Fish 'n' Chips - A Journey from 2nl
10-27-2016
, 09:55 AM
I hope I am able to provide something a little different for the readers here as it seems anything along the lines of ‘starting at 2NL and working my way up’ is somewhat of a common theme these days around the PG&C forums. But even though thats me in a nutshell, I also enjoy playing live, visit Vegas on occasion, and would also like to contribute anything else interesting tat happens in life into this blog.
Anyway, a brief history of me…
I’m 27 years old and live in the UK, I am a home owner and live with my girlfriend (soon to be married) and our new born baby boy (who I’m over the moon with!). I’ve worked in retail management for the past 11 years since I left school, but unfortunately, due to the current state of things, our business was forced to close.
However, having found ourselves in a reasonable financial position, we are now taking on properties in need of re-development to make a living. In short - this is fantastic, earns good money, and means we can work for ourselves without the stress of customer enquiries day in day out. But having said that, when you’re taking on large projects, there tends to be lengthy gaps in-between property sales etc which leaves downtime for things like family life, holidays and poker, hence the reason for staring this blog).
As far as poker is concerned, I started playing as soon as I turned 18 (the legal age here in the UK). Myself and one of my best friends used to visit a local pool hall every Wednesday evening where there would also be a poker tournament running over the far side of the room. After several weeks of playing pool, we decided that poker looked so much fun that we’d give it a go ourselves.
In fact, I remember sitting down at the table not really knowing the rules of the game and being extremely nervous when I saw a little disc that said ‘Dealer’ on it. My immediate thought was ‘oh no! I have no idea how to deal cards, and I’m going to have to deal when that gets round to me!’ - but, as it turned out, one of the regulars took it upon himself to deal every hand giving me a huge sigh of relief! - Anyway, fast forward less than 10 hands into that comp, and I’m bust with no real reason why I think this is so. I’m just enjoying my first experience playing poker.
After several weeks of playing the same comp (I think we played every week for best part of a year in the end) I finally managed to get a win! - £125 to be exact from a £5 buy in. I even have a victory picture of me holding the winning hand (AJo) to this day! 😃
Then as we get older we then started to visit casinos and play larger competitions. (nothing huge, maybe a £50 buy in maximum) and also start to play online (never really focusing on cash but rather Sit n Gos or MTTs). Over the next several years I manage total live earnings of around £15,000 which is ~breakeven, and end up massively down online just playing $3-$10 tournaments for fun here and there.
Then, about a year ago, I took it upon myself to get ‘serious’ about being a winning player (poker has never been about huge money for me, but rather the fact that I want to call myself a winning player), so I decided to finally download Poker Tracker and deposit $40 into Pokerstars and see where I could get myself using good Bankroll management and discipline in my play. Here I managed to grind to around $100 before deciding that it was too slow and I’d rather just look for spots to spike a big pay day in MTTs etc. So as you can imagine my $100 soon vanished.
So finally we are here, October 2016 and I’ve managed to win just short of £1,000 in a tournament a couple weeks ago, and as I’m currently experiencing one of my gaps between property ventures, I decided to book a trip to Vegas on November 5th for a week (yay!) and also re-boot my challenge and see how far I can get starting at 2nl. (again, poker is not about the money for me. I’m well aware I can deposit bigger and start bigger).
I hadn’t played on Stars in sometime, so having logged back in I noticed I have a few bucks in my account. So rather than making an initial deposit, I decide to start with my current balance, just to get back into the swing of online poker. But much to my surprise, I’ve started out reasonably ok over my first 12,000 hands, so for now I’ll continue the grind and see how things go.
This time around the things I’ll be doing differently as followed:
1. I will not give up and decide I would rather just look for big spots to spike a win. I earn good money in life and to re-iterate, poker is not about the money for me. So the fact I’m starting at 2nl makes no difference.
2. Over 10 years of playing poker, I’ve always been aware of fundamental concepts of things like position and expected value, but due to my attitude to the game, these tend to go out the window. So during the challenge, I’ll make sure I adopt an attitude change to my play and stick with it.
3.I have no real volume goals, but due to downtime being a factor every now and again, it could be possible I could play anywhere form 40,000 to 100,000 hands a month. My first graph below indicates I’m on track for 60,000 in the first 30 days. In essence, the volume won’t tilt me in anyway what so ever. The goal is to call myself a winning poker player so the volume will happen when the volume happens!
4. I’ve pulled some of my old books back out to re-read, including ‘The Theory of Poker’ and the ‘Harrington on Holdem’ series of books. I’ll make sure to indulge myself in poker wisdom both with books and online from time-to-time in an effort to keep my game sharp.
So, to kick things off, here is my first graph below. As you can see I’m around 11,500 hands into the challenge. The first 3,000 or so were a real blood bath for me. I honestly just had to re-adjust myself to playing 2nl again and ‘get back into the swing of things’.
Also, i play zoom. Currently 3 tables but will add 4th soon.
I’d love to hear your guys opinion on a BR management structure i could adopt (bearing in mind my attitude towards my goal)?
Current BR = $29.67
Total Profit = +$12.97
Anyway, a brief history of me…
I’m 27 years old and live in the UK, I am a home owner and live with my girlfriend (soon to be married) and our new born baby boy (who I’m over the moon with!). I’ve worked in retail management for the past 11 years since I left school, but unfortunately, due to the current state of things, our business was forced to close.
