How do you do, fellow kids?

My name is Israel, but everyone calls me Izzy. I am full-time, professional mid-stakes grinder that plays 6max, NLHE games on Ignition / Bodog / Bovada. I specialize in counter-exploitative, anti-Bot strategy. While I am currently winning at mid-stakes, my goal is to become a bonafide crusher at 2k in the Ignition pool.

I played my first Ignition hand on October 13th, 2024. I started as a 50NL player. Here are my life-time results thus far:


Like many of you, I'm sure, at first, I had no idea there bots on Ignition nor did I know that there may even be more bots than actual human players. I struggled for quite some time to surpass BE at 100NL. However, I joined Nacho's CFP, gained awareness of the bots, and started to incorporate simple anti-Bot strategies into my game. As time went on, I became more and more proficient with tools like H2N4 and I started to learn how to do my own MDA on the bots. Eventually, anti-Bot strategy became the absolute core of my WR.

Here's how I've done over the past 100k hands:


As you can see, I haven't even come close to sticking a landing at 1kNL yet. While I think I can make a good living sticking to mid-stakes, my goal has always been to make it to high stakes. I am going to do everything humanly possible to make the leap from a winning 500NL player to a winning 2kNL player. In this blog/journal, I will share my day-to-day process for study, the results of my game play, and the inevitable struggles and disappointments that come with trying to move up stakes.

In my next post, I am going to outline my personal history with poker (spoiler: I played my very first hand in March 2024). If you're not interested in that kind of personal history, just scroll on past the next (very long, probably) post.

I look forward to interacting with y'all 2+2! Hopefully, someday, this thread will become an epic piece of proof that the poker dream is still very much alive.

GL with your grind, men!
WAGMI
(we're all gonna make it!)

How I got started with Poker...

Okay, as promised, let me explain how I got into Poker.

In October of 2023, I tore my pec bench pressing. This event caused me to re-evaluate my entire life.

At the time, I was a former competitive powerlifter and an aspiring pro bodybuilder. While I was able to achieve some pretty cool milestones, such as squatting 600lbs/272kg for reps and deadlifting 650lbs/295kg for reps, my physique wasn't even close to the pro level yet. As a "fitness influencer", you earn all your money from coaching and affiliate advertising. While I did quite well as a coach when I was powerlifting, that had ceased to be the case once I switched to pursuing bodybuilding.

If you're interested in that kind of thing, you can still see some of my fitness content here:
https://www.instagram.com/izzy.narvaez/

The pec tear represented the 3rd major injury that I'd had in six months. I also tore my bicep tendon off the bone completely doing curls. Both tears required surgeries. Both surgeries prevented me from training. Both surgeries left me with a lot of time to sit around and think.

I started playing games on my phone to fill some of that time. When Solitaire got boring, I started playing on Poker on various free apps against computer programs. To my surprise, I really enjoyed the game. Growing up, I played Chess competitively so perhaps it isn't that surprising. When I found out that people make serious money playing poker, I began to get very intrigued. In sort of a perfect confluence of events, I discovered Poker during my quarter-life (hopefully, lol) crisis.

In any case, I set out to learn the game properly and discovered GTO Wizard. I used the trainer tool and played every single formation until I achieved a Wizard score of 80+ across a 20 handle sample. And I do mean every single one: SRP/3BP/4BP/Squeeze IP/OOP PFC/PFR. Once I was able to do this, I repeated the entire exercise on a 50 hand sample. This process took me over three months to complete and I was studying 4-8 hours a day.



My time on ACR

From there, I deposited my first $50 onto ACR. I beat 2NL almost immediately:


5NL, however, was another story:


As you can see, at one point, I was stuck 100 buy-ins at 5NL. I finally overcame this stake when I started playing rake-adjusted preflop ranges. My VPIP dropped from ~28 to ~20 and I immediately started winning from there.

I made it through 10NL relatively quickly despite some big swings:


25NL was just one giant heater:


50NL didn't go so well:


It was at this time that I made the decision to join Nacho's CFP. Based on some of the materials in the CFP, I decided to make the full-time switch to Ignition.

