February '24 was turbulent, I'd say.
I am studying poker for quite some time now, and I am starting to like the idea to sustain myself trough poker. Going pro, doing what I love whenever and wherever I want it.
Sounds nice but damn, it is tough.
Pain and Anger
So at the beginning of February I was studying exploitative strategies. This is somehow a topic I did not study too much since I began taking poker seriously again about 3 years ago.
So I began to dive into explanations for weak players behaviours and where regulars get it wrong.
Studying leaks of the population opened my eyes a bit on where the money is made. It also showed me that I am also a weak reg and suffer from lots of things the general poker population gets wrong.
After diving into exploitative theory for the first week, I began grinding - and it went well. Too well. I was extremely aggressive in a lot of spots that I expected people to overfold. It worked.
I was hyped. Poker was never this fun in my life, pushing people out of the pot because I know they are weak, or folding very strong holdings when I know they are strong (in the past I always stacked off with 2nd nuts, but now I am considering some other factors and sometimes end up folding very strong hands. Was kind of a station in spots where I really should overfold).
With my EV-graph and my confidence rising to the sky, I fell in love with the idea of finally being decent and getting closer to my goal of being a pro. I said to myself that if I can prove to make decent money the next few month I might take a break from my study for university, trying out to fully dive into poker as a pro. Well...
Now with the mind of "I have to prove it" there was also the mind of "if I lose now I can't pursue my dream". Somehow playing poker got really emotional. I considered myself a person who does not tilt, because I have a good attention for my emotions and know how to regulate them. But poker is also way easier if there is less pressure.
I had a lot of pressure and every small and big pot I lost meant now that I have to "win it back" and "get the graph to over 0 EV" to prove myself I am good enough. But I made mistakes and it made me so angry. Angry because sometimes I knew what to do but made mistakes, because of playing too many tables or being distracted. I was angry because there were so many situations I did not know so I made mistakes. I have never felt this much anger while playing poker.
My body started sweating, I got the urge to smash something, I wanted to scream. Wow, that are strong emotions and I learnt that I am not as cool headed as I thought. I learned that pressure can amplify emotions, especially the negative ones. But I also learned that anger can be controlled too.
When feeling lots of anger and pain, I did push-ups. It felt like a better alternative to smash something expensive, and in February I did a lot of push-ups, which is good for physical health.
I learned that when I feel a lot of anger, that I just have to wait it out a little. 2-5 Minutes of strong anger, but then it vanishes, mostly. Then I am somehow able to smile and maybe even laugh a bit about these exteme emotions that I just felt.
I tried to use the emotions as a guide. When I felt very angry, I tried to see what the cause was. Often it meant that I did not have enough knowledge of a spot, made mistakes, lost confidence in myself. But objectively I just had to learn the spot in GTO then learn how population deviates.
While grinding, winning and losing, I created a ton of drills. I know have drills ready for the most important and frequent configurations. Bunch of SRP and 3BP drills. I drilled a lot. I drill at least an hour each day, sometimes significantly more. It helps so much, because playing against the solution is 1) cheaper to make mistakes compared to real poker and 2) gives me the opportunity to stop a hand and look at the solves in real time. With more drilling I somehow got a feeling on how different SPRs play out and what to do with my range against different betsizes. I also learned where it is good to stack off and where not to.
I would say in February I learned more for my poker carreer than ever. I learned about emotions but also I practiced so much, I feel like my intuition about hands start to guide me more and more to the right decisions.
Extra Money
So while I lost huge EV in February in poker, I ran pretty good over EV.
I also made decent $$ from other income sources this month.
Furthermore, a decent chunk of my bankroll is currently in form of crypto. The prices for crypto got really high this month so luckily I got some profit there. But I consider this variance, because the prices could also fall instead or fall again.
Next steps
- Analyse, discuss, learn, drill, etc.
- Get a sample in 10nl 20nl, prove that I am winning, move up as fast as possible. My bankroll is big enough but I am not confident enough to move up. Once I see I can do it, I will move up fast and go to the casino again, to play live.
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Bankroll: $5.738
Days left: 567
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Edit:
Some points I learned that I want to share:
- Some people are notoriously overfolding so pressuring them in (certain!) spots is key
- Other people are notoriously overcalling so pressuring them can be very expensive. I have to see what type of fish a player is before making huge deviations. I learned that people overfold so I started blasting off, but then I learned that some people don't fold their weak holdings anyways. So first analysing what player it is, then exploiting is the correct order