First of all @AspiringPlay thanks for such a beautiful message. What I can say is that a large part of my evolution in the last month, month and a half, has been in terms of mental health. I'm not talking about meditating, cold showers or breathing exercises.
I'm talking about being good with myself, being confident that I have the skills to beat 50NL. In fact, I think that the 3 most essential things to go from 2NL to 50NL are:

• Having a simplified and solid strategy;
• Mental health;
• Physical health.

Believe me, these are the 3 most important pillars in poker and I don't believe anyone can reach/beat the high stakes in the long run without one of them.
If you add to those 3 things someone who can guide and coach you [if anyone is interested add me on Discord: Confucius#8197 ] you are set to crush almost every stake.
I don't want to go on too long on this but after all this time I'm sure that creating simple methods and being physically and mentally prepared is much more important than running sims in PioSolver or reviewing sessions with gtowizard.

As for the future, I think I'll create a Discord channel and mentor 5 players and make sure everyone achieves their goals and only then consider adding more players. What do you guys think of this idea?

sheesh just read the whole thing. amazing and inspiring. I think a discord with 5 players would be a great idea, I'm in

Thank you @Stixxem2!! If you are really interested add me on Discord.

Thanks for the Letter !!! I will join up if I manage to find my endurance. My diet, exercise routine, psychological fitness is out of whack lately and my poker has suffered from break even to -EV -Profit. Little spurts of success till I run out of Juice... It's odd I go through my Poker Graphs I see the +14-16 BBs per 100 and then the sink when the energy level goes down...it's directly correlated. This man certainly knows his poker.

Hey guys,

To finish my 25NL journey I decided to show you my results. Right now I'm playing only 50NL but after post about moving up to 50NL I played a couple of sessions of 25NL.

140 000 hands played, almost 150 buy-ins made and a pretty good winrate. Thank you for all your support, I hope to continue to bring good results to motivate you guys and show that it is possible.

very nice journey.
congratulations

Rocket Ship Chart!

First big session on 50NL. Ended up +400$ (+7.5 buy-ins)!!

Every time I see this thread I'm reminded that anyone who plays ZOOM as their main format is either a recreational, an idiot, or both. Well done OP.

Laziness.
Can´t weigh pros and cons accurately.
Self delusion.
Irrational.
...

E.g.: The person is actually good enough to beat zoom, and he thinks his hourly will be better with the extra volume.

He doesn´t consider variance implications (lower winrate, likely bigger SD format etc), or consider but doesn´t give the proper weight it deserves. Even if he considers, he doesn´t see how it impacts BRM. Or he sees all that but still goes aggro BRM bc it´s better to be broke than a nit . Etc etc etc

I mean, everytime you see this guy bragging a nice session it makes you think you know more than other people about what’s best for them? Kinda weird to me but ok

Hey guys. First of all I would love for all my sessions to be like this, however that is not the reality. I post these sessions because I'm a person who likes to keep the best moments of each stake and this was one of the best sessions ever (in terms of money) that I've ever had.

However this doesn't mean that ddn was wrong in what he said (perhaps it was in the way he said it). It's already been proven, at least for MICRO and LOW stakes, that it's much easier to develop and have good results playing regular tables vs zoom tables. But I also think there are cases/people where playing these zoom tables is better, but that will always be the exception and not the rule.

For all the people who still have doubts, I'll leave here a text from a high stakes player who wrote about the subject.

You Should Probably Stop Playing Zoom

(buzzing in on your wonderful stream and journey, I also read recently that your conservative BR is actually pretty smart... Having me re-evaluate anything I do in the future)

Zoom/Blitz/Rush and Cash I heard from Jeremiah Williams that gamblers will play more hands, gives an opportunity for fish to fold more often cause they can just hit fast fold. There is more money in Regular Tables. Some other Pro said full ring is better as you save more BBs before getting a hand instead of 6max. It is a little slow and boring but you can open 10-15 tables on some sites.(multiple sites and use a table manager) So do you need Blitz? Table Selection is impossible...

I also heard from others and seen them do just fine in Blitz by racking up LeaderBoards, Rakeback(on sites that offer that). I have had a lot of fun with Blitz but I'd say it's really tough. You may have to be a lot more nitty and trained in it. Seems your BBs per 100 will definitely go down.

If your Coach is trained in Ring or telling you to play Ring you should go that route. I watched Weazel who just won what a Triton Event unable to do a BankRoll Builder in 10 Nlz on ACR. He tried and quit! And then never tried again. That's how much of a challenge it was. I've seen other pros just get the 19k hands per week to get the $50 leaderboard/rakeback and move onto 25 NL regular.

I had a lot of fun in Jackpots and a lot of fun in Blitz/Fast poker. They aren't as profitable for me...

Yeah well he didn’t say “you will make easier dollar on reg compared to zoom” which is known to be true by almost anyone for years.
He said you play zoom you idiot, which sound very dogmatic and makes him sound kinda dumb tbh, as if $/hour was the one and only rule in the world

Good god you are stupid. Thought you were a troll but you are just plain and simple stupid lol.

