Hello everyone,

I will try to keep my introduction somewhat short:

I started playing poker around 2007 after Jamie Gold won the WSOP Main Event for 12 million in 2006. I played a sometimes excessive amount during the vast majority of my twenties, dabbling around in pretty much every micro-stakes format, from all sorts of SNGs to MTTs to 9-max / 6-max / HU cash games. My success was often small and sometimes nonexistent, as I struggled for a very long time with the mental side of the game, blowing several small bankrolls. And to be honest, I probably did not put enough study into my game, although I tried pretty hard at times to get better.

In hindsight, I wasted a ton of great opportunities over all those years. But like they say, hindsight is 20/20, right? Anyway, I quit playing for a few reasons in 2015 and thought I was done with poker forever.

Fast forward almost a decade later, and I felt a strong desire to get back into poker after a dream (no joke) so I opened an account at GGPoker and deposited 100 Euros. I got hooked on All in Fold pretty fast after playing some hands to complete one of their honeymoon missions. It also did not help that I hit the jackpot twice in my first few thousand hands haha. Anyway, I have a ton of time at the moment and realized very quickly that I could take a real shot at the German leaderboard for low stakes (runs from Wednesday to Wednesday). So I finished 3rd for C$100 after playing for only five days and now I finished 2nd for C$200. I thought that I could take 1st place (pays C$300) this time but the guy in front of me is just insane.

So yeah, that's pretty much where I am right now, grinding $1 (5c/10c) AoF, chasing a top spot on the leaderboard to build a decent bankroll while clearing my first deposit bonus, and accomplishing the honeymoon missions for some extra cash.

I finished the leaderboard week with 50.6k hands:

- roughly down $65 on the tables (including All-In Fortune payouts)
- won the jackpot three times (two times within a few hundred hands) for $84, $77, and $70 for a total of $231
- 2nd on the German leaderboard for C$200

for a total profit of $366 not counting any rakeback and first deposit bonus. I am not really pleased with my on-the-table results although the rake is obviously pretty insane. There is probably enough room for improvement left to bring that figure closer to breakeven at least. I am not quite sure how much longer I really want to grind AoF but right now it is decent enough money. And at some point, I will have to convert all that C$ into actual $.

Be that as it may, I will take another shot at 1st place on the leaderboard this week while also playing some GG World Festival tournaments, but more on that in another post. I really enjoyed the sense of camaraderie on 2+2 and especially in this section of the forum. And who knows, maybe some people from back in the day are still around here? If so, please say hi!

The daily AoF grind is not super interesting but I will probably give at least some short updates, especially to where I stand on the leaderboard.

Last but not least, after two weeks my bankroll sits at a total of $740:

- $420 in actual cash,
- another C$300 and
- about $20 in T$ and tickets.

I also have $68 deposit bonus left 14 days of honeymoon missions for some really nice payouts.

This post is already way too long, so thanks everyone for reading!

All the best

GL!

gl mate

Thank you guys!

Update 01/5

Not sure if I will give daily updates regularly but I have a few minutes so why not? However, I will focus on volume and leaderboard progress rather than the daily swings because variance is obviously pretty insane and even EV can be sometimes a bit misleading over smaller samples IMO.

Anyway, right after I created this thread I played for about 90 minutes and got in 1.5k hands. And I hit another jackpot, which means I hit three within a few thousand hands. Unfortunately, the jackpot was pretty small so I got only $67 this time.

I wanted to post the hand but I have no clue how to do it on today's 2+2 forum lol.

After this small session, I went outside. The weather here is amazing at the moment so I went for a long walk and some Asian food for dinner. Then I got back home and finished the first season of Lincoln Lawyer on Netflix.

I got back to the tables at around 10 p.m. The tables are often pretty hit or miss around that time but the Happy Hour is from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. and I need the double points for the leaderboard. I finished at around 1:30 a.m. with 3.1k hands for the session.

So only 4.6k hands yesterday but poker is not (always) everything.

