Title was supposed to be 'MTTs the right way' but I got let go at my job on Wednesday so don't have anywhere near as much as I was planning in savings, bankroll or study done. Instead of moping around though, I thought I'd take the approach of ‘life happens for you’ and that this is an opportunity to just start where I am and try my best. I have a ~$500 roll and 2 months expenses saved so let’s see how much I can get done with that.

Been reading a number of current and old PG&C threads of players who have done/doing similar things to what I want to do. Tried to extract all the lessons I could from their experiences so hopefully that will help me get on the right track early. Ultimately, it’s just going to be a case of putting in the hours, studying hard, trying to find good players to network and learn from, show up consistently, don’t get discouraged by bad results/downswings, stick to the plan, actually learn from mistakes, etc, etc. Seems like a general theme is playing on softer sites with smaller fields when starting out. Also seen a couple recommendations to start with cash games to build good deeper stacked fundamentals before transitioning to MTTs. I won’t be doing this but after knocking out the initial ‘easier’ revisions from things I’ve studied in the past, I think I will make my focus on improving my deeper stacked play.



As you can see, turbo games suit my very math, ICM, short stacked, volume based style and not so much logical, hand ranging, soul reading side of my game. I can definitely do both sides but this is my early SnG background shaping my results and preference I think. Something to keep in mind and work on.

I am going to try structure my week a little something like this:
Tuesday - Day off but with some light study. Mostly just setting a new topic, strategy, tactic or improvement to work on for the upcoming week.
Wednesday - Study and a practice session.
Thursday - Game Day.
Friday - Review of Thursday session with focus on the improvement for that week then a practice session.
Saturday - Day off; prep for Sunday and light study.
Sunday - Game Day.
Monday - Final review and adjustments of study topic then a practice session.

This will give me 2 dedicated days for grinding out volume and 3 days to ensure I study/review properly with no pressure to be done by a set time to start a session. I can get in 3 supplementary sessions then to assist with volume targets and get 5 days of work in without (hopefully) burning out from playing all the time. Not entirely sure how this will go but if I could do 60 games on game days and 20-30 games on study days then I'd get something like 180-200 games a week. 800-900 games a month. Not locking this in as I need to test it out first but I think it's manageable.

Daily schedule:
11:00 Morning routine
12:30 Gym (may go after session instead, 24 hour gym).
13:30 Either:
- study, prep food and then start a session when study is done.
- Meal prep and start session at 14:45 on Game Days. Register until 21:40 (Liable to change).
- Chill on days off. Catch up with friends. Plan for my week ahead.
01:30 - Update PG&C & Network with other MTT players.
02:00 - Crash (if session is done).

If I can stick to this then hopefully I should start seeing improvements in my general well-being and my game whilst still getting in good volume. Idea is to just see where I am each week, make small adjustments and keep gradually incrementing the numbers.

Going to spend this weekend experimenting to find the right setup and schedule. Will start my first cycle of study on Tuesday, 4th May. Expecting the first couple weeks to be rough but then hopefully find some rhythm and results.

Already following a few MTT PG&C's but I need to start commenting and leaving my GLGL's and thoughts on hand histories. Got to be in there learning and supporting others even at the risk of embarrassing myself, getting criticised or ridiculed about how bad my game is right now. Not interested in building a following, poker fame or even the money really but I do need good people around me so I can improve faster and that means I need to put myself out here and network. Must also start frequenting the small stakes MTT board.

****, am I supposed to include an about me in this opening post? Ok, let’s do this quick; Martyn, 31, UK, playing since 16, microstakes dweller, love football (support West Ham), enjoy watching and playing most sports and games tbh,... feel free to ask if you want to know anything else.

Lifetime Graph:


May Goals:
[ ] Build good habits.
[ ] Don't go busto.
[ ] Make some proper incremental goals based on initial outcomes of being settled into a routine.

Anyway, that’s enough talk for now. "Let’s play some fkn cards!"

Hey man GL! Not sure I'd play MTT's with a $500 roll though, I'd probably grind it up with SNGS until you can play like $10 MTT's on average.

Do whatever you feel like is best for you though!

Hey Martyn, wish you luck!
Nice plan, i'm sure you gonna have good results if you stick to it!
Let us know how it goes, i'll be following

Thanks man. I don't think it matters what you choose really. Can't do much properly with $500. I like hunting for FTs and wins. Enjoy the format more than cash or sng's. It's what I've historically played and it's what I want to play longer term so I might as well just start with it.

