Hello everyone,

Welcome to my 2P2 PG&C thread. I am currently a 25 year old living in the UK working a 9-5 as an Engineer in the Aerospace industry (not transitioned to the life of degeneracy just yet!).

I have been playing poker since my first year of university which is just shy of 8 years ago. My first taste of poker was seeing 2nd and 3rd year students gamble away their student loans at the poker society and I knew at that moment that had to be me someday. So I got a stars account, learnt how to play poker from TonkaaaP on twitch and proceeded to bust many 100 dollar deposits, never lucky.

I was mainly just playing for fun, breaking even at cash games and donking away at MTTs. I decided one day to dedicate some time to learning cash games properly. Luckily for me my job is actually working in a team designing mathematical models (aka game theory!) to tackle some of the aerospace's biggest challenges. So it felt natural to get my hands on one of these solvers everyone was raging on about at the time and see how they worked and could be used to make me an end boss, spoiler: it didn't. It was certainly very interesting to see how people applied its use to poker and I am very much keen to get stuck in again.

After some time I made the full transition to cash games and met some people I am still close with today, so that has been one of the highest EV things out of poker so far for me.

For all the graph junkies out there unfortunately I don't have anything to offer you right now as I have a new PC and have not actually played poker properly in several months. I had mixed success, growing a roll of $1k to around $10K and then really struggling at the 100NL cash game limits.

For better or for worse I then signed up the ginge poker academy, the first one that ran actually. I had mixed feelings, certainly the best thing that has come out of that for me was the relationship I made with one of the guys involved. From a game and strategy point of view I actually ended up losing a big chunk of my roll adopting the principles outlined in the course. I joined with an open mind but in reality I was throwing away all the hard work I had done over the previous year which left me fairly demotivated. I love poker and I think everyone can play the game how they want to, its why its fun! Each to their own and I am thankful for the life experience none the less.

After this phase in my poker life I had mainly just played on and off for fun, I did not want to go back to the stress that had been in my life during that grind!

Fast forwarding to today, I want to get back into poker properly, approach the game and all its beautiful intricacies in the way I had done previously and rebuild a healthy relationship with playing, with the aim of seeing where it can take me.

I will be starting with roughly ~£500 in my account playing cash games. The aim of this blog is to make me accountable for sticking to my goals (especially when the going gets tough) and to share with the community how I approach poker in 2022 and beyond.

Smart goal setting is key, I have a full time job so my initial goals are going to be consistent but achievable:

I want to play 2 hours before work, so wake up at 6, grab a green tea and play till 8. Then head to the office and work. Evenings and weekends I will keep flexible also, I am an avid climber and keen to not let poker interfere with that or my gf or my friends.

I will evaluate this and report back, some downtime in the evenings will definitely be spent doing some studying, which will be a mix of theory, MDA and studying with friends. I will be encouraging myself to share my approach to studying with the community and hopefully learn a thing or two. As for posting consistency I will decide what works the best, maybe a couple times a week talking about my experiences, both positive and negative.

Thanks for taking the time to read I am excited to start.

RE the username if you know you know: https://www.youtube.com/c/THEBIGLEZSHOWOFFICIAL

If you don't know then you need to know!

Hello Steve!

It would be interesting to hear about your experience of balancing work, personal life, and playing poker.

Cool intro

Good luck!

Thanks!

A quick recap over the weekend and todays morning session:



Energy levels are feeling good, will smash a tea and head to work now, climbing later.

Study wise managed to put in some DTO cash volume (a good friend of mine hooked me in, I like the simplified approach to their solves and its easy to put reps in on their web browser). By no means is that my sole study source but its good to keep checking myself. I am re reading modern poker theory to get my maths up to speed before heading to the solver/MDA dungeon.

Things to improve on based on this weekend is mainly dusting off the rust on my game, made some loose calls which I knew deep down probably should be thrown in the bin. But we move on and learn.

Leggo

note: have been mixing volume here between 5/10/25NL but probably just sticking to 25 going forward.

