Hi, Here's a little introduction about myself and where I am in my life at the moment.

I'm a 20 year old guy living in Reading, England scraping by on a minimum wage job. I work in a kitchen of a large nationwide pub chain. The job mostly consists of getting things out of the fridge and putting it in the microwave/fryer/oven, there really isn't much skill involved. To be blunt, it's a bottom feeder job. There is no sign of promotion/progression in the place, the managers are mostly useless and the place is run terribly. There are only two main reasons I'm still there: (a) The work is easy, I'm happy doing the simple work, there isn't much that can go wrong. (b) The people that work there are all in a similar situation that I am, it's our main source of income and we know it's not a hard job and make a good time out of it together.

Before living in Reading, I lived in the North East of England where I studied my A-Levels (Ages 17-18, Uni-qualification exams) in Maths, Physics and Computing. I did a little worse than average after not really applying myself at all over the few years I studied. Despite this I sucessfully managed to enter university in Manchester. This wasn't for me, after 4 months I dropped out and moved back home to my miserable hometown. My search for a full-time job was hard, the employment situation is desperate, with very few jobs only ever going to vastly over-qualified people. I moved to Reading (where my brother lived at the time) and he helped with out with a job around January/February 2011. Since then I have worked the same monotonous job cooking microwave meals for the masses.


And here's a little situation about my current poker history, situation and mindset

I first stumbled on poker at school around the age of 14 or so, and decided to play with friends on a fortnightly basis for penny stakes. I was a huge fish in a big pool of huge fishes, I believe we all had lucky days and unlucky days back then, I decided to play online on PKR after seeing the 3D character adverts, That site got me hooked, despite playing on the play money side of things, the interactions were great for a new player to the game, and I couldn't believe they had 10c giveaways and freerolls. I stayed up many a night playing the freerolls to hopefully hit the jackpot of $20 or so, I think I managed to win around $10 total and threw it all away in a matter of minutes on the cash tables. I then went to deposit real money and repeat the cycle of losing my total bankroll.
After finishing on PKR, I found myself playing on Full Tilt for a while, I enjoyed the software and the variety of games were amazing, I really enjoyed the matrix games. Fast-forward a few years and I decided to look into learning poker, I bought myself HEM2 and got started on the micro games, I would say I was a break-even player at best, playing as high as 25nl (I played higher but without discipline). One night I joined a $20 tourney on Stars for a bit of fun and luck was definitely on my side that night, as I chopped the thing heads up for a $2.6k score ( I withdrew $2k/£~1.3k). This changed my perception of poker forever. I went on down to the local £1-2 game and played a few nights a week. My bankroll management was terrible and has always been to this day. I went on a winning streak, winning around another £2k, I believed I was the dog's bollocks. With this money I bought a new TV, poker books, HEM2 and video site subscriptions. Then it all came tumbling down, I got hooked, I would go to the casino every night, often after a shift at work, I remember falling asleep at the table twice due to exhaustion. I lost it all. I was never in debt, but I lost the money buffer I had and it sucked bigtime. My love for the game went, and my money spent on books and video sites was wasted. Fast forward another 6 months and I find myself at this moment in time with a tiny bankroll to show for all my time playing poker and I feel ashamed, I have decided to work towards proper goals in poker and life.


With a current bankroll of $114.83 on Pokerstars, I will be playing 2nl
Here's are a couple of goals I have set myself for the future (Both long and short term)

Short-term Goals

> Play 10,000 hands over the next week to see where my game is it
> Try to beat the game for 5bb/100
> Use correct bankroll management (50 buy-in rule)

Long-term Goals

> Play 50,000 hands of 2nl Rush and move up to 5nl when my bankroll hits $200
> Actively learn, using books and online videos to make the most of what I have open to me
> Actively post and contribute on the 2+2 forums and join a study group and learn with others


I'll post graphs and interesting HH's on here, I'd love to hear feedback from other fellow players.

Good luck everyone!

50 buy-ins is quite hefty, 25 is really more than enough, and most would consider 15 enough to "take a shot". Really, if you can't get by on 25, you have much bigger issues than variance.