Today's plan is simple: Grind as much as possible. I am 3rd on the leaderboard now but within striking distance for 1st place.

That's all, have a good one!

GL! will follow!

Thanks a lot!

Update 02/5

Short update before I hit the tables again:

Played about 5k hands, 2,5 hours break for a shower, a short walk and dinner, then an early evening session with 2k hands, another 2-hour break, followed by a Happy Hour session for another 2k hands.

Not gonna lie, I am doing super poorly at the tables right now but it is what it is. The leaderboard chase looks decent. I am in first place right now with two guys behind me, one of them being the winner of the last one and that guy can really put some insane volume in.

I think I will need about 11k points to win so time to grind again.


01/5-08/5

Hands: 14,014
Leaderboard Points: 3,135 (1st)
Jackpots: 1 (Total: $68)


On a side note, I finally figured out how to do those fish buffet spins lol. I had four spins and got a total of .... 13€. Seems like a pretty big joke to me but whatever. I am two-thirds of the way to Bronze Crab btw.

Can someone please tell me how to post hands from GG here?

Update 03/5

Alright, it's already pretty late here but it cannot hurt to unwind a bit before bedtime.

I started my day with a 5.3k hands session and hit another (tbh much needed) jackpot. Lucky enough it was a relatively big one this time:



I continued a bit later with a mini session (800 hands) while waiting for my food order before I hit the tables again at around 7 p.m. for another 5.3k hands. So a total of 11.4k hands including a jackpot. With that kind of volume, I widen the gap between me and the guys behind me on the leaderboard by a lot. It looks like they are still grinding but I should start Saturday with at least 1,400 points ahead.

Still not doing great at the tables so I will need to see where I can maybe tweak some things although I am pretty sure it's not really smart to deviate too much from my standard play.


01/5-08/5 Progress

Hands: 25,463
Leaderboard Points: 5,402 (1st)
Jackpots: 2 (Total: $153)

GG World Festival

I just finished a super crazy session but more on that later because I might play more later today.

GG World Festival, a week-long tournament series with four buyin tiers (low, medium, high, super) starts tomorrow and I will play some of the low events. I guess even after all this time my true love are still tournaments and for some reason I just love those tournament series like the PS Micro Millions back in the day.

However, I will not play a full schedule, because 1) I am limited to four tables (stupid government) so I can not register all events 2) I don't want to miss 1st place on the AoF leaderboard and 3) I don't think I am probably rolled to play a full schedule anyways.

What I will do instead is to pick some of the events each day, probably not more than two at once, and fill up the rest of the tables with AoF. As for being probably rolled, I have T$14, and completing tomorrow's Honeymoon Mission will give me another $20 so that's a decent starting point IMO. Completing 24 Honey Missions is worth another T$50 which should be enough for the rest. I should hit that by Wednesday unless one of the upcoming requirements is super crazy.

Tomorrow's schedule looks pretty good. I think I will play most / all Bounty events and in case of a deeper run, I might up end regging the $15 100 Grand and/or $25 Main Event, too.

Update 03/5

Okay, I am done for the day. The tables were still pretty good but I finally felt a bit drained after all the grinding. One thing that really tilts me is the super clumsy "switch table" feature. I donno if GG makes it extra annoying to switch tables.

I had one suuuuper long session earlier today after I got stuck pretty badly at the beginning and had nothing better to do anyway. Things were so bad that I lost a lot in the CO LOL. Then this hand happened:



Things got a little bit afterward. I wanted to cap the session at 8k hands because I already played super long and with about 250 hands this happened:



I took only ~119k hands but I finally hit my first Royal flush (with both hole cards)! And that after flopping the nuts already hahaha.

I closed my session afterward, took a bit of a break, and then hit the tables again for an evening/night session where I played another 2.8k hands.

So very decent day with 10.5k hands and two jackpots. Also did my spin for Bronze Crab and got 10€. Sigh.

