What a beast redlining at 10nl

Thank you!!!



Haha thanks, but I'm not sure if I can be a redline beast if it's still negative overall. I'm of the opinion that it's pretty tough to get a positive redline at the micros considering how often we'll be playing with fish who can be pretty station. Blueline is the way for my MDA strat with an as decent as possible redline!

Moving up part 2! 10NL -> 25NL (25,200 hands, 12.4 bb/100, 31 buyins won)

There's still a couple of days until the end of the 4th week, but I've continued on my major grind and was able to push out another 5k hands the last few days! With the 10NL finish line so close for myself, I had to make the push. Anyways, the last 5k hands went great putting me at 25k hands and an overall winrate of 12.4 bb/100 (11.4 evbb/100) winning 31 buyins overall.

This is good enough for me to make the jump to 25NL and I'll probably be able to report on my first few sessions by the end of this fourth week. With holidays and end of year coming up I might start to become quiet online, but I'll still be grinding out volume. I'll try to give updates as much as I can!


Last 5,000 hands at 10NL




Total 10NL Results

Nice job bud. The jump from 10 -> 25 and 200 -> 500 are the toughest, because it is 2.5x the stakes. You have been running pretty hot, so it will suck if you get slapped with variance at 25nl, because it takes a while to rebuild. Either way, your goal is to get out of the rake trap.





I don't know if you have ever looked at this, but the rake is atrocious at the micros and only starts to get better around 200nl. The fish are always the fish, and the regs just get marginally better until about 500nl, where the regs are much better. I guess what I am saying is be very aggressive with shot takes.

Thank you! Yes, I have been running quite well as evident by my graphs, but I am also fairly certain I've been milking the fish when I'm making good hands which just pads my winrate that much more. I might have mentioned this before, but as far as bankroll goes, I am not limited by my ability to replenish to 20-30 buyins if needed at any stake up to probably 200-500NL. And even then it would be because I'm hesitant to play a stake that I'm a losing player at. My main concern is in my ability to win at my current stake, and so if I were to get slapped with some bad variance at 25NL, I'll probably drop down to 10NL to cool off, but in terms of bankroll for moving back up to 25NL, I won't be limited by having to rebuild at 10NL. This will definitely help in terms of coping with some unfavorable variance.

Thanks for the info on the other sites, and yes, I have seen the rake structures at different limits for Ignition (PaiWangLuo)/Global Poker. I am aware that the net rake decreases as we move up, however, I'm still trying to be cognizant of my main goal which is just to simply prove I can win at each limit with my simplified MDA strat and then move up. When I hit resistance, and I'm sure I will, I will take a step back and reassess my game. Like I've said before, I have pretty much disregarded GTO/GTO drilling completely and my MDA strat is very simplified so that I can play without thinking too much about it.

My attraction to the game lies within the data. It relates a lot to my career/educational background, but I enjoy compiling datasets and extracting/trying to draw conclusions from them. I was once a losing player at 5NL and it is amazing (to me) and incredibly fun to be able to create my own gameplan, from my own data, that has allowed me to win at the games I once lost at. I've had plenty of obvious leaks pointed out by others in the comments, such as some preflop holes, which I appreciate and I've been working on, but in the end, my obsession with the game is being able to figure the game out on my own, in my own way.

I know I'm missing pieces of the puzzle, but I'm really enjoying playing and putting in large volume (with respect to how much free time I have) and so I'm not concerning myself with the theory/GTO side of things right now. I think eventually I will as I evolve, but for now I'm focusing on the next level of 25NL

You're beating the games, especially if your focus is to max exploit the fish. Like I said, the fish remain the fish, and there are plenty on Bovada.

In order to get a high degree of statistical confidence that you're beating each stake, you'd need like 200k hands at each one. This obviously doesn't make any sense. You're beating the games, move up.

You can do that, without paying massive rake. The point of this game is to maximize EV and you aren't doing that at the micros.

You do you, but myself and others have been down this road before and it is just better to move up, especially if you have the bankroll to sustain it. I am not saying jump right in to 200nl, but take aggressive shots more often. Trust me.

I agree with this that fish are fish everywhere, but I have my own personal approach to the game which is to put volume in at each level and climb via my own developed strat catered towards exploiting population. In my field, the degree of statistical confidence we want to achieve for a certain experiment/project is going to differ based off of many variables such as time, money, etc. The way I'm approaching poker is looking at confidence intervals that satisfy me. If my sample size + winrate at the current stake shows me to be a winning player, then that's good enough for me. I don't desire to put in 200k hands at any one stake, but I'm satisfied enough to see my winrate bounds at a 95% confidence interval isn't losing. I don't want to debate statistics as I think it could go down a huge rabbit hole, but I have a rough plan that I want to follow and it involves being at each level in chronological order.


