroll management, it is of course the graphs, that catches peoples attention.
i was very addictive checking my graphs after each poker session, as if a session graph could tell me if i am a good player now.
today i know, that a nice graph can be an ego push, but there are far more important questions to ask yourself when striving for better.

anyway, i want to share with you my pokerstars graph from 2012 to 2023. to be honest, the regular activities on stars stopped around 2021.
that came from new law restricitions in germany that killed my games.

when you check my graph, you will notice the following. i was a losing player with 2-3 mtt binks, then i went break even, then i started crushing.
i was trying every sng format. really. 9max, 6max, hu sngs, 50/50s (who remember?), 180mans, 18mans. also every speed structure i tried.

my ego was so big that time. i wanted the nice graphs. but my study routine was not existent. for 60k games, you can see i was miserable.




GAME CHANGER: 16man hyper satellites.
at around 70k games, i found a format, that i felt comfortable in from the very first hand.
when my postflop streategy sucked all the years, i still became better in icm pushing ranges over time. it was never a study process, but more like an automatism.
compared to most push or fold spots, i found that the satellites have a HUGE ante every hand, which made me push way more hands than i usually would.
i think the main reason this worked so fine for me is that most satellite players had no idea of the right strategy in the games.
this made perfect sense because most players wanted to fold into the money (=mtt tickets). so pure aggression worked very fine for me with almost no variance.

my 16man chip. i think most chips came from non showdown pots as most villains folded way to much.


my games results:


i went up from the lowest sats up to $7,50 sngs and felt like very close to become semi professional...until...

due to law regualtions (i think it came in 2021) i was forced to stop the 16man games.
main changes was a cap of 4 tables which killed my action completely. i was clicking 18-20 tables to that day so my hourly was 1/5 now.
today the 16mans are no longer available in germany. it seems like the 16mans traffic is very frozen, many grinders are no longer active.

back then, i decided to let poker go and try something else in life... but i guess you see twice in life.

next time, i will share more insights: how i came back to poker, which site and format and how i plan to go pro, at least semi pro.
also i will start to give daily updates about grinding, routines, mindset work and study sessions.

Nice read, looking forward to updates

THE COME BACK TO POKER AND WHAT I PLAY NOW

hi all

after quitting poker for a while, it never really kept me going.
i started realizing there is no other game that is comparable.

what i enjoy about POKER always was the idea of "play more, earn more".
- you can decide how good you want to be
- environment and community is full of smart people
these points give a huge feeling of control to the own poker travel.

what also caught my attention (but i never managed to get to this points):
- free choice of where to live
- possibility to be your own boss

it might be also nice to know that i never felt like an extrovert, an entertainer, who seeks the big stage.
poker also worked for me for exactly for that reason. just my workspace, my laptop, and the vibes i enjoy most.
i can sit there for hours, grind, study, while listen to a documentary...


END OF 2023 I DECIDED TO GIVE POKER ANOTHER CHANCE.

first, i logged in to my old pokerstars account. i was shocked, what pokerstars became.
- player traffic, even on the weekends, was so far from what i remember back in the days.
- most games was frozen. no 50/50s, no husngs, no 180mans, WHAT WAS HAPPENING HERE?

soon i realized that pokerstars was no longer the best poker option to go.
so i started searching 2023 poker content on youtube. i realized that ggpoker is now, what pokerstars was before.
the traffic on ggpoker is huge. the client seemed nice and the support was very helpful and fast acting.

i decided to give it a shot. big question was, which games should i play there?
the poker environment switched more and more to lottery games.
sit and gos seem to be very dead today and the sites also had to react to the hu sng cartels.

GERMAN LAW
as mentioned before, german players are only allowed 4 tables at a time.
when thinking about going pro, the possible options are limited now.

option1
rush & cash (zoom) would give enough action in 4 tabling.
but it would mean that had to learn cash game first.

option2
spin and golds. lots of recreational players in there and the trend goes to lottery games more and more.
+ lots of heads up action so 4 tables would also be enough.

all other options on ggpoker seemed not to be profitable when only grind 4 tables.
mtts was always interesting to me but i still think 4tabling mtts is not really +ev.

i started watching some youtube videos about flash spins and zoom cash.
also i played some sessions of both options.
after all, i decided that my personal preference was more the spins action!