My time on Ignition

As mentioned previously, I played my first hand on Ignition at 50NL. I started there because that's how far I had made it on ACR and I assumed ACR was the harder pool. While I had immediate success at 50NL, my initial attempts at 100NL went really poorly. Overall, I was nothing more than a breakeven player in this pool at first:


In the middle of January, I finally established myself at 100NL and even started shooting 200NL. That, too, did not go well at first. Here were my results from January 1st to July 1st:


In July, I finally crossed the profit threshold necessary to join the main team at Nacho's which gave me access to the bot data. Developing anti-bot strategy was an absolute game changer for my win rate.

Here are my July results:


It took me a while to fully understand how to properly counter-exploit the bots. At first, I went way too hard with the exploits and subjected myself to intense variance. Here are my August results:


That essentially takes us to last little leg before we reach right now. In the past several months, I have gone as far as to make anti-Bot strategy the core of what I do. Of course, I still do basic things like table select for Fish, but my off-table work has gone from tons of work studying sims and using the GTOw trainer, to primarily using MDA to derive anti-Bot strategy. Here's the results since September:


Anyways, that fully brings us to now and covers my entire poker journey thus far. Here's to adding new some chapters going forward.

GL with your grind, fellas.
WAGMI

11/21 Results: +502bb, +$2903

Tracker Results:


Today's Graph:


Month-to-Day Graph:




Whale, whale, whale...

What do we have here!? Games were incredible today and I was fortunate enough to be in position to take advantage. At 500, there was one of those once-a-month whales that spun his stack up to 900bb, burned it down to 50bb in just 50 hands, and then spun it back to 550bb again... before eventually going busto, of course, ��


Things continue to go well this month. Once I reach 50 buy-ins for 1k, I will give myself a 20BI shot. I thought taking that shot might be a far-off, distant goal... but maybe not. We'll see. Knock on wood.

GL with your grind, men!
WAGMI

you are sicko
how much rake did you payed last year overall?

2024 ACR:


2024 Ignition:


2025 Ignition:


Not sure how accurate the "rake attributed" stat on PT4 is but that's the best estimate I've got.

I think it’s really dumb to publicize bot exploitation with so few good site options remaining

What's your reasoning?

You play so high with a high winnrate, thats unusual. I think your winnrate is lower than rake...

This is post-rake WR. I also get a small amount of rakeback on top of this.

11/22 Results: +945bb, +$2,444

Tracker Stats:


Today's Graph:


Month-to-Day Graph:


Session Debrief: Fish Friday
Games started off hot garbage for a Friday night. I was actively complaining about it on the Nacho's Bodog discord, lol. While there was never a point where I was like, "****, the games are amazing now". About two hours into my session, I had a steady stream of Fish at both 200/500NL. I wasn't able to load up every single table at any point or anything, but the wins kept stacking and stacking.

When was all was said and done, I nabbed another 9 buy-ins and, for the first time in my entire career, I have broken the 20k profit mark for a single month.



Off-Table Work:
~4 hours of building multiway stats in H2N4. I was trying to investigate whether bots had substantially different strategy depending on if we were in a standard single-raised, multiway pot or if we were in a multiway ISO pot. The answer was yes. Found a couple juicy exploits that I'm looking forward to trying out.




GL with your grind, men!
WAGMI

11/23 Results: -9bb, +$553

Tracker:


Today's Graph:


Month-to-Day:


Debrief:
Single worst session I've played all month. Not my A nor my B game here. You can tell from my redline that I was absolutely not locked in and just doing a lot of button clicking.

I've once again blown past my session-stop rules for no real good reason. When it was time to stop according to my rules, I still had really good 200nl tables... which is irrelevant according to my rules. I am supposed to stop based on the presence of 500nl fish -- not 200nl Fish.

I am considering moving up to 1k earlier than planned. At 500nl+, once the games die, they're dead. There's no kidding yourself about going just a little bit longer to produce better results. At 200nl, at least on Ignition, the games are pretty much permagreen. You log on at any time of the day and find at least a few Fish worth playing against.

Playing sessions this long, well outside of the sweet spot, is truly a waste of time. I actually lost close to $1k in the additional time that I went beyond where I was supposed to quit.

