Hey everyone!

Im a 23 year old student from Brazil. I've always been passionated about poker and played it and dreamed of being a professional when I was ~18-19 as I started to play with friends and perceived that the game could be solved and money could be won at it, so I started going to high school and reading and studying poker during all classes. I became a cash game regular at my city poker club, but I've always loved MTTs and wanted to be a pro at it, so I sent application to the 2 biggest poker teams in Brazil (perhaps in the entire world), but since I didn't had any online volume, wasn't accepted. Then, somehow I've got accepted in one of the best universities of the country on engineering, so my poker dream became supressed.

In the middle of all this, I had another chance of pursuing my dream, playing for a micro stakes stable in Brazil, and that experience was really really bad, and after it, I felt that it just wasn't for me the work that I nedded to put on and I gived up back then.

Earlier in 2020, during the pandemic, without the personal interaction on my university (which was the only thing that held me there), my interest on engineering and working on the field that I was studying reached its bottom, making me feel really despondent and without a goal for my future. Saying that, I decided to give another try at poker, an old friend from my 18 year's homegames oferred to stake me on apps and I accepted. Started to have nice results and decided that I would give a try for myself on the .com sites, where I build a nice constancy through a couple of months.

I was studying and evolving through a brazilian community, but wasn't enough, and was aiming to reach a higher level. A couple of friends who were having astonishing results and having the career in a way that I admire, were playing for a team named Poker Detox, what piqued my interest. Talking to my friends, one of them invited me to join the team, and I saw there a big opportunity and decided to head in it, sent my application and got accepted.

And that's where I am now, since 15th August 2020 I moved up from a ~$5ABI to a ~$55ABI, with 5-figure profit throughout ~6k games, craving more and more and never felt so realized in my entire life, really loving the path!

To ilustrate that, these are my graphics from back then to now:


Before joining the first brazilian team.




During my time on the microstakes brazilian stable




This is my graph from when I came back to play on the .com sites before signing with Poker Detox (until game #1k) until the end of my 1st year of contract



For me, a solid routine and good habits are the pillars for a successfull career & life in poker, so I am starting this new habit of journalling, after feeling a big downgrade on my performance caused by some failures on my daily routine, decided to add a new habit which seems really enriching. But this is a subject for another post, will try to upgrade here 1-2x a week.

Let's share experiences, looking forward to know everyone.

Cheers!

Thats awesome to see you're improvement. Never knew that PD also dealt with MTT players. Detox is legit. Just follow the strategy and I'm sure you will succeed. GL.

Yeah they opened the MTT division early on 2020 IIRC. The strategy there is really a big thing. Thanks!!

Hey man!

An interesting beginning for you haha. I like the story and I would love to see your weekly updates here. I really think journaling helps in many ways. I also just started and I am happy I did since it motivates me. I hope it will work same for you. Goodluck!

Hey mate!

Cool read, nice to see you've started to have some success, keep up the good work!
I've also heard good thinks about poker detox, and might know some of the guys in there. Sometimes its hard to know how good (or bad) a stable is until you experience a couple, but glad you're in a good one at the moment.

In. Huge improvements man, wow. That's alot of profit per game, v nice. Keep it up.

So how does Poker Detox actually work? It seems you play for them and they work with you but then you split half your profits with them? What site do you play on? As am American cash game player who's coming back to online after many years away, I've never heard of them.

Thanks man! Really enjoying this start of a new habit since it motivates me on my daily routine, not to mention that my head is way activer right now throughout all day thinking on how and whith what I will update my blog

For sure! Some stables just want volume of people with low ROI playing for them without that good of a structure and follow-up, and this is just terrible for a player career, specially if you are starting it.

Appreciate it man!

Hey! Yeah, they coach me, stake me and have some other features like mindset 1-on-1s and stuff, and I play for them and share my profits. I play on the majority of the .com sites like Stars, Party, GG, WPN... They have a cash game division as well, but I don't know much about it. If you want to discuss somethings, PM me!

Good Stuff my man, keep crushing!

Hello people!

In addition to what I've said on my last post about routine and stuff, will dig deeper into it now.

As I said and based on my experience, routine is deffinitelly the most important thing on a poker player's life (at least on mine)and will contextualize where I sit at now and what makes me think like this.

At the top of excitment of being on an awesome team (which I honestly think that it's the best in the world) and after my huge and fast improvement throughout the ABIs, WCOOP showed up. Excited to play on it, and playing the biggest buy-ins of my entire life, my concern with my routine, which was the main thing that helped me to get this far, was put aside, and my life at that time became a little messy.