However, having found ourselves in a reasonable financial position, we are now taking on properties in need of re-development to make a living. In short - this is fantastic, earns good money, and means we can work for ourselves without the stress of customer enquiries day in day out. But having said that, when you’re taking on large projects, there tends to be lengthy gaps in-between property sales etc which leaves downtime for things like family life, holidays and poker, hence the reason for staring this blog).
As far as poker is concerned, I started playing as soon as I turned 18 (the legal age here in the UK). Myself and one of my best friends used to visit a local pool hall every Wednesday evening where there would also be a poker tournament running over the far side of the room. After several weeks of playing pool, we decided that poker looked so much fun that we’d give it a go ourselves.
In fact, I remember sitting down at the table not really knowing the rules of the game and being extremely nervous when I saw a little disc that said ‘Dealer’ on it. My immediate thought was ‘oh no! I have no idea how to deal cards, and I’m going to have to deal when that gets round to me!’ - but, as it turned out, one of the regulars took it upon himself to deal every hand giving me a huge sigh of relief! - Anyway, fast forward less than 10 hands into that comp, and I’m bust with no real reason why I think this is so. I’m just enjoying my first experience playing poker.
After several weeks of playing the same comp (I think we played every week for best part of a year in the end) I finally managed to get a win! - £125 to be exact from a £5 buy in. I even have a victory picture of me holding the winning hand (AJo) to this day! 😃
Then as we get older we then started to visit casinos and play larger competitions. (nothing huge, maybe a £50 buy in maximum) and also start to play online (never really focusing on cash but rather Sit n Gos or MTTs). Over the next several years I manage total live earnings of around £15,000 which is ~breakeven, and end up massively down online just playing $3-$10 tournaments for fun here and there.
Then, about a year ago, I took it upon myself to get ‘serious’ about being a winning player (poker has never been about huge money for me, but rather the fact that I want to call myself a winning player), so I decided to finally download Poker Tracker and deposit $40 into Pokerstars and see where I could get myself using good Bankroll management and discipline in my play. Here I managed to grind to around $100 before deciding that it was too slow and I’d rather just look for spots to spike a big pay day in MTTs etc. So as you can imagine my $100 soon vanished.
So finally we are here, October 2016 and I’ve managed to win just short of £1,000 in a tournament a couple weeks ago, and as I’m currently experiencing one of my gaps between property ventures, I decided to book a trip to Vegas on November 5th for a week (yay!) and also re-boot my challenge and see how far I can get starting at 2nl. (again, poker is not about the money for me. I’m well aware I can deposit bigger and start bigger).
I hadn’t played on Stars in sometime, so having logged back in I noticed I have a few bucks in my account. So rather than making an initial deposit, I decide to start with my current balance, just to get back into the swing of online poker. But much to my surprise, I’ve started out reasonably ok over my first 12,000 hands, so for now I’ll continue the grind and see how things go.
This time around the things I’ll be doing differently as followed:
1. I will not give up and decide I would rather just look for big spots to spike a win. I earn good money in life and to re-iterate, poker is not about the money for me. So the fact I’m starting at 2nl makes no difference.
2. Over 10 years of playing poker, I’ve always been aware of fundamental concepts of things like position and expected value, but due to my attitude to the game, these tend to go out the window. So during the challenge, I’ll make sure I adopt an attitude change to my play and stick with it.
3.I have no real volume goals, but due to downtime being a factor every now and again, it could be possible I could play anywhere form 40,000 to 100,000 hands a month. My first graph below indicates I’m on track for 60,000 in the first 30 days. In essence, the volume won’t tilt me in anyway what so ever. The goal is to call myself a winning poker player so the volume will happen when the volume happens!
4. I’ve pulled some of my old books back out to re-read, including ‘The Theory of Poker’ and the ‘Harrington on Holdem’ series of books. I’ll make sure to indulge myself in poker wisdom both with books and online from time-to-time in an effort to keep my game sharp.
So, to kick things off, here is my first graph below. As you can see I’m around 11,500 hands into the challenge. The first 3,000 or so were a real blood bath for me. I honestly just had to re-adjust myself to playing 2nl again and ‘get back into the swing of things’.
Also, i play zoom. Currently 3 tables but will add 4th soon.
I’d love to hear your guys opinion on a BR management structure i could adopt (bearing in mind my attitude towards my goal)?
Current BR = $29.67
Total Profit = +$12.97
10-28-2016
, 05:09 AM
I've played a couple of sessions since my opening post, but I had a strange session this morning. I finally added the 4th table to Zoom, and I have to say I'm very comfortable keeping up with the action. It's a shame Stars don't let you play more tables at one limit.
The weirdest spot of the session was hitting a Queen high straight on the turn with two Jacks on the flop and shoving all in, only to have some guy tank for the remainder of his time bank and then finally call with QUAD JACKS! - Must be the biggest slow play i've ever experienced.
All in all I made it a winning session... Just. In total since I started the challenge I've played 22 sessions and 17 of those have been winning.
Onwards and upwards...
Current BR = $32.31
Total Profit = +$15.61
The weirdest spot of the session was hitting a Queen high straight on the turn with two Jacks on the flop and shoving all in, only to have some guy tank for the remainder of his time bank and then finally call with QUAD JACKS! - Must be the biggest slow play i've ever experienced.
All in all I made it a winning session... Just. In total since I started the challenge I've played 22 sessions and 17 of those have been winning.
Onwards and upwards...
Current BR = $32.31
Total Profit = +$15.61