While discipline is generally not something I struggle with, there is one particular aspect that I've always found extremely difficult even dating back to my days in competitive sports: knowing when to stop. I never took enough days off, never took enough breaks, and always had to be the first one in and the last one out. That's all well and good, but I also burned out more than everyone else and got injured more, too. Unfortunately, in my mid-30s, I still don't fully have a handle on it.

I might need to do a bit more intensive soul-searching about why I keep repeating this mistake over and over and over in all facets of my life. I think I may need to bust out the 'ole pen and paper and do some writing. Clearly, spewing paragraphs in type form doesn't amount to much in the way of progress.

Honestly, pretty disappointed in myself for doing this again. Any time that I would've spent working on off table duties tomorrow is now completely impossible because I'll need to sleep right up until it is time for my next session. Just a total jackass move on my part... again.

Anyways, GL with your grind, men.

WAGMI

If you were coaching someone else on mindset, someone who faced the same challenges regarding knowing when to stop and overall self discipline, would you ever talk to them using words like "Honestly, pretty disappointed with you for doing this again", or, "just a total jackass move on your part... again". If the answer is yes, nvm . If it is no, then why do you think this approach will work well with you specifically?

Not saying both mental leaks are necessarily linked, but if you're gonna do some intensive soul-searching, maybe starting from this part will be more interesting to you (?)

GLGL

Absolutely. I see your point. I would never speak this way to someone I was coaching. I think that would be completely unprofessional and entirely unhelpful.

However, I am not entirely sure every relationship functions the same way. In loving relationships with immense trust built up, I think sincerity in expressing a "negative" sentiment, so long as it is not spiteful or mean-spirited, can have immense emotional impact and can lead to positive changes (sometimes).

But I am not sure. Perhaps it would be better if I audited my self-talk. I will say, though, and this is a very weird thing to type or say aloud, but I do have immense love and respect for myself despite frequently being very hard on myself. Still, maybe you're right.

I'll think about it. Thanks.

11/24 Results: +532bb, +$2564

Tracker:


Today's Graph:


Month-to-Day Graph:


Progress not Perfection:

The drive to keep playing is still very, very strong for me. Today, I was able to quit on time but not before "restarting the client and cycling my four tables one more time".

Ah, brief explanation:
Because I multitable, I often sit out of tables and just wait to get booted which takes 3 orbits. Ignition makes it a pain in the ass to tell which table you're on. You have to click a button which pops up a window inside of the client itself and then you have to remember this number because there are no screen names or anything like that. The pool is anonymous. I've found it takes way too much mental bandwidth to remember alladat shih. When you get booted for sitting out, you automatically get a table you've never been on before. The downside? Well, you can't get back to the table you got booted from unless you restart the client. That's not a problem when there's no fish on that table, but the presence of fish is temporal, of course. That table might get a Fish later. So, periodically, when I can't get tables, I reboot the client to "reset" the tables I can't get to anymore.

All this to say, "checking one more time" after rebooting is reasonable, but it's also a bit compulsive in my case. Still, I'm quitting at 6am... not 2pm.

Progress not perfection, ��

Game Play Debrief

I can be more locked in. I punted off two stacks at the end with pretty stupid bluffs. Redlining without being a donkey is much harder than it looks, tbh. In this pool, it is more productive to pick spots where villain is playing defensively and at least partially capped. The hardest spots to get one through are when they're the aggressor. My success rate for reraise bluffs is low and probably something I should just stop doing until 1k/2k. "Won't the pool notice that?". Nope. They don't notice any of the extremely exploitative, highly unbalanced things I do because... they can't. They don't know it is me and they don't know my stats. In known pools, my style would be suicidal.

I think this is a cool play, but I don't think 500nl regs are folding the hands they need to fold for it to work. MOVE UP WHERE THEY RESPECT YOUR RAISES, AMMIRITE!?


Self-Talk

In any case, maybe it seems like I'm too hard on myself at times, but, for my entire adult life, I've tried to take on the advice of one highly esteemed Doctor:

~Doctor... Julius Irving, NBA Superstar lolol

Seriously, though. I live by that quote. If your standards for yourself aren't higher than anyone would else would ever reasonably expect from you, raise the bar. Demand more. When you do, more follows.

Okay, taking off my Tony Robbins cap now.

