I will be treating this thread as my own diary in my journey to online high-stakes poker. Currently, most of my volume is from low-mid stakes but I did shot-take previously for a short time in high-stakes (as high as 25/50) but it didn't end well for me. I believe that I have what it takes to play at the highest level if I just put in the time, and effort, and most importantly, embrace the long-term grind.


I am doing this for my own sake so that I will be accountable for what I say here. I will be honest, I have created a few threads here over the years but I haven't really gotten to continue those threads because I had a lot of issues with my mindset during downswings. One of the biggest mistakes in my career that I have repeatedly done was to continue playing games above my level after taking a long break. This usually ended up with an even bigger downswing. Other huge mistakes that I have done along the way that I think are vital to my progress:

1. Playing in auto-pilot mode - this sucks out the joy in playing the game for me, it always made me feel bad every after session whether I won or lost that session.

2. Putting in too many tables - when I was on an upswing, I always thought I could increase my win rate by adding more tables, I was still playing at a relatively high level playing 3-4 tables simultaneously but greed and impatience came in and little did I notice I was already playing up to 8 tables.

3. Playing too many hours - I wasn't always a huge grinder, at my best, I could only play anywhere from 4-5 hours of high-quality sessions per day depending on my energy levels. I always envied people that I see on the tables when I start my session and still be there when I'm about to sleep. I tried pushing myself but I always pushed very hard. I should push myself less knowing that this is my weakness. I think anywhere from 30min to 1 hour of my weekly average is enough.

4. Too little study - here is where I'm good at. I could hammer down solver work for 2-3 hours straight on good days and not feeling drained afterwards. My huge mistake is not taking advantage of this strength and only studying sparingly.

5. Not taking notes on hands that I'm not involved in - I think this is one of the most underrated skills to have in my opinion. Free information is advantageous early on especially when you know already know how to exploit it.


It's funny that while I was doing these mistakes, most of the time I knew what I was doing wasn't right. However, I wasn't emotionally composed enough to take a step back, slow down and trust the process. Instead, I did things the opposite way. I felt that I wanted to get out of the hole as fast as I can.


I understand I just have to focus on improving myself. Not comparing myself to others. Just focusing on bringing out the best of me in poker and how I relate to it.


Now that this is out of the way, it's time to get into the details of what I'm going to do moving forward. Currently, I'm taking things slow with poker as I came off from a relatively long break for me which is about close to two weeks. I commit to doing the following every day:

1. Goal setting for playing session
2. 30 min - 1-hour hand review pre-session
3. Visualization exercise
4. 1.5 - 2 hour playing sessions split into 2-3 sessions + 5min breaks in between
5. Post-session review
6. 1-hour deep theory study session
7. Post-session detachment

The past 3 weeks have been great. I have tried to discover more things about myself outside of poker. Ever since I started playing poker seriously, I was so committed to trying to make it that I never gave myself time to figure out other things that interest me. It was a struggle for me because early in my career, there were things I wanted to do outside of poker but whenever these thoughts came to my mind, I felt guilty because why should I be enjoying my time when I am not yet financially capable. This was the narrative I was telling myself all the time. It made me just stay at home and play/study poker all the time. This happened during the beginning of the pandemic. Looking back, it was funny because the pandemic didn't actually affect me mentally that much with all the lockdowns because I was still at home all the time.

I have now realized that I could do things outside of poker and not feel guilty about it. After discovering a lot of new things this past 3 weeks, right now, I am ready to put poker in the driver's seat again. I feel that I have still so much to learn from this game like how I can deal with losing. I have always loved the game and I do believe that my earning potential is still so high that this could set me up for life. I will just have to keep in mind that if something catches my interest, I will go with what I truly feel and not stop myself.

Time for November Update.

This month, I was only playing whenever I wanted to really play without volume expectations. Most of my days in the first 2 weeks were spent exercising, also started incorporating ice baths 2-3 a week now. I feel that doing these ice baths increased my energy a bit.

2 weeks ago in one of my weightlifting sessions, I accidentally overstretched my arm when I was trying to stretch my chest using the squat rack. I overextended my shoulders and I felt a dull pain in the beginning and the pain was getting more intense as my session went on. I left my session early and had to get it checked by the doctor. the next day because the pain wasn't going away and I couldn't lift my arm above my shoulder level. Turns out I sprained one of my muscles, I forgot which exactly because the MRI showed some inflammation in the area. Fortunately, no bones were broken or ligaments torn in that area. Have to take 2-3 months off from using my left shoulder.

After this happened, I began to spend more of my spare time reading about spirituality. I think this was the most productive and eye-opening 2 weeks I've ever had in my entire life. I've felt grateful for my injury because I wouldn't have dedicated time to be reading about this. In this time, I have begun to understand much more deeply about my life. About how I was talking to myself in my thoughts, about how we identify ourselves, about how certain emotions trigger inside of us, etc. I have never felt so free in my entire life until now. I felt like I have removed quite a lot of resistance in my mind at this point in time. Everything just made perfect sense and everything I was reading was deeply resonating with me. I had been always interested in spirituality ever since I was in high school but it didn't feel right at that time. I think what connected the dots for me was the "bad" experiences I went through. If I was to summarize what I have learned this November is that life is whole, balanced, and perfect as it is. The "good" and the "bad" experiences are what make the wholeness of life.