Leatherass and giev money both went on 100BI BRM. Which is what I'm also aiming to do.

For someone who wants to escape his mundane job and provide himself with a proper and stable income (and who will be living off his BR), you want more BIs.

because when that DS hits, he can't just be like "Oh well looks like I'll work another month as a corporate exec and re depo 10k.



GL op, pick a BR that you feel is suitable and crush this game.



Will be following

Oh and also, don't play rush/zoom. Stick to normal tables where you can look at players tendencies and get proper reads. It makes it easier to get a fix on the fish.

Edit: Do you have skype?

Cheers for the advice, I've switched to normal tables and they are much more fishier and I guess my winrate will be better on there too

Yeah, I do have Skype, I'll PM you my user if I can

gl bro
why did you drop the university?
i think studies>everything, you should consider re-joining the university!

I left because I was having bad time, I was stuck in a crappy converted block of flats where nobody would socialise with each other, and I was in a room next to a Chinese guy who would scream down the phone at 3am in the morning.

I want to go back one day, I'll need to clear the debts off first and then do a year's worth of study to get back to uni level

No issues man. Follow my thread as well man, I'm doing something similar but I'm at Uni.

yeah, tough way to live,
i've moved 5 times in 2 years when i joined my university,
so tough to find a place to call home!

gl man, i hope everything ends fine for you!

He's talking about starting at 2nl and working his way through the levels, not making a living on 2nl rofl. You don't need 50BI to move through the levels.

Once again, he would be better off building it up, working with 100BI at every single level, than going on a heater for a few thousand hands, thinking he is ready for the next level and watching his BR disintegrate at the next level. And once more, tonnes of pros who are now known as crushers well through the levels with 100BI for every level.

Not quite in this day and age. OP said he had less than ideal A levels, same as me and i went to uni. Cant find work

Also OP i bet you work in weatherspoons lol?

lol wtf no, your not going to go broke at 10nl because u didnt have 100 BI due to variance lol.

20 BI is fine for 2nl/5nl/10nl depending on discpline obv. id even say 20 is fine for 25nl, then 25 for 50, 25/30 for 100nl etc...

i doubt there are any crushers who started off at 2nl with $200 and didnt move to 5nl until they had $500nl.

using 100 bi brm at the nanos/micros is just a massive waste of time, probably do a lot of bad to OP's game than good.

Lol, the day I need $400 to play 4NL is the day I quit poker for life, no joke. This is terrible advice. It would take him probably more than a year to get through each level following a 100BI rule. There's literally no way he needs that much of a bankroll. Even a break-even player would be just fine with 25BI. All you need is 25BI, and move down if you get below 15BI. That's more than responsible BRM.

Cheers for the bankroll advice guys, I'll probably be hitting 5nl when I know I can beat 2nl for say ~10k hands or something, I have a $50 bonus coming soon, so I might take a shot when I collect that. My bankroll will be around $200 or so when that happens

It's going ok at the moment, I've had a good start, hopefully I'll be moving up very soon.

I'll be going for a big session soon, I'll post results after

I've put in around 3 1/2 hours in so far, and made a good start. Hopefully it'll still this way. I've felt like I've made good decisions so far and haven't lost a lot of chips due to bad calls.



I'm running at 11.8/7.9. I'm not sure if the VPIP/PFR gap is too large at the moment or not though, I'm struggling a little OOP and just tend to C/C most streets.

Haha, how did you guess?

Dudes, why are you telling a guy with known tilt issues to be using a 20BI rule? Its a recipe for disaster with him moving up, losing a few BI on his shot real quick and going nuts.

OP, stick to your 50BI rule and crush. If you're serious about this and want it, i'll give you my skype and you can send me a couple hands a week to talk over.

Time for a quick update, I've put around 12 1/2 hours in so far and I'm happy with the results. I have to admit, I'm running a fair bit over EV-line so I'm expecting the results to even out sometime soon.