So in your opinion was Ginge poker academy misleading/scammy? I've seen some other testimonies that it wasn't really worth the price compared to other poker training products.

And based on some of the other criticisms of Ginge, I have the perception that he is isnt quite the player that he makes himself out to be.

I can only comment on the first group and I think I only ended up spending around $1k or maybe less since there was a rebate at the end!

He has a very individual approach to the game, and I can imagine that a few years ago the strategy he created probably did okay at 200-500z. For anyone new to the game although that strategy teaches very bad habits its by no means a bad starting point. But for me coming from a very data driven background it was wayyy to oversimplified.

Okay so we simplify a bunch of spots down to a very absorbable set of strategies, but as an engineer I need to see tests, proof, results etc.. which were nowhere to be seen. I am expecting a huge database or library of solves that marry up to population and show that you maximise your EV in xyz spot because population do this in xyz and you arent being counter exploited as shown in this document or spreadsheet or whatever. So that was the feedback from me really.

After that the price went absolutely ludicrous for what it is and turned into a money grab.

UK based midstakes player here!
Subbed.

Best of luck!

Hello Crazy Steve,

Guess we have some points in common. Also started a challenge here in 2+2, also a fulltime engineer playing on spare time.

Currently playing after dinner 1 or 2 hour session when possible. How is waking up early to play working for you?

GL on the tables

haha amazing, what are the odds!

I just checked out your thread and dropped a sub so gl to you I hope you manage to donate it all away like you intend to , what discipline of engineering do you work in?

RE: the morning sesh, my mind is really fresh in the morning. I find that I am not bummed down by the events of the day and that I remain more emotionally neutral when I am playing. Its also really quiet in and outside the house which makes it quite a tranquil grind experience (I don't listen to tunes I find it distracts me). So I think for me personally I can capture the most amount of EV during that time of day.

I could actually talk for days about this particular topic hahah. I am also quite health conscious and enjoy fasting, so I have been experimenting with one meal a day and a green tea addiction to boost concentration and push my body into a state of ketosis before the morning grind. Again this is completely personal but for me I feel elite when in this state!

The only downside to all of this weird obsession is that I feel completely burnt out and toasted at work. That being said I have decided I don't actually care. I like my job, but the company dictates your EV, and its also consistent EV regardless if I have a **** day or not.

Responded above, still getting used to this old school forum haha!

Last couple session have been really good, might be on a bit of a heater lol but I'm all here for it.

I might post some hands at some point, certainly this weekend I will try to make a post about how I am studying in some spots maybe people will find that interesting or comment on how it could be improved.

leggo

Played a very strange hand this morning which baffled me haha



Preflop and flop are standard with some mixing in calls and raises with this hand, got a good wedge of equity so cant go too wrong here with either play. Villain opts for the flop 3 bet. I believe that this makes sense with a chunk of over pairs, which also have a nice slice of equity. I thought in game that this particular player would do this with over pairs more so than better flush draws and the bluffs.

Which left me confused on the turn. The Kd has quite potent removal effects I find it hard to believe actually that villain is even supposed to keep barrelling here, coupled with our flop reads. I have to say I was rather baffled at this point. I opt for the call and think that's the only reasonable play, we want to force villain to play badly and the best way to do that is retaining our positional advantage throughout the remainder of the hand.

The Ad river further compounds these removal effects and at this point I am trying to convince myself that they don't have QQd. I had a fairly statistically insignificant sample of hands which couldn't help with my decision. I think this call down might of been a bit of a misfire, its one of those weird spots where I actually just mind game myself.

We move on!



this morning session was not too eventful, although I feel like I nitted up slightly pre flop, if I get some time later I will review to make sure im hitting the correct 3b% in the BB mainly.

I'm a mechanical engineer, now working as project engineer in the energy field.

People are quite different, I rather play with music but probably because my play hours aren't as quiet as your morning play.

I am changing my diet to vegetarian and I have read some articles about fasting and how its practice can elevate the state of concentration but I have not tried it yet. Might give it a try some day... How long do you do fasting, only one main meal a day?

