I've been reading this thread for a while now and figured I'd actually make an account and contribute as opposed to stalking everyone else's threads. Not sure if people will care but at least this could be somewhere for me to track my own progress as a poker player. I am currently a student at the University of Richmond, play live and online, and am a breakeven player over the past 13 months since I first learned the game.
Brief timeline of my experience with the game:

Feb 2021: learned how to play during $10 home games in dorm rooms with friends.

May 2021: After watching 20+ hours of Brad Owen crush souls into tiny pieces at 2/5 and 5/10 at Bellagio, I figured I should invest my first summer job paycheck from my landscaping job, decided to shot take and play live poker 1/2 NLHE at a place in NH where the gambling age was >21. Lost 42 dollars over 4 hours, pretty sick adrenaline rush that I haven't shaken while playing live poker even though it's been almost a year.
Improved rapidly: won 900 playing at two small locations over about 35 hrs.

July-Nov: got into online poker, and, like an idiot, played outside my roll, got stubborn, and lost around 1.9k on sites I shouldn't have been on anyway as an American player. Played way too many hours with nothing to show but a huge loss.

Jan 2022: VA's first card room had opened near me in September; I figured I'd give poker another shot to redeem my -1000 -ish historical loss overall in poker. Went on an insane heater winning 1300 in 1/2 over a few sessions.

Present day: bankroll killed by having to pay for school/ general life stuff, + idiotically backing into a parked car and having to pay almost 1k in damages. I have studied the game deeply for the past 3 months and consider myself to have a holistic understanding of the game, I consider myself capable of winning if I can be disciplined with bankroll management and generally not be an idiot with how I spend my money. Since it is perfectly legal for me to play online on Ignition in the state of VA, I will be depositing 300 for strictly cash game poker. I will start at 25z and work my way up, as I have found the pool remarkably soft over a small 10k hand sample of play on the site.

Again, not sure if anyone will be remotely interested in my progression, but I feel like this could be a productive way for me to improve at the game and share.

Poker journeys are interesting… give yourself a break a bit too… seems like you have a good head on your shoulder but may be overly hard on yourself ( that’s my first read )

Good luck and keep progressing

at what amount are you moving down to NL10?

Ignition doesn't offer 10z. Not really sure, I guess I plan on not moving down haha.

Also, after downloading the Ignition hand grabber for poker tracker 4, I realized that it is not compatible for Mac users which really sucks. I was able to use poker tracker for other sites but I guess its no use to me now. If anyone viewing this has an alternative HUD that works on Mac for my site please let me know.

Update on 25z:

759 hands
P/L: +33.57

Ill probably start doing weekly updates and hopefully be able to get my hands on an alternative to software to track results.

Good luck too you. I need help becoming better at poker give me a tip please.

Although I am in no position to be giving out poker advice, I'd say two quick fixes that have helped me increase my winrate somewhat:

1. fold river vs raise!
2. don't open/call 22-66 in early position
3. 4bet bluff when you are playing OOP

I actually use Poker Co-Pilot, i tried the popular PT4 and actually preferred poker copilot, i never see anyone else mention it really but you get something like a 30 days free trial so youve got nothing to lose!

GL, subbed


Edit: they only support zoom on pokerstars and not any other sites sadly

Day #2 update:

Ignition 25z results

P/L +48.94
1228 hands

Working on finding a site to track my results on, I am happy with my play so far, even after running bad early in the session, loosing a 450bb pot.
Will post some hand histories that I thought where cool. Feel free to comment and give me advice/criticism.

I play 25z on ignition on a Mac as well, there is no way to use a HUD but you can download your hands on PT4 the day after. Unfortunately, there is no ignition hand grabber for PT4 if you use Mac though. DM if you ever want to talk strategy over discord. GL

Day 3 Ignition 25z

P/L -9.15
977 hands

will work on importing hands into PT if I can figure out how to do it.

Day 4 Ignition 25z

P/L: +37.24
1129 hands

Played a session of live 1-2 last night for the first time in about a month and a half. It was at the same place in NH that I played my first sessions at.

I bought in for 300, and sat down at one of the best and most fun tables I have ever played at. Huge action players calling every raise. Anyway, I flop a set of 8s on J85 and get it in on the turn vs KK and hold to double up. My stack is at about 650 when UTG opens to 10. I look down at 55 and 3-bet to 45 over two calls of the open. I did this for multiple reasons. The whole table is around 200-300bb deep after two whales dumped a few buy ins and left. Anyway, UTG is the only caller and we go to a flop heads up of AQ5 two clubs. Bingo. He donks 25 into 110 and I raise to 90 given the availability of draws. He calls, and I bomb the 9 of hearts turn for 175. Now, I consider myself a pretty aggressive player and attribute much of my win-rate at 1-2 to me just bullying passive, call happy players out of pots. I had shown down a 6- high bluff to this same player to scoop a 150 dollar pot about 5 hands earlier. This is relevant now because he rips it in my face for his remaining 496 after I bet 150 on the turn. At first I felt sick thinking that this was set over set, but, after about 15 seconds of me being a nit, I flick in the call and now we have a $1,282 pot going to the river and the dealer burns and turns the 8 of spades. Final board is AQ598 no flush available. I snap show my set of 5s and, after about 20 seconds, this guy tables J10cc for the royal draw and rivered nut straight. I was so stunned that I wasn't even able to be mad about this egregious slow roll that this guy had done for the past few seconds. I just took my remaining 32 dollars to the cage, not saying a word until getting back to my car. I know it isn't that much money, but that was the biggest pot I have ever played and it was literally crushing when I expected to be good when he didn't table a bigger set immediately, although I put him on top 2 initially.

