I just read through the entire thread, your numbers look good, nice work! I`m from the GTA too, but have lived in Calgary for the past 6 years. I`ve never played at Rama but want to get 1 or 2 sessions in while i`m home for Christmas. Does Rama have games going every day, or is it more just nights/weekends? Do they run tables of 1/2, 1/3 and 2/5?

Sorry man I've been MIA pretty much for all of December. I appreciate you reading the thread and for the positive feedback. I don't plan on abandoning the thread either I'll be posting frequently again in January I just have gotten side tracked as of late. I still plan on reaching or even surpassing all of my goals that I laid out at the start of the thread too.

But anyways to answer your question if it's not too late, yes Rama has games going every day - 1/2 and 2/5 and sometimes 5/T on weekends. The games are pretty good too. If you've already gone since this reply is really late hopefully you've been crushing it. If you have anymore questions about poker in the GTA feel free to ask!

Long Overdue Update: (more regular updates to come)

Alright it has been far too long since my last update. I contemplated not even continuing with the thread but decided it does provide me some value in the sense that it holds me accountable. So for the start of 2018 I honestly have barely played at all (online especially) and it pisses me off. I have had a vacation and been plenty busy at work but honestly that's not an excuse I need to be far more intense with my approach to hit and surpass my goals. Just to recap when I started this thread in late 2017 My goals were as follows:

Goals (By The End of 2018)

Be a live 500NL 2/5 regular

Reach Zoom25 or higher

Play 1000+ hrs live

Play 500,000+ hands online

After consideration and talking with some guys here who gave good advice I decided I'd cut down the live play hours and mainly focus online to improve (along with my commute is somewhat hefty and that along with a full-time job is not ideal).

So the start of this thread saw me beat nl5z over 50,000 hands for a decent win-rate 7.69bb/100, 6.36/100 adj.

Since then I've been playing some live sessions and studying but not near as much as I want to be. I also played in the following WPT Fallsview Events:

$1100 Event
$275 Super Satelite (to the $2500 event)
$550 Super Satelite (to the $5000 main event)

I busted in all of them super early getting my stack in (around avg. chip stack in all situations) with the following equity: 76%, 83%, 79%. So obviously it was extremely disappointing because any of those double ups would have put me in a really good spot in each event early. But anyways it is what it is and in my live cash results made up for it so that was definitely a good thing.

So as for what my plans are now:
--> I will be getting straight into some nl10z grinding and post some graphs as I go. Hopefully I'll do alright and then by the end of 2018 surpass my goal of nl25z. If not I'll honestly have to reconsider how much time I can put into poker in 2019. But I love this game so honestly failure is just not going to be an option in 2018 for me.

And as always feel free to comment or ask questions the more people I have in my thread the more it makes me want to stay on top of it and post.

Well not an update I'm super happy about but I've played about 10,000 hands over the past 3 days at nl10z and things aren't going too well (Losing 7 buy-ins over a 1000 hand stretch doesn't help). The thing is I'm still optimistic as I really feel as though I've been running awful. I know that's a common excuse when you see a graph like this and maybe I'm just not good enough to beat nl10z yet but I've committed for the time being to study off table for 2hrs/day (minimum) with 20hrs+/week of study being the goal (I'll still be playing as well).

Hey guys I just wanted to say I'm not sure how many people are really following my journey but I'm trying to figure out how often I should post updates and anything else poker related. I was thinking maybe every 10,000 hands or so online and then maybe also post my live cash results if anyone is interested in that too. Although the live play would be a lot more sporadic as my main focus is currently 1) study 2) online play 3) live play. If anyone has any input feel free to let me know

I'm a newbie, but I'd say just post when you feel like it haha. If you're posting just because you have to post, might get old real quick. gl on the tables man, enjoying the thread

what school did you go to OP? Fellow Canadian and Mac alumn.

GL on your journey!

Gl man, I'm doing the same thing. Work full time and started out at 2 NL in Jan working my way up to 25NL this year hopefully. Also from the great white north. subbed and gl

Very good point haha, yeah I do enjoy this site and the pgc's a lot so obviously I want to try keep an interesting thread going so I guess I'll post as much as I can without feeling like I absolutely have to. And thanks for the kind words

Man I remember constantly following one of your threads a few years back. You were a player from my area playing at a level that I one day hoped (and still am hoping) to get to so that's pretty cool to have you ITT. And I'm trying to stay somewhat private for the time being but the University is in Ontario.