Also subbed and will follow. Good luck we will keep in touch

Final weekday session for the first week in this rebuild saga.



Felt like I played really well, still trying to refine certain spots. Will try and get some good study time in on Sunday probably, not sure if I will be putting a session in tomorrow.

If your WWSF is any indication this rebuild saga will be a quick and easy success. gl.

thank you my friend for the kind words, although I am not sure how much of a sample you need to have a statistical significance for WWSF!

nice first results! hope you succeed, best of luck!

Hey CS just subbed to follow along and wish you good luck. Maybe I'll learn something along the way lol. Old fart just turned 50 here and just getting back into the cash side of poker after some time off and playing mostly MTT's before that another lifetime ago. I'm starting off alot lower then you. The very bottom 2nl on Pokerstars. Another life time ago when I first started playing online and cash I just threw in $150 and started right at 50nl(.25/.50). Way way way under bankrolled. But got lucky and there were so many fish and I got hot right off the bat in in a few days had $500. So this time challenged myself to start right at the very bottom and work my way up.

First thing I learned I need and want a red line that looks like yours lol. So dam hard to get them to fold most the time at 2nl. Anyway good luck with the journey man.


Cheers!!!

Thanks mate for the kind words and sorry for the late response!

Best of luck with your challenge, I hope you manage to run it up. One thing I would say is though that just ignore all the lines, the yellow line is the only one that matters and everybody play style is different

I would say for 2NL I would probably just have an insane blue line since any marginal hands I would be exploitatively betting huge for value. GL to you!

Weekend Update:

Poker is a marathon not a sprint! I think this mindset has really resonated with me over the last few days and there are a couple things I think would be good to get into text and remind me in the future that I am in this for the long haul and not to burn myself out emotionally or physically.

This weekend was a little bit of a disaster!

I played my first session at 6am-8.30am on Friday Morning, overall this was standard, I felt the same consistency in my performance as any other weekday last week (this routine will not be changing at all).

I managed to take some flexi leave on Friday and naturally I wanted to start playing again, or more I felt that I should be playing aka trying to force hands in. So around 11am I fired up tables and instantly noticed a sense of sluggishness and lag in my normal game, I didn't quit there and then which for me is a leak I need to squash.

I can sum this up with the following chart of steves poker performance over time:



As you can see, anything up to 2 hours and I can usually play my A game, this has to be first thing in the morning though for me. 3 hours and we slip into B, anything after that and I might as well not bother.

I think when zooming along this is probably a very very common leak players have, mindlessly clicking buttons after playing for 10 hours, not even beating the rake at that point. Poker online is very competitive, rake is high and players are good. Even marginal players who are winning at 1bb/100 aren't netting you a fortune, and since most of the 'regs' at low stakes are these 1bb-2.5bb/100 players I need to make it my priority to ONLY be playing my A game against them, its the only way to send them to the showers constantly in game If I am just that bit more aware than they are. So I am trying to have a moment of zen and tell myself that its the long game that matters most, which leads me onto my next little nag at myself.

Second thing is I found myself obsessing over my graph, idk what the **** is wrong with me as I haven't really noticed myself doing that before. So the next time I post results will be the end of next week, probably next Sunday.

Here is the graph for over the weekend:




tldr: Quality > Quantity. Stick to the normal morning session and spend the other time you have free studying.

Next time I check results will be next Sunday. Got into some very juicy 700bb pots lmao on the 25z streets so that kinda saved my mini downswing

Gl me and you all for the week ahead legooooo!

Thanks probably gonna need all the luck I can get down here at 2nl where you get 3-5 callers every hand and you mostly always get called down by at least 1 guy. Nothing like the old .25/.50(50nl) I played back 15-20+ years ago during the Moneymaker online poker boom. Those were good times and super soft games. Now table selection seems very very important. No worries about the late response we all got personal lives and real life going on.