As always, GL with your grind, men.
WAGMI

# 11/25: No play

Tuesday Bot Calls
I don't play on Mondays because I host the Ignition Bot Strategy call for Nacho's on Tuesday mornings and I generally spend my usual night time playing hours preparing for it. Unfortunately, tonight, H2N4 decided to put out an update that, initially, kept my DB from being able to be rebuilt at all. I had to roll back to previous versions to get it functional which then broke a bunch of my stats. The call definitely wasn't up to my usual standards which I am severely annoyed about. I hope the guys who attended were still able to get some value out of it. Once H2N4 releases a patch for the issue, I plan to refilm the call on my own including all the stats that I wanted to show but weren't functional during the call.

Thanksgiving Holiday Break
That means I've probably played my last session this month. I may play tonight, but only if the H2N4 isn't patched and I can't redo the parts of the calls that I want to redo. Regardless, on Wednesday, my wife and I leave for Arizona for (nearly) a full week of visiting family. The holiday season is virtually the only time of year I take a break from working so I don't plan to do anything poker-related at all: no playing, no studying, and probably very limited engagement on Discord as well.

November has been a banner month -- by far the best of my career. And, tbh, I have more exciting news on the way at some point (soon).

GL with your grind, men!
WAGMI

I knew I've seen you before, one of the most inspirational stories I've ever seen, Congratz!

Thanks! 😊

I have played my last hand in November. Here are the final results:


+25k and over 70 buy-ins won:


Pretty cool moment for me as a guy who was struggling at 50nl only a year ago. Obviously, we have to be on guard against complacency as poker players, but I’ll definitely take a short moment to celebrate over the holidays.

Been an extremely strong month for the Nacho’s Ignition/Bovada/Bodog team, too:


Can’t help but feel some pride over those team wide results now that I have taken over as the de facto “bot coach” for the group.

For any Americans reading, happy Thanksgiving!

I’ll be back with the results of my first December session on the 1st.


Glgl with your grind, fellas.
WAGMI

I've never received coaching before and I'm thinking about trying it. How much did it benefit you? Also can you give me some examples of a bot exploit? Maybe without specifics but a general idea. For example what I'm thinking is perhaps the bots defend vs 3bet range changes drastically based on the size of the 3bet. Let's say the open is 2.5bb from the BTN by a bot and then SB 3bets to 10bb. Perhaps the bot has a much tighter defend range for 3bets in the 11-15bb range. I'm guessing it's more inelastic in it's ranges then it should be and you're exploiting that fact. 3betting to 11bb instead of 10 to get a much higher degree of folds. Do I have the right idea or is it something else completely? Is my example nail on the head accurate?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Was this hand played by a bot lol? He had AK of clubs by the way.

Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD 2 Poker HUD and Database Software

NL Holdem 5(BB)
HJ ($532.50) [VPIP: 37.3% | PFR: 33.9% | AGG: 58.3% | Flop Agg: 66.7% | Turn Agg: 50% | River Agg: 50% | 3Bet: 25% | 4Bet: 0% | Hands: 64]
HERO ($452.67) [VPIP: 13.4% | PFR: 9.8% | AGG: 29.9% | Flop Agg: 34.6% | Turn Agg: 28.5% | River Agg: 28.8% | 3Bet: 4.6% | 4Bet: 11.1% | Cold Call: 6.7% | Hands: 401034]
BTN ($500) [VPIP: 36.8% | PFR: 36.8% | AGG: 0% | Hands: 22]
SB ($510.50) [VPIP: 18.8% | PFR: 12.5% | AGG: 0% | Hands: 16]
BB ($742.81) [VPIP: 15.6% | PFR: 15.6% | AGG: 55.6% | Hands: 46]

Dealt to Hero: 9 9

HJ Raises To $12.43, HERO Calls $12.43, BTN Folds, SB Folds, BB Folds

Hero SPR on Flop: [13.6 effective]
Flop ($32.36): 6 5 6
HJ Bets $20 (Rem. Stack: $500.07), HERO Calls $20 (Rem. Stack: $420.24)

Turn ($72.36): 6 5 6 8
HJ Bets $70 (Rem. Stack: $430.07), HERO Calls $70 (Rem. Stack: $350.24)

River ($212.36): 6 5 6 8 9
HJ Checks, HERO Bets $69.79 (Rem. Stack: $280.45), HJ Raises To $159.58 (Rem. Stack: $270.49), HERO Raises To $350.24 (allin), HJ Calls $190.66 (Rem. Stack: $79.83)



Also, how bad did I play this?

