Hey 6betme, hope you get back to the casino this weekend and get some run good.

Be lazy all you want, just don't miss the Friday/Saturday night games.

1) Play while drinking
2) Play dangerously under rolled
3) Play higher stakes than skill level dictates
4) Insanely high bills

I didn't think there was a worse recipe for a poker pro, but OP has managed to make it worse. As soon as he quits his job and "goes pro" he not only stops playing and has no income but he goes on vacation. You cant make this **** up.

Pit game play would make it a worse recipe

BOOM! Lets play some martingale BJ !!

OP has already done that.

So we done here folks?

OP appears to have got 4) under control. He's eating leftovers and cooking more instead of eating takeaways and restaurant food. However, he's offset that by playing less. I'd love him to get back on the grind. At the end of the day, this is a job and you have to put the hours in.

Almost seems like it. Been surprisingly quiet in here for a while,considering its a very short time since our hero "went pro". I dunno if he in reality is closer to bustoville than he informs the thread about, or if he for other reasons seems to avoid playing.

Guys he is on a well deserved vacation let him enjoy his time off in peace. I'm sure he will come back with epic stories of degeneracy and spending half his roll on his gf on trips to the restaurant trying to impress her and getting drunk.

Patience.

What happens in Sydney stays in Sydney.

Sent from my LGMS631 using Tapatalk

One of the hardest transitions that recreational players have to go through when they go pro is playing when there is no other income coming in. The game gets harder when you just can't save to get your bankroll back. OP, there's nothing to be ashamed. This is the dark side of the poker lifestyle. Go find a new job and go back to poker being a profitable hobby.

I'm assuming that the OP didn't flame out spectacularly because someone would have posted it in this thread.

Thank you. You're right. Something about the freezing cold Winter days just makes me want to stay at home all day and night with the heater on and the laptop on. But I need to get this volume in. I need to suck it up, leave the bedroom and get to the casino.

I put a few thousand hands online at 25nl and won about 8 buyins. Pretty small sample size, but I do feel that I have an edge over the field just from seeing how they play. I'm not afraid to pull big bluffs if I have to, like I x/jammed 170bbs on the flop with 22 on an A53r flop and got someone to put in 40bbs then fold. I think that that kind of ruthlessness is what gives me an edge, since very few players in the 25nl pool are capable of pulling 150bb+ bluffs, and they always give you credit for having 2pr+ in that spot.

I actually played a live session of 2/5 a couple of days ago and managed to win $600. I'll admit that I was drunk that night (thus I failed the alcohol challenge), but I still think I played pretty tight/solid that session. The last big pot I won involved me jamming $330 into $380 on the turn with QQ on a J859 board and getting snap called by 87. I'll admit that I was pretty unhappy to get snap called, but it turns out that I had him crushed the whole way.

So from what little volume I've put in, I have managed to win back most of the 1k I lost last week at the PLO tables. My bankroll is still alive and well, but I do need to push myself to put in more volume and stop being a lazy c**t that sits in his room on his laptop with the heater on all day and night.

That's good that you got unstuck but don't get stuck in that rec mindset of back to even is good enough. Remember you're a pro no so you're also down everything you spent on rent, food and entertainment since then too.

You won't last long on zone playing like that. lol

AFAIK he is play ignition zone and not Stars. The anon tables should prolong the life span a little.

A few years ago, Bovada was extremely soft. You could flop a set 200bbs deep and stack your opponent's overpair/TPTK. You can't do that these days because people are nittier and better at hand reading. But you can adjust by bluffing more. And once the stacks get deep enough (150bb+), it's quite easy to get someone off a strong 1pr hand by piling the pressure on postflop.

TIL that when villain gets it all in with 13 outs (9 clean outs)...we have him crushed.

And by freezing cold you mean highs in the mid 50s (°F).

No surprise. Alcoholism can be a serious problem.

The PLO King of Pub Poker

So 2 nights ago I went out to pub poker. It was the same venue I went to a few weeks prior, only this time my girlfriend wasn't there; it was just me and 2 of my mates. For those who don't know: pub poker is completely rake-free, but players have to deal themselves, which can cause some issues...

When I got there, I couldn't help myself. $12 pint+parma combos are pretty rare in Melbourne, and since I was only at a pub and the stakes were ridiculously small, I figured I've got nothing to lose. The whole point of the no alcohol challenge was to prevent myself from getting drunk at the casino with thousands at risk, and since I had no intention of going to the casino, I thought that I could have a few sneaky beers with no consequences...

We joined the $30 MTT and I busted pretty early when I jammed 26bbs with KTs and this super drunk guy limp-called it off with 54s and won. Luckily, they had a $1/$1 cash game running on the side ($20-$50 buyin) and they were playing PLO, as opposed to the normal NLHE.

At the table was a guy who called himself "The PLO King". He looked kind of similar to Indian Romeo, but slightly more meth-head looking. He was very rowdy and bragged about how he's unbeatable. I think that me, him and my mates were the only ones that knew how to calculate the size of the pot, and even he had this view that "I know that that's how they calculate it at the casino, but that's not how we do it here." But I insisted on doing the maths for everyone. I made around $160 profit there.

