To respond to M1ndctrl - I guess it really depends on what the person is trying to achieve, i guess that's the more appropriate answer. If you are just playing poker recreationally and not really looing to go pro, you can almost do whatever. However, if you are looking to someday go pro, I think it's important to start to be professional with your approach, especially knowing how sick this game can be.

I think what you are experiencing has to do with a couple of things, fear of loss, and also lack of confidence. Lack of confidence in the regard where if you lose you feel like you don't know what you are doing, and if you win you may feel like you got "lucky" and want to book a win before you lose it back. I think that you should always put yourself in a spot where you feel confident in your ability to win + are also challenging yourself. You don't want to have a triple barrel bluff, and not pull the trigger because you are afraid of losing a stack. So try to be aware of these emotions, and try to understand them.

To tackle the lack of confidence, I think honesty about your game + study is a solution to this.

Improvement begins with the truth.

Cheers

Today it went well again. Up like 5.5 buy-ins. I'm playing pretty decent tbh.



The total bankroll is at $157

Won about 2.2 buy-ins today. I also recieved $10 from my rakeback chest .



The bankroll is now at $178. We are getting seriously close to take shots at 10NL.



Tomorrow will be a day off. I will be studying for 2 hours and I will comeback fresh on monday.

Congrats!!! Looking forward to continuing to read about your progress!!!

Nice to hear

Unfortunately yesterday's study session didn't went very well. My computer isn't able to run sims and therefore I can't use a solver. What I usually do is use GTO trainers to study (I use free trials) but I ran out of options. I have a paid subscription on a mobile app which I used to study yesterday but with this option I am not able to target certain spots (I found out I have a bunch of leaks in my strategy). With other words, it is time for a subscription for a GTO trainer site but I have no idea which one.....

Advice anyone?

Alright guys, tomorrow I'm two weeks in this challenge. time to evaluate

First of all this is the bankroll right now:



Today went well again. I won like 8 buy-ins in a few short sessions and also recieved around $7 in rakeback. This means tomorrow I will be playing 10NL!

During this challenge (I know it's only 2 weeks but still:P) I improved in my pokerskills a lot especially mentally. I'm still in full control of my tilt issues due to discipline. I also improved outside the pokertables. I'm sleeping very well, wake up early, (almost) quit drinking alcohol, eat healthy, excercise everyday such as go for a run everyday and push-ups, learning skills unrelated to poker (such as programming, playing a guitar, starting with fl studios tomorow) and I'm working on my depression which goes well at the moment (sometimes I still feel depressed but I'm dealing with it pretty well imo).

I started this challenge playing 2NL with $18 in my account and currently the bankroll is at $225.

Here are the total results untill now:





Hopefully I can keep this flow going at the poker tables as well as outside the poker tables. I want to thank everyone for reading and following me along this journey, it means a lot

Down around 2 buy-ins in 10NL today but also recieved some rakeback so the bankroll is still at:



It is gonna take a couple days for me to adjust to the stakes but I'm confident I can beat it.

GL with 10NL

Don’t worry about losing two buy-ins. It happens. The skill level is basically the same at 10NL compared to 5NL in my experience so just relax and play your game, it will all fall into place.

You have been doing great so far and I look forward to following along. Keep it up.

I will be taking a few days off from the pokertables and then I will be playing 5NL untill the bankroll is $500. It's kinda boring but I had a huge tilt session where I lost 65% of my bankroll and although I'm confident I'm able to beat 10NL I need to have a big bankroll (and more confidence) to take shots again. Also I will start of with playing two tables of zoom instead of four. I will probably back on the grind on monday/tuesday. I also got a bunch of rakeback coming my way in the next few weeks so this in combination with my current 5NL winrate will hopefully result in me playing 10NL again soon.

I won't give up on this challenge

lets go! Never give up! I'm down to give you an hour of coaching for free! Just hmu!

Keep going I believe in you!

GL

Hey guys,

I'm still in this challenge. I'm currently playing NL5 and planning on moving up next week when the bankroll is about $500. I will finish this rakeback race on stars and then I will be making some new rules to myself. I also will start to update this blog daily next week.

Peace

Keep it up, downswings happen to anyone. You just miss every flop, get sucked out, miss your draws. Just take the day off. Worst thing you can do is going on tilt. Because it will only hurt YOU. No one else.

Don't be too strict with the BRM. If you feel you play good and run above EV just take some small shots at higher stakes with a clear stop loss, so you don't tilt away the majority of your BR. Also it helps you to stay motivated, if you grind up to 100BI it will feels like what it is, a grind.