Feel free to not answer it if it would help the bot makers or give too much free info from your work, but:

- I studied quite a bit the WPN hands TylerRM posted here last year. How close are the Ignition bots to them? Did they change a lot of what they were doing already? Were these changes actual improvements, or just changes to try to retain some edge vs people studying them?
- More curiosity than anything, so just yes or no, and a number: Did you ever get any insight from what the bots do, like an exploit they employ vs population that makes a lot of sense and you and your CFP weren't doing before? If yes, how many?

Coaching definitely helped me, but I’d say the improvement process was holistic. Seeing what other people were doing with their overall process for improvement was also crucial.

How should you study? Click through solves for hours memorizing outputs? Upload HHs to analyzer? DB review from a coach? What’s the most time-efficient method? Does it depend on the player? Does it depend on the pool? The stakes? What should you consider? Are there softwares or tools you need to learn to use?

What should you study? How do you decide what to study? Do you have a systematic way of determining leaks?

Answering these kind of questions correctly was as big of a deal for me as direct 1on1 coaching. These days, I get 1on1 coaching once a month, but the vast majority of my improvement comes from self-directed, off-table study. The coaching, for me, is to make sure my blind spots are still being covered by someone who doesn’t the same biases as me.

You’re on the right track, yes. There are preflop exploits that are of this nature, re: specific size stuff. I can’t get any more specific than that for obvious reasons, but, yes, absolutely on the right track even if it’s not exactly nail on the head.

All players have tells. Including bots. When you have access to clairvoyant HHs, which Ignition/Bodog/Bovada provides, your goal is to find these tells through mass-data analysis. The bots try massive exploits in certain spots. Identifying these and proceeding with the obvious counter exploit can sometimes be worth quite a bit to your WR.


There is a strong possibility this was a bot. I cannot be sure without having my own HUD up or having more HHs from this player, but, yes, a likely bot based just on this one hand.

Assuming this is, indeed, a bot, well played.

They appear to be made by the same company or at least developed from the same base product. The bots in all pools have commonalities, but they also seem to attempt exploits based on pool-specific data.

The last big update to bot strat was in April. They got better. A lot better. Bits and pieces of their strategy changes regularly with pool trends, but core updates seem rare. It’s very likely that the developers use AI to keep their pool exploits current. We see month-to-month shifts in strategy in a few spots and staying ahead of it can be a hassle especially becomes sometimes they flip and start the doing the exact opposite of what they were doing before which means your “counter exploit” is now a huge punt.

I personally don’t think they care about retaining edge vs. bot-aware players. I think we represent such a small percentage of the pool that they just consider it part of the cost of doing business. For them, I doubt it’s much different than a big chain store expecting x% lost revenue from people stealing each year. There’s also a very strong possibility that not all bots are even programmed to win at the maximum rate. I have it on good authority that people have purchased “action” bots for apps and club games just to make sure the tables are never dead. These bots come programmed to BE and they work for the house. Are these on Ignition? Depends who you ask. It’s a theory that’s out there, for sure.

Good question! Yes. More than once, but I can’t put a specific number on it. Several times, though.

Do you really think there is a high prevalence of bots at 6max 500nl? Can you give an estimation of the 5 other players at a 6max how many on average are bots? I'm so dim I can't tell everyone seems real to me. Is timing something I should be looking for with bots? I'm sure it would be hard to randomize timing like a human would so answer is likely yes.

Another thing I'd like to ask about is coaching for profit. How much of a cut do they ask for and where would I apply? I'm a pretty decent player but I realize I need help to improve my game. Not sure what I'd like to do yet just sort of exploring the possibilities.

I'm running these 6max 500nl games too after reading your blog. Good luck out there bro, let's slay these bots!


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Check out this hand I played I really like. I reasoned that betting the river large might induce a bluff since I shouldn't have much 6x as the preflop 3bettor and he can have plenty. For the same reason I think I should probably just check back a lot of the Ax that gets here on the river. Getting check raised is awful and the stack to pot ratio leaves us in a really awkward spot where any bet is sort of reverse implied odds on a bluff. I'm gonna call it a value blunder. Sometimes you just take a value hand and check it back because you really never get paid by worse.