If anyone is curious about what I was reading, please hit me a PM and I will send you a link. I don't think links to other websites are allowed in here.

Going back to poker, I feel that I am ready to start busting out some good volume in the next coming months. I will be updating with results real soon in here.

To keep this thread interesting, here were my graphs in the last 2-3 years for GGPoker and PokerStars. Just want to block out what games I am playing, will post more details as time goes on

Subbed.

How are you constructing your post session reviews?

Hey there,

I am following Elliot's method in his A-Game Poker Masterclass course.

Basically just asking myself a couple of questions like if I was successful in achieving my session goals and also looking back what went well
and what went wrong in the sessions and making the necessary adjustments next time

GL with your goals! Will be following

Thank you friend.


New update, I've been grinding quite a bit for the past few days and I have realized I've gotten into a mindset trap where I just want to play extremely soft games without studying that much. This went on for a few weeks. While this approach can lead to a very high EV, the problem is that you won't have much volume. Also another problem I've dealt with is my winrate will get worse overtime. A 10/20 table with 4 regs and 1 whale will yield me a much lower EV compared to a 2/4 table with 4 regs and 1 whale just because the average skill level of regs in higher stakes is much better compared to the lower stakes.

I think moving forward, I will want to revert back to a more study-than-grind approach for the first month or two just to get the GTO heuristics down to an above-average level. I will tackle the most common spots in no particular order

FORMATIONS:
1. BTN vs BB SRP / EP vs BB SRP
2. CO vs BTN SRP / EP vs BTN SRP
3. SB vs BTN 3BP / SB vs EP 3BP
4. BTN vs CO 3BP / BTN vs EP 3BP
5. 4 bet pots in general

These will be my main focus for the next 1-2 months depending on how fast I get through these topics. This has worked out for me before when I studied a new game where I put in 4-5 hours of study each day and only play 1-2 hours per day. Eventually, the more I get confident, the more I will shift more hours from study to grinding depending on my progress.

Subbed

Shortly after I wrote my most recent post, there was still a part of me that is doubting if my true desire was to be a high-level high stakes poker player. This stewed n my mind for several days and I didn't have much motivation to play or study. I tried looking for answers to my question and there I found my answer. All this time when I am visualizing poker, all I see is myself winning, me knowing all the correct moves in each spot, my balance increasing, etc. I visualized all the light-natured aspects of poker. While this is good and keeps me excited, this perspective is delusional. I did not take into account all the dark-natured aspects of poker such as losing even though I made all the correct decisions, having long stretches where you just cannot win, games not being good enough for me therefore just waiting in the lobbies, and so much more. My point here is to approach the game as a whole. Not just the "good" things that come with it, but also the "bad" things that will come just because this is the truth about poker. I am bringing these things up to make it clear to myself that I accept this game as a whole and not let the "bad" things keep me from pursuing my vision. I have always had a hard time when I was on a downswing and this always held me back because I let this emotion consume me to the point that I stop playing because I fear of losing more. This is just one of the resistances that I have always encountered before. Now, I have a good grasp of what things are possible having played this game for almost a decade. However, I will remain open enough that there might still be things that I might fail to spot beforehand and will overwhelm me at any moment but I understand that these types of moments are where learning happens the most.

Now, I see wholly that poker will bring out the best of me and I will commit to this journey. I'm not sure how long but for now, I do envision myself being a master of multiple games and now my current focus is in 5-card PLO.

It's been quite a while since my last update, I have been focusing this March and April with grinding after working with another coach. I felt very confident after working with him a few times on early March. I felt like I started to figure out how to play 5 card PLO a little bit but I am still quite passive and clueless in a lot of spots. My results are a mix of a couple of factors: Variance, table-selecting hard and low-level competition.

Around 80% of my volume in the graph was played in 1/2, the rest were a little bit of 0.50/1,2/5, 5/10.

Playing in some lineups in 2/5 and 5/10 are quite uncomfortable. The known regs in the pool are quite aggressive and are not shy to put me on spots. I believe that I just need to know more how the certain boards and runouts interact with certain ranges in the most common spots in order to be able to attack and defend correctly against these regs. Even though there's a huge spot on the table, I think I'm just leaking too much vs strong regs in the table.

My approach for this month is to put 80% of my time in studying. I have already laid out my study plan for this month. The remaining 20% in playing which is just to keep up putting volume and continue to learn how population plays.

After typing this post I just realized that what I'm talking about here is quite similar to my 2nd to the last post. For some reason, when I start feeling confident, I stop studying and focus immediately on grinding. I think now, having this situation repeated a handful of times in my career, it's much more crystal clear what I have to do to be more sustainable and have a higher long-term EV.

Graphs


PLO GG


SD GG