The leaderboard chase looks very good after today. It seems like most regs did not play (a lot), so I really pulled ahead with a 3k point lead as of right now. I don't want to get too comfortable but 1st place looks pretty much like a closed deal.

That's all, have a good Sunday!


01/5-08/5 Progress

Hands: 36,040
Leaderboard Points: 7,631 (1st)
Jackpots: 4 (Total: $315)

Update 05/5

What a day!

I started off by playing 500 hands of NL5 Rush for the Honeymoon Mission and lost about 2.5 BI. I managed to stack off with (top) two pair versus a straight two times. Felt pretty stupid.

Not a lot of AoF today, just a bit before the first event and a tiny bit while playing the tournaments. So only 5.6k hands for the day but I am still 3.2k points ahead on the leaderboard.


01/5-08/5 Progress

Hands: 41,696
Leaderboard Points: 8,771 (1st)
Jackpots: 4 (Total: $315)


I played a total of four GG World Festival events today:


02-L $2.50 Mini Festival Kickstarter [Bounty]

First event, first deep run! I made it to 18 / 12.862 for $35 plus another $79 in bounties (11 KOs) for $114!

I was 2/25 when I called a shove ~35% of my chips with 99 vs TT all in pre, he shoved 16BB 6-handed UTG. The call felt pretty standard at the time but with ICM... I dunno. Then I was 8/20, open shoved 88 for ~16BB and ran into JJ and KK behind me ... Funny enough, the hand before that I had KK and won only a small pot ....

But I cannot complain, I had a ton of really good starting hands earlier in the events although I couldn't really build a massive stack with them and I won a few key flips, too. Still, so close to a FT ...


07-L $5.40 Bounty Hunter Sunday Mini Main

The next event I played, finished 182 / 17,713 for $29.30 and another $36 in bounties (7 KOs) for $65.

With about 350 players left, I lost about ~50% of my stack with 77 vs JJ BTN vs CO all in pre. He min opened and I shoved, felt pretty standard. With about 290 left, I lucked out with QQ > AA all in pre with Q on the river. In my final hand, I pick QQ up again, open shove them for about 10BB and the guy next to me has AA ...


09-L $2.50 Sunday Bounty Hunters Mini Big Game

I got in pre for 50BB with AK vs QQ and missed. The late reg was still open for another 90 minutes but I decided against it which is probably -EV?


12-L $3 Sunday Sunday Bounty King

I busted about 2.5 hours in. MP open limbs, SB completes, I have A6o in the BB and shove for about 12BB. MP tanks and finally calls, SB folds. MP shows Q8o, boards run 9324Q and I am out. Picked up one bounty for $0.70 before.


All that being said, I turned my T$14 into $180! Obviously I am happy about that but it's a bit of a "what could have been" Sunday LOL. I am also 172nd on the GG Festival Low Leaderboard for C$300 ... but I doubt that I can keep that up. 1st place pays 100k BTW.


It has been a super long day, so I am out!

Update 06/5

I had the worst session ever at AoF, never did so poorly over 4.1k hands before. I worked on a few ranges and just finished a "testing session" for 2.1k hands. The progress felt good, but the results were pretty bad again.

Anyway, I locked up first place on the leaderboard.

01/5-08/5 Progress

Hands: 47,842
Leaderboard Points: 10,118 (1st)
Jackpots: 4 (Total: $315)


GG World Festival

I really thought that it would run only for a week when in fact, the series runs until 11th June. Stupid me. Obviously, that changes how I will approach the Festival. But I am still good enough for C$130 on the leaderboard, which makes things kinda interesting.

Anyway, no events for me today because I could not fit them into my schedule. And I am still pondering about that 99 vs TT from Sunday tbh.


Gl all!

Update 07/5

With the leaderboard (hopefully) locked up and some other stuff to do, I took it (somewhat) easy today and played only 6.2k hands. The sample size is of course still super tiny, but I am very pleased with how things are going process-wise since I changed a few things on Monday. More on that probably in my next post.