Maybe my approach to poker and how I desire to climb is not maximized EV, but I think that it's evident from my ignorance of GTO and other things that maximizing EV is not my goal. Poker is simply my hobby and one that I'm currently very into. I'm having a blast following the steps I set out to follow and I never intended (and probably never do) for poker to become a source of income as I doubt it can ever surpass my current one and all the benefits that come with it. If it does, I must have gone down some path that I definitely wasn't expecting, but who knows.


You are clearly knowledgeable of the game and I respect that. I'm not sure if the point of the game is necessarily uniform for everyone. I think your point of maximizing EV being the goal of the game makes sense (obviously this is the point of theory), but if that was the case for me I should probably be sitting more at my local card rooms haha (there's probably a lot more EV to be gained there especially on weekends). I cannot argue with the facts about the high rake and non-maximized EV at micros, but I desire to climb through the limits like levels in a video game. That's just my approach for now and it's been great fun.

Week 4 Update:

First, happy Thanksgiving everyone (if you celebrate it)! I just wanted to make a week 4 update after my last session for this morning before I'm off to be busy with Thanksgiving. Volume grind was great this week and I was super motivated to try to make the push to my 10NL finish line. I was able to get there with great success and have since been putting in sessions at 25NL. I'll probably keep doing 5k hand mini updates as I think they're a nice point to step back and take a quick look at how things are going.

So far 25NL has been going very well, probably a little too well as I'm running super hot like I have been since I started this journey only 1 month ago. Running hot is of course nice, but I'm sure my MDA strat is contributing to boosting those winnings just that much more. I've decided to modify my 25NL -> 50NL requirements from my original down to 25-30 buyins at 25k-30k hands depending on how I'm feeling.

Even though I've slightly reduced my move up requirements from my previous ones, I'm still honestly surprised at how fast I've reached milestones. I'm not sure how 25NL will go, but I am thinking I might take a step back to update/refine the MDA strat before moving on to 50NL and beyond. I'll probably really think about how to approach 50NL and beyond as well in terms of making some new milestones/goals. I'm really trying to avoid stepping deep into GTO/solver world until necessary, but we will have to see what happens.

Anyways, a summary of my results are below like usual as well as one of my 25NL sessions that went super well!


25NL session (almost 6 buyins won!):




Results so far:

5NL: 8,854 hands, 21.5bb/100 (20.8evbb/100), 18 buyins won

10NL: 25,200 hands, 12.4bb/100 (11.4evbb/100), 31 buyins won

25NL: 5,000 hand update coming soon!

25NL -> 50NL: 25-30 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 at 25,000-30,000 hands

Congrats on the amazing results!

Thank you!!

First 5,000 25NL hands!

I just wanted to post a brief update of my first 5k hands at 25NL. Things have been going super well and I'm up almost 12 buyins at a pretty insane winrate. I have honestly been playing A LOT though, putting in around 40,000 hands in the past month. This is a huge amount of volume for a part time hobbyist and I've been getting some heat from the missus, so I'll probably be toning it down a bit for the next month. Either way, I hope to keep up the good results at 25NL


25NL results so far

Week 5-6.5 Update

Sorry I've been silent so long! I had to go away on a vacation/business trip which really took over my time for the past couple weeks. I've been only able to squeeze in 5k hands with my recent busy schedule, but things went really well in those 5k hands! I'm back home now and looking to get back on the regular grind so stay tuned!

The usual summary of results below:

Last 5k hands



25NL results so far



Results so far:

5NL: 8,854 hands, 21.5bb/100 (20.8evbb/100), 18 buyins won

10NL: 25,200 hands, 12.4bb/100 (11.4evbb/100), 31 buyins won

25NL: 10,486 hands, 18.6bb/100 (13.5evbb/100), 19.5 buyins won

25NL -> 50NL: 25-30 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 at 25,000-30,000 hands

Week 7.5 Update

Just a quick weekly update! Volume has really slowed down due to work, life, etc. I expected this to happen at some point as poker is strictly a hobby at this point so my time spent with it is going to be up and down depending on my life schedule. Haven't put in another 5k hands since the last update so I won't be summarizing there. Just checking in and throwing in a nice session I was able to have this week!

Week 8.5 Update

First, hope everyone had a great Christmas or holidays! My volume has definitely dropped since returning from my trip, but that's because of external life things haha. I know I'll still have a slow start to the New Year, but hoping to pick things up at some point again. My heater finally seems to have come to an end this past stretch of hands, but overall 25NL is going great . Still going to keep pushing through to my goal to move up to 50NL! I'm thinking to update my MDA strat soon. I've put in about 50k hands since I started the 2+2 journey so hopefully I can make some refinements.

