Hello Everyone

With this thread I want to share my hopefully successful poker journey.
I try to be totally transparent about how things are going, how I feel and what my motivations are.
Also, I look for input from you guys and discussions about poker because I don't have anyone to discuss poker related topics with.

Some stuff about me:

I quit a well payed day job at the end of last year because I run out of motivation and started to feel burned out.
During the first month of inspiration taking I started playing online poker again for fun (did so for fun from time to time since I was 18).
I quickly realized how much fun I was having playing the game and thought about the possibility to give it a fair shot since I now have the time to study the game and put in the volume doing it full time.

So I decided to do that, bought an online subscription for study material and started digging through, while also grinding daily.
After 3 months full time studying and playing and things really not going my way I felt lost and hired a coach for an objective opinion on my game and my luck.
It turned out that I was a lot worse than I thought, that indeed I was not lucky and that my competition is a lot better than I expected.

Now 3 months later (6 months into poker), getting coached for about 10 hours a month, studying wider including different sites with study material, I see clear progress and the chance to actually make it.
I also did a lot of PT4 stats studies, fixed many holes in my game and kicked out zoom games because I currently can't beat that over any limit I tried (50NL - 500NL).
At the end of May things still are not going my way though and I consistently have red months online + live games (live mostly because of variance (If you want to know more, ask!)).

While I saw the progress in my game I did not see any progress considering my bankroll and I started looking for mental help books because I had a hard time handling several mental issues.
I found the book "The mental game of poker" and studied it during vacation. I must say I helps a lot so far.

As a next step I tried to make things more structured, playing only one limit for a month, having clear short and long term goals and measuring my performance in terms of how I play and not the monetary result.

Since June (so since 9 days now) I play 100NL non zoom tables only and have the following goals:

Short term:
For June, 50k hands at NL100, being up 1k (rakeback included) at the end of June, 5h hand review in PT4, session rating above 7 in average (1-10), play 3 days the leaderboard into top 5, deep review of interesting hands for 10h, study 20h

Mid term:
End of July, beating 100NL non zoom consistently
End of 2023, beating 200NL non zoom consistently

Long term:
End of 2024, beating 500NL non zoom consistently
End of 2025, playing 5kNL somewhat regularly


Maybe important:

I still have enough money to stay unemployed for quiet a while and would stop playing poker once I see that I am not making any progress anymore and that I still can't pay my bills from it.
So I accept that I will make less or even no money for a long starting period while it has to be worth it somewhen since I plan to pay my bills with poker in the future.
But for now I love the game, wake up motivated every morning, like the competitive environment and appreciated the freedom of self-employment.


I try to post an update weekly, including graphs and how I feel about it.


Thanks to all of you who support me on this journey.

Greetings
tryagain

Week 1:

For traffic reasons I play mainly on GG and therefore mainly post the results from that site since they are the most relevant.
First screenshot shows my June NL100 graph.
There are 7bb takeout on average for rake.






My average session rating is 7-8 while there are none below 6 or above 9, so I am very happy with my game and I did not tilt.
I rated the variance input to be around -2 in average (from -5 for very unlucky to 5 for very lucky).
Only 3 sessions show 0 or 1 in variance input, all others are negative.

I also check PT4 stats and I have a lower RFI than usual while my cbet turn and river success is lower than usual.
So apart from the fact that I run 12 buy-ins below EV in all-in situations, I feel like I had less good starting hands than usual and my opponents seemed to be more often on the top of their range than usual.

All together it seems to be a very unlucky start for this month.
I am happy with my game though, did not tilt and therefore could put in the volume.
I could study a bit more and try to do this for the upcoming week.

PS. I really don't like my red line. The red line was a focus point for this week but I still could not flatten it that much. I will try even harder!

I would say that if you've been studying full time for 3 full months, playing on top of that to reinforce knowledge, and have had a one-on-one coach for at least some of that time, and you are still losing 1.7evbb/100 @ 100nl, that some thing or somethings are going wrong in either the learning or the implementation.

I'm curious:

- What do you like about poker? What drives you the most in the game?

- How much time do you spend at the tables on average every week?

- What is your schedule during an average week at the table? (so, do you play 4 reg speed tables for 2x4 hour sessions? 2 reg speed tables? 8?)

- What does your off the table study look like? What did you study yesterday?

- Are you reviewing your hands/database to make sure you are doing the fundamentals correctly? Opening the right hands from the right positions? Using the correct sizing?

