Hello and welcome to my, hopefully, interesting thread full of adventure and mischief.

So what's this thread about? Well, its all in the title. My plan is to live the dream: travel the world, funded by clicking buttons in my pyjamas. Hopefully it can be a source of motivation for myself and entertainment for the readers.

So a little about me. I'm a 25 year old from bonny Scotland. Been playing poker for a long time now, but as a hobbyist. Made some decent pocket money but that is all.

I love being outdoors. Trail running, cycling, hiking--these are my passions, and will hopefully balance out the long hours spent at the PC.

About two months was when I had this idea and decided to start from the bottom with £200 at nl10 on some untracked euro sites. Since then I have grinded it up to £2000, improved my play tremendously, and am now playing nl50. I am confident enough in myself and my abilities to create this thread, and be sure it will not die like so many others of its type.

So I will now start playing poker full-time, aiming for 40 hour weeks. Will post more detailed goals in posts to come.

Lets ****ing go!

SO I thought an interesting way to start this thread would be a mini challenge. I normally don't play on stars, but I've put a little volume recently and felt the games are pretty good and had decent results too. And besides, everyone loves graphs right? So I have decided to do a week long nl25z challenge, with the rules as follows:

40 hours playing 2/3 tables
no looking at results until the end of the week
absolutely no time on the PC apart from poker (I tend to procrastinate on youtube ETC, need to cut that **** out, spending 40 hours a week on the PC is more than enough.)

So that's it. Challenge starts tomorrow.

As for more longterm goals I am planning to grind until at least 3k bankroll and 3k in savings before jumping on a plane to somewhere.

Hey guys. So it's the end of the month and I thought I should post my stars results that I have played so far.



That was mostly at 25z on stars, with a bit of 50z here and there. I also played quite a bit at the untracked Euro sites with decent results. I've had to withdraw a small amount for living costs since I am playing full time having quit my crap job now. Thankfully my costs are very low since I still live with the parents and I'm very frugal with money.

I guess I should post some info about myself. I am a university dropout. I was doing CS at a decent university but ended dropping out due to the personal issues I had. I basically moved back in with my parents and became a bit of a shut-in, playing video games all day. I was very unhealthy at his time, doing no exercise and eating junk-food all day. On the bright, side I got so good at LoL I ended up challenger and started making money doing ELO boosting, which actually payed quite well. unfortunately my health deteriorated further due to that lifestyle and I eventually decided to quit playing completely around 2 years ago, and got some crappy job instead.

Since then my health has drastically improved. I started exercising, getting out doors, eating healthy and meditating, and now I feel like a new person. I'm following a strict plant based diet--which has helped with some of the chronic health issues I've had in the past--for two years now.

This month I will be doing a 100k hands challenge at 25nl zoom, with the aim of being accepted into a staking/coaching program. Hopefully I can maintain my current win rate of EV 7bb/100 at these games but I'm not sure if that will be possible. I will look at results only 2 times per month

I also want to set myself a fitness challenge. Normally I love being outdoors running etc. but the winter is coming in so I want to aim for going to the gym 6 days per week. I also want to aim for 1 hour of meditation per day also.

My poker goals is basically "shoot for the stars". I want to aim to play as high as possible and hopefully make some poker buddies doing so.

Anyway, Gl at the tables everyone. Hopefully in this thread will become more interesting as I can accrue enough money to leave my parents house.

Interesting hand I played. Villain was somewhat unknown but active over a small sample.

PokerStars Zoom No-Limit Hold'em, $0.25 BB (6 handed) - Converted at http://www.handhistoryconverter.com

Button ($41.10)
Hero (SB) ($26.03)
BB ($29.47)
UTG ($40.60)
MP ($23.20)
CO ($24.11)

Preflop: Hero is SB with 6, A
4 folds, Hero raises to $0.56, BB calls $0.31

Flop: ($1.12) Q, 3, 6 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $0.80, Hero calls $0.80

Turn: ($2.72) 2 (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $2, Hero calls $2

River: ($6.72) K (2 players)
Hero checks, BB bets $4.28, Hero calls $4.28

Total pot: $15.28 | Rake: $0.69

The reason I called down was I don't think people thin value bet a Qx enough at these stakes and I don't put him on that many Kx, meaning he can be pretty unbalanced here. Thoughts?

hey man good luck with the new thread!


as for the hand, you can consider cbetting flop on this board to protect your hand from overcards. x/c is fine too and x/c turn is good.

river gets difficult so lets look at his value range. He can definitely have 33, Q6s, and Q3s. He may have 66 but should 3bet it pre so lets assume not. He will also have a handful of KsXs (9-3 minus blockers id say) hands as well as 45s and maybe some 22 that tried to steal flop. were looking at about 17 value combos and that's not including KQ or 66, which at these levels you may find people flatting even though they shouldn't very often.

