Hi all, My name is Maze and my sn on most sites is Mazeskrrr.

Firstly a lil touch on my background, if you wanna skip this feel free to move all the way down on the details of the challenge.

I am a college drop out who realizes I was wasting my money on the education I didn't enjoy. On my way out I was introduced to the NLH poker game. Which I think is probably the most genius game there is. Because there really isn't an absolute solution to each spot against your opponents.

I immediately fell in love with the game and became a degen because I had no idea what I was doing. I binge watched HSP from 10 years ago and thinking I can play like durrrr and instantly become wealthy. That obviously didn't happen. I used spend my job earnings all on the felt where I had no idea what BRM is and just kept dumping bis at the casinos. I was at a time even recruited to private games because they allow me to run it twice and I enjoy that part of the game as if the way game was played or HSP. anyways, I eventually learned more concepts about the game regarding BRM and the importance of the RAKE.

It is at that time I found out the game I have been actively going was a scam, I never did pay attention to the dealer raking and it was only then I realized they were over raking and stealing almost every pot. Regs at that game also collude where the host would pay them a minimum hourly for playing with whales like me. I obviously quit that game as soon as I found out and that was a few months back. It was funny cause I kinda thought those people were my friends. anyways lol.

Thats a lil about me and my story and what I am trying to achieve.

I have been watching some hs cash game crushers like Jarretman and ginge poker, mynameiskarl. Sometimes I just observe their pools, and at one point it hit me. I have been thinking about the game wrong. It is not a sprint against the villain at the moment, instead it was a marathon in competing with each others strategies over big samples.

I have now adopted a hud, tracker for the game, and a basic pio solver to learn more. I am also trying to read books related to the game. If anyone has any advice on books selection and stuff, feel free to share them with me.

I feel like I have a beginner understanding of the game but this game is like a blackhole full of knowledge, I don't think I can master them just by playing hands. and I am happy to spend time to learn things about it off the felt.

Here are the details of this challenge, beginning BR is $500, starting at NL25.

I will move down if necessarily, I will update graphs and BR along the way. feel free to ask me anything.

The goal is to become a winner over large samples at NL100, eventually NL200. and maybe when I'm there I will start over at NL50 again and hope to become a crusher at NL200 on stars.

If there are fellow grinders like me from micro stakes low stakes who wish to study or share hand history together, perhaps invite me into a discord group. I will be happy to be a part of those!

Thank you for your time in reading, best of luck to everybody!

Maze

Just finished the first session here, unfortunately I do not have graph available as My Hud wasnt properly tracking my opponents stats in zoom.

Overall think I played well, finished the session up, I tried to play couple $5 spin and gos and accidentally bought in for $50 spin and go on my first try, i hit 10x and the prize was 500. not sure why but maybe since its 10x the first gets 400 the second gets 100. I luckily had some run good there and finish with first, really great for the br.

I wasn't really sure how to deviate from my strategies with stars new ante games at NL 25, should probably adjust my sizing there.

I took a shot playing 50NL and the game was quite soft, much to my surprise really.

There was an interesting hand that happened today and I made a sick hero, share with yall below.


No Limit Hold'em $0.10/$0.25
PokerStars
6 players
Formatted by pokercopilot.com: Poker HUD for Mac and Windows

Stacks:
UTG - UTG ($21.09)
MP - MP ($69.87)
CO - CO ($66.05)
BTN - BTN ($25.31)
SB - Hero ($57.44)
BB - BB ($36.92)

Preflop: ($0.35, 6 players) Hero is SB with Jd Qd
2 folds, CO raises to $0.75, 1 fold, Hero calls $0.65, 1 fold

Flop: 9c 7d 8c ($1.75, 2 players - Hero: $56.69, CO: $65.30)
Hero checks, CO bets $0.60, Hero raises to $3.50, CO raises to $9.00, Hero calls $5.50

Turn: Qh ($19.75, 2 players - Hero: $47.69, CO: $56.30)
Hero checks, CO bets $10.00, Hero calls $10.00

River: 8h ($39.75, 2 players - Hero: $37.69, CO: $46.30)
Hero checks, CO bets $46.30 (all-in), Hero calls $37.69 (all-in), Uncalled bet of $8.61 returned to CO

Total Pot: $115.13
CO shows Kc Tc (a pair of Eights)
Hero shows Jd Qd (two pair, Queens and Eights)

Hero wins $113.13

I L pre because we're both considered quite deep at this reg table. When the flop came it was really great for my range, Im gonna have all the sets, JTs, etc. In real I have two overs and a gutshot unblocking any club draw, I think this is a great candidate to go for a xr on the flop. So I did, big too. With the raise I expect players at this level to call with almost all the overpairs, 3b with AA, and trap with AA with a c.