Hello Mate

Thanks for your response.
It's a fair assumption.


I considered this first week of playing to be a downswing and expect to be winning about 2-3bb/100 but yet have to prove that.
You most likely will know but the graph shows the results including rake.
So 1.7bb/100 losing means winning 5.3bb/100 but paying 7bb/100 in rake (since GG takes about 7bb/100 for NL100 regular speed).

Now to your questions:

- I love the competitiveness, the fact that you can build a strategy to beat the strategy of your opponent. Now after these months I also love the depth of poker since I was not aware that it's such a complicated game. Since I come from a math based background I also like the statistical aspect and the logical one.

- For June I played 7 hours daily (once 10h to play the leaderboard) and studied about 1-2h per day. So for 7 days this makes 49h of online play a week. I try to plan off days in the future but did not so far for this month.
Before that I played about 3-9h online a day and 2-3 times a week live for about 5-6h and studied about 3h a day.

- I usually play 1-2 hour blocks. On GG I play the max no of tables, so 9 at a time. Usually it's around 7-8 since I close bad tables and queue.
On stars I play the max amount of tables as well, that would be 4 at a time. All regular speed, I don't play fast fold/zoom anymore since I was losing too consistently for it to be just a downswing.

- Yesterday I was looking at preflop 5bet jam pots to narrow down villains range since I wondered if they ever use A5s as a bluff. It turns out that they don't and basically only shove AA, KK and sometimes AK. I had the feeling that the preflop charts from Upswing are not working and I was implementing them blindly for too long without taking into account what my opponents ranges are.
I studied most of the Upswing basic course considering cash games (about 400 videos from 20-50min), were taking notes, screenshots, making summaries etc.
Currently I also do summarize free content from various youtube coaching channels that play 50-200NL.
So for the first months I was mostly studying concepts and trying to implement them. In retrospect there were many holes in my implementations. (which is to expect since it's a new field for me)
My main topic for the last two weeks is the red line and how to flatten it or even make it positive. So being more aggressive, calling down more close spots and protecting my passive lines.
This week I also take a look at over and underbluffed lines.



- I am reviewing my hands about every week (at least most of the big pots that I lost). I also reviewed my preflop ranges some time ago. Now that you specifically mention it I will do it again this week.
I think I did not adapt enough to the rake structures since the charts are for close to no rake or 500NL on stars which is very very different to 100NL on GG.
So I did adapt the ranges best to my knowledge.


Greetings
tryagain

Week 2:

I mainly played on GG and here are my results since the first post:






I managed to beat the pool for 7.5BB -7BB Rake = 0.5BB (rakeback not included) and think it's more where I see myself than last week.
Still unlucky with the all-ins as I am roughly 4 buy ins under EV, which is in line though.
Again I tried to focus on being more aggressive but my red line does not really show that.
What is your experience with the red line on GG? Also falling for NL100 or can you manage to stabilize it or even pull it upwards?

I did not tilt this week and could pull in the volume which is great. Variance input is still slightly negative between 0 and -1 but in line.

I wanna add my stats from my PT4 reports to give you more insight. Maybe you find something to work on and can tell me, certainly would appreciate that.





It seems that my BB is very weak. Maybe I don't defend enough? My target value is around -35 to -40 BB.
Also MP seems rather low. Fold to much and don't 3 bet enough?




So the overall stats for this month are as follows:





Here we see that the red line looks better for the second week of play. Still dropping hard though.







Any feedback is appreciated.

Greetings
tryagain

Week 3:

Lot of stuff happened this week.
It seems I finally found a way to play more aggressive (since 20th of June) and I can clearly see some improvements looking at my red line.
This makes me optimistic being a winning player moving forward.
I also looked into the database and thought again about my expected winrate.
Now I would say that I was probably a 4-6BB/100 winning player, which means after rake (7BB) still being losing 1-3BB/100.
I think I could improve a lot this week and expect to be more around 6-8BB winning now which results into -1 to 1BB/100 after rake.
Let's see and hope for the best next week.





Results from last week.



Whole month:

Still running below EV, but EV still is not positive.
Looking forward to next week, where we also will calculate net winnings including rakeback etc.

Week 4:

I continued to play more aggressively which seems to be a better approach considering long term results.
Looking at my financial results you cannot see any improvement yet. But 10k hands is also not a big enough sample size to judged yet.
Currently I am optimistic that when I continue to play like this I will be able to share positive results for July. Let's grind and hope.