Despite having a great August in term of results, my stress levels were clearly high due to a bad mindset of "this is my first big series as a pro playing the tournaments I'm playing, I'm at the top of my game and I will only play play play". This thoughts took me to a place not even near to the top of my game, right in the middle of WCOOP. I stopped worrying about my resting time, my food, my physical exercises, study time, etc, and it obviously ended up badly.

Since the start of september I'm sitting at the biggest downswing of my career (~300 ABIs), and trying to get back to my optimal place, which consists mostly of me dividing rightly my time to the things that I've mentioned. I think that downswings are a part of a poker pro life and dealing with it in a proper way only brings benefits.

And that's why I am adding this blogging habit to my routine, to help me being honest with myself and with my daily schedule. Will post every thursday my goals for the week and the resume of my last one.

Cheers!

Another important thing from my first post that I would like to dig deeper into, is regarding my first experience on my first brazilian microstakes stable.

In there, when I had my first downswing, I was moved out from the main .com sites due to that, without any review or assessment of what might be causing that, I was just a micro ABI player along with a lot others watching live classes of pio on how to balance cbet sizing in different flop textures. Like How is this even effective to microstakes players?

That's the mainly thing that got me disappointed with poker back in time: Playing for myself I'll start on microstakes, will every team be like that when I hypothetically get accepted?

And what I've heard from my friends before joining Poker Detox was the opposite of that. The team is player capped what makes the relationship between superiors and players closer, and the team provides everything for you. We have winning and palpable (not pio theory for microstakes) strategies, mind coach, BR management, game selection, monthly reviews and assessments over your game to find your main leaks, not to mention the routine and performance follow-up we can have there.

When I joined the team, I've noticed that those things were really avaiable there, and it really overcame my expectations, which I am really grateful for.

If someone wants to speak closely about it or wants more info, my PM is always open as well.

GL everyone!

Hey guys!


As I said, will start a bi-weekly goals blog in here, for me to be honest with myself and evaluate my level of commitment to my game and daily routine, being tomorrow day-zero. So, let's get started with it.


WEEK 1 (29/10/2021 - 5/11/2021) - GOALS


1- Wake up everyday at 8:30AM
2- Exercise 5x
3- Dedicate at least 7 hours to study (Coaching hours + alone studying)
4- Play at least 100 MTTs.
5- Start the new habit of documenting my buy-ins and cashes to have control over my grind and profits
6- Start the new habit of rating my game (based on optimal stats and principally mindset)*, and keep it on average 4.


*I will review my stats and my mindset after all my sessions and rate it from 0 (bad) - 5 (excellent). I've seen someone doing it here on 2+2 (If you are reading this, give me a shoutout so I can give you credits ) which I found pretty nice. My stats are basically my frequency of plays (like RFI and stuff) accordingly to what Detox's strategy is based on and will rate my mindset based on things like tilt control, motivation level, etc... Will discuss more about this throughout the blog.


Hope I can keep motivated and turn this into a really nice habit to boost my confidence and help me going back over the top of my game!


Cheers, GL Everyone!

MID WEEK ATT 1

Hey everyone!

Since my last post, I've managed a little to get back into my optimal routine, but aiming for more improvement. Yesterday here in Brazil we had a holiday, which made me slept out of my schedule a bit, but nothing out of normal or really bad.

The new habit of keeping my buy-ins documented is going well, and during these last grinding days I've had a 2nd place finish on the big $33. Slowly coming back and watching my graph go up again.

Will come back in 2 days to list the points that I've written on my last post and make a check list of them.

Cheers!!

First week conclusion

Hey everyone!

First, I want to apologize for my lack of optimally attendance here on this first week. Due to fulfilled grinding days and a big holiday midweek here in Brazil, I didn't manage to post my updates here the way I wanted, but let's get back into it.

One thing that I would like to mention is that I am getting back into my optimal place, feeling my mind really clean and present during my grind, not to mention that my study routine is getting perfect for me, solving, discussing and analysing spots in a way that really fits for me, so the blog really helped me! One other thing that I also want to emphatize is that I will start blogging inside my team as well (we have a place for this in our channel), to start connecting with similar players (in ABI level) on a optimal way as well, being on a team where we live together with multiples nationalities, origins and minds have their (big) benefits .

Saying that, let's start going through last week's goals list


1- Wake up everyday at 8:30AM
-Finally managed to get my body used to waking up early, and now is not an issue for me anymore, despite the weekend, then I'll give a yellow mark, half acomplished.