Also, I got into this 0.5 week updating because of my weird timing from my trip return. I will probably do a 10 week update next and skip the 9.5 week update.

Last 4.5k hands




25NL results so far



5NL: 8,854 hands, 21.5bb/100 (20.8evbb/100), 18 buyins won

10NL: 25,200 hands, 12.4bb/100 (11.4evbb/100), 31 buyins won

25NL: 15,019 hands, 9.7bb/100 (9.1evbb/100), 14.5 buyins won

25NL -> 50NL: 25-30 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 at 25,000-30,000 hands

Hey MDAmicros, have you played other poker sites vs ignition? Just wondering how the player pool is on othersites or if Ignition seems the softest. Also, are all these hands just from 6Max?

Hi! Yes, I've played on various other sites before namely ACR and GlobalPoker, but for this 2+2 blog the hands are all Ignition. As for softness, I'd lean towards what you might hear often that Ignition is softer than ACR and Global is probably even softer than Ignition. And yes, I play exclusively 6max!

Huh thanks, I've only played ACR over several years and its always felt decently tough, and full ring has pretty decent, nitty oponents of less than 20% VPIP each. I maybe should try Ignition/global.

Although I also feel like playing tighter opponents has made me try to analyze things a lot better.

Yea I think it's always good to try to play on softer sites because you will have higher winrates. I'm sure you'll improve by playing tougher opponents, but I would hate to sit at a table full of them. Soft sites are great because you can sit with multiple fish at once and you'll definitely run into decent players as well. I think you'll get plenty of improvement from playing softer sites as well

Looking forward to next graph post!

Thanks you too

Just started again on Bovada 10nl. Hoping to catch up soon. GL!

Great to hear! Feel free to reach out anytime and hope things go well

The final push!

Hey all, I know I said I wouldn't make a 9.5 week update, but here's just a super mini one because I'm making a final push for this thread! The goal was to get to 50NL and I am possibly just 5k hands away from that. My move up requirements for 25NL is 25-30 buyins and/or +5evbb/100 @ 25,000-30,000 hands. Well, I'm currently at 25 buyins at 20,000 hands! I've decided with my New Year's goals/challenges I'd like to conclude this thread and move on to the next thread for the rest of 2024. With that, I will play another 5,000 more hands at 25NL and if I'm still 25-30 buyins at 25,000 hands, I'll consider it a success!!! Wish me luck


Last 5k hands



25NL results so far

Week 10 - Concluded!

I honestly can't believe I'm here with my initial goals completed in 2.5 months, but it happened! I put in the last 5k hands the rest of this week and managed to finish 25NL with 28 buyins and 11.1bb/100 (14.1evbb/100) over 25,000 hands. I will put 25NL results down below as well as a total results summary of the blog. With this, I will be officially concluding this thread and moving on to my 2024 goals/challenges thread so please follow me here if you are interested!

I really did run very hot through this entire run which I am very glad about, but I believe I was able to prove that my MDA strat worked quite well from 5NL-25NL. I did somewhat expect the strat to work very well from 5NL all the way to 25NL, but I definitely noticed some improvements in the regs as I went up. Fish were always fish as usual . I do want to mention however, I was very fortunate to be invited to a great small group where I have been able to really improve my MDA tools and skills (shoutout to the group!). I ended up making some slight adjustments to my strat near the end of my 25NL run, but I will be really diving into things for 2024 and I even hope to add some GTO into my study mix.

Thanks again for following and stay tuned in my new thread!

Total 25NL Results




Total results from 5NL-25NL

5NL: 8,854 hands, 21.5bb/100 (20.8evbb/100), 18 buyins won

10NL: 25,200 hands, 12.4bb/100 (11.4evbb/100), 31 buyins won

25NL: 25,238 hands, 11.1bb/100 (14.1evbb/100), 28 buyins won

Hey, so I feel like such an idiot for playing on ACR for so long. I guess I thought all online poker was basically the same and site didn't matter etc. Kinda like how all low stakes cash 1/3 & 2/5 is decently similar. But I started playing on ignition and goddamn it is so much softer than ACR. over like 2 months on ACR playing 2NL, 5NL, 10NL and tracking results I was up like $160ish, and in 2 days on ignition I made $220 lol at mainly 10NL & some 25NL. 25NL 6max ignition feels akin to 5NL on ACR, depending on table.

Think I'm gonna switch over to ignition full time. Only thing is I'm on a Mac and PT4 won't work for ignition, so I have to get a new HUD.