Monthly Review: June

Now looking at the whole month we see that I was consistently losing the first 50k hands and the last 16k hands it looks more like breakeven.
We can see that the red line looks much better during the last 16k hands which is where I started to play more aggressively and fight for pots.
We can also see this change in the stats WWSF (Won hand when saw flop) and AFq (Aggression factor quotient) which improved a lot.







Weekly progress:
We can see a clear change in my game approach where I actively try to bring up my red line and play more aggressively. It's to expect that my blue line will suffer but I hope that I can improve my red line more than my blue line suffers --> net better results.
One can also see the big difference for the values WWSF and AFq.




Financial results:
My results including rake, I lost 2,775$ which is equivalent to 28 stacks. --> -4.18bb/100
I payed 4856$ in rake which is --> 7.3bb/100.
I ran 1591$ below EV is is about 16 stacks. My EV is --> -1.78b/100
So my EV says that I did beat the pool for 5.52bb/100 but payed 7.3bb/100 in rake and therefore could not make up for the rake.
I got about 2,4k in bonuses (rakeback, leaderboard, flipout etc.) which is about 50% of the rake I payed.

So my net results are -2775$ + 2400$ = -375$.
My net EV results are -1184$ + 2400$ = 1216$.


I played about 146h for the month and basically every day --> 5h a day.
I studied 45h this month which is about 1.5h per day. It's ok but could be better.
I don't play long sessions anymore because I realized that playing 1h and taking a 15 min breaks means that I am much more focused playing.

Hopefully this gives you some insight in my poker journey and maybe is also valuable for some new players to see what to expect.

Greetings
tryagain

New month July 2023

Week 5: (1-7th)

Aggression still was the topic of this week.
I managed to pull it off quiet well. At the end I did not manage to achieve a positive red line --> still a lot of work to do here.






Checking the red line vs a similar sample size from the month before:



Red line was around -2300BB and now is around -200BB --> 2100BB higher
Blue line was around +1300BB and now is around 800BB --> 500BB lower

So overall the results are 2100BB-500BB = 1600BB = 16 stacks better! (all-in variance included here)


I had a great start being up like 9BB/100 after the first 10k hands, then fell into a strong but short lived downswing and am now recovering again.
The picture changed a lot just from the fact that my red line is not tanking that hard anymore --> Seems to be the way to go.

Currently 1.9BB winning which is already a huge improvement compared to last month. Hopefully I can keep this up until the end of this month.



Recap of my goals for June:
50k hands NL100 --> achieved, played 66k hands on GG alone.
Being 1k up rakeback included --> Not achieved. EV results achieved but variance said no. Anyway the true goal was to be up 1k without rakeback which I clearly did not achieve. --> goal for July
5h hand review in PT4 --> achieved with 7h
Session rating above 7 --> achieved
play 3 days leaderboard into top 5 --> not achieved, only managed to get into the top 5 twice. But I also only tried twice and did not feel that well during these days. Less enjoyment and I also realised that I could not play my A game during the whole day grinding this much. So I think I won't take this as a goal for some time.
Deep review of interesting hands for 10h --> achieved, together with my coach
study 20h --> overachieved with 45h





So overall I am very happy with my progress and my work ethic.
The results were very unsatisfying though which was frustrating during the last week and especially doing the monthly summary and the profit calculations.
But that's part of it and also motivates me to push even harder this month.



New goals for July 2023:
- play 70k hands overall on GG (zoom and NL200 regular speed included). NL100 will still be the main volume though
- Study for 30h
- Deep review interesting hands for 10h
- Session rating above 7 in average
- Be net winning before rakeback in NL100
- Start playing 10-25% of NL200 regular and NL50 zoom to get a feeling what the differences are and if there are any


Let's grind and see. ^^


Greetings
Tryagain

As someone who plays full time and has been beating rush NL50/100/200 for all of this year I give you my feedback:

The rush and cash pool is tougher than the reg tables. you should have around a 8-10bb+ edge on reg tables compared to rush so I recommend you crush reg tables or try crush rush and cash. Most likely if you try and play both the same you gonna have weird results and will not adjust correctly..

Alot of the money is from knowing the pool tendencies and adjusting to them.