So to call his bet we need to win 28% of the time to breakeven when you call. So he needs 6-7 bluff combos to make our call BE or better.

I think go to bluffs are 47s and 57s for 8 combos, although some can be 3bet pre for sure. On the other hand, a weak aggro opponent may find a ton of random bluffs here with J high to 8 high hands or even A high. But in that case it also adds some value to his range in terms of K high and other random hands that connected. Overall, theoretically your call should be fine based on the above. But if we add in KQo at least and some 66 then it gets tough to find more bluffs for him to have to make it BE. That + the fact that most people underbluff rivers in these games makes me lean slightly towards fold, but it's possible that calling is the correct play as well.

Basically you should be tanking this spot regardless of what you decide, and calling overall isn't bad, its slightly -ev at worst I think. In micro zoom games you may want to err on the side of the less variance decision though since there's no way to accurately tell what the right answer is and even if you are right, its higher variance and very low EV gained long term.

Hope that helps! Cheers man.

Thanks for your detailed response.

I'm not really good at trying to work out what specific combos ETC he may have there--after all, he could be playing up to 80% of all hands if he is playing correctly VS my small raise (he's probably not, which is why I do that small open). I do agree with your analysis that people are under bluffing rivers in general, but what weighed me towards a call was just how wide his range could be that he gets to the river with there, the fact that I am perceived capped from my flop line and the fact I don't think people will value bet as thin as they should there. All this lead me to believe that it might be a good bluffcatch spot given how very easy it would be for him to overbluff there considering all the above factors. This is just my not so scientific hand analysis though, and I agree that its probably a whatever spot. He ended up showing up with a weirdly played 53o. there is always that WTF factor at these stakes, that's for sure.

Solid win! Yea if we knew he could bluff eide enough to even include showdown worthy hands, or say too many Ax or random air hands then i def like the call. I also suggest to be careful in these spots based on who im talking to. So if. You find yourself calling too many spots like this and justying the losses with the wins then you may be hurting yourself long term but if this is a rare calldown based on the situation where you took the time to consider all posibilities then i think its okay to add some ev here with a call. With lack of info its close though which makes it tough so wp!

I'm actually trying to add a few more river bluff-catches to my game as I think my river call eff is a bit high. Its around 1.45 and I think around .8 is a break even call for the commonly used bet sizing ( the stat is calculated stupidly and its very misleading). Im probably missing a bit of Ev there. You makes some very good points I think.

Subbed

Any special place you want to travel to?

GL!

Hey man. Well anywhere hot basically. I hate the winter where I live, it sucks. it's already dark by 4:30 and its only going to get worse . The summer is good though.

So I had an absolutely sick heater yesterday. Said I wouldn't look at results but I just had too. Was sitting with like 500bb on every table, was sick.

nice results man, move up already Detox cfp program by any chance?

Yeah, that's the dream.

As for limit I normally play 50nl/100nl on a soft untracked site. It's much softer than 25z but the software is ass and you get like 1/3 of the hands per hour. The reason for the 25z is to move down 1-2 limits and play 100k hands in a month for the cfp challenge.

Lucky I'm running way above EV so far. My EV win rate is not that impressive. 25z kinda sucks with its high rake and high amounts of nits everywhere. Its definitely crushable for a big win rate but its not the most +EV game to play in. I'm paying 10bb/100 rake with basically no rakeback to play a nitty zoom game.

Thought it was that, good luck with your application and this month!

Thanks man, need to up the hours over the next few weeks for sure.

Still playing 25z. Volume wise I'm a little behind. just broke a pretty cool milestone though, 1k profit at stars!


anonymous photo sharing

Nice graph man, half way there keep it up!

Sup guys. 25z is officially CRUSHED! Really happy with how my game is, winning over 9 bb/100. Felt like I've learned so much playing these zoom hands too, really worthwhile.

Hopefully I can now blast up the stakes. Gonna grind 50z like crazy now, and if I run decent, nl100 in January.

Well done bro! gl with application on the 18th i think

With gaming background you'll get there easily!
Good luck!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In, glgl!

Sick winrate. Should post more hands tho!

Thanks man. LOL experience has helped me with tilt, that's for sure. Its a way more stressful game than poker.

tyty will try to post some hands. Its just hard to know what peoplr would find interesting, funny hands or serious. It feels doubtful you will get much serious discussion on here haha.

Funky time so far at nl50z. Games seem pretty good honestly. Think i can win > 5Evbb pretty easy longterm.
Had a -14 Bi downswing there on Saturday when It was wall to wall fish, so sick lmao. Here is the month to date:


Need to up the volume. Procrastination is my biggest issue right now.

I've also cut down to 3 tables and feel like its made a big difference. Looking back at the downswing it felt like all coolers but after analysing some hands with a fresh head there was def some spots i could have made an explo fold. Live and learn!