FIRST THOUGHTS ABOUT SPIN AND GO FLASH / SPIN AND GOLD
the more i thought about it, i decided to give the spin and gos (spin and gold on ggpoker) a shot.
they start with 15bb which means preflop ranges are very important here, felt like home
anyway, i knew that my postflop game had to be better.
i read a lot about the games and figured out that rakeback was a huge part of the profits in the games.
for me, grinding rakeback would be ok. play more, earn more. i was thinking "how hard can it be to break even"?


after some research i found that a chip ev of 20-30 per game should be really ok in the flash spins.
so i started figuring out, how good i was on the lowest limits.

i put $25 in my ggpoker account and decided to grind c25 spins now. not for the cash. not for the rakeback.
just for the learning. for studying the tendencies, for finding out what the default spots look like.
so i played 5000 spins of c25.

soon, i will share insights of what came next.

my c25 spins graph:

gl

NEXT STEP: $1 SPINS + BANKROLL MANAGEMENT PLAN

hi all

after grinding the c25 spins for a while, i built a bankroll of 150$.
i think it's fair to say that most money came from the german low stakes leaderboard, where I cashed between 10-30$ per week.
my grind volume in jan24 and feb24 could have been higher. with more volume, the rakeback bankroll would have grown faster.

but i do not hate the pace as i did tons of other stuff during the day.
while "work life balance" became such a buzzword today, i still think balancing between solid grind and real life activities is huge +ev.
my doctor once took a piece of paper and explained me the balance model:

4 arrows (north, east, south, west axis)
- body
- work
- family, social
- hobby, spirituality

first, it seems all obvious but then you realize that "work work work" is just 25% of the overall. i try to grind 5-7hrs/day
but also focus on the other 75% of the balance model is so important for a healthy running system (body and mind).

while i write these lines, i look up to my whiteboard and want to share another note, i once wrote down:
the big 5 you should focus on daily: (think it was andrew huberman who explained)

x regular sleep
x sunlight (especially in the morning after wake up)
x exercise
x social connection
x nutrition

you all can check for yourself how good you perform in the big 5



BANKROLL MANAGEMENT

while grinding c25 games, i thought about the right time to move up to $1 games.
i was sure my decision would depend on my c25 results.
when i realized my winrate of 36% in the games, i decided that 150 buy ins for the next stake should be ok.

as soon as i got to $150, i started 4tabling $1 games.
the climb-up felt huge for me, dont know why. instead of 0,5 and 0,75 and 1$ prices, i saw $3 $5 and $10s now.
the games were not much harder, but some players popped off more regularly now.

my bankroll plan (always depending on how comfy i feel at the stakes):
- move up at 150BI for the higher stake
- move down when i fall under 100BI for current stake

makes the math really easy and not too fancy.


CURRENT STATUS:

while still playing the $1s now, i try to build up the roll up to $450 and move up to $3s.
my current roll is at $312,83

my $1 graph so far:



my overall spins graph on ggpoker:



also on my agenda here:
- session review, weekly review
- study and default spots
- hand discussions
- mindset hacks and ideas
- book reviews
- my plan of becoming (semi) pro

BANKROLL BUILDING UP TO $450

hi all

i was reading "the one thing - the surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results"

anyone here knows the book? i read it two times now and recomend.


in a world of endless distractions and interruptions, re-focusing to the important tasks is a game changer.

my one thing for the moment is reaching the $3 spins on ggpoker, which i will play with a $450 bankroll.
my current roll is at $312,83.

the plan for the week is to play about 35 hrs.
per day, i play 2-3 sessions and about 2 hrs per session.

btw, i really have no luck with big multipliers so far. my biggest catch was some 10x, never ever seen a bigger x with 12k games on ggpoker.
to those, who grind spins on ggpoker, what was your biggest x?

hi all,

many quiet readers might wonder how i plan to go pro while playing $1 spins on ggpoker... for those who wonder i want to share my plans.

germany seems to have an own spins leaderboard. i think this might come from the fact that germany is allowed to click only 4 tables...

