Yo.

I deposited $50 on Ignition the other week to play some micros for fun. I've been having fun with the sessions and really enjoying reading other people's experiences at a similar level, so I thought I'd also try my hand at a blog. I don't really know where I want to go with this, but I really enjoy playing/talking about poker. I'm not necessarily new to the game, but I've never built up a serious bankroll online. I've really just punted small deposits for fun every couple of months. Part of writing something like this is me keeping myself accountable and sticking to a plan. I can also be prone to tilt once in a while, and I'm hoping the embarrassment of bad results will keep me calm in the moment lol

Results over the past week...


As you can see I've had a great beginning to this bankroll. Isn't that weird how my yellow line came back to within a penny of my green line? Sample mega tiny but just thought it was funny it happened to end up like that. I'm up ~$78 and have a lot more cushion for 5z as far as the bankroll goes. $50 was kind of an uncomfortable beginning, but having 26ish BIs feels a lot nicer.

How I'd like to run this thing...

The annoying thing about Ignition is that I have to download the hands 24 hours later, which means I'll be updating this blog the day after I play a session. I'll probably just briefly check my large pots to see if anything funny / interesting happened and include a few of those with the progress update. I can't promise daily volume; I have a job, hobbies, etc. and won't always have time to sit here grinding thousands of hands like a little 5z gremlin. Maybe I can try to on weekends or something.

I don't know how long I want to be at 5z. The next step up is 25z on the site unless I want to play regular tables. We'll wait until I have $200-300 before I make decisions like that. Maybe I just 5z up to $500+ and then shot take or something lol. If anybody has input on that I'd love to hear it. Definitely enjoy fast poker a lot more than the regular tables though.

The graph in this post includes yesterday's session, but I'll make a follow-up post to this discussing only that session. I've played another session today as well that I'll likely discuss tomorrow. I'd like to include graphs of each session and the updated overall graph with each post. Guess that's it so... hope you guys enjoy. Always happy to chat with other people playing the micros, so feel free to reach out. I'm cool with chatting on discord and discussing hands or whatever.

You made it looking good so far! I didn't realise there was no in-between on ignition, seems quite a step. Am I right in thinking ignition is hudless? How do you find that?

I'm in a similar boat, with regards to other hobbies and full time job. If we can grind these micros and sacrifice time, it's safe to say we have the commitment and discipline there to succeed haha. I think tilt effects us all in some way or another, but hopefully we get more and more immune to it in time.

Subbed and good luck. I'll be up for discord at some point. I just need to download it and sort an account out.

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Session - January 22nd

I only played ~300 hands this session. I actually wanted to play more, but hilariously things went TOO well. You ever play, immediately stack a few people, and think... "yeah, I guess that's good enough for today." That was me. In the past I'm guilty of being up a good amount, and just continuing to play a ton more hands until I eventually play worse and lose it back. Not that day. Figured it'd be nice to just lock up a couple of very easy buy-ins. Wasn't any preflop jamming or anything like that, just nice easy value shoves on rivers. Wish it always went that well. The session I'll post tomorrow was GRUELING compared to this one.

Session results...

Overall results... (You saw this in the OP)


Only really had one big hand for this session. I stacked a couple shortstacks too, but they were really standard hands against people who just played bad.

Shoved river targeting an ace, but they showed up with something else!

I thought I was targeting AT+ there, but I guess he could also have just been blasting with some BS the entire time. Really surprised he called but I guess he really liked the hand he ended up with. Lovely flop for me of course lol

Like I said earlier, the session I post tomorrow absolutely sucked. Not going to spoil the results or anything, but it was a lot more hands played and I definitely went through some adversity. I'll have more to talk about for sure. This one was nice and easy... hope I have more of these in the future haha.

Was that an old man forgetting to wear his glasses if only it was that easy all the time! Nice hand.

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Thanks! Glad to have you along for the ride. Looking forward to reading your updates too.

Yeah it's hudless. It's a lot easier on me not having to sit there keeping track of a bunch of stats; it's also nice that nobody is picking up on my probably awful tendencies lol. I can just really get in-tune with the 5z pool and how people are playing overall. People just seem a lot more bold on here than other sites. Since it's anonymous, they don't feel embarrassed about doing absolutely ridiculous stuff haha. I've had tilting people call me down with Q high for their entire stack after not hitting their draw. Lots of random open shoving, lots of people not reupping their stacks, etc. You should try it out and see if you like it!

Tilt has been pretty bad for me in the past... I was always guilty of "oh, I lost a buyin or two at 25z, better load up 200z to make it back real quick" type stuff. I'm trying to be strict about just enjoying (lol) 5z and enjoying the process of winning and trying to make a sick graph. Sometimes we'll just have bad days, and that's OK. No rush to fix it or anything, it'll correct itself over time.