Here are the graphs for my two latest sessions:

18/09/12 AM


19/09/12 AM


And here is the up-to-date graph for all my hands:



I have tried being more aggressive vs the fish, by isolating them in later positions and increasing my preflop raises a little bit.
I have also tried to cold call OOP and defend my blinds far less and this has helped my non-showdown line quite a lot
My preflop stats have also gone from 11.5/7.7/2.1 to 12.9/9.6/3.8. I'm trying to close the gap further between VPIP and PFR, does anybody think this is necessary at this moment in time (with my current winrate) ?

I’ve just read through your thread – good luck OP.

There is quite a bit of conflicting advice in this thread already, particularly regarding your best way to approach BRM. In my opinion, given that it sounds as though any money won at the tables would be a helpful addition to your wages, and given that you probably won’t be able to redeposit any big sums if you did go bust, I’d say you’re better off being a little conservative. It’s hard to suggest a particular figure, but anywhere around 40-60 BI would give you the luxury of suffering a significant downswing (and they can happen no matter how much you crush a level) without feeling that you were about to go bust.

The other thing to think about is this – are you in a huge hurry to get to high stakes? Unless you want to be playing 400nl by Christmas, what harm will it do to be a little more conservative with your bankroll and wait a few more days/weeks at each level before moving up? That way you’ll gain more experience of each stake, have a better idea of your likely sustainable winrate, and when you do move up, you’ll be able to do so knowing that, if that shot fails, you’ll be able to drop back down to the level below which you can crush.

Your stats look fine (I assume you’re playing FR). There’s no problem with a 2-3% gap between VPIP and PFR – at 2nl or 5nl there are loads of spots where the best option is to call with a good implied odds hand rather than raising or folding, so you’ll never be able to keep your VPIP/PFR completely together.

Clearly you’re crushing so far judging by your graphs, so I’m sure you know a lot of this already, but the key to beating 2nl/5nl is just to keep it really simple. Don’t get fancy, don’t slowplay, don’t bluff very much, don’t call with dominated cr*p preflop. Just bet big for value, and keep betting until the villain announces that he has you beaten (and fish make it very obvious when they have a monster), at which point just fold and don’t think twice about it. People spaz out so often that they’ll give you their money on a plate if you just hang around and stick to giving yourself easy decisions.

If you ever want to discuss hands/strat feel free to drop me a PM. If not, GL at the tables!

Just read this and I'm in the EXACT* same situation as you.

I'm 18 years old, just finished A-levels (didn't try hard enough and ended up with poor grades) I'm not going uni, therefore, I'm looking for a full-time job. I first started playing poker at the age of 14, playing on facebook and then moving to PKR (lol I loved that site).

I started to learn about the game, read books/forums and mainly played SnG's and MTT's on stars, I managed to win a few $2.50 180 mans and finished 7th in a $12k gtd for just under $500. Also tilted at one stage with $100 in my account and played 100nl HU. managed to suck out on some guy and left the table with about $360.

Anyways, fast forward to a couple months ago. I come clean and told stars that I played under-age (big mistake) now I'm banned -_-. lol.

Finally turned 18 last month and deposited $100 on 888. Tried to grind 4nl but went bust about 2 days ago. I'm now looking for a job with good hours so I can deposit again and give it 100% with proper BRM and strategy.

My dream is to one day be pro.

Since our stories are similar, message me if you're ever interested in discussing strategy and helping each-other improve. + We can also keep track of eachother's progress. We're in the same boat!!

I feel for you dude, it's a waste of time not putting the effect when you can. It's only 3 years down the line for me, but I know I did wrong already.

Have you got Skype? If so I'll PM you my username

Quick update:

I've played the 10k hands that I wanted to play at 2NL and here are the results





I've beaten the stake with quite a strong win-rate at 26bb/100 (20bb/100 EV)

I will now attempt a 10 buy-in shot at 5NL and post updates and thoughts after a few sessions.

One thing I've noticed since keeping this challenge thread going is that I enjoy playing more and, more importantly, I pay more attention. It doesn't feel like I'm just pressing buttons anymore.

If anyone is playing similar stakes, feel free to PM me if you want to talk strategy

Great job OP, inspired me to take my game a little more seriously

Cheers, it means a lot!