the lowest leaderboard looks like this (c25, $1, $3 games)


the mid leaderboard looks like this ($5, $10, $20 games)


my next goals to move up in stakes is:
1. get to $450 bankroll -> play $3 games
2. get to $750 bankroll -> play $5 games
3. as soon as I can play the mid leaderboard, i will aim for weekly top 5 which will make $100 per week just from rake.

as mentioned before, my bankroll strategy is:
a. moving up with 150 buy ins for higher stake
b. moving down when les then 100 buy ins for for current stake

with now ~$320 in my bankroll, and playing the $1 games, that means i have huge buffer to $100 which would force me to move down to c25 games.
also, i will move up to $3 games, when reaching $450 bankroll.

MAKING A LIVING FROM PLAYING MIDSTAKES FLASH SPINS?

no. to cover my life expenses, i need about $1800.
midstakes spins will not make me that much money (just if i grind for first place leaderboard week by week).
so the plan is not to stop at the midstakes, but move on to at least $50 games.
i will continue the grind and take things seriously this time.

YESTERDAY SESSION
was walking a 10km run and went skating for 5hrs with some beers. so i decided to not grind too hard.
therefore, results are very ok hehe.



this morning, i was also playing about 1,5 hours so here is the march graph so far. played only $1 games.


have a nice day ya'll

Nice read! GL!

So you can husng afterall then. GL.

hi all,

haha yes, it seems. but i have to improve more when i want to crush mid stakes soon.

yesterday volume was ok. i am not sure if i really want to post sesion graphs or just weekly.


for flash spins, the chip ev seems to be not the most important stat but the hours of grinding.
this comes from the fact that most money is made through rakeback.
so the chip ev graphs might be misleading.

the leaderboard always starts on wednesday 12am. i decided to count my work hours from wed to wed also.
just grinded 19.5 hrs this week (today is tuesday). i try to get another 10 hrs in until tomorrow 12am.
30 hrs per week should me my personal minimum volume. will be hard enough when summer time starts.

i like skateboarding and being outside in the sun a lot, drinking beers and enjoy blue skies.
but i really want to make a living from poker and so i ahve to professionalize for decent hours per day.

PLAN FOR TODAY
- 2.5 hrs grind session
- meeting my girl for a coffee
- say hi in my favorite music store in the city
- 2x 2hrs grind session in the evening

in order to mix this blog up a bit, i wanted to share a video from the lovely Bencb with you.
lots of good content in a condensed form. maybe you can take something with you for yourself and your life.


edit: https://youtu.be/6jX0AXduYjQ?si=qo0jICwD2U9BrSYG

have a nice day ya'll

hi all,

leaderboard race
this morning is very funny. the weekly leaderboard ends wednesday 12am.
when i stopped my grind last night, i was sure that my ranking was safe until 12am.
this morning when i checked if my thought was right, i figured out that 2 players tried to attack my ranking.
i put in a littlie morning grind to defend my leaderboard $. sometimes, 2 hrs of grinding can increase your roi A LOT lol.

in the coffee shop
in my city, there is this one fancy coffee shop where everyone needs their coffee from.
i personally dont feel the hype but my girl wanted to chill there with me for a coffee.
what i noticed really quick besides the fancy peops and fancy topics everywhere, was the huge amount of peopz sitting there with a phone.
i think its cool to sit there for drinking coffee, having eye contact and a nice conversation or maybe use the shop as an outsourced workspace.
but the people sitting there next to each other while scrolling phones and dont talk to each other.... such crazy times, i really dont like.
glad that i did not even take my phone with me yesterday.

after coffee, we went to a local music store (one of the last independent music stores in Germany ) where i bought 3 CDs of bands that made my youth.
that priceless moment when you've listened to an album so many times in your youth that when you see it in a music store you feel like you've found a very good friend again.

rakeback luck
yesterday during my grind session, i also got lucky in one of these rakeback spins. got the main price of $12 bankroll is growing nice.


