The sparks are me bleeding 2/5 buy ins 🫠

you went broke playing 2/5 good game ..
post some hands x)

Ah, havent played anything higher than .25/.5 recently. The 2/5 is from when I went broke the first time

a lot of days it feels like i'm the anvil

Busted the roll completely, got enticed to bum hunt a 100 vpip 95 pot 95 3bet whale at .5/1. Got crushed by him obviously. Time to focus on other stuff until I get ~10k together to start grinding 1/2 again. The .25/.50 games feel unplayable. Not that they are difficult to beat, but more in the sense that I don't see how somebody could beat the games for enough to make it worth while.

Kind of exhausted and depressed, so here's one hand (the biggest hand) from today.



Gonna hop into the magic streets for a couple weeks and apply for staking, will update with rough bankroll updates.

Basically $0/$10k.

Just extremely frustrating to be set back to practically zero (not that I wasn't at zero basically before today), after making so much progress towards my goals.

i'm really sorry to hear that dude. i've enjoyed reading the story of your poker journey. from here, it's only over if you want it to be and it sounds like you've got plenty ambition left in the tank to keep it going. if you want to continue, and you want things to be different in the next go around, you have to be brutally honest with yourself about how you ended up here.

it'll probably be hard to register this right now, so i encourage you to read this in a few days or weeks once the wounds are healed. it's the same advice one of my poker coaches gave me a long time ago when i was a little bit older than you. honestly it's probably one of the single most important pieces of poker advice i ever received.

you suck at poker. you're not nearly as good as you think you are. you've got lots of technical leaks within the actual game itself, and lots of emotional, discipline, and tilt management leaks as well. right now, you don't have the skills, tools, or the systems in place to succeed at this game


it stings. it hurts. it makes you mad. it makes you sad. feel those emotions. but it's the truth. i don't say this to tear you down, or to make you feel worse than you already do. i say this because now more than ever it's important to come to terms with this reality. this is an opportunity for growth, but you have to be honest with yourself about where you are right now, what comes next, and what's in your control to make it different than the times that came before. if you can accept this reality and come up with an actionable plan to change it, then you'll be well on your way to where you want to go.

most people can't come close to admitting this is their reality, much less actually accepting it, and then doing something about it. coincidentally (or not) most people will never be successful at poker. i'm convinced it's the first step to actually becoming good at this crazy ****ing game.

Thanks elephant! That is good advice for sure. Right now for me, although my technical game "sucks", depending on who you compare it to, I'm confident I can beat midstakes online. This isn't just a feeling, this is backed by ~150k hands (small sample I guess) The issue for me is the emotional, discipline, and tilt management leaks.

Fwiw, this is my years graph to date, including all hands from pokerninjas, to the current downswing.



In addition, I am up ~12k this year from playing 1/2 and 1/3 live, over a small sample of ~120 hours.

The frustration for me comes from feeling like despite finally beating the games, still being unable to make financial progress in my life.

Because 1.5 years ago, I wasn't beating the games. Didn't understand ****, was very new, had no clue what I was supposed to be doing etc, and was basically degenning away money.

Now that I can actually beat the games and have made decent money from poker, I expected it to be smooth sailing. Unfortunately, I was wrong! Have always had an extremely tough time holding onto money (even before I gambled / played poker), will need to change that if I want to find long term success in anything, not just poker.

Think rake kills the game at the first place. x) also you would made it on your own es mentioned, by killing the micros. Micros are actually hard to beat.

Care to post the full graph with EV? Curious to see how you ran during that stretch

Yeah for sure! My main point I wanted to communicate with the green line graph is how much raw money I actually burned through. Ran extremely hot with pokerninjas! And medium cold on my own.



Was talking to some people in discord, I believe that some adjustments on early streets (preflop opening more KKxx and fewer low rundowns, flop folding to cbet too much, turn barreling too often etc) have made my river decisions a glorified guessing game with some fundamentals and exploit. Which might not be a bad thing, but I feel like if I'm going to improve significantly, I'll need to play the "correct" way, instead of what I roughly think is highest EV in a specific pool.