Sweet man you'll have to let me know how it goes or if you have a thread of your own throw the link in here so I can check it out



Another ~10,000 Hand Update (~20,000 total hands @ nl10z):

So over the past 3 days I've played another 10,000 hands and studied a very good amount. Not sure how sustainable this is with the amount I work but I'm going to do everything I can to keep this pace up especially before I go on vacation for a week near the beginning of March.

[QUOTE=TWoods;53516208]V
Sweet man you'll have to let me know how it goes or if you have a thread of your own throw the link in here so I can check it out /QUOTE]


Yeah man I do. here it is and nice job on the 10K hands.


https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/1...83/?highlight=

[QUOTE=sweetswing1;53517314] Nice just checked it out I'll be following along for sure And thanks I appreciate it

Played another ~10,000 hands over the past two days


~30,000 hands @nl10z update:



I would grind more tonight but I have to be up at 3:30am for work tomorrow so I'll probably just eat and then study a bit and get to bed so I can get a decent sleep and then put some more hands in tomorrow night.

Nice job man, keep grinding

How's it going OP? I lurk the threads from time to time but feel compelled to comment on this as I'm in a pretty similar situation. Recently graduated from a Canadian university, been interested in poker for years but decided to take a 9-5 job for now. I would suggest putting more volume into studying/online while you build a bankroll and jump into live 2-5+ if that's where you see yourself in the long term. Anyways hope you are still at it and good luck on the grind!

Just want to start by saying I was on vacation for the first half of March. Went to an all inclusive with some of my buddies where a ton of american spring break students were and it was a really good time. I've got lots of good stories but I don't think I should be sharing them here lol. But now I need to get grinding because I've put forth a pretty pathetic volume and it's pissing me off. I'll be putting in a minimum of 50,000 hands in April, hopefully somewhere closer to 100,000. I need to have a winning sample at nl10z (50,000-100,000 hands) to get to nl25z asap.

Thanks brother !


Hey man yeah my volume is terrible to be honest I need to step it up. I'd say the 9-5 idea is a good choice for now, what are your future plans are you going to be studying/playing a lot when you're not working? And the thing that makes my situation unique is all I'm trying to do currently is get better since I don't need to technically build a bankroll. I'm fully rolled for 2/5 due to the fact that I work full-time and still make some money on the side as well by playing live about 4-6 times a month which I've been doing (haven't posted live results though ITT for a while). What I've realized though is that I like online a lot more than live. The only thing I don't like about it is that it's almost like an expensive education since at nl10z I'm making lets say $2.50-$5/hr depending on the amount of tables I'm playing instead of ~$20-$25/hr which I could be making playing live right now.

The thing is my long-term plan by the end of 2020 is as follows:
Playing online 6max NL & PLO (regular tables not zoom) 200-1knl.
Playing 5/T as my regular live game (deep $2500 buyin would be preferred). Obviously a long way to go but that's where I want to be (I think the time-frame is reasonable though of almost 3 years to get to that point).

~10,000 more hands at nl10z (40,000 total)



Overall things are looking pretty good. I've been studying a reasonable amount I just need to get more hands in. I've also played about 5,000 hands at nl25z and I'm right around break-even. I'll put in another 10,000 hands or so at nl10z and if all goes well then I'll most likely get into some nl25z.

Been about a week since my last update. I've been working a ton of 12+hrs days which leaves little time for play but I've tried to at least study as much as I can with the free time I do have. I had the day off work today though so I put in about ~5500 hands with about ~1000 of them at nl25z which I was really happy about. I ran pretty terrible (in nl25z not nl10z) but managed to stay focused and pick my spots and ended up slightly positive which was a nice feeling since I'm trying to move to nl25z for good asap. I do notice spots that I feel somewhat uncomfortable in nl25z though so I don't expect an easy transition and I'll need to do quite a lot of work off the tables to get where I want to be.

Here are the graphs from today:

nl10z:



nl25z:

Played another ~4000 hands today. Don't think I'll post daily graphs but today was pretty special. +11.5BI @nl10z, +2.5BI @nl25z.

nl10z:




nl25z:




The odd part is I checked the Overall Luck Bell Curve after and thought it would show me running crazy good but in reality I just ran well when I needed it in certain situations. Along with the fact that for these results I think I played my best too but it's hard not to be a little results biased when the results are like this. I think I'm honestly just going to ignore the Bell Curve from now on tbh because I've had the exact opposite happen in quite a few sessions.

