Hello you wonderful community!

I have decided to start blogging to keep a journal of my career and to find fellow grinders that are willing to work hard and improve together. Recently decided that I need to treat poker more seriously if I want to succeed. I have just deactivated facebook to keep distractions to the absolute minimum. I also created a discord channel for mtt sngs. If you are interested, please join at https://discord.gg/D7MKZsg

I mainly play mtt sngs, those games have been my bread and butter and helped me to support myself financially for the last 3 years. In this blog I will post about my journey to becomming mtt reg, as sngs are slowly becoming less profitable and will eventually die IMO. Here are my results so far on pokerstars.



I do not plan on setting myself any financial goals for now. I just want to improve, work with people and slowly transition to mtts. My main games for now are $3.50+R 180s and on demand sngs. Ocasionally I might add some mtts to a session, but not that many just yet.

I am looking forward to meet new people and work hard, reviewing daily. In the spoiler below you can find tldr story of my journey so far 🙂

Peace and GL on your grind, friends!

tldr:

My name is Grzegorz (Gregory or Greg) and I am Polish 28 years old, normal dude with a dream. And this is my story so far.

Beginning. Wolverhampton, United Kingdom.
I found out about poker when I was doing my bachelor degree in Wolverhampton, England in 2010 or so. I do not have any specific gaming backgroud or anything in particular that could lead me to poker. At the time I just knew that some of my friends started playing this online cardgame and they were making decent money at the time. I decided to try it out, made a pokerstrategy account and started studying. I didn’t have much time for poker at the very beginning, so my skill wasn’t really increasing at the time. I treated it more like a hobby with some money making potential in the future. Never thought that one day I would play this full time and make a living out of it.

After finishing my degree I stayed in England for 1 more year working as a bartenter and studying the game/playing when I had time. I also went to local casino and won in my first tournament (we actually chopped HU). That was eye opening how bad eveyone was (despite the fact that I was playing $1 ABI) and how easy it was to play against them. I started to see that sky might be a limit and started playing more and studying even harder. That was 2013, when I started to treat this more seriously.

Coming back home. Lublin, Poland
In October 2013 I came back to my hometown, Lublin in Poland and faced difficult times telling my parents that I started to play poker and I really enjoy doing it. They are very conservative and they wanted me to focus on my masters degree but I decided to take some time off and focus only on poker. I rented my own place, I was young, stupid, full of hopes and dreams and way underrolled for this move. My game was not getting any better in 2014 as my mindset was really bad. Focusing purely on the money and not development and also having my parents talk **** about poker all the time was not an optimal way to go. I was playing $5 sngs at the time, grinding really hard to make a enought to pay rent and bills. At this time I was also in toxic realtionship that surely hurt my motivation and I was not able to believe in myself to the level I do now. I felt like maybe it wasn’t a good path to take and decided to go back to Uni.

Masters degree.
The pressure from my parents, girlfriend and myself was very high (at least I felt it was), so I enrolled to business school here, in Lublin. There was a huge difference in schooling programme compared to the UK. I didn’t really feel like Im learning, I felt more like a slave that needs to memorise a ton of chapters to pass the exams. That was it. It was definietely not my world, so I decided to quit.

Business.
There was one specific benefit about taking business class – I developed a mindset that I can start my own business and be successfull at it. This and some other factors pushed me towards eventually starting my own online business in sales. Im not gonna talk much about it, other then it was OK at the begining and could be fine in the longrun if I put more time and energy into it. I also found out that opening a company and putting ideas to work was more exciting then running it. I definietely lacked discipline and fundamental knowledge. Running my own business was very fascinating at the very beginning, but poker was taking over again. I wanted to get better, I wanted to grind more. I wanted be better player and I wanted it more then anything. Around this time I got away from my toxic long distance relationship (I envy people who can make this work) and was motivated more then ever to acomplish something in this game.

