TLDR: Won $4000 bad beat jackpot, gambled $1000 away, now I want to become a better player with $150 BR, within 4 weeks I want to be at $300 and improve from there.


Hi all,

After reading through some blogs on here I realized I too need some accountability and a place to show where I’m going. Something about me:

I’m a 23- year old student. I work about 12-15 hours a week and dont have too much workload for my studies right now so a decent amount of free time.
I started playing poker 6 months ago and have been hooked ever since.

Now the interesting part: last week I started on ggpoker, and I was a complete dickhead who joined 200NL tables, just getting crushed cuz im still a complete fish… and then I got incredibly lucky and beat an opponent who AAAJJ, and I had AAAQQ. This gave me the $3800 bad beat jackpot, so of course I was very happy and started degening a little bit…
All in all I withdrew €3500, but in total I had wasted around €850 euro’s just punting in too expensive tournaments and basically just gambling.
Right now I have $150 left on my GG account which I will use for this current challenge. I’m up money now but this past week since winning that jackpot I was just gambling and I want to straighten up and become better ASAP!

So, the challenge for the next 4 weeks, where I will give at least weekly buy probably more updates:

- NL10 to NL25 : Once I reach $300 I will take stabs at NL25.
- Take control of tilt and my urge to gamble; this basically comes down to being patient I think. I have downloaden ‘The Mental Game of Poker’ and will be reading that,
- Running 5KM’s twice a week,
- Eating max 3000kcal per day ( I was bulking and now need to be cutting, I have a steady weightlifting routine).

My (weekly) updates will show where my bankroll is at, how far I am in the book, whether I ran, and if I was able to keep track of my calories on most days.

Some questions for you:

- should I get pokertracker 4 or something else to show my hands and stats to you guys?
- how do you properly study? As you see I’m 6 months in and I feel like I have learnt a lot and fast in these 6 months but I have no idea where to begin with ‘proper’ studying. Any course, or discord group or whatever you recommend? Please let me know!

You should play the lowest stakes and plan on losing it.

Yes, you should have a database software.

Runitonce essential would be a good start.

Alright, thats seems fair enough. Just stick to NL10 until I am winning?
I will look at Runitonce tomorrow, thanks.

A quick update to my goals:
I realize getting to $300 before stabbing at NL25 seems a little bit arbitrary, and im actually way too bad to be even thinking about that so lets not...

- $150 to $300 challenge on NL5. My goal is to get there around the end of may, I have no idea if this is doable but Ill see along the way and adjust accordingly,

- Read 'The Mental Game of Poker' and work on my tilting / gambling tendencies,

- Take steps to increase my fundamental knowledge by doing courses, I will start with RunItOnce, it seemed like a good resource. I will watch the first two video's from the 'From the Ground Up' NLHE course and maybe I'll buy the $50 course since it also includes a month of RunItOnce subscription.

- Tomorrow I will purchase Pokertracker 4 so I can share my stats with you guys,

- Run two 5K's a week and stick to (count) 3K calories a day and at least 150g of protein.

I think this is more realistic and puts me on a path of getting better. Since I'm up over $2500 on poker in general due to that bad beat jackpot im not afraid to invest a little bit since I do enjoy this game a lot and want to make an effort at getting better.

So, yesterday:

I lost $15.5 playing NL10 and two smallish MTT's. In the MTT's I just got sucked out on early in the tournaments so that was just unfortunate.

I was playing a single table NL10 and got all in with a king high flush against a full house. I should have seen it coming and really I shouldn't have called the all-in since there were four of the same suit on the river and he easily also could have had the nut flush. I think a big leak in my current game is overcalling the river and just calling with too many hands from all kinds of positions.

This is what made me think its better just to go down to NL5 and play 4 tables since im just ******ed for playing a single NL10 table and an mtt on the side.

I did stick to 3K calories, didnt run a 5k but I will do that today.

Current BR: $134.5

Back with some new iterations. Lost my previous bankroll in a tilting spree (this is still not under control) so I've decided to take one last $250 dollar deposit to play NL5 until I'm profitable. This is 50 buyins, I will only contemplate going up to NL10 if I reach $500. I also have some money on GGpoker to play tournaments but this is just on the side a little bit, the $250 is for cashgames.
I will update every day of play how it went. Some rules:

- I will play a maximum of four tables at once, I cannot concentrate on more at the moment,
- I will read at least 10 pages of The Mental Game of Poker every day (obviously I have barely been reading that book since my last post),
- Before starting play I spend at least 30 minutes studying some aspect of poker. Right now it's pretty straightforward, I've bough FTGU Cashgames from RunItOnce and I will be watching 1 or 2 videos on there and making notes.
- I stop when losing 4 buyins to prevent tilting.

I won't update about the life and losing weight stuff and all that since that is going pretty well and doesn't really belong in this thread IMO.

If anyone has some suggestions for my study / daily playing routine I would love to hear it, Im open to it all. Please keep in mind I'm really a total beginner so anything helps.

Thanks for reading!

No poker today, just about 30-45 minutes of preflop studying. Really no time for anything else. Decent enough!

No poker but on e4 of FTGU rn, doing well! Happy with the studying