Here's the Overall Luck Bell Curve for both sessions:

Well what goes up must come down I guess: Another ~2,000 hands at nl25z and it's now about 6am here in Canada so I won't be getting much sleep at all.

I stopped the session at -3BI although I wasn't tilted and I felt like I was playing ok. So I'm not sure how I want to set a stop loss moving forward. I think as long as I truly feel like I'm playing solid I can keep playing regardless of how much I'm down but maybe after I find myself 2-3BI down take a minimum 1hr away from playing and just regroup and come back fresh. Or even move back down to nl10z for the rest of the day. If anyone has any advice for how they handle stop losses please let me know. Anyways here's the graph:

Hey welcome back, nice results lately. Don't think a stop loss is necessary as long as the results aren't affecting you and you can still play your A game. Though personally I tend to grind long sessions when I'm down and either get back even or lose a **** tons in a day. So a stop loss might actually be good for me. Definitely check out TMGOP by Jared Tendler if you haven't already, he has a rigorous system for recognizing and mitigating tilt problems to help you stay focused and play your best.

As far as my own situation goes, I'm pretty much just a weekend warrior these days. I've done a lot of work on the technical aspects of the game in the past and just started working on my mental game now when i recognized it as the limiting factor in my growth. Might start my own thread so more on that later.

Took Monday off for a 4 day weekend so time to hit the tables. Good luck.

I actually feel like I'm really similar to you in that if I'm down I'm competitive so I want to push super long sessions to work my way back. I'll need to monitor if I'm still playing my best when this happens though (it happened today and went pretty badly I'll post a graph below). And yeah I'm actually in the process of reading that now it's really good material. It's funny how similar poker is to golf (mentally) and since I've been around competitive golf all my life I think it can definitely help as I try to move up in stakes.

And man you definitely should start a thread I'd follow along for sure are you mainly playing live or online or a mix of both? Also a thread may help with motivation and if anything it's just nice to have somewhere to talk with like-minded people who enjoy the game.

And from what I referenced in the first paragraph here's today's ~4000 hands all nl25z: (it's pretty gross)



After the last nl25z session I posted I actually had a really really solid session that night and was up a decent amount but then this one definitely hurt a bit. I'll post a graph once I hit 25k hands at nl25z I have right around 20k currently.

Update 25,000 hands at nl25z:



So it's been swingy for sure but I'm happy with this start. I was playing my best poker at nl10z prior to this and was really on a good stretch so that was nice to come into nl25z on a high. I'm still making studying and session reviews a priority too. I know that sometimes I can slip into just playing hands to get volume in with little to no improvement so I keep trying to remind myself that it's a complete waste my time to go about things that way (at least in my mind). The thing is though is that the jump from nl10z to nl25z is very big and quite honestly I could very easily be a losing player at this limit. I have been making an effort to review all my sessions in order to get used to how the population is playing in different spots. And lastly, its Masters weekend coming up (the most prestigious pro golf tournament of the year) so I'll be watching that quite a bit and cheering for Tiger Woods (hence the screen name) so my volume may be a bit low but I'll shoot for at least 1k hands/day over the weekend.

Hey guys quick update. I'm playing nl25z exclusively right now. I've been putting in a lot of time both playing and studying this month. Hopefully big things to come.

Just want to give a shout-out to all of the players who enjoy ripping into others in the chat box at the table (which I have closed but can still see what they're saying in the speech bubble above their avatar). A "reg" in nl25z was unhappy with a play I made, he folded but before he did found it neccessary to bombard me with hate for over a minute calling me a fish saying how I'm clueless and how he's taking notes.

This thing is, the hate from other players is the type of stuff that I love and just more motivation for me. I heard the same thing a few times at nl10z before I beat it for over 9bbEV/100. All it does is make me want it more and to get better every day. It's 8am here in Canada I couldn't sleep so I've been up and have already put in 3000 hands today before work. I want every player who talks s*** to me watch me climb the stakes as I work harder than them while at the same time balancing a 40-50hr a week job.

Btw I don't think I ever posted my nl10z graph so here it is:

Neat looking graph, keep it up