Little turning point.
This is around 2016, I am 26 years old single man living with my parents. I have no masters degree, no work experience, and I have just closed my company as it wasn’t profitable anymore. I play card game on the Internet, withdrawing almost every $ I make, playing $2 ABI and feeling like a massive looser. Luckily, I have developed a passion for this game and I am grinding hard, studying, talk poker with friends etc. I am getting better. I work on my mindset, spending habbits etc. In August 2016 my friend called me and said that he came 3rd in the Sunday Million last night and he wants to ‘freeze’ a part of his bankroll. So, he shipped me some money (shoutout!) and I immediately started to grind higher. We both knew I am profitable in those fields, so he had no problem with that. I am not sure if I would still be playing if it wasn’t for him.

Polish law enforcement is the worst.
It is summer/autumn 2016 and the government is introduing potential changes in gaming laws in Poland. Noone knows exactly what it means. Everyone speculates. Some people think that we will be fine, some think that poker will soon be illegal/banned in Poland. At first, I didn’t know what to think about it. I was grinding sngs with $10 ABI and didn’t really care about goverment at this point. Things got a little more clear in the winter 2016/2017 when we knew that they are going to introduce new gambling laws in between April 2017 and June 2017. According to the goverment both poker and sports betting will be illegal in Poland unless played on Polish sites etc. There were some unclear notes on this, so some people thought it is unlikely that poker will get banned, some already booked one way tickets to Malta, UK, Thailand.

Grind the **** out of here. Bigger turning point.
I was shocked, scared, confused and pissed off. I knew that it was somewhat likely that we only have 6 months left to grind. I personally though that it was close to a coinflip whether or not they will ban poker. This unsure situation turned into the best possible ‘push’ towards ginding my ass off, that I would ever imagine. I was on fire, tilted by the government and ready to play all day everyday. I was grinding. Limited social life, limited time-wasting. Poker was my only activity. I started to climb sng stakes rather quickly (was top 3 in mtt sngs leaderboards for quite some time), started to fire some mtts. First 3 months was very good. I won big 11, big 55, final tabled couple other mtts and was printing in mtt sngs. I built up $20k bankroll and booked my ticket to Malta, as 2 of my friends was already there. I have never been to Malta, but whatever, I knew that I need to move out quickly.

Malta. April 2017.
I landed on 03.04.2017 in a place I have never been before. My mate was suppose to pick me up from the airport, but was too drunk to bother. I took a cab to their place in the middle of a night with 3 suitcases and little to no clue where the **** I was. The tension was gone as soon as I arrived and we started drinking etc. That was fun night, meeting theirs friends and socialising from the very first night. They were living in 3 bedroom apartment with one other dude that was going home for Easter holiday, so I had a room for myself to stay in for a week or two. I immediately started looking for my own place and found a nice apartment in the middle of this lovely island. I moved on my own on 14th April.

Malta, settling in.
I quickly settled in my new apartment and got used to the climate and Maltese way of thinking. I am very adaptable personality and feel well in almost every setting. For the first couple of weeks I was exploring Malta, going out, hanging out with friends and a girl I met there. Poker was not on the top of my to do list. Over the summer I also had 2 couples visitting me for a week each and I myself went back to Poland for a bachelor party and a wedding. When you count all of that time it’s a month without grinding. It had a huge life EV for me of course, but I felt too confident that I can grind it all back by putting more hours in then I used to. I couldn’t..

Malta, grey days.
I wasn’t playing much. I was having fun, chilling and enjoying life. That was obviously a huge mistake and punt of my EV. Playing only 20hours on average per week, downswinging/breaking even in sngs and playing too many scoops and mtts cripled my bankroll significantly. I started to feel financial pressure even though I had money saved for 6months living there. I started to play lower stakes with hopes to grind it back, but time was running out and $EV wasn’t so promising. I decided to grind 50 hours per week or sometimes more, but couldn’t stand the pressure and decided to move back to Poland in December, just before Christmas.

Poland, moving up again.
I came back to live with my parents again, and felt awful. I knew I had skills to grind higher but my bankroll was an issue. I had $1k roll and some money saved up. Decided to go all in again and played a lot. After couple of weeks I realised that my parents aren’t happy with what I am doing, they don’t believe in my at all. It’s hard to play your best game with this kind of mental pressure. I decided to move out on my friend’s couch and grind with him for 2 weeks. After 2 solid weeks of grinding I rented a room with my other buddy (non poker friend). I was grinding and only thing I could think of was moving out to my own place again. I saved 6 months worth of rent and moved out in July.