Just playing GTO won't make you a winner and rush and cash. Most likely you be around -1/2 bb/100 loser (before rake)

Once you played in a pool day in day out for around a month you will start to understand their lines, behavior and when the pool underbluffs or overbluff in spots but don't rely on solvers since I did try solver play and didn't make money or much at rush was losing around 2-3 bb/100. Now I stopped with solvers and I beat the pool for a good vol of hands monthly around 1-3 bb/100 on average.

NL50 rush if you can beat it then try NL100 rush. (NL100 rush is pretty tough and I hate playing that limit for too long per day) NL200 is a nightmare for long periods should just bum hunt and play the best times at that limit... NL200 reg tables are much easier.

Thank you very much for your feedback.
I plan to focus on regular speed tables and agree with you that rush and cash tables are tougher.
Your point that mixing could lead to wrong adjustments is plausible.
I will keep the NL50 Rush and Cash to 10% or lower just to get some feedback and some comparison to regular tables.

When you say "you should have around 8-10bb+ edge", do you ignore the rake in that statement? 8bb vs pool no rake? or just no rakeback? or with rakeback?

I agree that playing GTO on these limits is suboptimal and I don't try to blindly copy the solver.
When you say "Most likely you be around -1/2 bb/100 before rake" you mean I lose 1,2bb vs pool? So then with rake you lose like 6-7bb/100..right?

Many thanks again for your feedback about the rush and cash pools and your experience.
I wonder, why do you play rush and cash when you agree that these pools are harder to beat and regular speed tables?


Greetings

Tryagain

I have comparative stats and lines to the NL50 reg winners/crushers on pokerstars. (over 200k+ hands)

Those which are beating the games for around 8bb/100+ on average.

Virtually all their stats in terms of how much they make per hand as PFR,3bettor,call 3bet,cold call,4bets and so on is nearly identical to mine...

I modelled my play versus the biggest winners on the reg tables at pokerstars and in comparison my win-rate is around 1-2 bb/100 so I assume there is around a 8 bb/100+ edge on reg tables. That's how I derived my assumption there.

The GTO and solved solutions when I tested them versus a 200k hand sample I was a -1/2 bb/100 pre rake (With rake) I am winning barely... So just a break-even winner. This is solving for example all preflop 3bet/4bet/all in scenarios.... Ranges you should call down with on triple barrels and so on.

Around NL50 (Which is the cap) The pool is strongly deviated from GTO. My meaning there is since I have 1M+ hands experience already playing over a year. I can just tell when villian ALWAYS has AA/KK and can fold my TT-QQ easily on turn or river on low boards in 3bet/pot pots.... There are just lines where near enough 90-95% accuracy is correct in terms of where villian just never has a bluff. OFC There are the odd villians which will bluff in spots where the pool never bluffs but just bluff catching the 1-5% of regs which do that isn't where the money is made...

There is tons of spots where I just folded QQ postflop because I know I wasn't good.

Also the NL100 rush pool and NL200 rush pool in terms of pool tendencies and meta are completely different to NL50 and lower.... It is weird but I tell you my observations.

NL25 rush (Alot more people are barreling or run weird bluffs)
NL50 rush (90% of regs are nits, near enough they have the nuts when action happens, you can profit by overfolding and never bluff catching)
NL100 rush (Regs and Fish generally will barrel more often than not with bluffs, BD and so on, so the pool tendency is not same as NL50, I don't really like playing this pool, you get put in alot of tough spots and I don't like jumping up and down from NL50 to NL100 since it takes me time to settle in with what's happening in the pool this month) Please bare in mind the pool game meta always changes monthly so you might sometimes be surprised with aggression or the opposite.

This is why I recommend just sticking to one certain game and crush it and move up accordingly.... When you play the game a long period of time you start to know most of the regs, their tendencies and also if the pool dynamics change e.g. aggression preflop increases or people start to bluff too much in 3bet pots and so on. When you have this confidence level its easier to make adjustments which don't lead to overadjustments or just outliers like the dynamics have changed. A certain limit pool dynamics can change because of a few bad regs or (semi pros) which come for a few weeks.... busto their roll or lose money and have to move down etc...

There is a great deal of myth behind the red line... Although this works better at NL200+ (since people can fold a pair), below it all the big crushers normally have a losing red line.


--> why do you play rush and cash when you agree that these pools are harder to beat and regular speed tables?