2- Exercise 5x
- Due to the holiday, exercised 3x only, which makes me sad about it. Was on a good heater health-wise and let this free days break my routine. One side note for me is: Don't let the holidays or vacations slip you out of your routine and optimal schedule, it will get you down and if you get out of it for a week, you will take a least two to get back into it, so your path will become much tougher and stressfull.


3- Dedicate at least 7 hours to study (Coaching hours + alone studying)
- Concluded! Really happy of getting back to the habit of studying in a powerful way. Me and some guys who are playing around the same buy in level on Detox created a side group, where we have daily hand discussions and analysis, not to mention our bi-weekly call to study a variety of game areas, really amazing and I am trully happy with that.


4- Play at least 100 MTTs.
-Accomplished. Since October 29th I have 140 MTTs!


5- Start the new habit of documenting my buy-ins and cashes to have control over my grind and profits
-Optimally accomplished. Created an organized google spreadsheet and everything is being updated and organized everyday.


6- Start the new habit of rating my game (based on optimal stats and principally mindset)*, and keep it on average 4.
-Here, I'll give a yellow. I've been clearly more present during my grind and playing with higher quality, but didn't manage to note and trully analize my game after my grind.

Really happy with my performance so far, and aiming higher and higher. I never want to base my goals on results, but happily they are coming back slowly and hopefully they will keep coming. All I wanna do is my best, play my A game, be present and consistent at the tables, and let the poker gods do the rest, without worrying that much.

Cheers!

Now, let's not drop the ball, keep going with the goals! Another thing to add, at the end of four weeks I'll post my sharkscope player group´ to see how this new habit impacted my results.

WEEK 2 (09/11/2021 - 16/11/2021)

1- Wake up everyday at 8:30AM
2- Exercise 5x

I will maintain those two goals since they are the ones that by far gives me the biggest boost on my daily routine.


3- Dedicate at least 10 hours to study (every kind)

Regained the will to study, solve spots and engaging discussion, so why won't raise the time doing this? Lets go!


4- Play at least 100 MTTs.

5- Start the new habit of documenting and rating my game (based on optimal stats and principally mindset)*, and keep it on average 4.

Since I just did something thought-wise, will start documenting it, which gives me more clarity and material to post here also.


I think that's it. I'll comeback on thursday for updates and to talk a bit more about how I am doing, my results, my team, etcetera.

Cheers and good luck at the tables!

Midweek 2 att

Hello players! How are you doing?

Here, everything is going well. I'm feeling on a crescent in terms of my game, evolution and routine. Managing to grind really well and focused for a long time, studying a lot (especially ICM spots that I were struggling with) and managed to start my new habit of documenting my rates and my mindset. Feeling pretty well!

In terms of results, nothing that expressive, but I've been making final tables this week, at least one per day . Here are a quick recap from my results of this week so far, hopefully they will keep coming and increasing. The ball is close to the goal, soon it will enter.


This was from wednesday, pretty happy with the result, since I got to the final table 9/9 and managed to ladder until 4th place with a <15bb stack most of the time.


This 4th place was pretty good as well, table fulled with annoying regs and I've managed to get a great result, despite losing some key hands on the FT.

That's it guys, will comeback on tuesday for my week conclusion!
Cheers and good luck at the tables!!

Hey poker world!

Everything is going well and on the line, and it happened that, on this sunday, I've achieved my life's second biggest score! Really happy about that. I've always had a tough time on trying to get more peaceful saturdays of not going out and drinking and sleeping late, since mostly all od my friends are non-poker related and for sure my weekly goals helped me with that. I've had a nice and quiet saturday with my girlfriend, which leaded to a powerful sunday. Woke up early, exercised and felt energized throughout all my 13h grind, and then I've won the literally last tourney that I've registered on the day, feelling really blessed and grateful!!



It happens that, following my schedule and my plan is working really good for me, and I am seeing myself in a really great place again.

And now, let's go for the week conclusion.


1- Wake up everyday at 8:30AM

Done! My new grinding schedule is helping me to sleep well and more organized. I wake up at 8:30 AM and start grinding at 9:30, which is a thing that makes me jump out of bed in a more excited way, and I concluded it very well!

2- Exercise 5 times

Optimally done! Not to mention gym and stuff, I've joined a group of old friends who love the same sport as I do (Beach-soccervolley), pretty nice one and I am playing it 3-4x a week! This is making me much more active phisically.

3-Dedicate at least 10 hours to study (every kind)

YUP! Finally learned how to use the HRC and spent hours and hours running sims and docummenting it with hands that I've saved from deep runs. This is a very pleasant way to study and It's really entertaining for me, not to mention the coaching sessions and stuff with my teammates. Really happy for that.

4- Play at least 100 MTTs.

