Hey,

Thought I should start a blog here just to keep some documentation on my poker journey and share my experiences.

So who am I?

Nickname: AroundEven
Why AroundEven?: Back in the days I was working for a poker site in Malta. This was during the time everyone was speculating about who Isildur1 was. We had a poker player there who was Swedish and hadnÂ’t logged in for a long while but still had around 12k on his account just lying there.

I was always curious about who that person was and saw his name and started googling his name and saw a lot of speculation about him being Isildur1.

When it then was revealed that it was in fact him, I thought it was cool to use his nickname he had on that site, which was AroundEven.

Country: Sweden
Playing level: NL50
Background: Been playing poker for a long time as a recreational player, going to Vegas for month and so on, but never taken it really seriouslyÂ… until now

Pipe dream: To reach 200NL and crush it there enough to one day quit my job.


——

I have had some small achievements like ending up second in the national online championship side event and winning some tournaments, but now I have decided to try to beat the levels of cash game.

I now started out on the microstakes at GG, but was getting crushed. I thought, wow, this is going to be really hard.

Then I moved over to a Swedish site and some higher levels and there I started crushing it after studying a lot, did the from the ground up course, the CORE 2.0 and read POP 1-2 and started to really analyze my leaks.

After that I moved back to GG and started playing NL25 and things were starting to go better.

My plan was always to start with NL50 but I wanted to try just a little bit at lower levels for small samples to see how it went.

The last week I have tried to play when I get the chance and have been going on a real upswing and now it is time to try NL50 with a bankroll of 30BI.

Here is my recent sessions at NL25:


I been running hot, but also been playing pretty good and having some luck when I have had bad days. Win rate is around 43bb/100 hands, so definitely a hot run!

Hope you guys will follow my journey! Would love to find more people to talk poker to!

Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1567

So, I started my serious poker journey today. This is the first time I am using real BRM and trying to play as much as I can at the same time as I study and take it seriously.

I had an hour on lunch where I could grind out 2 tables at NL50.

I played very solid today. No big mistakes, no overbluffing or over calling and had a really good session.

Not one of those where you win big pots all time, more slow and steady and after one hour I ended up winning around 130bbs.

I know one of my biggest flaws are that I can have a lot of great sessions, but then when I end up having a reaaally bad session, then I lose a lot, no, like… a lot!

So I also ordered the “mental game of poker”-book. Thought it would be a EV+ decision.

I am probably playing tonight some hours, but I have two small kids and need to get them to sleep or at least calm down before I can get started.

When it comes to level difference between NL25 to NL50, I feel not much difference at all. Lots of reggy fish on both.

In order to handle my tilts I have decided to have a 2BI stop loss.

I also always review my hands before a new session and write down my leaks and how I think I should plug them. I also read those notes before I play to remind my self.

My goal right now is to double my bankroll and then start playing at NL100. If I can make good their for a couple of months, then my plan is to maybe, maaaaybe consider playing poker full time. We’ll see, I feel a bit to old to do something like that and I have a great career, but it’s a nice pipe dream tho.

Level: 50NL
Current BRM: €1656
Current winrate: 37.7bb/100 hands

Played around 600 hands yesterday evening. It was kind of slow and did not really play my A-game. I said my stop loss would be 2 BIs but I think I was down around 2.6 BI:s at one point.

Played for around 3-4 hours and it was really swingy. I had some bad runouts and also played pretty bad. My EV was 1 dollar plus, but my actual result was -69 dollars when I ended the session.

Decided to play some Rush & Cash and lost an all in with Jacks against a draw the first thing that happens.

Ended up with 19 dollars plus and EV of 80 dollars plus. So once again I was far under EV.

After these types of sessions it's easy to get discouraged. But looking back at it now it feels like it was an okay session result wise, since i both was playing bad and really ran bad. Could've gone worst!

Today I played 2 tables of regular hold 'em on NL50.

I played really solid and could spot some fished right away which I took most of my winnings from. Ended up seucring around 200bbs and closed the session after 70 minutes. Good day so far!

Subscribed. Gl!

I'm in a similar position to you. Looking to play poker professionally. I was playing 200nl at one point, but I'm currently playing 50nl and learning + re-building my roll.

It'd be great if we could work together at some point. I have a study group with a few people where we get together and go through hand histories, etc.

I'll dm you too!

-Luke

Thanks, Luke! Lets talk on DM!

Level: NL50
Current BRM: €1736
Win rate: Around 40bb/100 hands

Had a nice session tonight.

I always get kind of performance anxiety before I play. I am afraid I will come in and just spew and tilt away 4 buy ins or something. so going in to playing tonight was a little bit tough.

It always takes around 10-20 minutes before I get the feel for the game. I always play kind of bad then and later I pick it up and play more concentrated. I have found that it helps to be overly vocal about your thought process and getting some momentum in getting some decicions right usually sets me off on the right path.