But yeah just let me know whenever you're all set up on discord! Maybe we can start a study group or something. Good luck at the tables!

Session - January 23rd

I didn't enjoy this one very much. I was hit with some bad luck in the beginning and took a bit of a downward tumble. I was down about 3.5 buy-ins at 1k hands, and decided to just keep grinding it out. In contrast with my last update, when I'm down I get stubborn and want to play more. That's probably a mental leak. I'm happy to say however that I didn't feel angry during the session; instead, I just rolled my eyes at a couple of the spots where I lost money. I definitely didn't play my A game this session, but I was conscious of tilt and even happy that I earned some imaginary EV dollars.

I stayed patient and eventually that paid off. I battled back to positive, but it felt like it took ages. I know it's only 1750 hands, but it was hours spent knowing I'm down and feeling like I was clawing for scraps. The graph for this session is an absolute mess lol.

Session Graph - 1,766 Hands @ 5z - +$5.49

Overall Graph - 11,165 Hands @ 5z - +$83.17

Some of the hands I played today were really interesting. I'm starting to learn that if villain thinks he is pot committed, he'll get in there with anything. I'm also learning that just like villain, I have difficulty finding my fold button too lol.

In this one, I get a bit frisky preflop. As played, do you call river?

Wait... they called with WHAT? Lmao

Consider me a non-believer... All actions instant, including the flop donk. Seemed like tilt/spew to me.


Anyway, tumultuous session aside, I've already played another one I'll post tomorrow. Making these posts is kind of fun so I hope I stay somewhat regular with it. Feel free to comment on any of the hands I've posted even if it's just to have a laugh at me or villain! Glad to keep growing the BR, even if this was a tiny win.

Session - January 24th

Nice and easy! Another low volume day where I locked up a couple buy-ins. I don't have a lot to say about this session. AA>KK all in pre... that's basically it. Some boring mid-sized pots otherwise. Happy to just make progress on the bankroll and post up another positive result.

Session Graph - 466 Hands @ 5z - +$11.19

Overall Graph - 11,631 Hands @ 5z - +$94.36

The session I post tomorrow should have a little bit more volume. Not sure if it broke 1k hands or not, but it was another one that just felt like it took a while. Once again because things didn't necessarily go the way I wanted them to... I'll definitely have a few large pots to share. People get absolutely nutty with deeper stacks sometimes.

Looking good so far dude! Glad you are keeping disciplined. If you lose a few stacks don't even worry about it. I'm going through this learning phase myself. If I just power through and not let it affect me, I notice it just comes back anyway and these short small down swings are usually followed by short higher up swings, adding to the overall up trend of the graph.

Problem comes is if you carry on, knowing you are a bit tilted you run the risk of losing further stacks and the tilt just carrys over to your next session. Know thy self (as the Greeks once said, I think lol). Just always have in the back of your mind that poker is really just one big massive session, with breaks in between.

Keep up the good work. Cheers

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Thanks! I like that way of thinking about it. Honestly I think the low $ amount helps a lot too. I feel nothing about $5, and now that I've got some buy-ins to work with, it doesn't feel like I'm losing a big chunk of my BR either. Makes it easy to just shrug and keep grinding! Kinda highlights the importance of this discipline and BR management for sure.

Session - January 25th

This session could have been a lot better. I managed to get KK in for ~250bbs against A6ss preflop, so you'll see the middle of the session where my green line and yellow line say goodbye to each other. I don't intend for this thread to ever focus on bad beats, so I'm not going to highlight it past that, but I just wanted to explain why the session looks so brutal. In reality it was just that one hand that made all the difference, and I'm thankful people exist to make that hand possible haha.

Anyway, happy to still book a win. This also officially takes me to 30 buy-ins, and means that I've won 20. With $150 in the bankroll, my next immediate goal is trying to reach $200! I'll have a decision to make at that point. Do I stay at 5z or do I switch to 4 regular tables of 10NL? Maybe just add 2 tables of 10NL with my 5z volume? I don't know. One thing at a time. Hopefully within a week or two I'll be in a better spot to make those decisions.

Session Graph - 1,452 Hands @ 5z - +$7.79

Overall Graph - 13,083 Hands @ 5z - $+102.15

This hand made me sweat on the river. I felt like they had to have AK, but there isn't really a scenario where I fold this. Villain was a psychopath lol

They really do be going for it...

I didn't play a session on the 26th, but as I type this I plan on playing today. I have nothing to do so maybe it'll be another decent volume session. Good luck at the tables everyone, hopefully I make good progress past $150.

Red looks solid. Cool results.

Good luck!