Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1961

My winning streak continues and now we are only 39$ from taking shots at NL100!

Had a really great session today. Played really solid and felt like I didn't take one decision wrong almost. It was one that I felt that I probably could've made more money of tho and that is this hand:



I jammed on the river thinking that he might have hit his flush and would call me. He tanked for a long time and then folded unfortunately.

Everytime these situations occur I get mildly tilted, especially if I took the decision pretty quickly. When I play I sometimes act to quick and don't really take my time to think about how to max out value of the hand. The pot was already pretty big so I could've gone for 66% or something and maybe get a call, but my feeling with these NL50 fish is that the size of the bet doesn't matter that much if they, as in this example, maybe hit their flush.

Well, well! Good session all in all!

Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1761

Had my worst session just now.

I played bad, ran bad and had bad circumstances.

Thought I should be able to play in calm and peace but my daughter has some kind of tooth ache, so while she is trying to sleep she wakes up and cries about it and I have to run in all the time to her and comfort her while playing.

A some what smart person would stop playing, but I was down a lot (like 2 buy ins) and I wanted to get back and win that last buy-in to take shots at NL100.

I got greedy and stupid and strayed away from my principles and this led to me loosing a lot. I even went in to NL100 rush and cash and spewed away 100 dollar like an idiot.

This is definitely something to learn from.
I got to stop doing these stupid things.

Well, well. Back on the grind tomorrow or maybe the day after that.

I might take shots on NL100 anyway, just because the curiosity over if I could hang there is getting to me. I guess, since I have a job I can just take 500 from my bankroll to shot take and then cover them with my next salary. We’ll see…

Level: NL100 (!)
Current BRM: $1791

Hey,

So just had my first session at NL100 and it is the first time in a long while where i felt a little bit nervous playing poker.

I did some bad moves in the beginning, but also felt that I could play on this level.

At the table I had a guy who had won a WSOP bracelet, which was pretty cool.

I had a supergood read on one player I was playing on both tables with and had won a couple of pots making him fold.

I almost could feel the frustration from him always trying to re-raise me everytime I raised from SB, then me calling and then being aggresive on the later streets getting him to fold.

Now we ended up in this hand:



When he went all in I insta called with just top pair cause I felt 100% that he didn't have it. Nice feeling, but also risky in a way.

Ended up with just around 30 BBs plus on 114 hands, but this was just my first test to see how it was playing NL100. It was fun... And scary!

Cheers!

Level: NL100
Current BRM: $1835

Had a new short session on NL100 and it feels okay. I really don't feel as comfortable as I did on NL50, but it takes some time to get used to I guess.

It feels a little bit like walking on a frozen lake. It is slippery, You are uncertain and careful and a little bit afraid that you will fall through the ice and get a real cold water, freezing and chocking experience.

The hand I posted yesterday has given me a lot of things to reflect on. Of course it wasn't a great play from my side if I wasn't sure on my read. It might have been a bad call GTO wise as well and I might have played the hand wrong actually. In the moment however, I was a 100% I was right. I was so sure I could feel it through the whole of my body.

But then, when I look sober on it. It was maybe not a great call. And I should probably avoid playing like that.

I know also that I really need to learn GTO more. I need to spend more time learning to play GTO, even if things has gone great so far. Anyone with great tips on how to get started? And how I can do it more effectively? Please share!

Have a great day!

Level: NL100
Current BRM: $2216
Monetary result: +$716
Hands played: 3605

Been playing a little bit since last time I wrote.

Today I had a sick session where I really ran amazingly good, so a lot of luck has taken me up to an all time high BR.

A long with playing I have been putting down a lot of work on training GTO. I use the postflop+ app right now since it is the most cost-friendly alternative for this at the moment.

It is kinda of boring just playing spot after spot after spot, trying to get all decisions perfect, but it has already helped me a lot with playing out of position, which has been a little bit of my weakness (One of many).

A long with this I am reading the mental game of poker and trying to play 1-3 hours per day, listening to a lot of podcast and watching random poker clips.

