Backstory: after a few failed attempts at trying to grind thru the stakes (due to a combination of degenerative behavior at poker and was mostly busy with a job as a tech guy at a state university. Contract was not renewed due to reasons I wasn't informed), I'm going to give it another go. Still have my roll intact from before, it's just I moved to another non-stars site. I came across evthealien's thread (again) and his youtube channel, which gave me enough motivation to play again.

POKER GOALS:
I exactly have $68.52 which is plenty for 2nl. The plan is to grind 10k hands and evaluate roll, minimum of 20BI until 10nl. At least a hand review/week

HEALTH GOALS:
Started running again for a 5k distance w/ a few stops. Once I'm able to run the whole distance with a max of 2 stop then I increase by 1k till I peak at 10k. Actually planning to do the One-Punch man routine which is amusing to me at least.

PREP:
Yes, I have PT4 but still not fully setup for optimal grinding. I will be playing for at least 800-1k hands any given day 4-tabling 6-max tables up to 20k minimum a month.

Till next update

Week 1 Update

Stake: 2nl
Hands Played: 7.5k
Profit: +$18.48

Messed up the first 3-4k hands playing really weird, dipping to almost a deficit of around 7-8 BIs but managed to grind it back up and more. I'm rolled to play the next stake but I will play out the remainder of the hands before I moved up as part of my discipline building. I will grind less volume till I take the exam by the end of the week.


HANDS:
#1 - How often do you shove the turn in this spot?


#2 - How often do you call the river shove here?


Till next update

Quick Update

Summary:
- 2nl, 10k hands played, +$28.62


Finally done w/ 2nl at a decent wr and now moving on to the next stake.


Till next update

Goodluck!

Week 2 Update

Stake: 4nl
Hands Played at Stake: 10.2k
Stake Profit: +$55.07

Total Hands Played: 20.2k
Total Profit: +$83.69

After getting hit by a small downswing I managed to climb up back up again, guess I have to re-evaluate at 20k hands at 4nl. Also I did the update earlier by a day since I have to prep for an exam tomorrow.

Thanks a lot bud.


Till next update!

Week 3 Update

Stake: 4nl
Hands Played at Stake: 20.1k
Stake Profit: +$45.78

Total Hands Played: 31k
Total Profit: +$87.52


Got beat up a lot at 4nl but whatever. Rolled enough for 10nl due to bonuses and will move down if I hit $180 (hopefully not).


Till next update!

Reboot + Week 1 Update

Stake: 4nl
Hands Played at Stake: 9.2k
Stake Profit: +$41.48

prior to diverting more time for my thesis proposal, got into quite a bad string of losses (as stated in previous post) but still enough to play 4nl. I had to restart for the nth time and this time dedicate a solid schedule

UPDATE:

tldr version of my background

basically, life happened. Thesis meant no more time to grind even to make a minimum 15-20k hands a month. Eventually that meant stake is put on hold till I can get more volume going.

After shipping the thesis defense, I eventually had nothing much to do but to find a job and without a roll, wont be able to get that volume up and running. So, I played the playmoney tables. Played on and off for a month to get some rust out risk-free and managed to finish a lol wr of 67bb/100 up to the 1k/2k stakes.

A short while after, a friend who started playing again for a few games just for fun shipped me $20 casually on stars so I had basically a roll (HELL YEAH!). So I started playing the 2c games. Eventually I played worse than usual and currently running a 1.83bb/100 wr @2nl lol with about 2k hands from 4-tabling.

Also posted awhile ago about alternative sites other than stars since I basically didnt like the vip system anymore (even for low volume grinders, the stellar rewards were nice for those hitting the 15-30k vpp yearly mark). The only answer to that was another site which has rakeback. The initial plan was to deposit $200 or so on a WPN site and take the 27% rb starting with 10nl and go from there.

This thread is no more about a challenge but rather more of a log as proof of the passion I still have for the game despite my lack of decent success at it.

And I'm going to start posting hands again. Feel free to point out my lack of solid game theory



Review : BTN is nitty while the blidns are new to the table, standard open from LP. Flopped bottom 2 on a very drawy board, almost psb for value and charge other draws which they flatted. Turn is a brick, could have bet here much bigger but could possible be beat here by a very small range of hands, QT, 99-TT, KJ maybe rarely QQ as its usually a 3bet. BB's minraise was suspect so I took the safe route of calling rather than shoving here since it would be easy for me to fold a 4-straight or a club river. River bricked and still I was very wary to gii especially against the BB so river was checked through and I got a nice sized pot

5k hands in and I've basically doubled the initial roll with some rungood. Oddly enough as I was looking into my positional winrate, BTN was only 2nd to the BB. I looked further into it and I found they were mostly coolers / beats and stuff so no biggie, even my SB has a bigger winrate than EP lol.

Moving on, despite the notion that micros should be played as "bluff less and valuebet a ton", that is a clearly incomplete way to play poker as a whole. I cannot stress enough how much value stealing can add to your winrate. Even without a hud (but better with one as it can help if you have >4 tables - I saw one Peruvian guy who was like 22-tabling 2nl and playing really really tight and berated me when I lost to him to a cooler, guy had no idea how much he lost in blinds and rarely is the table giving him action. It is ridiculous how much money you can make off steals. Now, how much do you raise preflop during a steal attempt?

It depends.

You can still follow your charts as to preflop betsizing and the only thing you have to adjust is how they react. I'll try to recreate an example, cards are unimportant for now:
To sum it up, basically start with trying to steal for the cheapest and watch carefully for villain's reaction, especially in betsizing when defending via 3bet and adjust accordingly. Or you can just look up Pokey's post.

I will look into starting to switch to 5nl tables once I hit around $60 since I can manage to play just fine with 2 tables. It's not the best way to do things with such aggressive brm, but hey I dont play a lot of tables anyway since I always advocate playing better first than playing more tables but autopiloting.

Cheers

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Nearing almost $100, i'll be wrapping up 2nl in a few more wins and move up to 5nl. Funny thing about the graph though is I've though that my redline would be worse but whatever. Also my button winrate is already at 2nd best which is not bad from being 2nd worst during the last update.

Its Christmas morning so I'll be getting some sleep after a whole day of work prepping stuff the day before

Happy holidays y'all

Moved up to 5nl and got my ass royally handed to me. Moved back down to 2nl and to another site where rb is offered.

Cheers