Seems my ZOOM post upset a lot of people, but it's simply the truth. First off, allow me to clarify the following:

That's incorrect. I said if you play ZOOM as your main game you are either an idiot, a recreational, or both. If you're simply a recreational who enjoys the convenience and fast-paced action, that's perfectly fine. You can stop reading here. If you're aspiring to be a professional, however, then you need to realize that the primary goal of poker is to make money.

If making money from poker is your goal, then playing ZOOM is extremely stupid. Do you think poker sites systematically try to discourage regs from playing reg tables (via table caps, active waiting lists, removal of heads-up tables, less rakeback, etc.) and encourage them to play ZOOM because it's beneficial to the regs? Of course not. They do so because it's beneficial to the site. Lower win-rates = deposited money stays on the site longer = the site rakes more. This is fundamentally how the poker ecosystem works, and if you still don't understand this in 2023 then you're just a lost cause.

Now take a look at OP's winrate. He's winning 9bb/100 at ~25NL reg tables pre-rakeback over 140k hands. I challenge anyone to achieve a similar winrate over a similar sample at 10NL ZOOM or higher. Assuming rake is roughly 8bb/100, this would require beating the pool for 17bb/100, despite not always having a known rec at the table and recs playing better due to simply being able to avoid boredom by fast folding. It's certainly not impossible, but anyone who can achieve this has the skillset to beat much higher stakes and would be wasting his time playing 10z anyways.

Since I don't think anyone can dispute that winrates at reg tables will be greater than at ZOOM, let's move on to the next point: variance and risk of ruin. With a lower winrate, variance increases. It's easy for regs to pretend they're an extremely disciplined mental game mastermind. Yet, when those same regs hit a 50 buyin downswing because they're grinding out ZOOM with a 1.5bb/100 winrate, they either go on monkey tilt and bust their roll or get discouraged and quit playing. Not to mention that with larger swings, a significantly larger bankroll is required to move up in stakes, thus stunting your growth. Risk of ruin increases exponentially as winrate decreases. This is all just basic math and no amount of being outraged or acting offended is going to change it.

One common argument in favor of ZOOM is "well I get dealt more hands/hour so I get more practice towards becoming a better player!". This is a pure cope. There are ininiftely better ways to improve at the game than "practicing" against a bunch of low stakes nitregs. The truth is, you're too lazy and undisciplined to search for and play on reg tables, and enjoy the convenience and fast-paced action ZOOM offers. When you think about it, you're not too far removed from slots players who enjoy the aesthetically pleasing graphics, the exciting sounds, and the convenience of just being able to turn "fast mode" and autospin on. You're either a recreational, or an idiot.

Finally, when confronted with all the above, the ZOOM player will commonly retort with "w-well if I grind 4 tables for 16 hours a day I get a lot of rakeback and leaderboard money!". Ok, that's great. What do you do when the sites lower the leaderboards payouts or remove them entirely? What do you do when the country you live in makes it illegal for sites to give you rakeback? Will you just go and clean toilets for a living instead? Come to think of it, you should probably just go do that now since it's a more dignified existence than being a low-stakes ZOOM rakeback grinder.

There are some players who attained high winrates at NL200/NL500 zoom

Onkleb (from the RIO forum):

Exception, not the rule definitely. The guy would very likely accomplish even higher than that at normal I presume. In one of his threads, he posted a study he did of how much he was winning when there were no recs at the table, 1, 2 etc, and the difference was quite drastic, like close to be to 4, then to 10 with 2, then to insane wr's.

If his gameplan was to destroy recreationals (above paragraph plus his own words in other posts), logic tells he would be winning at an insane clip at normal tables.

He also wasn´t playing even close to GTO/solver like (his own words), which is also another common bias the zoomers here have

Btw, I had strong suspicions OP was him or another big crusher, from the start. This "I´m an aspiring poker player", then crush everything in uNL then coach almost from the start never got me

Confucius, are you finnish? Does your stars nickname begin with an S?




*Obv j/k, I´m sure I don´t need to explain why.

This does more to prove my point that refute it. I already said it's certainly possible to accomplish a 9+bb/100 winrate in 10NL+ ZOOM, but anyone who is capable of doing so is an incredibly talented player who would also crush reg tables and higher stakes. The particular guy you posted is in the .01% of poker pros and is likely the best player in his pool. The same can't be said for your average small stakes ZOOM reg.

Reads my post, can't refute anything that was said, proceeds to block and post that screenshot to pretend like he didn't read it. Very sad.

No worries @FazendeiroBH. I'm not finnish and my nickname doesn't begin with an S ahah!!
And no, and unfortunately I wasn't a big crusher and I don't think I am yet. I was just a mtt REG who no longer had time to play tournaments and I was very lucky to have friends (that were already pros) I could ask for help.

About my coaching, I can easily explain but I know that many people don't understand. When I was playing 2NL, 5NL and 10NL I looked almost every day for coaching and the prices were ridiculous for Micro stakes players (around 50$ - 100$ or more). I also didn't know anyone in poker that play the same stake or similar stake that I was playing and most of my initial students now study with me.

Exactly explaining something already agreed on on previous post.
Good job man and good luck in life