Hey 2p2,

decided to go full-time pro this year after long consideration especially considering that I have some solid job offers in finance.

I am currently finishing my Bachelor's degree (about GTO poker) and once I am done I will start putting in some serious live volume.

Some background info:
I am quite young, crushed 500z and 1knl back in 2015, then degen'd around quite a bit and lost most of my roll at high stakes/ nosebleeds.
2016 I rebuild online by playing 100z and 200z, ran at around 4evbb at both stakes, but then had to invest once again most of my roll in long-term assets (for my family/so not able to sell them anytime soon).

The main job offer I have right now is a 60k Euro salary and a 10k signing bonus. Additionally, my parents owe me 7k, which they might only give me if I take the job (-.-), though it is not sure if I even get it in that case, since I had some larger arguments with them about going poker pro. They hate my decision and pretty much told me to go to hell and not contact them again - it is unfortunate that they do not understand or have my back, but that's just life I guess and some people are born with those kind of parents - variance.

Either way, I made some calculations and there is a scenario in which I will take the job first and quit asap once the bonus is in, while grinding during the weekends - no matter what I choose to do, I should end up in Vegas in June.

As you may have figured by now, the step I am taking is a huge risk for me but I am confident in my skillset and I believe I will make it up there by the end of 2018. I do not want to stay in poker long-term, but in the next 2 years I want to run it up big time, and welcome you all to follow me on my journey.

take the job and grind mate see how it goes

First two sessions, found a home game close to my town, took a risk and went there alone (which is a pretty ****ing stupid move tbh).

Luckily it went well.
Pretty sick story actually, will write a session report later.

if you have a similar sn here as on stars, I remember you from a couple years back, when you used to come in and punt off some stacks at nl50 zoom hu, fun times

gl with the live grind and degree!

Not sure yet, its a really tough call imo


Haha yeah that was me, I always went to HU when running bad in 6m and tilting. did you really feel I was punting off stacks though? Iirc I had quite a high winrate (albeit no sample size). How are you doing?

Thanks!

Hey & GL OP! Will follow this.

Had the same issues with parents back in the days when decided to give poker a shot.
It basically comes down to the generation of our parents/family (assuming you're in your early-mid twenties) that these kinda "jobs" are not real jobs. They would react the same way if you'd become a callboy for a living or doing some other gambling stuff. They just don't understand and more important: They don't want to understand. Especially in Germany people won't "accept" this. Don't get frustrated over that, because they don't know better.
I had these arguments a thousand times and finally gave up at some point, because simply telling them that they're wrong won't help at all.
I made a slow progress of explanations for the game and talking about "other" pokerplayers. Like someone who binked EPT and what MTT's are like and how big this actually is. Went on live trips, showed photos of the trip (including card room of course) and showed them my scores online, while explainig always a litte more about the game and what I was actually doing.
Long story short: Parents kinda understand and they are very supportive and we are in a good relationship (never was bad tho).
Just proof them wrong by making a living out of it and try to explain what you are actually doing and give them some "safety". Imagine how you'd react if you had a son and he would skip a big job with a safe future to do the "things he loves". Pretty hard to be like YEAH DUDE DO IT MAN.

subbed gl op,

what country are you from, are you planning on living in vegas?

Thanks for the words man. Im not sure if I will ever be able to convince my parents. As for now, I think they made the decision to kick me out of their lives, since they aren't really answering my messaged, but I think I will just leave it like that and take it how it is. Ill just live my own life and well see how that develops but I wont be making an effort into improving my relationship with them.

Im from Germany, the vegas plan is mainly for WSOP, in general I have no idea where I decided to stay yet long-term. Any cool ideas?

I was at WSOP for 2015 and I stayed at the Signature at MGM was pretty awesome. MGM is the nuts in general as it a huge complex rather than a hotel, pools, girls, awesome bars / clubs places to eat.. tho the only draw back it wasn't super close to the RIO

haha, no worries, I don't remember anything explicitly bad, just typical markings of 6max player playing hu (super high 3bet, super high aggression, while overfolding both pre and post)

I'm still playing hu, unfortunately didn't make any move in stakes as I need to cashout on daily basis and I don't have all my time for poker, I'm working on my phd. Plus, the games got really hard, mb nl50 is as soft as ever, but nl100 and upwards in hu is pretty reg infested with gigantic rake.

to be fair you're supposed to 3bet a lot in HU, most HU players don't 3bet nearly enough, especially lower stakes

well, if you're not REALLY good posflop (and most lowstakes regs, including me, are not) it's correct to 3bet less, since stronger ranges are easier to play. 3betting more than 25% is extremely hard to execute within a balanced strategy. To be fair, though, I was playing OP quite a while ago and I was admittedly overfolding to 3bets back then.