Oh, and I won another jackpot, albeit a smaller one:





10 hours left to go and I am still 2.6k points ahead. But the guy behind me is still playing ...

01/5-08/5 Progress

Hands: 54,064
Leaderboard Points: 11,367 (1st)
Jackpots: 5 (Total: $386)


I have some stuff to do tomorrow/today (Wednesday) so I am not sure if I can grind We will see.

Update 09/5

Sigh. I did not accomplish yesterday's Honey Mission which was winning a Pot in PLO with Quads ... That means I will not get the $150 for accomplishing all 30 missions. But I just did not have any extra free time yesterday. I tried it for 100 hands with the hope of getting lucky but nope. Still won about 1BI at PLO while playing every hand with a pair. More like PLOLOLOLOL.


01/5-08/5 Recap

This worked out beautifully ... NOT.

I played 54.1k hands:

- ~ -$380 on the tables (including All-In Fortune payouts)
- 5 jackpots for a total of $386
- 1st on the German leaderboard for C$300

Obviously, it was not the plan to break even after the jackpots ... The only thing that salvages things somewhat is the first-place leaderboard money.


I think my best shot atm is to go back to the leaderboard grind, at least for one more week, and see if I can turn things around. Things are looking pretty decent after I changed a few things and winning the leaderboard one more time would give me a very decent BR for cash games. However, it will be somewhat tougher this time because I already missed some grinding time yesterday and will miss even more on Sunday.

But we will wee. GL all!

I am done for the day, so it's time for a little update before I go to bed.

I played only 7k hands today. I lost about one hour in the morning playing 300 hands of PLO2 to accomplish the Honey Moon mission. But I made ~1.5BI so maybe it's time to switch to PLO?

I won one jackpot today which was nice:




I started the day about 5th in the leaderboard and took the lead although only by a couple of points.


08/5-15/5 Progress

Hands: 10,682
Leaderboard Points: 2,309 (1st)
Jackpots: 1 (Total: $71)

The goal for tomorrow is 10k hands to pull away on the leaderboard hopefully.


GG World Festival

56-L $5.40 Thursday Mini Twister [Bounty Hyper 3-Max]

I would usually not reg a tourney at 1 AM but 1) my edge should be pretty decent in that format and 2) the estimated running time was only about 3 hours. So I decided to spend one bullet in that event.

Well, it lasted exactly 20 minutes for me. I lost a 89bb pot BvB 87<A7 on Q737Jr. A few hands later 88<A5s where I 4b shoved AI pre for an 86bb pot. Finally, I jammed ~17bb with K3s in the SB, BB calls with 96s, 9 on the river. GG me.

Update 10/5

I played 10.6k hands but lost a ton - and I mean a ton - especially over the second half of my day. I was able to recoup a little bit but this was still the worst table on the tables. And I could not pull away on the leaderboard, which is kinda sick.

Oh, I made another royal flush bit only with one hole card so no jackpot:




08/5-15/5 Progress
Hands: 21,365
Leaderboard Points: 4,330 (1st)
Jackpots: 1 (Total: $71)




GG World Festival


60-L Friday Night Mini Fight [Bounty 6-Max]

Won one bounty for $0.30

Things went kinda decent until this hand:



Late reg was open for another 60 minutes but I did not feel it.


61-L $5 TGIF Mini Hyper Special [6-Max]

125 / 3,780 for $23.99

I lost AK < 44 AI pre for what would have been a very healthy stack shortly before the end of the late reg. After that, I had to play short-stacked for the rest of the tournament. I had one brain fart when I folded in an obv calling spot BvB. Final hand A6o<55.

Update 13/5

Short update after the weekend before I hit the tables again:

Saturday:
I played another 10k hands and the bleeding from Friday continued. At least I won another jackpot for $82, it took about 22k hands from the last one. I also played in one GG World Festival Event (see below).