This was a pretty funny hand:




In this hand one player raises, I call, another re-raises and I call again.

We end up with a pretty wet board and I flop middle pair.

Here Villain checks after me, in position on a flop with board that is so wet and not trying a protection bet there made me knew he totally whiffed it.

We go check, check.

And on the turn I check OOP again, and was suprised he checks back. On river I donk bet half pot and somehow he finds some reason to call me down with ace high! Really poor play by him and this is pretty common on NL50, tbh.

I don't feel any skill difference between NL25 and NL50 yet to be honest and already starting to glance for NL100.

But I am trying to stay humble. I know I only played 1000 hands so far and there will be large downswings sooner or later.

But for now... I am just enjoying this and it feels good after a day where it feels like you've crushed!

This is my first 1000 hands on NL50:

Level: NL50
Current BRM: €1736
Win rate: Around 40bb/100 hands

Haven't played since last time, but looking at some interesting videos on poker from youtube.

There is so much good free content!

I decided for a new BRM strategy.

My first thought was to start taking shots at NL100 after doubling my bankroll.

But after looking at some videos with tips on BRM and shottaking I decided to implement a new strategy:

I will take shots as next level as soon as I am 10 buy-ins plus in the current level.

So when I got 5 buy in in winnings for next level. I will take those and start to take shots on that level. If I lose them, then I go back to the lower level and keep working on that level. So it can look like:

When I got 40 Buy-ins for NL50 i move up to NL100 with 5 Buy ins.

If I lose the 5 buy-in I go back to 50NL.

If I keep doing great results at that level I will continue playing 100NL.

Since I got a full time job with pretty decent pay, I can easily take 1500€ out and put in my BR without hurting my private economy, so that is a good thing to fall back on. It is all about investing in yourself.

Of course I know that I am in a very positive (And NAIVE) mindset now that I been having really great results on both NL25 and NL50, even tho it's small samples, but I feel my A-game is really solid and I am doing a lot of studiyng a long with my background with playing lots of lots poker earlier and winning tournaments and being a winning cash game player, so lets keep it positive and then we will deal with negativity, self doubt, thoughts of giving up, motivation loss and all that when that times comes

Leeeet's go!

Hello mate, gl with your journey, btw i also was posting pokercraft graphs when i started but its no good, i suggest you to get PT4 or some other accurate software, your real winrate can be be less then half what you're seeing right now

Great advice! I am actually getting it soon, I just need to get some time to learn it and right now all my time goes to grinding and learning strategy.

How you figure the win rate would be less? Can you explain the logic of that since amount of hands and the dollar amount on the screen is hard data? It’s not counting the rake or something?

The graphs of pokercraft are pre rake. Compare what you really won and the graphs. You pay a shitload of rake at GG. Something like 8bb a 100h.

Hey mate nice blog, subscribing to this thread.

A few words of advice:
- please do not focus on your winrate unless your sample is AT LEAST 200k hands and even then play around with the primedope variance calc. Winrate numbers are extremely misleading and I find them to be very bad for mental game, just disregard it and focus on good decisions

- since you play GG, be careful and be sure to tableselect hardcore. The rake is almost unbeatable, even on higher stakes, and there is a lot of "fish" who are not real fish. Definitely recommend using smarthand if you already don't and don't play fish who are losing less than 30bb/100. You will most likely just bleed to rake

Not only the graphs exclude rake, like someone pointed out above, but the winrate numbers are EXTREMELY misleading with low samples. A "decent" sample is at least 200k hands. I would even say it's not enough. My winrate has changed dramatically in the span of 500k hands.

A realistic maximum winrate on GG will be around 4-5bb/100 post rake, pre rakeback. The best crushers have this winrate. On mid/high it's going to be probably maximum 2-3bb/100. Higher winrates are impossible to achieve due to multiple factors, mainly tough player pool, whales/fish who simply don't lose enough, strong competition in other regs and MAINLY the insane rake on GG.

Yeah, I know and have written a couple of times about that it’s a really small sample and maybe I’ll remove that metric if it annoys people.

Regarding players at gg not being fish, I don’t know if I agree with that, but maybe I’ll start notice that at 100NL.

And here I am not talking about results because that can vary, I am talking about being put in bad spots, lot of pressure and the feeling of being outplayed. The feeling you get when playing with great or better players of being uncomfortable is just not there.

Is the rake really that insane at GG? It’s 5% with a cap of 2 bb from what I been able to read, that is pretty standard, right? plus they pay a lot of rakeback

So....

I did some math about the rake:

Amount of hands: 1568
Winnings in balance: 246 dollar
Winnings in BB: 492
Winnings in Pokercraft: 286 dollar
Rake: 40 dollar

Rake percent: 16%
 (!!!)
Rakeback: Pending

That is pretty horrible.

