I took a shot at taking poker seriously back in 2016 playing zoom on stars, but I peaked at 25nl, always losing whatever I had won there when I'd shot take at 50nl. After a million plus hands essentially being a rakeback grinder who didn't have anything to show for the work I had put in I stopped taking poker seriously and just donked around in tournaments from time to time.

4 years later and now that I'm out of Uni and am just working, I feel like I have endless amounts of free time, so I started dabbling in the zoom streets again. After running like a god at 25nl and 50nl, I jumped into 100nl and whadya know, I ran like a god there too, so I started thinking wtf is going on? Are the games softer now than 4 years ago? But alas, variance eventually started catching up to me as well as regs taking advantage of my biggest leaks and my 100nl graph began plummeting back down, then I checked my all-in EV and that's when I saw I'm running 50 buyins above EV....So yea, like I said, like a god.

Anyways, this lit a fire under me, and I want nothing more than to be able to crush these games that are currently crushing me. So this thread is going to consist of me checking in with updates as the year goes on. Despite probably a few million hands of nl zoom under my belt, I really lack on the theory side of poker and knowing what I should be doing with what in basically every spot, I just sorta go on what 'makes sense', but it's time to progress to the next level.

My official goal for the year is to be beating 100nl zoom and to have 10k profit on the year (including covering any expenses like coaching, software, or new PC for running sims if I go that route).

I'll be aiming to play "correctly" in as many spots as I can unless playing vs complete whales, but for me, "correct" play is so new that I'll be making an unbelievable amount of errors, including preflop as I had never even bothered with preflop charts in the past. So at least for the month of Feb, I'll be spending the bulk of my time going over my hands rather than actually playing them.

Any recommendations, thoughts, opinions on what you'd like to see in this thread (interesting hands, new insights into theory, mental state, etc?), well wishes, or bad wishes if you're in the 100nl zoom streets yourself are all welcome here, this thread is self-serving to keep me accountable, and something for me to look back on at the end of the year.

50 bi above ev lul gl! Ppl love graph porn and hand history so can post that.

So I'll show my degen graph as well as how disgustingly above EV I ran...

results by stake:


graph with all games combined:

100nl zoom only graph:


Obviously now that it's clear to me that I'm just punting money I will scale wayyyyy back on volume and focus on studying. What I had been doing was 3 tabling (sometimes 4 but I felt like I was really throwing money away at 4 tables) for 3 hours per day on weekdays and more on weekends. For feb my plan will be to play 1 table for 1 hour each week day, and spend the other 2 hours analyzing my play from that session, and sharing some of the spots that I'd like some insight on on here.

Bare in mind that some of my intuitions could be completely asinine in the beginning - I'm hoping that they are to be honest, because that just means lots of room for improvement - so go easy on me if my justifications or reasoning for actions is backwards in some spots, but all constructive criticism will be welcomed.

As I start to get more comfortable with my frequencies and ranges there will hopefully be less and less spots that I'm making gigantic mistakes on and therefore the play/analysis ratio will increase. I feel like I have so many huge leaks currently that there's a ton I can work on before bothering to invest in a PC and solver, but maybe someone on here has some insight into that as well.

Hi all! I was expecting to make a response to this earlier with some hand reviews to go over, but as I dove head first into some theory and developing a strategy (won't shill for what I'm beginning the journey with) I had a bit of a Dunning-Kruger realization - Just didn't know how much I didn't know.

With that being said, it didn't make a lot of sense for me to be doing a little bit of strategy, then playing, then reviewing, as I wouldn't even have a general strategy for most spots that I'd be able to review and refine, so I'm doing a deep dive into all the most common situations theory-wise and then will jump back into the tables and start posting hand reviews. I'm not sure what stakes I'll jump in at but probably something negligible like 5nl or 10nl as I expect I'll be making some huge mistakes trying to implement all the new strategies.

I know the thread just looks like a dud like all the others like it, but I'm putting in the man hours every day right now looking forward to loading up the tables again, tomorrow I'll take a break for pizza, wings, beer, and a good football game, also gonna try and get back into the gym and running so that I don't neglect my health for this hobby.

Good luck to everyone on the grind.

I'm back. This week I finally got some hands in, 3000 of them. Although I've been deep in the studying grind most of what i've taken notes on and learned has not sunk in yet, so while playing i'm forgetting wtf i'm supposed to do almost all the time, but that's fine as I'll be reviewing hands and comparing to notes, as well as coming here and other places to try and figure out spots where I'm completely stumped. Today I looked through all of my pots I played this week where I 3bet preflop and was happy to discover that even just comparing to my own notes I was making clear mistakes on like 3/4 of the hands on the flop (either sizings or frequencies). Strangely enough this made me happy because it means I have a ton of EV to gain even with some easy changes.

I'm not sure what my plan will be for next week as far as ratio of study/review time vs play time, and whether or not I'll be playing 1 table or 2...I'll likely stick with 100nl or possibly 50nl, as I think dropping lower is just going to bore me so much that I will probably not spend enough time with it. 3 hours per day would be nice but that's asking a lot while maintaining any sort of healthy lifestyle, so 2.5 hours might be the sweet spot, with a 50/50 split of playing/studying. or may do like this week where I get my playing in during the week and study/review on weekend.

Anyways, here's some hands that I marked as I was reviewing where I was really puzzled on the correct strat (i'm not delusional about having huge flaws in my game, so forgive questions that might seem like they should be coming from someone playing 2nl not 100nl).

This first hand is just a spot that I couldn't believe that I had actually folded it when I was looking at my hand history...now, it's possible I saved some money here, but this is just supposed to be a pure call right?

Next, this hand I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to be doing...the flop I like betting at least most of the time with this hand, and it seems like it would be bad to 3bet vs his raise, but then i'm also just giving him a free river...then when he bets tiny on the turn it feels like he's trying to get a super cheap showdown, but when he isn't he's likely just got trips and is inducing so I'm just sort of lost here. Any thoughts on this hand are welcome.

Then, this hand I am fine with the flop play, I'm going to be betting with a small size here sometimes but went with the large size this time. After the K pairs on the turn, I don't really know what my range is doing here...the SPR is 1.5, I don't know if I should be barreling small with value and jamming river or if i should just be jamming turn, and if I am jamming turn I guess I would just need to decide if this particular hand fits into the jamming range or not (which it likely doesn't)...any thoughts on this hand again are welcomed.

One more thing that I should know but just don't, how close is AK when you 3bet and face a 100bb 4bet? Obviously it's a spot where it's going to be slam dunk call vs some random whales but let's say everyone was anonymous, is it just a fold?

Also when I click hand history converter in 2+2 it just gives me an error message, hence the weaktight links, so any help with that would be cool too.

GL all and here's the graph for the week.

I ran the complete opposite albeit at lower stakes but its pretty funny how variance works in that way. As for AK it depends on positions. If its CO/BTN or BTNvsSB/BB then its profitable to stack off. If you are getting jammed on from EP then call with AKs and fold AKo. Stacking off with AKs at 100bb is never much of a mistake. AKo can be folded some of the time as it's more marginal. GL I hope you run above EV for life.