Around 11pm, another $30 MTT started. My other mate and I sign up. We see Indian Romeo playing on the table next to us, but he's keeping quiet and avoiding eye contact with me, so I decide to let it slip. I'm doing pretty well this time: I'm the second biggest stack on the table, but I eventually run my KQs into AKo and bust, so it's back to the cash game for me.

As soon as I sit down, this massive 40 year old Ukrainian guy tells me "you don't run the show here, we're doing it our way". They're playing PLO, except when you raise, you can "only raise by what's in the pot". So if someone bets $15 into a $15 pot, you can't repot to $60 like normal; you can only repot to $30, which is f**king ridiculous, but I had no power to disagree, since none of the other players had my back. Not even the PLO King. They all sided with the Ukrainian guy. So that's the bullsh*t game we were playing.

Since I'm tilted about this a**hole Ukrainian guy trying to tell me that I can only open to $2 from UTG in a $1/$1 game, I immediately accept the PLO King's offer to flip for stacks. We do a few flips and I lose about $50 there, but ultimately leave this table around $150 up. The most satisfying part was stacking the Ukrainian guy. God. I cannot tell you how amazing that felt. I wish I could see karma like that on the poker table every day.

So after the cost of food, drinks and the uber ride, I'm about $200 up by the end of the night. I catch an uber back to the city with my mate at 2am and I decide that instead of going home, I want to go to the casino. My mate tries to convince me not to go, but I'm drunk and I don't listen.

So it's 2:30am and I sit down at a 2/5 table. A different mate is on the 1/3 table and crushing everyone, sitting on about $2500, but there's a waiting list for that table and I'm too impatient, so I make him transfer to the 2/5 with me. We each buy in for $300, since we have this stupid plan of "trying to look fishy".

The funny thing is that, despite the fact that I'm drunk and my mate is sober, he's playing far looser than I am. He's opening QJo in the Lojack and calling 3bets OOP with KTs, which are things I'd never do. I try to call him out on it because he's my mate and I'd much rather educate him than educate the fish, but he always has some excuse like "QJ is a fistpump raise after a limper" or "this guy was squeezing light so I couldn't fold", so I gave up and just let him do his thing.

There's 2 hands which stuck out:

Hand 1: 4betting light

MP limps $5
Hero raises $25 HJ with 99
CO calls $25
BTN calls $25
SB calls $25
LAGtard 3bets $130 BB
MP folds
Hero 4bet jams $500
4 folds

We make about $200 profit without even needing to see a flop. Easy game.

Hand 2: Value towning the whale

1 limper
Hero raises $25 UTG+2 with QQ
Whale calls $25 MP (this guy had previously called $100 pre with 82o)
3 other callers

Flop ($120, 5ways) is J83r

Hero Cbets $80
Whale calls $80
BTN calls $80

Turn ($360) is J839 now with FD

Hero jams $330
Whale snap calls all-in for $200
BTN tank folds

River ($760) is J8935

Hero flips over QQ
Whale confidently flips over 87s

I mumble "nice hand" and start cutting out $200 to give to the whale. The chip stack is pushed towards me and I just leave it there for 10 seconds. The whale says "I'll be back". I'm sitting here confused. The dealer is dealing a new hand now and someone says to me "you won". I stop and think. "Ohhhhh I thought he had the straight". "How many beers have you had?" Chuckled another player on the table.

At that point, it struck me that I was actually quite drunk. It's one thing to misread a hand in PLO, but an entirely different thing to misread a hand in holdem. I cashed out and headed home shortly after that, around 6am, having won $600 at the casino and $200 at the pub. Not a bad night after all.

I'm not an alcoholic. Not even remotely close. I probably drink about 8 standard drinks per week on average, and 80% of days I don't drink at all, whereas alcoholics will drink about 15 standard drinks per night, 7 nights per week.

And the temperature has been 5 degrees celsius most nights (40 degrees Fahrenheit) which is extremely cold. Australia is normally a hot country.

That's good that you stuck to this rule. Until this:

You really need to stop drinking at work. I can see a potential disaster incoming if you continue this way, where you just go on a drunken tilted rampage at high stakes and lose your entire roll. That's not what you want, is it?

You were able to cut down your food costs, so I'm sure you can cut down your drinking as well.

Also the young poker pro going to the low stakes pub game and demanding that all the regs adjust the rues of the game they've been playing for however long and follow the poker pros "correct rules", even when the professional player is correct, is a terrible look and ultra douche move.

So what if it's not a true pot limit game, who cares? it's a social game at the pub. Take it for what it is, adjust and enjoy the gamble.

This.

The whole “I won back what I lost in my last degen episode” while appeasing yourself with “still up x amount this year with poker” is not a good mindset to have as a professional. Your monthly nut doesn’t care how much you’re up or that you recovered your losses, and thus it must be factored into your winrate if you want to sustain your roll. The fact that every session you’ve posted since going pro involves you saying “f**k it I’m playing 2/5” and getting blasted is concerning.

Finally we're back to playing 2/5 drunk and checkshoving underpairs for stacks.