Yes, the rake is horrible. I feel like I'm getting better, but when there are too few fish I seem to bleed dry because of the rake. Which was already said by MDA. The regular fish that are often at the table with 40bb do not yield enough. The worst part for me is that GG charges rake on unopened pot. I 3 and 4b quite a lot, so even then I pay rake. I have the choice between GG, Unibet and Bet365. I think I'll call it a day with GG. Anyone have any advice?

Makes sense. I guess the reason people play there is because of bonuses a lot.

I think I was supposed to get 20 dollars in rakeback from the fish buffet, but for some reason I didn’t get it. Then the rake would’ve been 7,5% which is a little bit closer to ok

I am not sure but I would think Unibet has to be better, although traffic is probably worse

Don't forget about PVI. The whole GG rakeback structure is a scam, because you never really know how much you will get. It is based on whether you are winning or losing. Nobody really knows the formula apart from GG.

Fair enough. However, it can be tracked if you just have the right data which is accessable for everyone so it is not really hidden on an individual level. It is just about doing the math manually in retrospect.

And what are the options? In the end the profits is what matters, if too much rake is being taken and it in the end of the day isn't profitable, then I guess it's just about giving up? Should no one play poker online then?

I think mindset is important and there will be people saying "Online poker is dead, you can't make any money on it nowadays. Rake is too high" and so on and this is what makes people quit and give up the dream as soon as an downswing come. People been saying that for years and if a lot of online pros belived that when they started playing, they would not be profitable playing pros today. That is one of the things that differentiate them from the ones that belivied it and quit. Then when you are there it will be of course, side gigs like online courses, offering coaching and so on.

Level: NL50
Current BRM: €1762

Played a pretty short session today of one hour.

Ended up with around 60bb plus for this session.

Playing this time of the day is usually a reg battle, but I enjoy it. Lots of good plays and playing with nicks that I recognize and have tags on keeps me really on my toes.

It seems like with some of these that I got a mental advantage if I have won some pot or read them right in scenarios before. Feels like I have an edge and it makes it more fun when taking the decisions.

Now I will not be able to play for a couple of days going on a trip, but I am brining some books and hopefully I can study some.

50 is a raketrap for sure! GLGL on the grind look forward to seeing updates subbed

Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1847 (+692 BB since new level)

Good to be back!

Unfortunately I didn't had to time to study or play at all on my 3 day vacation, but came back yesterday and managed to play 1 hour this morning.

This rake-thing that has been discussed in this thread is crazy, because GG is truly eating a lot of my winnings.

Today I little bit more than 100$ on the 214 hands I played so paid $15 in rake.

So the rake seems to be around 15%, which is crazy. I don't know really what to do now.

Should I play on another site? Which one? Or does it get better on higher levels? Please let me know if you have any advice.


Regarding the session, it went pretty good. I did stick to my strategy and didn't do any of the idiot-things I sometime can do that I regret and wonder why I did it seconds later.

Biggest hand I won was hitting trips on the flop.

The player I played this pot against was a nit and it was really easy to narrow his range because he played pretty ABC-poker during the whole session.



When he reraised me on the flop I really thought he could have jj+, AK or maybe AQ.

Seeing the Ace on the flop with my jacks, I felt that I could probably get a lot out of him in this pot.

Of course my mind was telling me that, ouch if he has AJ, but the probability of that is very small and he could of course have Aces but it seemed way more likely that he would have AK to me, which was the hand I really thought he had.

Seeing his AK in the showdown made me really glad, big pot win and also confirming my read on him.

The biggest hand I lost was this one:



I did probably not play it perfectly. Maybe I should've 3-bet it preflop, but I was on a table with a lot of loose player acting after me and A10 is not a hand I felt comfortable playing in a multi-way pot being off suit.

I floated on the river and hit my top pair feeling I got the best hand. Considering the SPR I felt like all the money would go in on the next street no matter what and him donkbet shoving the flush on the river seemed like a bluff and since I hit 2-pair i would say that this particular shove more often is a bluff than not.

I floated the flop*

Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1902 (+404 BB since moving up to NL50)


Played another session this friday night.

It was a little bit if of a rocky, but solid session. Played 247 hands, and now I am less than 100 dollars or 2 Buy-ins from taking shots at NL100.

It is going to be really exciting and I am feeling that these around 2k hands I played at NL50 has been pretty comfortable.

I think moving up a level will give me a rude awakening and i know that 2k is not a great sample to see if someone is crushing their level, but hey! Aggressive shot taking is okay, so now that I got around 40 buy ins at NL50 it is soon time to take a 5 buy in shot at NL100.

I got the "The mental Game of Poker"-book today and going to start reading it and prepare for some cold showers after running this good for 20 hours or something.

Have a great evening!

Correction:

804 bb plus*