Hey there everyone, before i begin blabbing here i want to introduce myself a bit. I am a 22 Year old from Latvia and i've been interested in poker for quite a long time, ever since i saw my brother play online poker and some home games with his friends when i was around the age of 6-7. And even played some online poker myself when i was a teenager (i don't advise underaged gambling ), watched a fair amount of live events played on Youtube/Twitch such as EPTs and followed some content creators. But i've never taken it super serious, i never sat down and seriously started studying and grinding for weeks/months it has always been a super short stint and without much of any BR management.

And so with this blog i've decided i have to finally do something about it and keep myself accountable and start studying and grinding hard to achieve my goals.

And the main goal i have with this thread is to achieve 100NL in the zoom/fast fold format for 2024.

Is it possible? Certainly.
Will it be hard? Definitely.

But i think i already have some advantages compared to the majority of the people which will help increase the chance of this happening. Mainly that i already make my living from sportsbetting (In case anyone was thinking about it, no i will not be giving advice on sportsbetting), so i am already well aware of the variance that is about to await me and the possible mental challenges. I am already so used to losing for months at a time with seemingly no end in sight and losing some seemingly "unlosable" bets that i think i will be able to get through it with poker.

I will make a deposit of ~100USD (92.7 EUR) and try to run my way up to 100NL with somewhat aggressive BRM. In case i suffer a massive downswing compared to my bankroll early on (2NL, 5NL, 10NL) i will redeposit to speed it up.

Move up to :
5NL with 30 buy-ins (150 USD)
10NL with 30 buy-ins (300 USD)
25NL with 30 buy-ins (750 USD)
50 NL with 40 buy-ins (2000 USD)
and finally 100NL with 50 buy-ins (5000 USD)

At least currently i am going to be playing GGPoker's R&C, even though i know the rake is higher here than in many other places the main reason for it is:
- The field from what i've researched and heard seems softer than in other placed due to the amount of rake and Chinese players.
- GGPoker here in Latvia isn't the same way it is globally, here it is licensed to a casino which uses GGPokers client, and that casino quite often runs various centrolls with low player count that have relatively decent prizes, and this will help me increase my bankroll quickly if i spike a tournament win or some ticket to a live event here.
- GGPoker here is licensed as an added bonus, even though you have to pay tax for gambling winnings over 3k€ per year.

Eventually i might move to Stars which i've already played on in the past.

Tools i will currently use for studying and improving my game:
- Run it Once from the ground up course.
- GTO+
- Various types of content such as poker podcasts, streams, live events etc.
- Various Discord communities and 2+2 where i can post my hands for analysis and read spots others.
- Possibly GTOWizard, but will see.
- Holdem Manager for database analysis and stats.

Long term goals for 2024:
- Move up to 100NL playing only R&C.
- Start reading various books, something i've been slacking on doing for a long time.
- Finding a study group that i could join in.
- Post here every week or bi-weekly depends on how i will feel.
- If it goes well and i get to at least 50NL, possibly move to a country that i won't have to pay tax for winnings.
- Attempt to play at least 5 times a week minimum 3-4 hours a day. But focus a lot on studying at least initially.
- Get out there and travel and socialize.

Shorter term goals:
- Learn how to fully utilize GTO+ to analyze various spots.
- Fix my sleep schedule, sometimes i can go to sleep even at 8am depending on what games i have on for sports betting, and i seriously need to fix this, it's annoying waking up when it's almost dark outside. Sometimes i sleep for 5 hours sometimes 9 hours, it seriously degrades my performance.
- Fix my exercise schedule, i often lack the discipline to follow my 3x a week strength training routine and do 2 or sometimes even 1 day a week only. I see no progress because of this.

Thread will be updated with various graphs and information when it's time to update. So let it begin:

Current bankroll: 100.11 USD (92.70 EUR)
Hands played: 0
Profit: 0

Inspirations for the journey: Luke aka Clanty and Linus.

I really think it is possible. but while youre at the very bottom- shot take aggressively and aggressively move back down if necessary. The shorter you spend in 5nl-25nl the better. I'm planning something very similar. I'll definitely keep up to date on your progress. Please during the journey you are going to feel alone- put all of your thoughts into this thread. Also, while learning GTO is going to help you at 200nl-500NL- really try and exploit the lower stakes in a way that also doesn't completely shake the core gto stuff you are learning out of you.

good luck- podobed

Hey, thank you for the message.

Regarding the shot taking, yeah that's what i am doing, i think 30BI shot taking until 25nl is fine, i've seen some people do 20BI shot taking BRM, but the chance of it busting is incredibly high, even 30BI is relatively high, but it doesn't hurt much redepositing for micros if variance hits.

Yeah i can definitely see how i would feel alone during this, especially not having much poker friends, and not much of a social life because of my schedule for the day, doing everything on the computer including making my income and poker grinding. That's why one of the long term goals i've set for 2024 is to get out there more and socialize and travel, i can already feel the last 2-3 years sort of adding onto it after finishing school and moving out to live on my own. Really want to get into a study group or have some like minded people to communicate with. But currently i am doing with some communities like 2+2 or some Discord servers.

Yeah i am well aware that playing GTO isn't the optimal strategy at these stakes so i am not planning on playing that way anyways, but i do want to get in the habit of learning it for the sake of exploitation, if i won't know the optimal GTO line how would i know the exact changes i need to do to my strategy to maximize my bb/100 at these stakes? And not to mention it will be useful in the future and be a kickstart if i move to 100nl+ stakes. Currently i am running a sort of LAGish strategy with my red line being close to even and at least for now it seems to be doing good with people being either fish who play face up and overfold when they shouldn't, or some incredibly nitty players who search for premium hands only.