Regarding playing on NL100 I feel rather comfortable at the moment. The biggest difference from NL50 is that sometimes you play and you see all these regs that you have battled with before it can be like: "Ouff, this is tough table". The fish are a little bit less, and some pros show up now and then.

Getting more comfortable I said, but not 100%, maybe around 85%. Much since I haven't played enough there to feel that have an edge or that I can outplay anyone.

We keep on grindin. The interest for these threads seems to be close to zero so I'll just write for you guys that in a couple of years will read this. Hey guys, I made it!

Level: NL100
Current BRM: $2354
Monetary result: +$870
Hands played: 3937

Had a pretty nice session yesterday and also a lot of discussions with a good friend that also plays poker. Played 2 tables of NL100 and 1 of NL50 and it became very apparent how soft the NL50 level is.

Made me think of, if it would be more profitable to just play 4 tables of NL50 instead of 2 of NL100.

But then again... I play poker to evolve and become better, and to become better you must challenge yourself and play at levels where you are a little bit uncomfortable.

When I started this journey and just before, I was really excited about the prospect of maybe turning pro and living on poker, like, really excited about that.
Now the excitement has simmered down a little bit and I am not as eager for that, but I still see it as a potential possibility in 1-2 years if I keep being profitable.

However, I am aware of that I been running really good lately. I didn't run so good at NL50, but since I started playing NL100 I have honestly been pretty lucky in coin flip-situations.

At the same time it is really tiring of people negging down on this. "It's to small of a sample", "You can't count winrate on this amount of hands" "you need at least 100k hands" and so on. And I do understand this, but people just hear statements like this and thinks it is binary. It is not, it is granular. If you are a winner on, let's say 10k, you are probably a winner on 100k hands. The variance of course affects this and you can have been running extremely lucky for 10k hands, but the larger sample is not going to drastically change the outcome. It is going to make it more accurate of course, and that what it is about. Larger sample size, larger accuracy.

Well, well, we will continue our grind. Not going to look at NL200 for a while, but if I keep being profitable and getting my bankroll up to 4000, I will take shots.

I am also thinking about going to the live casino and play some NL100 some time soon. It's been a long time since I been there and I just think it would be fun to throw some chips around and get some live action again.

Glgl, looking very promising.

Level: NL100
Current BRM: $1610
Monetary result: +$110
Hands played: 5922


Before yesterday:



After yesterday;




Yeah, so poker is about making great decisions, right?

Yesterday I made a really, really bad decision, but we lose, we learn!

So the night before yesterday I was playing 'til midnight and you saw that I peaked there. Really nice!

The thing was, after I was done I was going to sleep, but I talked a little bit with my wife and that led to other stuff, and that led to me not sleeping until around 2-3 o' clock in the night, waking up at 6.10 the next morning to go to gym. So about 1-2 hours quality sleep.

I finished things at work and then had 5-6 hours to play poker and I was doing mistake, after mistake, after mistake. I had a terrible session, playing my d-game and I. did. not. have. the. common. sense. to. STOP!

So now I almost punted away all my winnings and you can clearly see it in the graph above. What a mess!

When I close down the computer I was feeling stressed. And the reason I played even tho I shouldnt is because I finally got some time over where I could play and I wanted to cheerish that and play for hours cause I will not get an opporunity like that any time soon.

That was to put i mildly a huge mistake. I've shouldn't have played at all to be honest. I was way too tired and my brain wasn't functioning at all. Playing 2000 hands with those circumstances was not ideal.

Well, well, we will come back. I am not in a rush. Let's regroup and rebuild.

At least I got PokerTracker now and trying out the DTO cash app to see if it can help me more with the GTO.

Since I been studying GTO more I think I have gotten a little better at playing OOP, however, it has also got me a little bit more passive. Leading to a pretty huge redline decline. I will try to balance that better in the future.

Looking good op

Feel free to dm me if you have any questions about pt4

Good luck

So, naturally after having a BIG losing session it is time to revisit what went wrong and is there any big leaks in my game that I need to correct or work harder on.

To do so this time, I have used Leak Tracker in PokerTracker 4, which for me is an amazing tool to see if there is any obvious stuff that deviates from what should be correct.

Looking at my overall stats I am more or less on point on everything.