after my evening session, my bankroll grew to this:


winning distribution might be also interesting:


starting from the bottom
i think it is helpful to start at the bottom when you want to professionalize whatever game.
on higher stakes, there will be not many weak players so you have to know how to play vs. the recreationals.
and as i am a very intuitive guy, i often can not explain why i do certain things but having a strong feeling in my gut.
i think that feeling can be build when going through certain spots again and again and again...
so i think i often find better spots to bluff and better spots to let hands go.
at the beginning, play to learn, not to earn. that quote might be old, but not for me.

when the leaderbord rakeback money comes, bankroll should be about €370.
need €450 to start playing the $3 games. very hapy with the results so far as i started with a $25 bankroll in january.

as a last quick reminder today i wanted to tell you: put your phone away. and when not working, also put your laptop away.
this **** technology is a addictive distraction and will destroy your peace of mind more and more.
youtube thumbnails and tiktoks are designed to ruin your healthy perception and we feel more miserable, the more we see from this crap.
put it away. read a book. take a walk. have a nice convo. produce music, create a blog. study your pokergame.
everything is better than consuming that is designed to hold you addicted and makes you throw away hour after hour.

have a nice day ya'll

hi all,

consistency
as a huge believer of routines, learning by doing and the advantage of having a inner driven passion for something, i truly believe that consistency is the difference factor #1.
some of you guys were hopeulfy reading all posts right now so you know that my $ goal is to get to the $450 and move up in spin and go stakes.
the real goal tho is not to catch the money, but to catch enough hours grinding, studying and thinking about the game.
$ results can be far away from ev sometimes, and the difference from "what i should get" and "what i really got" can drag you down. the outcome is simply not in our control.

however, what is in our hands is the effort to work consistently. i think it is funny but misleading that players always want to show their graphs.
i also share my graphs here... but for the same reasons why girls dance their asses of on tik tok: that is what ppl want to see and it works.
in my opinion, really interesting would be not to show just graphs but share work routines, consistency strategies and weekly grinding hours.

when working consistent, we will get better. no way around that.
the more spots you face, the less you will be overwhelmed what to do. the more often you recognize the same spots, you will know what to do.
to know what to do in the common spots gives you chills more and more. and this all comes from putting in the hours.
i have recently read from another blogger that he recommends at least 100-120 hrs per month of "study and/or grind" if you want to somehow make it a side hustle.
that is a huge amount of hours for those who have to work a "real" job. for those who want to make poker a profession, it is super tough.
but anyway, as the poker environment gets better and better, grinders who are not striving to get better, will not make it finally.

those, who love to work consistently have a huge edge above the recreational grinders.

i created myself a work stable where i note my daily hours. i want to track my work hours better.



advantages:
x not living just into the day playing casually here and there
x got my working hours per week tracked
x violet color is study sessions a 30mins
x i can see on first sight when i get lazy for longer period

I believe that visual representations can often help to gain a better awareness.

at least, for the graph enthusiasts this month so far:


have a nice day ya'll

hi all,

gooood session yesterday!



masstabling flash spins?
this morning i was wondering how many spin and go tables the same time would be optimal.
i often read "in flash spins, volume is key" so i wonder if there are players who masstable them.
in germany, we are allowed only 4 tables at a time, so multi/masstabling is not possible.
besides that, i think that everything more than 4 tables must be very hard due to the heads up parts.
when i check my graphs and filter for 3way and heads up, i can see really clear that the cash is in the heads up part.

does someone has information of how many tables you can grind and still be at least break even pre rake?

my opinion of adding tables
dont be dumb like i was back in 2015. my ego was so big that i tried multitabling without any clue.
lost several bankrolls and constantly was in a fight with my ego.
you should be interested in learning the games from the bottom up. no matter if cash, spins, headsup or mtt.
start at the very lowest limits to get a feeling for the weakest players and the game structure itself.
play a decent volume, play to learn, not to earn, and move up stakes before focus on adding tables.

enjoy the ride and do the work
i started spins at c25 level start of the year and i am confident that i will start the $3 games in mid/end april.
i also just could charge $500 in my account and start playing $5 games but this feels like cheating and wont make me a better player.
for the moment, i still try to focus on each spot as deep as possible.
someday, i will be one of the main characters on german high leaderboard.
i know my way and i am not in a hurry to get there. enjoy the ride and do the work.