I like to think over the hands I play and playing less tables give me times to think over the decisions like what happened preflop, flop, turn and river on big decisions. Less tables the better overall decision you can make in tough spots.... Also ranges are tighter in zoom/rush so you will less often find villian turn up with a hand on the river where you like WTF... how did he get there with that hand....

So all in all, I'm a little lazy and I just prefer to make variance free money than to challenge myself too much to crush or beat players better than me. I prefer to be egoless and accept I am probably not the best player at poker but I just want to be good enough to make money at the stakes I play.

My blog is here: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...takes-1817679/

In 2022 I was a losing rush and cash player over like 600k hands... I was barely breakeven and winner for 200k hands after I started using solvers and start using more GTO lines then this year in 2023 I have been winning the games for a positive winrate pre rake every single month for NL50 and I also did a month at NL100 where I beat it for around 2-3 bb/100 but was stressful for me day in day out since I played against regs alot who always put me in tough spots... So I just prefer to play NL50 where I don't need to think too much.

Maybe I will give NL100 another shot at the end of the year or to be honest I prefer playing PLO sometimes since its softer but again I don't like variance so I think maybe if I move to reg tables I will actually just move to NL1K and bum hunt there if I am playing for profits and then rush and cash NL50 when I want to just make money without thinking too much. I know I need to study also a ton more since there are alot of spots I am unsure of but I am studying some other skills outside poker which I think will also benefit me in terms of personal development.

But yeah if you jump around too much you gonna have weird results. I also did similar I jumped to ACR played the zoom formats there NL50,NL200, played reg tables and so on.... my results was varied I did win some and lose some but when I finally decided ok let me just stick to one format of game and try and beat it is where I saw a much more significant increase in my progress.

You need data and you need to know if some spots when you bluff you should not be bluffing or spots where you should always bluff cos people overfold and without the hands and data its hard to figure out them spots...

Also I been paying for my expenses and living from poker since around Mid July 2022.... So if you want any tips or advice you can just DM me I send you my discord.

I have been making a living from poker full time since start of 2023... There has been also quite a bit of hardships and difficulties but I also will continue with this to the end of 2023 to give me confidence I can keep doing this long term year in year out.

Maybe I am very nitty and conservative but when I can't really afford to go broke in poker I think this is why I have very conservative bank roll management.

Rakeback/Profits/Bad beat jackpots I am around $50k+ in profits for the year.

I can play NL200 easily but again sometimes just handling $1-2k swings for me is a bit too much hence why I prefer to still stick to NL50. The swings at NL100 for me is still a little too much to stomach as well.

So far my biggest downswing stretch has been around -15 buyins and that is also tough enough for me since I am pretty much use to making consistent profits weekly, monthly etc...

Since GTO is supposedly unexploitable, I thought the worst one could do playing GTO was break even before the rake. Why do you think it is a losing strategy?

Hi tryagain,

It's good to see you setting goals for yourself and working hard to achieve them I am kind of in the same boat as you, albeit at lower stakes. I have a few questions, if wouldn't mind helping me out.

1) When you devote time to studying, how much time do you allocate to the following three areas? 1) analyzing your own game and ranges against opponents in general; 2) analyzing specific opponents, trying to copy winning players, and finding exploits against other regs; 3) studying poker theory (reading articles, watching vids etc).

2) Which tools do you find most helpful?

3) Why did you pick $100 NL stakes?

4) When you noticed your opponents were never 5-bet bluffing, how did you adjust?

Thanks.

That’s assuming you play GTO perfectly and not even the best do that.

@nogamenolife

Many thanks again for your insights. They are very interesting.
I took a short look at your journey and surely will take a closer look later.
As I said, I will stay with regular speed tables and only play some R&C for fun when I have only 20 minutes to play or so.
I don't see much reason to queue when I don't have at least 30minutes of playtime.

Greetings

Tryagain

Hey Yeeter

Thanks for your reply.
Sure, we are all family and on the same path, so I like to help if I can.

1) I studied a lot of theory in the beginning (November/December last year and March/April this year) Basically 100% of study time. With it also come preflop ranges.
I work with a coach since March this year and since then my main focus of studying is hand histories, my stats in PT4 vs somewhat ideal stats and since June also pool tendencies.
I now only study very specific theory where I still find relevant leaks in my game.
So far I did not study specific villains or trying to copy anyone. Studying villains comes for me at 500NL+ where the pool gets smaller and bumhunting is not as easy as for NL100 and NL200.