Could this be a bot here?

Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD 2 Poker HUD and Database Software

NL Holdem 5(BB)
UTG ($609.58) [VPIP: 41.7% | PFR: 37.5% | AGG: 61.5% | Flop Agg: 83.3% | Turn Agg: 50% | River Agg: 33.3% | 3Bet: 14.3% | 4Bet: 0% | Hands: 25]
HJ ($680.59) [VPIP: 21.8% | PFR: 14.9% | AGG: 31% | Hands: 87]
HERO ($597.52) [VPIP: 13.5% | PFR: 9.9% | AGG: 29.9% | Flop Agg: 34.6% | Turn Agg: 28.5% | River Agg: 28.7% | 3Bet: 4.6% | Fold to 3Bet: 59.3% | 4Bet: 11% | Hands: 403112]
BTN ($634.83) [VPIP: 32.7% | PFR: 27% | AGG: 45.3% | Hands: 217]
BB ($507.50) [VPIP: 25% | PFR: 17.3% | AGG: 16.7% | Hands: 54]

Dealt to Hero: 6 7

UTG Raises To $12.50, HJ Folds, HERO Raises To $35, BTN Folds, BB Folds, UTG Calls $22.50

Hero SPR on Flop: [7.5 effective]
Flop ($75): 7 4 3
UTG Bets $23.76 (Rem. Stack: $550.82), HERO Calls $23.76 (Rem. Stack: $538.76)

Turn ($122.52): 7 4 3 5
UTG Bets $39.44 (Rem. Stack: $511.38), HERO Calls $39.44 (Rem. Stack: $499.32)

River ($201.40): 7 4 3 5 2
UTG Checks, HERO Bets $148.80 (Rem. Stack: $350.52), UTG Raises To $511.38 (allin), HERO Calls $350.52 (allin)

I could have our tech guy run an analysis and give you an exact number, but I think an explanation might be worth more. Most of the bots seem to originate from the same company. As soon as you get 3 on the same table, beating rake becomes nearly impossible without the presence of a huge whale. However, it’s clear that they collude and this is part of their edge. As such, I think their optimal number is two and most tables have around 1-2 bots with the actual mathematical average being closer to 2 than one 1.

Bot seem to have “unnatural” feeling timing compared to humans, yes, but we’ve never been able to quantify this into a reliable tell.

Feel free to contact me on Discord for next steps and I can put in a good word for you before you go through the application process. You can also reach out directly through the nachospoker.com website and apply.

You would receive much more favorable initial contract terms than I did as a guy already playing 500nl. I started as a microstakes player so the first part of my contract, I owed a significant portion of my profits. There was no guarantee I’d ever earn the CFP anything substantial. During my contract, my % split decreased from 50% to 25% as I moved up stakes. players on their second contract at higher stakes pay even less than that. I am not in charge of profit split numbers so I can’t give you an exact answer but that is ballpark.

Let’s goooo!

I don’t think so as it is somewhat unusual for them to use this particular betting pattern. Can’t say for sure off of just one hand, but this does seem like a reg play.

In tight formation like this, EPvCO, I think sets have to call at a high frequency as neither side should have an abundance of 6x and there’s only so many non-paired Ax combos that call turn barrel after the donk. I’d be betting Ax here for value OTR, I think, specifically because EP is involved. Still, with your actual hand, I think the line makes sense.

Woah, I used to read your lifting blog back in the day when I was trying to powerlift! Pretty sure I saw you mentioned in H+F here. Never succeeded at powerlifting, I mostly ruck/run now(did run a marathon at least). Hate to hear about the injuries. I wanna start lifting again but have a torn labrum that needs surgery, so that won't happen for a bit(if at all, who knows).

Great to see you here, and succeeding at poker!

Good luck destroying the bots. I have a hate/love relationship with them; hate the "good" bots, love the ones I can shear like a sheep. Always wondered, do any bot makers program them to throw objects in chat? lol

Anyway, Happy Turkey Day. Cool that 2+2 has it's own John Connor blog now lol