Sunday:
I spent most of the time off the tables and with my family as it was Mother's Day. So only a smaller evening/night session for about 4k hands. I made a few mistakes by calling off thinly in tight spots. The session went super poor and I felt pretty defeated afterward for the first time.


The leaderboard chase is pretty tough as well. Obv I fell behind by a bit after yesterday's lack of volume. But at this point, I am pretty much in need of the 1st place cash.


08/5-15/5 Progress
Hands: 36,102
Leaderboard Points: 7,380 (3rd)
Jackpots: 2 (Total: $153)


GG World Festival

71-L $5 Saturday Mini Speed Zone [Hyper 4-Max]

I obv looked forward to that one but I had a really tough start and then AQo < A6s AI pre for 45bb ( he 3b shoved me).

I decided to fire a second bullet and re-entered with 33BB. Picked up some chips and then ran JJ into QQ, lost a flip AJ < 55, and then AK < A4s AI pre where he flopped a flush. The late reg was still open but I decided against a third bullet.


I still have the $T50 from the Honeymoon Mission, which should be good enough for another 10-15 events.

GL for this week!

Thanks! Things are going pretty rough at the moment, but that's poker.

Update 14/5

Even though I played another 10k hands, the 1st place on the leaderboard seems out of reach. The guy sitting on top (last week's 2nd place) grinded just an insane amount yesterday and is pretty much out of reach now. I could maaaaybe finish in second place but even that looks like a stretch at the moment.

At least I won another (smallish) jackpot yesterday for $68.

Today's plan is to start grinding and see if I have a shoot at 2nd place. If not, I will probably throw in the towel although I could really use the extra $C in prize money.

08/5-15/5 Progress
Hands: 46.3k
Leaderboard Points: 9,402 (3rd)
Jackpots: 3 (Total: $221)


GG World Festival

100-L $5.40 Monday Mini Heater [Bounty Turbo]

One bounty for $0.62

Only a few hands in I lost a decent pot with a set, which I should have folded... maybe. Shortly afterward, AKo < AKo and JTs for a pile of chips, the other AK went for the good ol' runner-runner flush. Honestly, I did not got back into my A-Game after this. I built my stack up a bit, but then I 4b shoved (probably too light) AQo into AKo.

A few orbits later I am down to 6BB. UTG shoves ~9BB, MP iso shoves for 22BB and I have ATo in the SB. I am not really in love with that spot but I just can not see myself folding mid Ax with only so few chips left and a chance to triple up so I called. UTG shows AJo, MP has 22. For the fun of it, the flop comes AKTr, turn is a Queen, gg me.

I am really not happy with my overall play in that event but welp, next time.

Update 14/5

11.5k hands played today and still only a measly 100 points ahead for 2nd place on the leaderboard. No jackpot, just a ton of teasers lol.

I will try to wake up pretty early tomorrow/today and I see if I can lock up the 2nd place. The leaderboard resets at noon my time.

I might be done with the AoF grind afterward, looks like I just can not make things work.


08/5-15/5 Progress
Hands: 57.4k
Leaderboard Points: 11,603 (2nd)
Jackpots: 3 (Total: $221)

08/5-15/5 Recap

Okay, I will make it short:

This was a complete disaster. Things went from bad to worse.

60,070 hands played:

- ~$577 on the tables (including All In Fortune)
3 jackpots: $221
2nd on the German leaderboard for C$200

Total: -$156

Obviously, the results on the tables are super bad but I also ran super cold with the jackpots as I "should" have won another 1-2 over that sample. But even then it would still be very bad results-wise.

I also could not win the leaderboard that was not for a lack of effort from me.

The last one I won:



And now the one that just ended:




Oh well!

The liquid part of my BR can not withstand another week like this but I will try to give the leaderboard chase another shot because I do not feel like giving up however stupid it might be.

BTW, things got so bad that GG Poker offered me a screenname change which I will gladly accept LOL. I am also thinking about opting into Platinum Fish for the weekly flat 20% RB but I dunno...


Okay, that's all for now. GL everyone!