Have not played poker in a few years and am currently down about 1kish playing 100 PLO and 50 r&c (the name they have for zoom) on ggnetwork (about 5-600 under ev) when I dabbled in it earlier this Feb as I had some free time and kept seeing their promos around. Then played some 10 r&c for a week and won back a few hundred due to the promos and rb. Not a big fan of the network and was not going to play here anymore but now due to the quarantine and them lowering rake somewhat, I'll give it another go until things restart and I stop playing or lose current deposit (have about 1.2k left). So that'll be a max 2-3 month period I figure.

Played online poker for about 7 years, but never hold'em cash games seriously. This recent week where I played r&c was probably my biggest sample size ever. Going to start at 10 r&c for the next 3-4 days to cash in on their race, and adjust ranges a bit, since I have no idea what I'm doing really, and then jump into 50 after.

Ultimate goal is to reach 200 r&c, and show profit within this 2-3 month period. So starting from 10nl, that's a pretty tall order for someone who didn't play NL cash at all before.

Anyway let's see how it goes, I might also end up quitting to play RE3 and FF7 when they come out in April, but will try not to lolz.

Since I will only have ~25BI for 50nl, big chance I bust it there since I don't plan on doing any redepositing for this if I bust current funds, nor will I move back down to play 10NL if running bad (or simply not having an edge).

Plan will be to play 3-4 days of 10 NL to place in this last weekly rake race they offer, then play 1-2 additional days for the daily race they offer at 10NL just to see how the next prize distribution will be.

Afterwards all 50NL and moving up to 100 at a 5k br, then 200 at a 12k br. 100NL was just added, and the 1/2 pool seems strong (i.e. mostly ppl with multi entries) although I never played it. Even 50NL had a pretty high reg to fish ration from the ~20k hands or so I played there last month.

Not going to move down from 50 if running bad, if br busts I'll end the challenge, if I manage to get through the 50NL phase and get to 100, will move back down if I go down to 28-30 BI, and same for 200. So things should be moving pretty quickly here, with a pretty slim likelihood of success heh.

Well not the best start, played 15k hands in a bit under 2 days, but the first day I was very sleep deprived prior to starting (slept like an hour max). Don’t think it affected my play too much though, just a lot of cooler type situations I found. Still, going to probably extend 2-3 more days than initially intended into the 10NL pool given the shaky results (depending on how much the daily prizepool is for each stake).

Totally different game than stars zoom though, since you get raked preflop as soon as it’s 3b. So should be a much more call heavy game overall, rather than higher sized 3bets/4bets and folds.

Overall rake seems to be at a 12bb/100 pre-rb, as opposed to the 23bb/100 it was before so a significant difference overall.

I’ll change the stipulation about not dropping down back to 10NL after going to 50, since it’s pretty easy to have a 10-15 buy in swing (which my high variance play doesn’t help either). Going to say that I will drop down if I get below $750 (15BI) at 50, then return to it at 1500 (30BI).

However, only doing this once, no further drop downs afterwards if it happens.

Results so far (excluding rake):



Overall down $175 due to rake, but getting some back due to the rake race, deposit bonus and affiliate bonuses (however these are only mid next month). So probably down less than $50 overall.

Being shark status on the gg tier doesn’t help either, since I won’t be getting funds back from spins except every $1k raked. Would have much rather preferred to stay at whale and get it every 400$. Never hit a multiplier above 20% (only 10s and a single 20) so far after the octopus status, so the rb from these must be somewhere around 15% rather than the advertised 50 for most who are not massive whales constantly depositing. Also fish buffet not really at 1:1 with every dollar raked, but think that's because a BB for every 30BB in a pot is used for cash drops, which don't count.

Well with the new structure the prizes for the rake race increased overall but went down per payout, since they added 2 new stakes. Kind of prefer it like this though since you can take days off and it doesn't commit you to a full week of playing if you don't want to (it's daily). Have some stuff to do so not going to play for the next 2-3 days or so though.

Currently sitting at 20k/100k on the fish buffet, so probably going to play at 10 until I reach 65k or so, to get the spin boost on the first day playing 50NL. That should be about 4-5 days worth of rake if I get like 8 hours in per day.

Will post daily figures after that with a BR tally and +/- per day. Should play somewhere between 5-15k hands each day.

Realized I still have PT4 installed and managed to import the hands into it. Surprised it actually works, albeit ~150 hands were not imported due to them being run multiple times, which is not supported.

Has me down -118$ when in reality it's somewhere like -172$, so thinking that's probably due to the non-imported hands. There's a much bigger difference between EV differential between what the GG graph itself shows and PT4 though, but again could possibly be explained in those multiple runs hand (or maybe those skew the results on the site itself too?). However, rake seems to be taken into account as well though, which I didn't think would be the case.

Kind of surprised at showdown winnings being so bad, but I do remember a lot of coolers, like 2 sets over sets, and getting AK in for 100BB multiple times after 3b-4b scenarios and running into AA/KK a bunch. Still, might have too high of a frequency for 5b jam 100B deep, should probably have a bigger calling % esp IP (w AK), not sure. We'll see how this progresses in the following days.

PT4: Results



Resuming soon.

Had a small one hour session, just to place for 5$ on the daily leaderboard lol, but ran good. Decided to only run everything once to see if PT4 keeps track of things correctly and takes rake into account, and pleasantly surprised to see it matches the dollar amount exactly (net amount without bonuses). Due to this, I may not run it multiple times anymore, just to have accurate results on PT but not sure yet. Maybe just at 10.