Done! But not the exact way I wanted. Only 101 MTTs seems a really tiny number for me. Accomplished this one, but not happy. Will raise this number for the next week.

5- Start the new habit of documenting and rating my game (based on optimal stats and principally mindset)*, and keep it on average 4

Despite my game quality and mindset are much higher now, I didn't manage to start this new habit. This might be due to not having a p´roper cooldown routine, and by the end of the grind I just want to get out of the computer or play games like CS:GO without even breathing. Don't like much the sound of this and will try to implementate a cooldown routine for next weeks.

This was this week conclusion, feeling pretty happy and, step by step, I am coming back up with my mindset and my game technique.

Let's go for week 3 now!

WEEK 3 (16/11/2021 - 23/11/2021)

1- Wake up everyday at 8:30AM
2- Exercise 5x

Again, will keep those two for obvious reasons. They have the biggest influence on my health and life quality, so I will keep them here until those to goals become solid habits.

3- Dedicate at least 10 hours to study (every kind)

Another one that I will keep here. Helping myself a lot on gaining clarity in a lot of areas of the game, which remains fresh in my head, when I have a solid study habit, so I can execute my best in all spots.

4- Play at least 140 MTTs.

Raised this one. 100 MTTs seems a pretty low number for me and I want to increase it.

5- Cooldown routine.

Will change it and "simplify" a bit the last #5 goal, in order to get there with time. Want to build a cooldown routine wich consists in running at least one hand on HRC/ICMizer and writing thoughts that I've had during grind and after it, in order to gain even more control over my game and mindset.

6- Pre-grind intentions.

What is this? I think that I've never mentioned in here, but during series, I always have a notepad in which I write all my daily grind intentions for this day. This is a really useful habit for me, and I don't really know why I implement it only during series. Will do it this week and share the document in here.


Let's go guys, let's be consistent and let's crush the tables!!!!! Cheers, best of luck!!!

Hello people!!

Nothing really interesting result-wise this week. But everything about my routine seeming really amazing for me, not letting the ball drop and keeping up with all my goals so far. This is leading me to a great place in my game.

One thing that I would like to comment that it's making me struggle a bit is about my time to start my grind. With the new Europe time and the 1 hour+ start of tourneys on stars and PP, my grind became a little messy and I am trying to fix this up. Optimally, for me, the best time to start grind is 11:30am UTC, but now there is a big gap between the earlier GG tournaments and the peak tourneys, which makes me a bit confused and create a negative aura during my grind, and I'm trying to fix this by keeping the same my starting time and extending a bit to reg more tournaments (which is reasonable and I think it can be fine for me). When I start my grind early I feel way more enrgized and manage to register and play consciously throughout all my grind.

Now, let's conclude our week!

1- Wake up everyday at 8:30AM

2- Exercise 5x

Done! Pretty happy with managing to be consistent in those areas which I always struggled at.


3- Dedicate at least 10 hours to study (every kind)

Done as well! Despite group reviews and coaching sessions I'm spending a lot of time on HRC now. Learned how to use it and I am loving it. Always struggled with some pre-flop decisions in ICM and PKO situations, and by solving them I am gaining much clarity in-game


4- Play at least 140 MTTs.

Played exactly 139 MTTs this week. Sick getting one less the goal, but since I didn't reach it, is a red!


5- Cooldown routine.

The HRC stuff is working really well for me and managed to do it everyday, solved more than 10 hands in this time and will not stop with that habit. About the daily grind resume, did it one day and didn't like very much, so never managed to accomplish it fully. Yellow.


6- Pre-grind intentions.

Never managed to do so. It might be because I am really strict to my starting time and never manage to do my morning routine to start with a lot of time my grind, so I never got time to write my intentions.

This was our week guys. For next days, will not stick to this model of weekly goals anymore, and will write a daily journal here, which i think it is more interesting and engaging for everyone.

Saying that, se you tomorrow guys!!! Cheers!

Journaling day 1 24/11/2021

Hey guys!

Today was a great day overall in terms of routine and my strict optimal habits. Woke up early, had a little walk, had a good breakfast and started my grind feeling really good.

Now, about the grind: wasn't a great day. Started well, clear-minded and stuff but things weren't going right during the early and mid-stages and I felt a drop in my mindset, TBH I think I am having a problem with it in terms of accepting variance and accepting losing pots and will set a meeting with the mindcoach from Detox, Nick Howard, who is an amazing guy and a insanely good profesional. At some point during my day I was down $1.8k, which is a lot but hapily this didn't affect me during my play that much.