My after thoughts:

It takes guts to put the money in in a spot like that, so props to that guy, honestly, I think my aggressive image paid off and I got him to shove his stack into me drawing to 30% equity as a huge underdog on the turn. I was actually in a good mood on the way back home, despite being felted by this guy. Also, I think it is important not to berate recreational players who are not familiar with poker etiquette; like immediately tabling the winning hand. Although I was pretty pissed about the slow roll, I gave him a pat on the table and said nice hand before leaving. Pretty exciting spot that I will probably never forget.

Good attitude dude you'll go far with that sort of mindset. Good luck.

My results for the first 10 days of seriously playing online. I am kinda frustrated being I feel that overall I am a major calling station on rivers. Besides that, I am happy with this so far, also running slightly below ev but I only have 10k hands so I guess its no big deal

Been a while since I posted on here, and I figured I'd give an update and show where I'm at.

Was winning at about 7.6bb/100 over 59,450 hands on Ignition 25nl until I had to withdraw to pay for life while being a college student. Overall, I feel that I am ready to move up stakes and redeposit, and will start by playing 100nl reg tables on Ignition in about a month. This might seem overly ambitious from someone who was only winning at 25nl over a small sample size, however my reasons for moving up are the following,

1. The rake is just too high to make a decent profit in the long term. From my own estimates using my tracking software, rake takes between 2.5-7bb/100 depending on my play style. This makes it difficult to see the results I want.

2. I feel that 2-tabling 100nl will allow me to take the game more seriously as there is no zone option for 100nl. I will deposit 1500 and exercise sensible bankroll management by limiting sessions to 3hrs and stopping after losing 2 buy-ins.

In the meantime, I have been putting in decent volume on Club GG, which is a mobile club poker app that I am sure most of you are familiar with. I have been extremely profitable on Club GG playing the .25/.50 stakes. My sample size is around 5,000 hands as it is hard to get in a lot of volume using this format. I was disappointed to see that there weren't many discussion threads on here about the platform. From what I can see, the games are extremely soft. I mean laughably soft, its insane. You compensate for it by paying 5% in rake, and I don't even know if that's capped. I think at the higher stakes like 2/4 and 5/10 the rake is 3.5%, which isn't insane but still not ideal. If anyone plays on the app and wants to talk strategy, player pool tendencies etc, feel free to reach out.

Update time:

Been playing and running decently well at 200nl zone and reg tables on Ignition/Bovada over the past few weeks since I have had the bankroll to start playing higher, I thought I'd share my progress at the stake so far over a small sample. Going to work on fixing my red line, I have no idea how to get it into the positive territory. Please help me out if you have any advice.

Update: After taking around a 3 month break from playing online to actually learn the game and study, I am back and playing a mix of 100-200nl reg tables on Bovada. Now that I have a good foundation of the fundamentals, I am trying to learn exploitative play especially as it applies to my player pool. After roughly 20k hands since December, it has become obvious just how truly bad most of the players are at 100nl, and even at 200nl there are usually at least 2 fish at each table, limpers, cold callers etc. I have limited myself to only playing reg tables as the rake for zoom seems to be pretty high, and have limited myself to playing only 2 tables when I am playing 200nl.

Here is my graph since Jan 1 of this year and some of my thoughts.


The biggest leak that I though I used to have in my game was my red line. As you can see, I am still loosing massively in my non-showdown winnings. Over this sample of hands, I was intentionally trying to 3 barrel bluff more, 4 bet bluff more, and steal the blinds by opening around 60% from the button. Stealing the blinds and 4bet bluffs have been massively profitable for me, but I have punted around 4 buyins due to players stationing me off when I triple barrel. I have come to realize that most players in the pool are passive fish, and massive stations as well. Generally when the population gets to the river, they're clicking call with 2nd pair + against me. Going forward, I am going to try not to focus on my redline as much and just try to play as exploitatively as possible; going for thin value, and playing aggressively pre, and shutting down on most turns and rivers if I face resistance.

The roll is looking very healthy, balance on bovada is sitting around $3,500. Will start playing exclusively 200nl once I reach $4,500.