But when we dig a little bit deeper we find an obvious leak that we need to work on and correct:



Here we can see that I overdefend my BB and I follow that up with underdefending and folding to much to cbet on the flop.

Of course we need more hands to make these numbers even more accurate, but this is something I been thinking of a lot.

It is easy that you hear that you MUST defend the BB since always folding it will be a large ev- and then that get stuck in your head and you start overdefending it.

So what is the medicine?

First of all we have to revisit the preflopcharts for this spot and make sure that we play according to these. This is not going to be superaccurate of course, we just need a hum of what range to play, what to 3-bet, what to 3-bet call and what to 4-bet etc.

The next thing we will do is drill this spot. So what spot makes most sense to drill? What spot occurs the most often? No surprise that it is: BB vs BU.

So we plug this spot in an GTO trainer, and we drill this 100-500 times.

Then we get back to tables and hopefully we can put this to practice and plug one of our most obvious leaks!

Level: NL50 (Back again!)
Current BRM: $1130
Monetary result: -$370
Hands played: -

So, my latest sessions has gone pretty south.

It has been a combination of not playing, running bad and deviating from the strategy.

I been doing some real big mistakes and have also experienced some real coolers lately.

To be honest, it makes me a little bit stress. I feel that I don’t have time to study as much as I would want to and also feel that I don’t have time to play as much as I want to. It frustrates me more than losing that I am not able to do what I want to do more, but that’s the life of a father with a full time job and 2 kids.

However I am thinking about putting more time to study and maybe take couple of days break from playing. It is hard, but it might be necessary.

In a dream world I would be able to take out 2 weeks vacation and just study and play. That would be amazing, but it’s not possible now, so let’s just do the best of what we got!

I see you started using PT4, looks way way better, gj mate

Sorry to hear that you are experiencing such a downswing mate. I really hope that things start turning around for you. Glad that you have been analysing your game to see if there's anything you can do differently. I also recently had a session where I played tired, tilted and too stubborn to stop. It had similar results.

I actually saw you on one of the 50NL tables during that session. One thing I will note is that you were playing with a broken stack and that resulted in a particular reg becoming more active with blind stealing and isolating you than they were with others before you had arrived at the table. I don't know if you two have some existing dynamic and maybe they just started to get a bunch of good hands but it was definitely a noticeable increase in aggression towards you.

You may find that enabling the auto-top up would result in some regs targeting you less as it is one of the things people often look for as a sign that someone is inexperienced. I mean it could be a good strat for counter-exploiting bad regs if you feel you can lure them into rough spots postflop. But this particular guy was just giving you a hard time and you didn't stay at the table very long after you joined so it didn't seem like you were enjoying his attention.

I'm no expert by any means so feel free to ignore me completely but I just thought I'd let you know about what I had observed from the short time we were at a table together.

Hey man!

Highly appreciate this input and you taking the time to share this and thanks for the kind words!

I usually top up as soon as I hit 80bbs or something, but maybe this was some time I didn't do it right away so really nice that you suggest auto-top up. I will defiantly add that as you suggest.

What you mention is also something that is very telling for the period I'm in. I never before felt bullied at the NL50 level, quite the opposite actually, but now all of a sudden it feels like everyone is sensing that I am in a downswing and they use aggression to put me down even more.

Thanks again!

Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1102
Monetary result: -$398
Hands played: 7823
Rake taken: $3746 (!)

Rake is crazy.

Just a small update.

I am seeing some light in this short down swing. Now at least I am breaking even on the latest sessions.

Putting in a lot of time now to get better and have a clearer strategy on certain spots. I feel that I am getting lost a little bit when playing with less confidence. The pool seems tougher all of a sudden. I need to slow down a little bit, play less in auto pilot and be more aware and concentrated.

On a another note I am little bit afraid of how the new chatgpt release will change online poker and benefit cheaters. There is a huge risk there and could be really hard to combat for the poker sites.