2) I use PT4 a lot. And Pio solver a little bit (will be more in the future though). Equilab to compare ranges as well.

3) I started higher, NL200 up to NL1k since I had no respect for the players there. Well that probably was not the best idea in hindsight. ^^
Living expenses are quiet high where I live and I don't want to play a limit where it's basically impossible to cover my living expenses with winning 3-6bb/100.
NL100 is the lowest limit where this seems possible so I started there, fully aware that lower limits might be easier as a kickoff, but I did not care about that.

4) If my opponent has 100BB and 5 bet shoves, I only call with AA, KK and sometimes AKs. So far I am not disappointed.

Greetings

Tryagain

1. You need beat the rake in GGpoker (including also what they take for BBJ) so both of these factors make alot of things very unprofitable. If you 3bet either GTO or wider you will get killed by the rake in zoom/rush games... The rake is a huge factor in how you play and more rake you play better you should be and also more bb/100 you need to win postflop against everyone.

2. I never really done the science or look and took a deep dive into the maths but unbalanced strategies crush small stakes. The only reason to look at GTO is if you played so unbalanced people can exploit you. However GTO only tells you what line you should take to not be exploited if people deviate too much to try exploit you. It's supposedly if you paly GTO and the villian plays GTO you both be break even but you try plug into GTO such things for example as:

WHAT IF villian never has bluffs, what if villian shoves with just AA as a pure example from early position then if you play GTO versus this opponent you just gonna lose so much money against them by calling it off with KK,AA,AKs but thats just a simple example.

I don't really go much by theory I base my assumptions and play on pool data and real data sets. I think you should watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN7rSWXcZ8s

If you know the pool is playing a specific way then the max ev is to play exploitable versus them but GTO is a good foundation to fall back on if you don't know what line or ranges you should be using in spots.

Week 6: (8th-15th of July)

Caught two downswings this week and it think it's variance because villain just was on top of his range so often.
Additionally I got coolered many times this week, much more often than most other weeks.
I noted a short upswing as well during hand 7'500 and 9'500 where I got looked up often times while having the nuts.

I still try to be smart aggressive and a goal is to bring the red line above the zero line.
While I manage to be more or less break even I can't push it above the zero line.
So this still is an open topic for me.
From next week on I plan to study with pio in an organized way, maybe this will help me.






Again a winning week with 1.14BB/100.

I now add NL200 regular tables and try to split the volume to 75% NL100 and 25% NL200.
Let's see how this goes.


I did not study that much this week. I expect this to be much more next week when starting more seriously with pio.


Greetings

Tryagain

Good luck. Your redline already is not bad which indicates you're not afraid to make higher variance plays which is the way to win against most pools.

Thanks mate, appreciate that.

Week 7 (16th - 23th of July):


Experienced a really bad week that felt like a big downswing. Villain was constantly at the top of his range, so bluffs did not get through and I got it in badly very often.
Especially NL100 was a big pain this week. But these things happen, so I try to brush it off and keep going.
NL200 regular and NL50 RC went okeyish. A bit of bad luck in the all-ins but nothing out of the line.


NL100 results:






NL200 results:







NL50 Rush and Cash results:







Started studying with Pio a bit more.
At the moment it roughly takes me about 1 hour to analyze one hand.
I guess I will become faster over time.


So mentally a brutal week and I once again questioned if I ever will be able to make it.
I try to take one step back and look at the progress that I've made which points into the right direction.
On average I improved about 1k-1.5k a month in expected winnings which is a very good trend. Just started out as a loser so the way is kinda long.
But hopefully in the next 1-3 months I will be able to cover all living expenses with my poker earnings.



Thanks to you for riding along.

Greetings
Tryagain

Week 8 (24th - 31th of July) and monthly recap:

This week went really well in the relevant stakes NL100 and NL200.
NL50 RC was a bit a pain and I think I tilted a bit and stationed too much facing large bets.


NL 100 results:





NL 200 results:






NL 50 RC results:







I started to study new course material and will be busy doing that in August.
Next to it I try to do some solver work and hand reviews as well since it's an integral part of studying and a good feedback loop.



Monthly results:

NL 100:






NL200:





NL50 RC:






So overall:

NL100, Won 1795$, EV is 737$, run above EV about 10.5 stacks.
NL200, Won -67$, EV is 639$, run below EV about 3 stacks.
NL 50 RC, Won -251$, EV is -13$, run below EV about 5 stacks.