To my surprise tho, villain 3b the flop, I decided to proceed with a call and reevaluate the turn, I made tp on the turn which is good but still need to proceed carefully.

He now bets for hp, slightly more than his 3b size on the flop. This feels very fishy to me, if he had exactly JTcc then I'd approve this size but besides that I dont think any set would bet for this size, JTo should bet bigger as well cause I do have some huge draw in my range as well that could call bigger, if he did have JTo, he should always bet huge because all my sets and draws would be forced to call to try to improve on future street.

I decided to call and see a river. River was another 8, all draws bricked. I checked and he Jams, I see some AA Jam here sometimes, but barely especially at this stake, most players would go for block to get called by a Q. It smells like a bet tryna generate some folds.

I ended up heroing.

The reason for my hero was, I block top boat, unblock all clubs, when he 3 bet i dont ever ever think he could have bottom 2 pair. Maybe set of 77 with a club that requires less protection?

And at this stake player makes a lot of mistake on bluffing where there river bluff jam way more often than river value Jam. Given all those reasons I called.

And sure enough he shows KTc BABY! Its good to be right hehe

Really appreciate anyone who's read this far. I will continue to update soon!

Late last night, I decided to jump on the grind and try to speed up the br challenge.

I figured the start was so well where I almost doubled my BR, it should be easy from here on. Sure enough that is not the case, I lost a few big pots and started tilting, even though I am still up at least 10 bi on the day, I was still tilting. I suppose I had this expectation where I should continue to crush without losing at all.

I was so tilting and wanted to recover the loss I decided to jump on couple high stakes spin and go that is not fit for my current roll nor my skillset---> I know little to nothing about em... I try to go for the shortcuts that involve high risk and continue to tilt.

Eventually I was so tilted I started buying in for $100 sng, in the end I busted the entire roll of 800 ish where I started with 500 with cash games earlier this morning.

I want to make sure I keep this in my blog to remind myself in the future from committing similar mistakes. ''Playing way above my roll and areas where I know very few about''.

The challenge will continue once I am able to spare the same roll of 500 to restart the challenge.

The eventual goal was to sustain a steady win rate within a year on stars NL100, if at that point I needed help or coaching I will consider join a stable or cfp deal to move up to NL200.

My dream is to crush NL500 obviously, the toughest online cash game on the planet there is. But i realize it is important to set short term goals first or else that will stay a dream forever.

Maze

So tonight the craziest thing happened!
After busting my roll on playing hs spg, my account had about 88 cents left.

I got bored after watching som good ol forrest Gump, decided to hop on ps and see whats popping, found my account got 88c left, decided to play some spg for 25c each.

I hit 10x on one of them, won it and sitting on $2 dollar. played more. hit a 25x on 1 dollar spin $20 for 1st $4 for 2nd $1 for 3rd. Of course your boy maze killed that and won $20!

so i didnt stop, played a bunch more $1 spin for a while and was up and down from $20.
decided to play 2 $5 spin and 1 $10 spin, won the $10 one that has 3x. sitting on 30.

Kept on doing the 2 $5 spin and 1 $10 spin combo, now we sitting on $100! running like sun forsho at some spots but kinda proud of myself. 88c to $100 in about 2 hrs. LOL

I understand that this isn't sustainable so I decided to stop. It felt nice even though just yesterday playing above my roll on Spins murdered my roll.

I will continue to post updates on the growing roll and record my feelings or thoughts to motivate myself, if anyone sees this I hope this motivates u too!

best of luck out there!

Maze

UPDATE!

I hopped on to play some cash cause the chest was almost full.
I played until the chest is in and opened got $10 and some dice to move up on the blowout promo which led to the biggest chest in the middle of the map.

I think that gave me another $100 cash! not sure because it lagged and didn't show. but the br did reflect now sittin on 200 with change!