New place, new mindset.
I had a very eye opening conversation with my friend about treating poker as a normal job. Working hard and developing. Progressing is my biggest motivation right now. Who knows what future will bring…

I wish you all best of luck if you managed to read it all 🙂

Thank you,
Grzegorz

Gl man, sounds interesting

Verstuurd vanaf mijn SM-G960F met Tapatalk

GL will follow

Thank you guys!

Little update of this month.

$3.50+R are my main game this month, I focus on them mostly and been working hard on improving postflop play. I try to think deeply through a hand, focus on ranges (my range and villains range), apply sizings that I think are correct in any given spot and target specific parts of opponents range. Some people say that sngs are push/fold game only. I strongly disagree. Most people have this approach and they don’t work on their postflop game. They don’t have a gameplan and don’t understand their range at all. I think that if we minimise mistakes postflop, then we can build stacks and chip up nicely. If we constantly build up, we will be on a shortstack less often then our opponents, so we will have less very marginal EV spots. AI EV in <15bb is around 5bb/100 or so, so pretty marginal and regs don’t really make mistakes on this stackdepth, so we should work hard on postflop gameplan to accumulate as much as we can. This is where EV comes from in those games IMO.



I also started adding some mtts to my daily grind. Yesterday I FT bubbled Big $7.50 🙁 Onto the next one!



Have a nice day!

I think this is pretty interesting spot and way of thinking vs recs that came up doing my daily review.

https://replayer.runitup.com/hands/81c5a2e856

We play vs fish, so decided to go full exploitative here. I think that his range consists of small PP, some med suited connectors and broadways as well as small to mid suited Ax and hands that he doesn't want to raise and decide, but limps and calls so AJo ATo A9o.

In theory we should be checking range oop, but here vs fish I think betting on the bigger side has merit as we want to maximize FE vs his wideish range. Maybe should bet 50% instead of 66% tho. Def see that we have immidiate FE OTF.

Turn is interesting, decided to bet 1bb because I dont want to be facing big bet and also when 3 pairs, I think our FE goes way down and he calls whatever he called OTF with.

OTR, having a Q sucks as we block his obv QJ combos, so I don't really think we should be bluffing this hand. He never folds a Tx (but he raises some of them OTT vs 1bb), I dont think he folds a 9x as they are really stationy. So the range we are targeting is Ax that peeled (he prob folds most of Ax so not that many combos left), lower FD and QJ.

So maybe betting 10% pot just to fold out this part of his range is a way to go? I don't care about balancing vs recs. Pretty interesting spot IMO.

Close but no cigar quite yet

At least I have some interesting hands from FT to review tomorrow.

Distractions, quiet mind, focus and social media impact on our lifes.

Just a quick post about what I have been thinking about lately and what changes I have implemented because of a few conversations with smart friends and some tedx videos.

So we all live in a very distractive environment. Eveything around us fight for our attention. Notifications, buzzers, people, eveything wants to get our attention. I order to stay focused and driven (especially during grinding and/or studying) we should try to limit those distractions.

It was always a problem of mine. Being on facebook, skype, discord, watching youtube motivation video or just browsing while loading my session. Since 2-3 months, I took a approach that I am going to limit those distractions one by one. At this very moment I can tell that I have achieved almost 100% of my plan. So what exactly did I do? Presession I:

- meditate with headspace, go through 100 spots on snapshove and play 1 session on lumocity (brain teasing app)

- close all tabs in firefox. I only have sharkscope and random number generator tab open

- close skype and discord

- turn off the internet on mobile devices

- play music from random playlists on spotify (deep house etc, preferably with no lyrics at all)*

- start reging sngs

* music without lyrics or with very limited ammount is not taking too much of our focus as our brain doesn't have to concentrate additionally on lyrics and understanding/interpreting them. This also applies for listening to podcast or twitch while playing. We waste way too much mental energy on that. And obviously I was guilty of doing this in the past.