Thanks! That's the key - just got to stick to the plan and work hard.

So had a little session this evening to check out HUD, table positioning and how rusty I am. Let's just say I have sooo much to work on. Very rusty and poor session. Threw up 11 games and 4 freerolls just to get some tables up on my screen. Built up a few stacks. Blew a few stacks. Directly bubbled 1 game losing AQs to A4s. Then had this little run:



Money is terrible but it's a final table in a solid sized field on my first session. Came in 7/9 and was pretty card dead so there's some positives I can take despite how badly I played most of the session.

Want to play tomorrow but I really need to just make all the quick and simple fixes in my game. Just spots I know what to do but lacked confidence in so chose not to do them. Maybe I can squeeze in another smaller evening session like today after studying. We shall see.

For study today I set up a bunch of filters to remove the junk hands and short stack spots from yesterday's session and then reviewed a little over 112 hands. Definitely just missing tons of preflop opening ranges, steal spots and blind defences. A lot of the post flop issues are from not playing preflop properly which leads to weird post flop spots. For example:


Almost certain I should 3bet pre. As is, think I’m too deep to raise flop but it’s probably fine if I did. Turn Ace is probably good for me, especially once he checks so I decided to check back as I don’t think there are too many bad cards and it gets too obvious even for fish when I bet out turn. Probably just a K, Q and maybe 8 is bad river but the diamonds of those are really good. I seriously considered raising river. I expect JT, J9 to pay. Maybe if I make it small enough I get a KJ, QJ call too. This is micro stakes after all. Think other hands in his range would have cbet turn or won’t call river. KQ beats me now though but expect a bigger bet if he had that. So not sure. Just an interesting hand where I can make cases for playing multiple different ways. I guess a lot of this gets settled if I just 3bet pre though.

Study - hand tags


Did well for 5 hours of my session this evening. Had the music up loud and fully focused on the tables. Played pretty well. Then I had too many tables around 20:00 and got overwhelmed. Really hurt some of my bigger stacks and deeper runs. Once table count fell back under 12 I was good again and had runs in these 3 games:

$1 rebuy FT came in 3/8. 164 entrants. Lost 77 < KQ, AA<KK, QQ < K5s to bust 4th for $28.23. Any of those and I have big chip lead 3 left but just couldn’t get there.
€1 bounty 14 left ran QQ into AA BvB. 12th/383
$3.30 - The Brawl $5k bounty came in 8/9. Was like 1st of 40 or so and went card dead/missed a bunch of boards. 1521 entrants. Had 86s > 55 when 8/8. K9o > J4o when 4/4. Lost A8o < A5s. Finished 4th again. :-/ At least I got $167.18 for this one.

34 games today. 2.5hrs study. 9.5 hours play. ~$66 in. $171.72 profit. Roll is now ~$650. Not bad for a test session!

3rd May
Wasted the whole day pretty much. Slept terribly, ate terribly, did nothing.

4th May
Productive day just getting normal weekly/monthly type chores done. Cleaned and organised myself, my stuff, the house, my meal/gym/work plans. Basically just trying to get as much done to set up for a good week of poker.

5th May
I struggled a little to get going this morning but I went through my normal routine, got to the gym for a solid workout and prepped food once I got back. Was 30 mins behind schedule and then took a call from a friend for 30 mins before studying.

Study (16:00 - 18:00):
Reviewed Sunday’s deeper stacked hands. Had 121 to review.



Majority of my errors are still attributed to opening ranges. About 1/3rd were during the period I had too many tables open which makes sense. Still need to work on it though so will make it my focus this week. Next week I definitely need to work on 3betting and restealing as I just simply don’t do it.

18:00 - 18:25
Felt it was +EV to build a Breaking Benjamin playlist so I could binge listen to it during my session. Was disappointed to find I was missing a load of songs from my normal playlist so had to spend some time fixing that.

18:25 - 00:43: Session
Felt mentally slow today. Wasn’t playing bad but couldn’t really keep it together with more than 8 tables. There wasn't really any big errors though. Just a few bets where I should have checked, some sizings that were off and a few misreads where I could probably have laid down the hand. On Sunday it felt like I got a lot of good value in on flops and it held up. Today felt like I would get the money in and the opponent would always catch back up on the river. Made it hard to build anything. Nothing out of the ordinary though. Just one of those days. Music was good at least and I enjoyed the session overall.

