Hey 2+2,
After lurking around for some time and also starting an unsuccessful thread in which I crashed my bankroll due to poor mental game and even worse bankroll management (Gotta be honest right?) I decided to take poker very serious. Serious to that extend that I want to do it fulltime. My english has gotten pretty rusty for sure so bear with me.

Who am I?
Sorry for starting this like my last thread but I think you guys won't mind.
My name is Dominik(24) and I'm from Germany. I've been playing poker for about 3 years now (with last year being my first slightly profitable year) with no real success because I didn't really commit to this to that degree, that is needed. Currently I study mechanical Engineering in Dortmund. You might ask yourselves why I want to give up on Engineering and switch to poker instead. Well the answer is simple and many of you can relate to this. I want to be free and escape the 9-5 life. Why poker when there are so many more options to make way more money? It is my passion and I'm not just doing it for the money. I'm living in a small apartment together with my girlfriend and I got no life expenses for the near future so I won't need to touch my bankroll.

Where am I and where do I want to go?
I'm currently playing NL10-25z on stars. It really depends on various factors which stake I'm playing. For example how sharp I feel, how the funplayer to reg ratio is etc. My bankroll is yet to be determined, but I will have like $800-$1200 on my starsaccount in a couple days from now. Since it will be pretty unlikely that I can reload that much money I will treat this bankroll very very carefully and try to avoid bad decisions to the best of my ability. I'm currently studying with pio, analysing hands myself and doing the math to get a better understanding of poker , RIO which I only joined because my former coach joined the team (shoutout to you if you're reading this by accident) and for preflop I try to study the snowie ranges and the frequencies so I get more balanced and don't 3bet or 4bet too much or too less. Btw please let me know if you know better options on how to study more effective or what I should be changing. I'm open to any advice you guys can give me. So where do I want to be at the end of this year? I want to be playing NL100z with no mental game problems. Let me explain that a little bit better. When I go up a stake I'm usually afraid to pull the trigger even though I can almost tell villains exact holding. And it gets to me when I lose 5-10 BI on that stake and that really shouldn't be the case if I want to be a professional so I gotta cut that sh*t. So here come the goals..

Goals
-Beat NL100z until the end of this year

-Maintain the routine of
-Watch RIO stuff when still in bed
-Big breakfast
-Pio
-Do something else that is not poker related(fitness, going out, etc.)
-Start my session when I feel sharp and make sure that I'm really in the right state of mind to make this session profitable in EV
-review some hands and try to get rid of some leaks in my game
-Have a good cooldown (play some video games, spend time with my girlfriend etc)
-make sure that I get a nice amount of good quality sleep

-But first start with a milestone, that won't be too easy to accomplish, but still it's still achievable. I want to have $1k table winnings in March.


So that's it. If you have any advice or recommendations for me I would be happy to implement them. Also if you guys have ideas to make this thread a little bit more interesting I would also be happy to take those into consideration.

gl man

tyty


So, the first days of March are over and these are the results so far:



This very small sample mostly includes NL16z and NL25z. I decided where I want to play by evaluating how tough the pools appear, but did not play higher than NL25z and won't play any higher unless I got like 50BI for the next stake and feel comfortable to give it a shot. Redline does not really look too flattering since I'm playing a pretty simple ABC-strategy with some small adjustments here and there. I don't even know at what point I should worry about a bad redline to be honest with you. Someone got advice?

Goals for the week
-Get a static sleep schedule and stick with it
-Study more than before (Only got like 1-2h of study in every day)
-Play more hands than before without burning out and without forcing myself to play. Aiming at 2-3k hands Mo-Fr and 4-5k on Saturday/Sunday

March Goal

$68.84/$1000

Gonna update again on Sunday. Thanks for stopping by, have a nice week and GL at the tables

This week went pretty poorly in terms of my goals. I didn't really stick to a sleeping schedule. I did no pio work at all and studied like 30min a day on average. The only thing that was ok was the volume, but I was playing my B game at highest so the results were bad. Gonna take today off to go review some hands and do some pio work for several hours (also felt kinda tilted from time to time). When you're just starting to make poker your profession and you get -$200 sessions… that really gets to you and you start to doubt yourself and if you even have what it takes. But I know what to do to make it and I will adjust and study more and play with more quality than quantity for the near future. Also I got the feeling that I subconciously miss out on too many spots while 4 tabling so I will try 3 tabling this week only and see if that has a good impact on my money bleeding redline. I also will look into Cbetting a lot on the flop since I tend to just bet 1/3 when the board is dry and switch to a 2/3 or check when the board is not favouring my range



Goals for the week
-Implement working out (go 3 times to the gym)
-analyze 3 pio solutions before starting my sessions
-play 2k hands a day 2 or 3 tabling
-work my ass off with my cbetting problem
-study blind spots a lot since I seem to be unsure in some situations there as well due to big ranges and I seem to be kinda lost and don't know what to do with which part of my range
March Goal

$165.47/$1000

Will update every Sunday from now on

Gl man. What’s wrong with ur cbetting? Too high %?

Ty, I don't think it's too high but it might be. It's at 57% on the flop. My issue is cbetting on various textures when ranges are still pretty big and I have stuff in my hand with no relevant backdoors.


