Hi everyone, I’m a 21 year old boy from Spain and I started playing poker about a year and a half ago. I was starting to play chess and read somewhere that poker was a strategy game, but that you could make money there. That caught my attention so I looked for some more info on the topic. I had never played poker in my life, so I started watching some videos on youtube learning how the game works, which hands beat which and some basic stuff. A month or so later I deposited in a website and for some months I was a losing player.

I lost about 100 euros in a period of 6 months but I was starting to understand a little bit of the game. Decided to invest 200 euros in a training website and I started making some money. On July last year I started putting in some volume and managed to go from 15 euros to about 1000 at the end of august, grinding from 0.10$ and 0.50$ mtts up to 5$ mtts.

I started college again and I kinda stopped playing, but kept in touch watching streamings and studying a little bit. I played the month of January and again with the coronavirus during march, April and these 17 days of May. And I have managed to earn about 3.5k these months (including January), making it about 4.5k total profit. Regarding volume it must have been 200-300k hands since I started playing (some of them with no profit at the beginning), don’t know how many mtts (recently lost my pt4 base).
My bb/100 (mtt wise) is around 17-21 bb/100 and my ROI is at 60% (only pokerstars tracked, adding other websites it should be lower, but can’t track them).

I really want to understand everything behind poker. I put a lot of hours into studying with a very heavy solver based style. I spent about 1k on videos from a top cash games guy who covers all the spots postflop and I combine them running my own sims on Pio with the mtts ranges and covering different stacksizes and how strategies vary depending on them.

I realized poker is an insanely complex game and I want to play each spot as well as it can be played. That being said, I still have a long way to go. And that’s why I create this thread, I would love to reach the top in some years and look back at this post and how I have progressed. Looking at llinus post, how he had a 200$ br and complaining about losing a couple of buyins at nl10 and where he is now is inspiring to be honest.

I’m not really money driven but if I manage to keep scalling levels I am not gonna be ok earning 2k a month for the rest of my career, I want to reach the highest games.

I will be posting graphs of how sessions and months go and try to keep this updated. You are invited to keep track on my way up to highstakes and all the troubles I find on the journey. I will be as honest as I can. I will also post the most interesting spots I find during my sessions.





-Have my play in SRP Ip as PFR and 3 bet pots OOP as PFR deeply covered
-Grind Mtts at least 3 days a week (I take one day off and the rest of the days I either study or grind)

-Play once a week cash games and focus on some postflop spots I have studied. Playing few tables instead of 6 to 9 when I play mtts and paying special care to some spots I think I struggle trying to find leaks.

-Going back to doing exercise. I do kickboxing but injuried my hand on december and as coronavirus has closed all gyms I haven’t done anything for about 6 months. In the worst shape I have ever been in years and lost some weight as well.






-When polarizing my game on the turn IP I think I don’t bet enough bluff combos and miss a few value combos. Trying to study those spots in all textures.

-Not checkraising enough on the BB on the flop. Although I have to do some studying before because not understanding the ranges you and villain bring to later streets and misplaying turns and rivers can be quite expensive. Until I know what I’m doing I will opt for more passive lines.

-My play on low and mid 3 straights when IP. Never seen the top cash regs bet big on those flops (which would make sense to me as many turns and rivers are gonna leave the board with a one card straight) but after working a bit with Pio it recommends polarizing your range with a big bet strategy or check (Which also makes sense because usually when you polarize your play you bet big or check). Gonna have to do some work to understand the pros and cons to these two playstyles in these boards. What I understand and do is bet a polarized range, bad boards for us generally and we can’t bet range.

-Playing IP when flatcalling. I have recently changed my strategy quite a bit preflop in these spots and tend to 3 bet way less IP and flat more with my medium range (some suited connectors up to AQ) and tend to 3bet a very polarized range as I don’t pay any rake postflop, people under squeeze and I think I have an edge the deeper stacksized I am. That being said I haven’t done much study on this sequence.

Thanks to everyone for reading!

Sunday session just ended.

Session hasn't gone too well. Lost about 60 euros or so. Week has been pretty breakeven, maybe lost 50-100 euros which is not much considering I play 5's and 10's mainly. I have to keep track of it manually because my pokertracker seems to have troubles counting the bounties (at least on Winamax, I think it works fine on pokerstars).

A little bit upset after having played wednesday, thursday and all the weekend but that's how poker works. Feeling a little bit tired after grinding about 12 hrs each day, gonna be taking tomorrow off, rest and watch some replays of people who have streamed the main event of the scoops and sleep well. No active thinking or something like that, just let my body and mind take a day off.

I will probably go full study tuesday and wednesday and back to grinding on thursday. I have had a couple of interesting hands that I want to review and i'll try to post them here on tuesday when I take a look at them. Gonna add a couple of graphs of how the week has gone bb wise. Not the ideal way to see how things are going when playing mtts but it's the most solid

I have never used 2+2 forum so I'm a big noob software wise, let's see if I manage to post the hands and graphs appropiately.

Good night and good luck to those of you who are still grinding!

Edit: So, as expected, I couldn't upload succesfully the images. Will try again tomorrow

So yesterday I took a nice break. Played some videogames in the morning and then ran some sims in Pio while watching some main events streams. I wanted to play after reviewing some hands in Pio so I played some zoom nl5.

I really enjoyed it. Money isn't a big factor at that level and I don't have the pressure of lossing a pot as it's not much money for my br. That's insanely good because it allows me to play as well as I can. I hadn't played nl5 since may last year I think and the pool seemed very soft. People don't bluff much, play really passive (saw a lot of flatting with JJ, QQ, AK) from the SB or BB which blew my mind. The few bluffs I saw were medium range hands that should have gone to showdown, so not too sure what they're doing.

Tried some bluffs that I will try to review later on today, but I really enjoyed playing without the pressure of busting a tourney. In mmts I definitely undercall some all ins postflop when I sometimes should. There are way more fishes in mtts but they are usually more aggresive than cash fishes.

Gotta do some college work now, but I want to play some more zoom hands later today. I'll be free to do a long mtts session on friday, and then again on sunday. So will be studying quite a bit in the free time this week