After 7 hours of registering, I managed to get kinda deep in some tourneys and got some ITMs which saved my losses a bit. Another thing to mention is that I've commited an ugly mistake on the F2T of GG masters daily which made me pretty upset, so I got up from my computer, ran str8 to the gym and only after it I am writing this blog and ran my daily HRC sims, and this for sure was an amazing choice. If I stayed at home, got up from my computer and started to play on my cellphone or layed down in my bed, I wouldn't have made any cooldown routine and my mistake for sure would be pursuing me for a bit. Really happy about that.

Now, I have some great news: During this morning I decided that I'm going to play the Brazilian Series of Poker!! This will be my first big live event and I am really excited about it.

I will travel from my city to São Paulo by saturday morning, getting there by the end of the evening to see the event and hang out a bit with some friends. Some teammates from Poker Detox are going as well, so fur sure it will be an amazing experience! On sunday I will grind online from there, and will play the main event from BSOP on monday. It is a $670 buy in with a $1.3kk GTD, I am even feeling anxious to go, haha.
I will travel from my city to São Paulo by saturday morning, getting there by the end of the evening to see the event and hang out a bit with some friends. Some teammates from Poker Detox are going as well, so fur sure it will be an amazing experience! On sunday I will grind online from there, and will play the main event from BSOP on monday. It is a $670 buy in with a $1.3kk GTD, I am even feeling anxious to go, haha. Detox let me sold my action to outside people, so I offered to my friends from school (who doesn't know anything of poker) and they all bought it in minutes!! This made me fell happy a lot and even more excited to play this event.

For sure when I get there will take a lot of pics, I can see myself like a kid in disneyland for the first time when I manage to get there.

First day of journaling concluded guys! Cheers, CYA!

Journaling day 2 and 3 (25 & 26/11)

Hey everyone!

On the last two days there were nothing really interesting. On thursday, after coaching and quick study session It was my sister's high school grad celebration so I took the rest of the day off to hang out with my family.

On friday I had a pretty good grinding day, made my optimal routine and played the sport that I love (beach footvolley) by morning and grinded pretty well, with a good volume and great presence throughout all my grind. Despite that, didn't had any great deep runs, but nevermind, results doesn't matter on the short run.

Today my journey on trying to be a brazilian poker champ begins! Will travel by night to São Paulo, getting there by sunday morning. Since I will travel on a bed-bus, will have my sleep there and get to SP well rest, and will do a great warmup in "Ibirapuera's Park", which is a really cool, green & enjoyable park, before sunday grind. On monday we will, in fact, begin our jorney! You can wait for a big amount of pics in here!!!

Cheers!

Hey guys!!

Long time since my last post, right? Sorry about that, live events are such a marathon and I didn't had time to post, rest, study or nothing, was only playing and playing and playing, I was only able to rest completely by last night, haha.

Despite the exhausting week on São Paulo for BSOP millions, it was by far the most enjoyable experience I've ever had in poker. I played 3 tourneys, highlight to the Main Event, which had 4115 entries, the biggest in history of Brazil! (Perhaps latin america as well). This total entries generated a prizepool of ~11M BRL (~2M USD), and I managed to get deep into it, finished 83º, busted on the last hands to make day 4 on a 140bb all in pre pot.

Despite the frustrating end, I had a really great time, played my best poker ever, talked to a lot of people and, the most important, had fun! I've managed to maitain my stack throughout all days on ~50bigs, didn't went all in pre before the busto hand and played really, really nice, I just can't remember any mistake throughout 3 days of play.


That's me playing during day 3. I can identify the happiness on my face behind the mask xD


Look at this hall, it's just AMAZING! Have never seen such an great structure in terms of organization, punctuality and stuff.


Now, a picture of it fully crowded.

I just can't describe how I felt playing on this stage. It was the closest to a dream becoming reality that I've witnessed, since I had the will to play on this huge live events since I started playing and watching poker. Getting deep on Brazil's biggest event it's also an amazing sensation. When I was on the deep run, I could look around and see lots of media guys around the tables, taking hand notes, filming stuff and taking pictures, I was feeling a superstar. Not to mention that, outside of the playing limits, there were loads of people just standing and watching everyone play. Another thing that it's very pleasing to me (for sure to every poker player) is: Chips castles. OMFG I managed to build castles on BSOP Millions Main event and this was a pretty unreal sensation.


This is my biggest castle from the tournament in terms of chip volume (look how beautiful it is, OMG)

I just can't resume optimally what was the experience there, but I think I did my best in this post. Still have a lot to talk about this event and the consequencies it brought to me, poker and mindset-wise.

Cheers!

That looks like an amazing event and experience congratulations on the deep run.