Played a session at the home game (gonna call it Q8 from now on) yday.

Was in for 2k, horrible start, ran it back up
Not sure how I feel about the home games still - they are literally the softest games you can find, but theres always this shady edge and people...

+610

MTD
+ 6170




Gonna start using thread savers:

Fair enough Yeah I think I might have been overfolding pre definitely. Probably still am HU. Gl with your phd mate! What is it in?


Yeh i was just exploiting teh shiz out of you

Played a session at the cas today.
Only downside about cas is, that even though rake is sooooo much better than home game, it's much further away. I've been thinking about booking a hotel next to it for 45 bucks/night to grind this weekend, but feels kinda wasteful...

First week almost over, very happy with the start so far.

MTD
+7302

Just logged my last session of the first week, booking 5/5 wins.
Arrived at the home game at 10pm and only 2 players were there (massive nits). I asked about playing HU with no rake, for some reason the older fish was excited to play HUPLO vs me (he thought he had an edge wtf). I crushed him pretty hard non-sd until the other fish joined in, was up 2-3BI pretty quickly jsut non-sd.

At some point the game started and I ran into some ****ty spots to drop down to B/E. Turned the session around with some huge bluffs. Its funny because the players there kept hating on me for being tight pf and being a "nuts player", even though I printed nonstop overbluffing vs them. Some of the players later on got angry at me, perhaps because they couldnt win a pot vs me. The atmosphere became uncomfortable so I cashed out eventually for a nice finish of the week!

Week 1 done - 30 hours logged!

MTD
+8212


P.S. I noticed that i really like playing PLO, i super enjoy making sick bluffs, especially vs live population overfolding some spots hard. Though, variance is super high so Im not sure yet how I feel about that...

Even though nobody seems to be following this pgc ill keep posting to keep myself going!

Been doing alot of mental game work recently, and also bought dougs HU course and have been studying a bit.

2/4 4 hour session at Cas today - the heater continues


Result
+1584

MTD
+9796

Following, glgl

We need some hands in here and maybe some conversation stuff at the tables

When I'm playing live 2/5/10 or bigger there is almost always a table full of clowns (by trying to be very funny all the time) going and most of the time the convos are hilarious.

You're right! Im going to start writing more hands down (i always think about posting some but then i forget about it). Also planning on writing a session report about the monster session i kicked off with.


Let's talk about mental game for now

I realized that beside being strong theoretically, mental game is actually the key thing that distinguishes the top pros from the breakeven donkeys that think theyre crushing.

Ive been reading Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and am planning on doing some of the exercises he recommended.


My main mental game concerns atm are:
- Due to the fact that I had some sick downswings in my life, I am kinda scared of them hitting. So a part of me is always a bit worried before a session, that this might be a losing one, especially when I am heatering like mad. (RIght now im 6-0 and know that a losing session has to be coming). This should not matter though since were here to grind and to realize our long term winrate and short term results shouldnt affect us at all.
- IN a similar manner, when I am up alot a sesion say 3-4 BI, I think about ending the session early and "booking the win". This is also faulty thinking as I should be grinding in the hours and stay as long as I can as long as I think the spot is +EV for me. On the other hand, due to Bankroll concerns, I believe it is okay to end early once you get to deep to dodge high variance cooler spots if your BR isnt large enough.
- I sometimes think too much about hands I just played (could I have gotten more value, did I misplay any street, bet sizing etc.) Instead I shold write these down, think about them after, and continue focusing 100% on the session and playing A-game
- After big pots my adrenaline is usually still pretty high and even though I try to continue playing normally ( and i probably do), I need to work on being indifferent towards pot sizes and all that stuff (even though this is probably one of the hardest ones to do)


What are your thoughts on these and what are your biggest issues, how do you deal with them?

Keep going, i follow !
GL !

I'm enjoying this as well. Will be following.

the whole "you should grind as much as you can when you're up since you're +EV" is bull

I've done the whole booking wins a lot in my career and it's good for your sanity, sometimes doing other things than poker can be fun, also helps to not feel guilty about not being on the grind

Thanks boys <3

The point is, I dont think you should be standing up because you are afraid of losing the win. If you have other reasons - sure. But I believe for a strong mental game it shouldnt matter whether you are up alot or not, if you are here to grind 6 hours and your spot is +ev you should grind the 6 hours, not be results oriented, and realize your hourly long-term (given that BR considerations dont matter of course).

of course but if you're up a bunch and you don't feel like playing anymore, you shouldn't force yourself just because you're +EV