life hack
today i also want to share some music tunes that i enjoy for years now!!
the deepness and chilled vibes fit so perfect for my grinding mood, maybe you will also enjoy the mix.



have a nice day ya'll

If we talk about flashes no one is b/e pre rb unless you are playing the lowest stakes. And majority of the flash regs masstable I would say 10 tables min and up to 20. It's all about the volume. It's not that hard with flashes because the game is quite mechanical preflop. Even for the hu. Reg speed spins and flashes are two different games that requires different set of skills.

hi all,

yesterday session gave me a nice bankroll boost, i am very close to €400 now.


thank you! what you do you mean by "quite mechanical preflop"? 10 tabling and more in the flash games?
If anyone has other information about "what is standard of tables grinding" I'd be happy to hear it.

have a nice day ya'll

It becomes so short so fast it goes to push / fold / trap mode pretty quick. So it's not that hard to learn the "correct" pre strats. Also when you are short post it becomes more a two street game. So it's a mechanical grind trying to beat the variance. In reg games you have more time and space to do something.

thanks for the insights. do you play the flash spins and / or have at least 10k games experience?
would like to listen to solid regs here who play flash spins for a living.

Yes / yes and I do.

hi all,

YESTERDAY SESSION
as my bankroll was so close to €400, i decided to take shot to the $3 games.
so i played 75% of 1s and 25% of 3s... on my very first $3 game there was a dude with 150k games haha.
in general it seems the player pool is not that different from 1s but the regs maybe slightly better in heads up.
i felt good playing 3s besides fact i was not able to win many flips in the heads ups, so i earned a lot of 2nd places.



in the evening, i was watching some gaming content on twitch and decided to do what i havent done for years:
clicking some $2.5 mtts just for the entertainment... today i think that was not very disciplined.
what i did not know before was that ggpoker has huge re-entry time slots.
mtts feel so different than spins. much less action in my opinion. just waiting for hands.
full ring and even shorthanded ranges are so far away from the heads up / spins ranges and i just love to play 80/90% of hands.
i used some re-entrys here and there which was also a mistake in terms of bankroll management.
i just had a weak moment. it felt bad.

STICK TO THE PLAN
so what i decided after yesterday is to stick to my bankroll plan which worked fine so far.
no more early shots, no mixed games gambling. no entertainment clicking.

my mid term goal is to get to the mid stakes leaderbord and make at least 1k a month from the german leaderboard.

have a nice day ya'll

hi all

instead if sharing results of today / yesterday grind, I decided to share results like once a week.
i started noticing that i lose focus when wanting to share results daily.
the grind is the goal, not the graph. had a pretty decent volume the last days tho.

i got 2 main thoughtsvtoday i'd like to share.

Fascinating things don't ask for attention
what does Isildur1 and the Mona Lisa do have in common? right. they are just "always present". in everyones mouth so to say.
while Viktor Blom is a human being and the good Mona Lisa is a painting. that makes the two difficult to compare.
But what is much more exciting is the realization that things and people in our society are constantly discussed,
admired and kept alive because people keep talking about them and in a certain way keep the mysticism alive.
This makes me realize that fascinating things don't have to beg for attention to be kept alive by society.

Oh, and they both have no "official" social media account from what i researched.

winning poker players are special people
The more blogs I read, podcasts I listen to, and videos I watch of successful poker players, I come to the conclusion that there are certain character traits that keep cropping up.
Successful players really enjoy learning. For successful players, studying game theory comes before making money.
It's much more the excitement and excitement of understanding the game better and never stopping in development.
Good players surprisingly often have a connection to other strategy games such as chess, Magic the Gathering, or an e-sports background.
In addition, study-based references to mathematics, physics and programming are often recognizable.
I find it amazing that people who are good at all of these things are more likely to be good at poker too.

have a nice day ya'll

Lol appreciate the brevity vibes

How does this work? Poker stars enforces a 4 table cap on behalf of the German government? Can’t you get around it by playing multiple sites?
I’m American so just curious about the rules over there, usually it’s deposit/withdraw limits the govt is interested in, the table cap thing is weird

Lol wow this was very inspiring and delightful to read, I definitely relate... good luck on your journey brother