I am really happy with my routine so far and I just though that I am gonna share it with you guys. For all that don't really believe that being a little distracted hurts their winrates - just try to avoid them for 2-3 sessions. You will see the difference and never look back.

Social media and all BS that goes with it.

There is so much information about how bad social media is for our development, self esteem and productivity. However, everyone is on it regardless. I am gonna post some links about social media impact below.

In general, my take on this is that it is very counter productive to spend even a little time on any platform. It doesn't bring any value and all it does is broadcast fake reality and make us depressed. People only post good stuff, interesting moments and generally when they have accomplished something or went on holidays. Then there are us, scrolling through all that information about how perfect and fulfilling our friends' lifes are and we sit at home being miseaurable watching all that happening around us.

I was guilty of having these thoughts before and I was also spending way too much time on facebook and instagram. I wasn't even involved that much. Not posting, just scrolling and judging. Looking back, I feel embaressed and really sad that it was such a huge part of my life. Yes, you guessed it. I deleted all social media platforms and I never felt eager to come back really. For all of you needing proof to what I am saying, please watch some vids and tell me what you think Peace!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czg_9C7gw0o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOchBnZJdEk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gM3KIvZO5oU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=trVzyG4zFMU

Good luck I like your approach and dedication.

Count me in I'm on the discord as well. GL!

Sent from my Redmi Note 5 using Tapatalk

Everyone wants success, but it only follows those who make a true approach to get it.

Subbed. GL!

Thank you guys, appreciate it!

OCTOBER 2018

October was good. Grinded hard, worked my ass off both indivudually and with my discord group. Mtt sngs are going very well, I feel like I have a massive edge over the field because of the hard work I put in recently. I am also very happy how discord is growing. We started with a group of about 10 players and now It's 50 of us with new players joining eveyday.

At the end of October I decided to add some mtts to my sessions. I will continue adding more in November as I feel that I gain a lot of experience which will help me to transition to grind them full time in the future.

I also review a little with a cash game player, and I really like his approach. Cash game players think a little differently and I believe that it is a correct way of analysing hands. He seems to be very professional. Because of that, I want to add some cash game sessions (probably zoom NL25) to learn deepstack poker and to gain more experience thinking about postflop ranges etc. I really enjoy it.

I believe that even if $ value in playing zoom is not that high, the value and experience that I will get will surely pay off in the future. Same goes for learning ICM in hypers. I think I might add few sessions of hyper 6max in November too.

Some graphs and numbers below.

sngs


mtts


cash


Peace!

ciao.mi interessa molto la tua storia...anche a me piacerebbe vivere di poker...puoi aiutarmi??

non parlo italiano amico mio

pm?

pm....
i translate

I fold

can you help me for my poker?:con fused:

I am someone that don't enjoy cooking at all and enjoy good food. That could be costly at times. Eating out or ordering online could be costly sometimes, but if we think about a value of our time, it doesn't look so bad actually. Let me explain.

I did some calculations about how much my time is worth and compared it to 4 different 'food supplies'

- cooking, grocery shopping and cleaning afterwards by myself
- eating out
- ordering catering
- ordering normal food


First, let's calculate our hourly this year. Let's calculate first 10 months of the year, as November has just started. Let's take a October 2018 as an example here ( I am using rescue time to track time spend on PC and categorise different apps)



As we can see business contains of pokerstars, pokertracker, discord and other poker related stuff - this is work/business for me = 160 hours/month = 40 hours/week = 5.7 hours/day

From Jan to November I have made $14,900 + approximately $300 in PS RB = $15,200
Which is $15,200/10months = $1520/month



Therefore, our hourly - I treat poker as a whole, not only playing, so reviewing etc is also work for me, is $1520/160hours = $9.50/hour

Wow, this seems low. I am in a process of moving up stakes, so hopefully this number will be constantly increasing, but for now, let's work with it as it is a true hourly for now.

Conclusion:
An hour of my time is worth $9.50 so far

So now, let's see how much time we need to sacrifice of our day to eat.