Well that's good kinda a bit new to HUD's so still learning about using them somewhat. Had Holdem Manager 2 for a while but never really got good at using it and never used it very long majority of my hands lifetime have been played all HUDless. Well looking at my blue and yellow lines I'm doing fairly well as the blue line is right at $12, Yellow line is just under $8 and the green line is just under $4. My red line I don't ever expect to get in the green playing 2nl or likely even 5nl or 10nl too many callers see almost every flop....meaning too many call downs overall. You just don't get them outta many pots.


Cheers!!!

Just a mid week update with nothing crazy to report. I cracked open PT4 today and 'accidently' looked at my results (take what you will from that lol) so I might as well share them. All jokes aside I didn't look from Monday till the end of todays session and I felt pretty indifferent when I opened them so clearly even this short graph dopamine detox has worked well and I am sure I will just hide them again now till the end of the week!



And 10 days into getting back together with poker but this time with a healthy relationship



I will set some weekend goals here also:

Fridays morning session will go ahead as normal but I aim to also plug away at some SRP BvB in the afternoon. I will run a couple spots in GTO+. I notice everyone at 25z that's a regular player either plays 19/16/4 WWSF: 43 which is just so god damn easy to run over, or they play more reggy stats like 23/20/8 WWSF 49 but they just miss so many micro aggression spots.

Anyway! The second goal this weekend is going to make my PC go brrrr because I want to re build the library of solves I had in a previous life. Might start with a couple spots and let the PC chug away overnight. I am going to say it but I am really NOT a fan of browser solvers. Not because I think anything is wrong with the actual data, more so they are just so bloody complicated, too many sizing's and people getting so bogged down in factors that don't matter, edge cases etc.. Just my take.

50 shots probably next week some time also!

legoo

Quick short Friyay night update,



Solid upswing last couple sessions, I've doubled my roll now 12 days in and 50 shots will come in the very near future. Whilst the results are nice I have been 100% dialled in every single hand so I attribute this somewhat to my short term success, but the downswing can hit any minute lol we are ready!

Most importantly I have hit the 20k hand mark so I have a decent enough sample now to take a look at my database.

I approach this in two ways, I look at GTO global baseline frequencies and compare my stats against them, I then take a look at population database and find out where pool are going wrong and ensure I ramp up the frequencies in spots where its just an evident print. I don't care about counter exploitation it seems everyone in the 25NL zoom pool is just mashing buttons mindlessly.

I can see myself perhaps procrastinating and not doing enough of this on the weekend so I will write it here for accountability.

What's up people, had some personal stuff going on in my life where I did not put much volume in over the last month since my last post!

I have been playing a fair bit though in the last couple weeks ramping back up, 50NL shot stuck at 1k bankroll and now plugging away at those games on stars and will continue to do so until I have 20 buy ins for 100NL. The roll is currently sitting at ~1400 or so I have almost tripled since the start of the challenge, around 1.5 months ago.

About 750 profit of that is from cash and 150-200 from a lucky tourney run in the big 16.50 after many beers lol.

December so far:


I will post at the end the month with a whole month update and what my plans are next. There is going to be some huge changes in life next year, I am really excited to see where poker will take me and I am very fortunate that I will be in a position to put 8+ hours a day in of 100% poker, see a new part of the world and seriously push myself. I hope to use this blog as a harbour for all my experiences (even if nobody reads it, I will be updating when I feel necessary to do so, almost like a public diary!).

The goals have been very consistently met since I started playing again 6 weeks ago, with emphasis on small baby steps that are realistic to achieve and get the dopamine flowing on a regular basis. I had been grinding 2 hours before work everyday and I haven't stopped that, I have also really ramped up on the study so thats been good.

One last thing, a group of friends who I met through pads poker discord 3 years or so ago decided to start a private discord. We studied a lot, became really good mates, met for some beers and yeh its been sick gelling with these guys. We have now started a public discord server with a few of us making some content for the community - mainly on tik tok and also twitch/youtube. We are doing some regular sessions and are really excited to start this community. If you would like to drop by and join in then feel free to get in the discord --> https://discord.gg/XdmzS588

gl for the rest of the month!