Specifically I'm ending up on rivers too weak, and can't generate enough aggression, even though I can identify thin value and bluff candidates.

We are kinda in the same boat. Im up over 50k this year but basically have no bankroll atm, due to life expenses.

Crushing the game, but can't really play, wtf. Too much money on smoking things maybe

Also have to learn fundamentals better, as we have just been mainly max exploit vs a soft pool, but just playing a guessing game with the better players who are playing closer to GTO.

Damn it, do we have to get better at life to succeed long term at poker?

I guess that would be win/win if we could pull it off.

What is the plan for after poker?

Yep, crushing life means crushing poker I guess

After poker? I want to work in the life sciences field. Specifically something like synthetic biology. But maybe also during poker

Back in the mix!

Turned some of my magic winnings into bankroll.

Grinding the $400USD out of the pokerstars monthly rakeback thing, then going to re-evaluate.



First day back

Was a little rusty, making medium sized mistakes throughout the day.

Thankful for some running hot

One thing I’m doing differently this time is focusing on if I’m feeling impatient or not. Gf said I should be more patient in regards to poker, and not try to force the results. I agree with her!

If you have a girlfriend who accepts you playing Poker, and understands it is the long game.. YOU ALREADY ****ING WON!!!



Even if you are a total loser at poker, if you have a cool girlfriend who accepts that.. YOU.. WON.. HUGE.

I mean.. what's it all for?

Yeah, I am grateful for her

you play with short br thats bad i think, i allways lose when i do so ...

Yes, not playing short BR rn should be good as long as I don’t start moving up too quickly!

You won like 10k at magic, stay at magic x)) )

Finished off the $200 rakeback challenge, and withdrew from stars. Going to grind the soft sites. IDK if it's just me running badly, but 50PLO has felt harder than 100, 200 and 500 PLO and I'm not exaggerating. I suspect there are widespread bot rings primarily operating at the 50PL level. At first I assumed I was just running bad / not having good thoughts, but apparently historically the bot rings operate at the $50 stake the most. Seriously considering either stacking roll until I can play 100, or grinding 25s.

Total graph of 50PLO across sites



PLO25 Graph



PLO100+ Graph



I'm well aware I've had losing streaks at 100+ longer than my 50 graph... Something just feels off to me though. Have seen a lot of threads recently on widespread botting, idk man...

Deposited again, got crushed again... Idk why but partypoker dropped a ton of hands. I'm down way more than this at PLO25 today.

Down around 10 buy ins.



Pretty unfortunate.





Results from the last couple weeks.

Running 20BI below EV ****ing sucks!

I am going to write to PokerNinjas I think, commit for a full year, and grind the app games again. I don't know what is wrong with my approach, but I need guidance and support I think.

Despite this horrific run, I'm still confident in my game, I'm confident in my game selection, and I'm ready to battle.

Bad news

- dropped 4 buy ins at 0.01/0.02 zoom today. (Somehow? I thought these stakes were supposed to be soft!)

Good news

-was filming a thought processes video to send to my backer! Starting at stakes 0.25/0.5 to 0.5/1 tomorrow, on app games again. Different backer, not PokerNinjas.

Excited to focus on the process again, and not be as stressed about money.

Fwiw, the night before I was frustrated and in a dark place. That night all I could think about is poker, and how much will I need to sacrifice to reach the top? Am I chasing something that is no longer achievable?

In that moment, I was willing to drop out of school, move somewhere cheap and grind. All to achieve my dreams.

I woke up in the morning with two DMs regarding staking.

I don’t really buy into the whole manifestation type thing, however this is
a happy coincidence

tables at PLO50 at PS recently are very tough. PLO100 too. I guess one of reasons is that games higher then that dont even run really so people that would usually play 100 or 200 have to drop down

Yeah I guess that could make sense, and tables end up with 50s regs and 200regs that think they can crush the 50s regs or something

Any news, how is your journey going?