Quick update. Was running pretty bad and that leaded to some bad play so I'm going to take today and tomorrow off and just grind in the lab

Not really too much to say. I'm pretty shattered about how bad I run and really doubting myself and questioning if I'm even good enough to beat NL25z even though it seems really manageable to beat. I am at -1bb/100 ev over 50k hands and I'm trying to keep me sane somehow to not go on tilt. Have to rethink my strategy and put more time in the lab and overcome that smallish downswing. I mean, everybody has -20bi downswings over a course of a few 10k hands right? But in my case I don't even know if I beat the stake, all I know is that I'm losing at the moment and it hurts. Gonna push through the pain and set everything up to make success inevitable. I'm slightly winning ($100-$150) with rakeback and a couple of <$5 tournaments that I play for fun, but I'm not including that into my profits for the month. I only count cashgame table results

But for now

-$94.39/$1000

If someone got some advice how to handle getting smashed for 1-2 weeks straight, let me know. I would be very thankful for every piece of advice. Have a nice Sunday

All the best for your challenge mate.

Thanks man, appreciate it a lot

Going to do mainly piowork today and get in a small amount of hands tonight. Time to turn things around boys

Well, trying to study a lot more when you´re on a downswing should help you to come back stronger when it ends. Idk if you have tilt issues, as I used to have, but one thing that really helped me to overcome this was to cover (or minimize) the table after any big river decision or any all in situation. Winning or losing, sucking out, bad beat, making a mistake etc, by getting those 10-15 extra secs and not knowing the actual cards until the session review was enough to calm me down, to avoid any anger or overconfidence feelings. Also not checking the cashier/graph while playing should help you (if you usually do this).

I still suffer a lot of bad downswings (and good upswings) from time to time, but it doesn´t change my mood anymore.

glglgl

Have someone who’s better than you go over your database or your hands. You don’t know what you don’t know and it’s impossible to say whether you’re a losing player or just running bad based on your winrate alone.

thanks guys, I'll probably just play more exploitive and go more with my gutfeeling especially in overfolding spots instead of trying to find out the GTO solutions for the spot and see how it goes. Should be the way to go on NL25z. But once I get to NL50/100z i'll definitely try to get a more GTO based strategy. Gonna update again on Sunday. GL on the tables everyone

Yeah, that doesn't look too sweet right? I am massively bleeding redline and now I have to find those leaks and really look what I am doing wrong.



It looks like big blind might be the problem, but can't really say yet because of small sample. I might actually not be a losing player, but I also might be an even bigger loser on NL25z. But with that small sample I can't really know and that really ****s with me. But I just got to trust the process. Study every day, find balance and play to the best of my ability and avoid tilting and I will get where I want to be by the end of this year.

I guess I won't get anywhere near $1k profit this month but it's important to just keep pushing through these tough times and try to come up with solutions to turn it around at some point. But until then GL at the tables, thanks for reading and I'm gonna update again on Sunday

Can you post evbb/100 from blinds?

Your cbet flop is too low (57% is quite low, should be up around 70-75% probably at these stakes, unless you are MW alot). This should fix your BTN winrate, which appears to be somewhat low - but hard to tell because I can't tell what kind of winrate you are losing from blinds or winning from BTN.

Try this out though and it should help.

Show 3bet/ raise first in stats from your positions too and we can help more.

I think your BTN VPIP is way too low.

Post some more stats, all we can see from those is you're really nitty pre.

I actually don’t think pio is a good tool unless ur already a really good player. I would focus more on fundamentals at this stage but that’s just me

Thank you guys so much for helping a fish reg in need. I really appreciate it more than you think <3

Here you got the evbb/100:


And here you got the rest of my stats:


didn't have enough space for BTN CO MP EP BB SB

Thanks in advance if someone can give me some more advice on what stuff I need to change

Yeah you're probably right but I just try to do whatever I can do. I don't know the exact path I need to follow in order to succeed so I just try out whatever might help me, because I really really want to be a good player some day

Every German I know studies mechanical engineering. I get you not wanting to be stuck with the boring 9-5, however having a degree doesn’t mean you must have 9-5 employment, choosing employment which is working between 9-5 is the problem. I would in your position have waited until I actually beat the games before giving up on your studies and becoming a poker pro.

I don’t know much regarding German online poker legislation but they must be better sites for you to play than the super high rake trap that is microstakes pokerstars!!

I suggest learning PLO ; )

I will finish my degree when I'm beating NL100z. I have not like 100% given up on that but it will clearly be paused for the next months.

WTSD is to high - you call too much on the river. Should be around 26.

Try to get VPIP EP->BTN somezhing like 13%/18%/25%/40%

You're sacrificing a mechanical engineering degree to go all in on poker when it's clear you haven't spent more than 15 minutes looking at a preflop chart. This is a level of recklessness I've never seen here in PGC.

I might just have looked at the wrong charts and I've not really given up on engineering. I am just going all in for this year on poker and see if I can make it. When I am where I wanna be in poker I will finish my degree and decide after what I really want to do. I tightened up my preflop ranges because I was afraid of getting destroyed by rake. So this was my approach and it turns out that it was wrong. Telling me that I didn't look at a preflop chart for 15 minutes seems unfair and pretty insulting tbh. Anyways, thanks for your input

could be totally wrong-- you seem a bit conservative on the turn, with a high flop cbet but lower turn cbet. Given you are entering river with a stronger range, your river play could be overly passive as well. These are at least things I would be keeping in mind if I was trying to exploit you as my opponent. If you are winning then there is little need to change anything that you are doing.

Not when he is this tight. Calling on the river is actually the opposite of his problem and shows a pretty bad lack of understanding by you.