Besides the poker side things you seem to really benefit of this challenge, so keep it up.

cheers

Cheers mate thanks for the advice!

Glad to see you are still going! Good luck and I look forward to your updates.

Allright guys. It's the end of the first month of this challenge. I'll do a short recap of it.

The first two weeks went amazing. I was playing very disciplined, I didn"t tilt at all and I was updating you guys everyday. I went from NL2 to NL10 very quickly with a decent winrate. Then on February 3th it went completely wrong. I wasn't feeling very good that day and I was playing awful and I tilted away my whole bankroll in one session ($260 to $30). After that day my confidence was gone. Also the buy-in rules that I made for myself were gone and I've went through crazy swings. I've had to reload a few times unfortunately, I deposited several small amounts.

a few day ago after taking a couples days off I've managed to get myself back on track. I had a montly rakeback challenge for $200 to finish and the last few days I grinded my ass of to finish that. I've managed to finish it 50 minutes before it would expire. After that the bankroll was back at like $400 but because I wanted to do this with the initial deposit of $18 I decided to withdraw all the money I deposited when I busted my bankroll ($140).

So with the starting amount of $18 after one month the bankroll is at $260.




My confidence is completely back and I'm playing very well again. I'm playing mainly 10NL and this time it's going well.

Looking back at this month I can be dissapointed because the bankroll could've been at $1000 easily and I could be playing 25NL right now. But I'm very happy with the fact that despite playing like a maniac and huge tilting sessions I kept going and I've finished this month with a 15x bankroll compared to the initial amount. Now my confidence is completely back. Also in life I'm doing better. I'm really working on my problems and I'm trying to face my problems for the first time in my life. Also since the first day of the challenge I've had a pretty structured lifestyle.

Few examples:

I've seen my friends/been in contact with my friends frequently
I've finished a basic coding course and I'm planning on to continue with this
I've been learning to play guitar
I've went for a run everyday and I've really made progress with this
I've started meditading

Tomorrow I'll continue the journey and I'll make a post about the goals and new rules for the upcoming 4 weeks. I'll go back to posting here daily.

Thanks for reading

So as promised I will write down some goals/plans for the next 4 weeks.

First of all my main goal for this month is to deal with tilt and to deal with confidence issues.

-Read one book about this subject
-Start using the 3.5 buy-in rule again (so quit playing after losing 3.5)
-When on tilt write down your thought process or record how you play (This is gonna be hard because when I'm on tilt I don't think rational
-Start taking a break again after 1 hour of play
-Update you guys everyday, also when I've punted or anything

I'll be working with a coach and I'm really planning on developing as a poker player. I'm not gonna set any money or stake goals and I'll try to remain very patience in this process (although my mind wants to rush it).

Also few goals besides poker:

-Run atleast 3 miles everyday
-Start working on gaining muscle (gyms are still closed so I'lll have to be creative)
-Try to learn a new language (probably spanish)
-Start reading books more often
-Start with a more advanced coding course

I've made a schedule for the next 4 weeks and I'll be trying to stick with it.

This will all start on monday.

GLGL

inb4hs

Haha

I wasn't planning on playing but I end up playing for like 2/2.5 hours yesterday:



As you can see I was up around 11 buy-ins in 10NL. My confidence is completely back and I'm relatively satisfied with the way I've been playing for the last week (I completely lost it before). Hopefully I can keep this going but more important deal with the next downswing very well.

The bankroll is somewhere around $370

First coaching session and day of the new month done. I realised that I'm still a massive fish and that I have major leaks in my basics. I'm going for a new approach for the upcoming months. I'm going for a learning approach which means I will play a less and study a more. I will get into more detail about this later.

Still played for a bit yesterday:



I was playing absolutely terrible but still managed to break-even at the end

Looks like your coach told you to be more aggressive!

As far as tilt goes which seems to be a big negative for you, we all tilt to some degree you need to just stop playing when it starts to happen.
Bad beats are going to occur, its far better to step away and rationalise what is happening than to lose control. You can do it, just try harder.

GL.

Lol good eye! 3 weeks ago somebody analysed my data and came to the conclusion that I was underbluffing heavy. Ever since then I'm kinda overbluffing. I'm getting exploited by the strategy I was using before (turn checkbacks to trap, overcalling rivers etc.). I still think in the micros playing the passive strategy (that I was using before) is making your more money simply because people don't punish you enough.

Regarding to the tilt issues, you absolutely right! But when this occurs it's hard to think rational. When I'm on tilt it's not that I'm angry or anything but I experience more like a 'f*** it, I don't care feeling". Anyway I will try to follow your advice!