Total: Won 1476$, EV is 1374$. Rakeback + Leaderboard + BBJ + Flipout gave 2711$ --> about 4.1k in profits this month.

(Not relevant for tracking: Went playing live twice --> +620$ and played 200 hands NL50 reg --> +130$)




NL100 was about 1bb/100. This is a nice improvement. I think it could still be higher though, so I try to reach 3bb/100 in Aug.
NL200 was about 3.5bb/100. This probably is a bit too high for my current level. I will play more NL200 in August and will take another look after the first two weeks.


Week 1 and 2 were ok, upwards trend that felt a bit like grinding.
Week 3 was really bad and nothing worked. So this was a rough week to grind through. But I believe that putting in the same volume no matter what is the key for me as long as I play solid and thanks to Jarret it seems I manage to do so.
Week 4 was great, most things worked out.

So overall I hope this is a representative month.


Timetable (only productive time is tracked)




Recap goals for July 2023:
- play 70k hands overall on GG (zoom and NL200 regular speed included). NL100 will still be the main volume though Accomplished
- Study for 30h Accomplished
- Deep review interesting hands for 10h I don't think I did that. Probably 5h. --> Not accomplished and takeover to Aug.
- Session rating above 7 in average Accomplished (somewhere between 7 and 8)
- Be net winning before rakeback in NL100 Accomplished
- Start playing 10-25% of NL200 regular and NL50 zoom to get a feeling what the differences are and if there are any Accomplished


New goals for August 2023:
- play 30k hands NL200 (Aug. first two weeks will be NL100 and NL200 50:50)
- Get green over all dates on GG for NL100 and also in EV. Currently about 2000$ in the red and EV is about 1200$ in the red.
- Finish the course I started during the last week of July. About 20h material left --> About 25-30h in study time.
- Session rating above 7 in average
- Deep review of interesting hands for 10h (takeover from July)
- Overall net winning target is about 6k$ for August. (If online alone then great, but also ok if I carry over live results)




Greetings
Tryagain

Week 9 (1st - 7th of August):


I had a bad start into August reporting 5 losing days and only 2 winning days.
I mainly played on GG and only show graphs from there while reporting the rest only within the text.


NL100 results:






Absolute garbage week considering NL100 which reminds me of the third week of July.
Just classical downswing, villain was on top of his range most of the time.
As you can see, I succeed in playing a more aggressive style which increases the variance as side effect.
This hurts when it goes wrong, like this week, but should be more profitable over the long run.

So EV is about -11.5 stacks down.


NL 200 results:





Good start in NL200. Did play a bit less than NL100 which is mainly because I tried to double down on NL100 since there I am in a downswing.
So nothing to complain here, the EV of course is too high and will balance out after playing more hands.
EV is about +4.25 stacks up.

NL50 RC results:





Did not play much here. Neutral start.
EV around 0.


So overall a moderate to bad start, already paid 2k in rake and only get about 20% rakeback (without leaderboard BBJ and flipout) which is about as low as you can get.
Officially I get 50% back but because of the PVI it's only about 20% --> PVI must be around 0.4





I did play 1.6k hands on another platform with various stakes and am down in EV about -1.4k.
Playstyle and everything is about the same, just bad variance at the moment as it seems.


I did study well this week and try to keep things at the same pace (1-3 hours of studying a day).



Greetings
Tryagain

Week 10 (8th - 15th of August):


This week the NL100 downswing continued (although mostly on another platform than GG).
Another week with -EV and of course we hope that the second half of the month will bring back a street of winning days.


NL100 results:






I even tried to alter the style a bit and try to bluff smarter instead of blind aggression. The results are not that great and I will go back to the previous style again and improve in finding good bluffcatchers and bluffs.


NL200 results:





It looks like I am down a lot but it's only about 3 stacks, so nothing to complain about.



NL50 RC:




Went ok, nothing really to talk about here. Altered the style a bit like for NL100 but will go back here as well.


Overall:


We ran pretty lucky this week considering all-ins.
The setups were not great, many coolers again.
Bluffcatching did not work that great either.


Played 4k hands on another platform and NL100 went horribly. Down about 13 stacks.
So overall we are deep in the red this month so far.
Let's hope things turn around for the second half.


I continued studying this week between 1-3 hours a day.
So far I did not make a day off this month. Probably this Saturday I will.


Greetings
Tryagain