And now let's compare our spendings and time saved. We assume that time saved we spend on poker. I am going to compare cooking for myself to catering only as an example.

By cooking we spend 2.5hours/day and we spend $11
By ordering catering we spend 1hour/day and we spend $19
So, if we order, we save 1.5 hours but we pay $8 more.
Is 1.5h saved worth more then $8?
Of course, 1.5hours x $9.50 hourly = $14.25

So, in this example, putting our 1.5hours saved into poker will net us $14.25 and we spend $8 more compared to cooking. This is $6.25 net profit everyday. ($187,50/month and $2250/year).

Actually, it is eye opening

Also, there is a huge benefit in ordering healthy catering as well. Firstly, we get 4 balanced meals with calculated calories and macro. We don't feel full and we deliver good balanced diet everyday. The food itself taste amazing, so it's definietely +lifeEV. Maczfit is Polish catering company that I have used in the past, but it is only an example of course. Unfortunately, I don't have any affiliate links or promos for you. I have nothing to do with the company itself. But I will definietely order 2500kcal for a month very very soon. Look at these beauties

November 2018 summary and very good start for December 2018

Hello again guys. I forgot to summarise my November, so there it is. I was a little lazy compared to previous months, but happy with it anyways. I have been discussing hands more and more on discord, meeting like-minded grinders this month. The group is growing and we also filter and kick inactive players, as we feel that sharing and not getting any value back is wrong. Hopefully in a couple of months we gonna get a strong, hard-working environment built by people that want to improve. I recently started thinking about my complete transition to mtts, as the bankroll is growing. I think I will play daytime mtts on different sites as a start and still adding some $3.50+R at the end of the session. Still waiting for the bankroll to hit that $10,000 so I can play $20 ABI (very conservative).





I also had very good start in December on sngs. Really happy to be back on track after pretty bad November. Gonna start adding $7.00 on demands and $11.00 KOs to my sessions.



If someone is interested in working together with us, PM me or join discord https://discord.gg/xtshpUG
More updates soon

Subbed, nice work! Good luck!

subbed, gl

I really need to work harder on maintaining routines and following schedule. For the last couple of weeks I did not perform very well in that regard. I became a little lazy and unorganized. Going out with friends on fridays and saturdays completly messes up my sleeping schedule. I really feel like I need to schedule my days to optimize time usage. This is something that I'm going to implement next year. I would like to put the days apart and have routines and time blocks for studying my game, reviewing with others, relaxing time and grinding hours. I do think that if I follow strict time schedule, I would perform way better. So many people say that poker is about freedom. We can play when we want, study when we want etc. But it doesn't mean that we can completly ignore basic principles and become hugely unorganized. At the end of the day, this is work and we should behave as professionals.

Poker this month is going OKish. After good start in the begining, I have had some breakeven or slightly loosing days. This is mostly caused by myself though. Not grinding enough and not reviewing daily as I used to.

Overall, I feel like I have improved my play on the blinds. I was focused a lot on BB defending and SB play in blind v blind spots recently. Feeling more confident everyday. I wonder if having possitive winrate on the SB is possible at these stakes. Anyone has it in green after good samplesize?

last 100k hands


last 200k hands



I'm taking the rest of December a little slower as usual. Christmas time always has been relaxing time, time for family and friends. Still gonna grind a little, but no pressure. Happy holidays everyone!

2018 was a decent year. I was very low mentally in the beginning as I had to move out from Malta, because the place was too expensive for me. Decided to rent a cheaper place here and it was worth it. I am really happy that I started blogging, created my own website at http://www.wanderer-pro.com and developed nice community for MTSNGs in my discord channel. Results could be way better but I can’t complain overall. I have big plans for 2019. Will post my goals for this year in the next post.

Regreds for 2018. Volume is the 1st thing that comes to mind. I should be playing more. I also regred not working out this year. I was slacking a lot. 2019 will be much much better, I have many goals and feel that this will be a turn around year!

GL

At 100k profit you win Alicja

200k you upgrade to Agnieszka

Kurwa!!!!!!!!!