€1 Bounty FT came in 3/8. 264 entrants. Finished 6th running 22 into AQo. Got really shallow with 3 players holding on with under 5bb. Tiny money but a FT none the less.

2 hours study today, 6.3 hours play. 21 Games, $62.86 in, -$25 loss.

Oh, I also need to rethink my meal planning as it didn't work and I spent 5 minutes sitting out of my games to fix my dinner...

Get to try a full schedule of games tomorrow so that should be interesting. Let's see if I can get 50 games in.

I'd squeeze the AJs yeah, betting turn for like 1/3 pot is fine as there will be many pair+gutshot that will call and also a non diamond T isn't really a good card for you. River could go for a minraise and fold to a shove

Definately work on 3betting/restealing because it's so +ev, not only for balancing purposes because it's micros ofcourse but you'll pick up lots of pots both preflop and postflop

For opening ranges just find some standard charts for MTT's and deviate from them according to the players behind you

Thanks for the feedback. I know with the 3betting/restealing that there are a range of hands that are not good enough to call in some spots but too good to fold - quite often because of stack sizes. Those are prime hands for balancing out my 3bet range but I just haven’t done the work to be really confident with that yet. I also don’t want to be trying to tackle 2 problems at the same time. I’d rather fix one and when that’s sorted, come back for the other one. Will definitely see a big improvement once I get it sorted though.

I have my opening ranges set already. It’s just the bottom end of those ranges I sometimes pass on and take the easier path of folding rather than trying to work through the hand. Sometimes it’s because I have too many tables. Sometimes I’m just lacking confidence. Other times I’m just being lazy lol.

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6th May
Wasn’t in the right headspace today. A little bit of tiredness. A lot of feeling dissatisfied with things in general. Feel like I need to see friends and go on an adventure or something. I think I also built this expectation of playing a big session today and sticking to my plan. When I realise that I can’t do it or that it’s going to be a bad decision, I start to feel guilty and beat on myself for being so inconsistent and weak.

I knew it was going to be rough like this for the first few weeks though. My priority is making sure I stay on top of diet, health, posture, mobility, fitness and strength - so that I feel good and have the energy to work consistently. It’s much more important to ease off on days like today. I’d rather focus on those things than focus on getting results/stressing about hitting poker goals and risk relapsing back into bad habits that will ruin me long term. When I feel down, like I am today, I typically reach for sugary foods and thus ruin my energy levels, feel terrible and start the cycle of doing less and less.

Just need to take a deep breath, not make things worse and find some little wins today.



It's like I'm holding all the aces
But I know I'll never win

7th May
Played yesterday's full session today. Hit the gym first though and stayed on top of diet. Started the session a little late at 16:00 but still got decent volume in.

$3.30 $2k Bounty 19/625.
$1 $300 R&A 11/191. AA<KK
€0.50 €200 R&A 16/229.
€1 €1500 R&A 18/638. 77 into KK BB vs btn for 14bb.
$5.50 The Flash $5k 6max 33/1318. AK < AA
$1.10 $300 Bounty 22/324.
€5 €1k bounty 12/415. Got 0 bounties. :-/

45 games, 9.4 hours played, $139 in, -$34 loss.

Frustrating session really. Lost count how many times I lost with AA or AX that was dominating a smaller AX. Surprised I had as many deep runs as I did but just couldn’t make anything hold up when it mattered.

Think I’m going to have to decide whether to go volume or scale back and focus on playing as close to perfect as I can. I think my ideal table count is 10 and then probably 8 when I have a deep game or 2 to focus on. Get maybe 600 games a month instead of 800-900.

900 games @ 20% ROI = 180 buy ins.
or
600 games @ 30% ROI = 180 buy ins

I think there’s a point in my sessions where I go from 10 to 11 tables and my play style changes significantly enough that my ROI drops a fair bit. I stop thinking through decisions and start auto-clicking most decisions. Play my hands instead of getting reads and stealing/restealing.

Something to think about anyway.

Seeing friends tomorrow. Got a few things to sort out after that and then maybe an evening study session to prep for Sunday. Also need to catch up on some other PG&Cs.

Just try out sometimes when playing like above 40bb deep, preferably in position with some hands like K9s, A5s or 67s in position against someone who opens a lot and has a decent foldto3b stat