ChatGPT will not affect poker in negative way, I absolutely wouldn't be worried about it. Solvers being a thing is much worse, they are around for years and people still play and poker is still beatable

Level: NL50
Current BRM: $1102
Monetary result: -$403
Hands played: 8289

Finally had a pretty good session tonight. I had lousy session during lunch, tho, so didn't turn a positive result today, but this session I just had was the first session for a while where I had a good feeling again and not that "Okay, here we go again..."-feeling everytime a new card was about to show.

I am doing some intense studying and will do Uri Pelegs course on Runitonce, the coming weeks, but to be honest I still have a hard time understanding exactly how looking up certain spots and random boards and so on will help me.

I just keep looking at different videos, reading different type of blog posts & consuming different type of podcasts to hope that one day it will click.

If anyone have any great tips on a course or any content, please let me know. I am looking at Carrot Poker School for the future. Think it is funny, since I did "From the ground up"-course and thought that his other courses will be as boring, but he has really switch to a more fun style since that one was recorded whole different energy on his new videos.

Let's hope this downswing soon is over, cause I really want to get back to NL100 again soon.

GLGL! Keep grinding and posting! Don't let the short term results affect your stress level, I know easier to say than to do!

Thanks a lot! Love the supportive nature of this forum.

Had a super lousy session today that fully tilted me and I punted away a large part of my BR.

After I shut down the computer, I was like f* this. I can’t handle it anymore.

Lots of frustration built up.

Then I cooled down, realize I got educate myself much, much more and worked harder on that and play a little bit less and not give up.

I also decided to not, just as you write, focus to much on the results right now. It is in fact stressing me out. I’ll try to put that aside and enjoy the game instead and at the same time focus on developing instead.

Thanks for the kind words again. I really appreciate it

Had a 2 days break from playing Cash Game, just to reset a little bit.

Since I tilted out like crazy on the 16th, I decided to take a little bit of break. What was telling is that when you sit down on the table and as soon as you get in a pot you get the "Here we go again..."-feeling that you will end up with a cooler or a bad beat.

It is not a great feeling and you are feeling insecure and it affects your game. I been having this feeling for a lot of sessions and all of the sessions has looked kind of the same. I maybe win a little bit in the beginning of the session and then I punt it away and then even more.

These last 2 days I have been studying more and taken the time I can to focus more on understanding the game even better. It's been nice to not have so much intense playing (I haven't played like crazy many hours, but I have played almost on all free time I have had.

I did play some poker tho on Friday, but not cash. I played a qualification tournament for the Swedish championship that is live in Bratislava. I did okay and came to the final table, but ended up at 6th place in a filed of 60.

Downswing disaster.

I am in free fall mode.

However, it is okay. I am realizing I will soon been busting my whole bankroll.

So I decided to take a break from playing and spend 80% of my free time to studying instead.

I don’t feel disheartened or that I will quit, I just feel that if I want to be good I have to put down the work a whole lot harder and give myself a bigger edge.

I am trying to get better, a little by little everyday.

And by this, and learning and studying you realize that you were and are pretty bad. You can’t just waltz in to a table and think you’re the best in the world cause you have played a lot of poker a couple of years ago.

Time to rebuild, reskill and then retry.

Hey man, I'm sorry to hear that it has continued to go roughly for you. The way you speak about going busto as an inevitability is definitely the wrong attitude to have. Move down while you still have a roll. Yeah the play will be different but a few more random hands in the mix is much better than busting your roll.

If you want to continue in the game as a winning player then you are going to have to work on your confidence and bankroll management just as much as your technical knowledge. Playing lower limits will help with that.

You describe your losses as punts and attribute it to tilt. I can suffer from it myself on occasion too so no judgement here but there's gotta be the ups to mitigate the downs. While these mental game issues are affecting your game so heavily you really need to minimise the losses rather than seeing going broke as an inevitability.

Your roll is your presence in the poker economy. It is your weapon and your life force. It is how you communicate with other players and the stakes that you play at form your poker identity. The cards only matter when negotiations break down and until then it is the bets that determine who owns the pot. If you allow tilt to destroy your bankroll then you are taking yourself out of the game and making it harder to get back to 50NL once you are ready.

I highly recommend moving down stakes when you do play. You can outlast a lot more $5 punts than $50 ones.

How do you study? Do you have any study groups on discord or anything like that?