Not going to update for the next 2 days, but might play a minimal session each day just to mincash on the daily rake race. If they happen, I'll update them together before starting again with full day grinds. Probably start updating with daily net +/- then too.

Last session:

Did not abandon this but brushed it aside and just played a bunch of video games instead. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Alright attempt #2 time to get cereal. Since they added 25 since last I played, I jumped into it directly without continuing 10NL. Had my best day yesterday and rb was probably close to 90% for this stretch so almost 40buyins.



End of May (about 4 days) + yest . Kind of swingy the first few days since I always feel my ranges/reading are a bit rusty after I take an extended break. So a bit over breakevenish until yesterday (rb also lower for last month's play).

May jump to 50NL if I have a couple more good days.



Might keep track of results daily now, but it's hard with the fish buffet spins to say where I stand. I did hit $250, and 180$ in my last two whale spins, so happy to see that it's not always stuck at 10%. Starting to change my mind about the ggnetwork. Hope they end up taking more of the stars player pool and give them a run for their money.

Figured out how to best approach this, I think. I feel if I don’t keep this thread going regularly I’ll probably end up getting sidetracked and not play anymore.

So I’ll post an update at the end of the day where I hit a fish buffet spin, which is going to be every 1k in rake. Should be something like ~4days of regular play. Daily is a bit too much, and probably not in the mood after finishing the sessions late at night. Also not going to convert into PT all the hands since it’s way too much work and I have to hand select every ~2k or so since the site doesn’t let me batch import all at once.

Sitting on 2.25k on the site and expecting a $150 payment for last month’s play sometime this month.

Moving up limits will be 4k for 50NL and 8k for 100NL, and I’ll do a move back down if I drop below 50BI at each limit then rinse and repeat.

Could just do 50NL now since it might be worth it from the race prizepool standpoint, or add funds, but would rather not yet - I’ve already rushed the 10 jump and not really played there much. Also back in the day when I was playing fulltime and made my way up the stakes in hus, I always found that you learn most of the stuff as you go along and progress gradually.

Well, the gravy train had to end somewhere. Guess after that big winning session, and r&c leaderboard places they must have relabeled my account from whale to winning player and my point accumulation plummeted by 4x. I suppose it makes sense since on some days I reached 90-100% rb altogether probably if you include end of the month affiliate bonuses. Wish it had lasted a little while longer though.

Mini update for my own record keeping, since now it's going to take 4x as longer for me to reach the spin than initial. Would have cleared the shark spin in less than 4 days under initial conditions but I'm probably looking at 15 or so now. Have 2/3 left to go for this initial one, hopefully by the time I reach it I'll be making the move to 50.

Had another solid session initially, followed by a very crappy one yesterday.

My fault though for playing sleep deprived again. Not going to try so hard for the late night double points on the leaderboards anymore since I'm already pretty tired by then and messes with my sleep schedule, as well as playing my absolute worst. Attention span is shot, and going through hand combos/ranges is severely affected, might as well be playing very drunk (that might even be better in all honesty). Good to be learning this lesson early though. Going to try to wake up earlier too and just play starting from late morning and reducing the night time.

Here are the results:




Since the rb drop I'm probably down like ~150$ (or so?) for the sample. But if you take into account points, and end of month potential affiliate bonuses to rake accrued it's probably something from like -50$ to 0, so breakevenish. Kind of sucks for like 25hrs of play though. Ran into a lot of tough spots and coolers as well. Thought I could just autopilot churn volume, finishing 25 on autopilot and moving on to the next stake, but guess that's not the case.

I was thinking of starting to mix in regular tables as well, starting at 50, but without the r&c leaderboard prizes, the rb seems shot to bits, but I am unsure if the regular table accumulation will be this slow from now on too. Still, if that's the case it would probably just be better to play regular tables elsewhere.

Going to keep track for the next few days of rake paid and fp accumulated to find out roughly what percentage rb is. Expecting it to be somewhere like 50-60% now with something like a 5-6 leaderboard place.

Well, pretty terrible month overall.

Results post the sessions mentioned above:



Think I broke even or down a bit (max 100, depending whether I get some affiliate cash back too or not). Never played this many cash hands before, still pretty new to me.

Managed to clear the last fish buffet spin, but the work I need to put in to get a decent leaderboard position is simply not worth it, if I knew it was going to be this much hassle I would have stopper earlier instead of clearing the spin. Got 250$ or 25% so meh whatever. Getting about 30-40% rake from a top 5 leaderboard position (which I got most days I played, although a mincash yields the same probably since it's really easy to get), and like a 15% extra from the fish points.

Since the rake is so high here, and not the softest games I'll be giving up on zoom (and ggnetwork altogether) and going to start playing regular tables elsewhere starting at 50NL, and continue moving up from there and see where it takes us.

My PVI on gg decreased below the regular ~0.31 or so I calculated earlier (which happened after that 40BI day) to ~0.25, so only about a quarter of my rake "counted". Pretty garbage considering I had a 75k breakeven stretch at best post rb. Crazy that I used to have it at almost 1:1 for a pretty good chunk of time. Think I have about ~125k hands at 25 rush and cash, but did not manage to hit the 600BB splashed pot bonus (1 in every 100k) so that kind of sucks too.