Hey there, everyone! I'm extremely new to this forum and the poker world, so please forgive if my naivete is obvious.

I'll put the TLDR here - rec player played live cash poker for a while, has a desire to "go pro" and is practicing and hopefully building a bankroll at the micros. Looking for advice, support, and relationships to build through this process!

I started playing live poker recreationally about 3 years ago. Texas had just started opening up so poker clubs around town, so I walked in with $100 to play $1-$3NLH and bluffed an OMC on my very first hand (who must have had absolutely nothing because it got through haha). With no studying and only watching what I would call "entertainment poker" on YouTube (High Stakes Poker, The Big Game, etc.), I actually had a surprisingly high win rate. Now I absolutely attribute that to blind luck and crazy Texas gambling, but I digress.
I had no bankroll, just playing with whatever spare money I had at the end of the month, which wasn't much seeing as I'm a married man with a mortgage (my only debt, thankfully!) Any money I made in poker just went into vacations and stuff. Over the pandemic, I started to play online at Ignition, fully aware that any money I put in there was never likely to come back to me. I tried tournaments to no avail, and found that the stakes I was playing live were MUCH more difficult online. So I quit for a while.
I eventually came across Jonathan Little on YouTube and started to get interested in playing poker for a living. Now I'll preface this by saying I KNOW I'm a long way from that point, but I truly think that I have the desire to learn and love for the game that is required to do this through live cash games. After studying (mostly JL and other training site videos) for the past few months, I decided to take the next step towards that goal.

Last Thursday, I put $500 into Ignition and started two-tabling .02-.05, occasionally adding in a .05-.10 here and there. Over 30 hours (or do we consider it 60 hours since it's two tables?) I've consistently grinded up to $665 as of last night. Do I expect THIS high of a win rate and positive variance to continue over the long haul? Absolutely not. But it is encouraging. However, I want to temper my expectations and keep level-headed so as to not take shots too early. My goal is to build up a big enough bankroll to start playing $1-3 (which is really $2-5 in Texas) responsibly on the side initially before making it my full-time profession I also want a community, accountability, and a place to discuss the process, hence why I'm now here!

If anyone would like to reach out and discuss playing professionally, any issues I might have regarding withdrawing my money from Ignition should that day ever come, or really anything at all, please do so!

Thanks for reading my novel

Hey man! If you want to have someone to talk strategy with send me a DM. We can have a talk, looking over some hands or can give you my advice on how to structure learning the game.

Best of luck,
Skull.

I appreciate it, I will DM you as soon as I obtain that privilege!

Hello! I really like that you have what seems like a humble, sane mindset. Win rates are definitely not steady climbs, but rather swingy journeys where you're always running under or over EV. Good luck!

Thank you! I am QUITE sure that I've made plenty of mistakes over this run but have been fortunate so far. It's not so much about the money as it is about learning and getting better over this time, especially because I'm not even 100% positive that I'll get my money back from the site haha

Ok quick little update, I started hot and heavy but haven't gotten in as much volume over the last week. I already knew that I should avoid everything except for NLH cash but I let my discipline slide a bit and played some tournaments (-$31.84 in 7 tries) and some PLO (-$28.31 in 5 sessions)...so let's just stick with Holdem cash (+$303 in what is now mostly .05-.10 6-max), bringing my bankroll to $743. I've played about 90 hours total over the past 2 weeks so my goal will be to up the volume and keep it to just NLH!

I posted this on the micro-stakes forum but figured I could include it in here as well...let me know if that is something I shouldn't do!

Interesting but I'm sure standard spot for most, I'm just interested in others' input!

.05-.10 on Ignition so no data on V, $13.54 effective

V .25 in CO, H raise to $1 in BB with KK, V calls

Flop (pot $2.05) comes 764, H bets .75 V calls

Turn (pot $3.55) comes 2, Hx-calls V's $1.50

River (pot $6.55) comes 4, Hx V $4

H?

Subbed. GL!

As someone who played professionally and made about every mistake there was to make and found myself in some very dark places, I’ll give a few general rules that I wish I would’ve followed….

1. Make physical and mental fitness your #1 priority. Diet, exercise, quality sleep, meditation
2. Being DISCIPLINED is more important than being GOOD. Don’t lose $ because of mental mistakes.
3. Focus on playing SOLID TAG poker and earn money off of people playing poorly.
4. Being over rolled for your game will alleviate ALOT of stress
- This typically isn’t achievable in the beginning (you have to shot take, imo )
5. Look to create another stream of income outside of poker. The more streams the better. That’s life advice not poker advice - LOL
6. (This is the most important one) Have a life and goals outside of poker. You can’t control the results of poker over what feels like a long time, so you have to be able to anchor your happiness to other things and goals in life (fitness, relationships, hobbies, whatever it may be). If your happiness depends on how things are going in poker, you already lost.

GL man, I hope you run it up!

I’m not much of an online player, but I would think the hands we’d find a call with in this spot are over pairs with the club blocker. In live low stakes, in general you’re gonna just be crushed all the time here. People don’t float the flop, and will happily show down 1 pair hands OTR.

Appreciate it! Those are all good things to think about.

1. I'm happy with my diet and exercise: I'm fortunate to have a gym at my office that I go to every day and am encouraged to eat "right" in order to not have a horrible workout, so feeling good there! I don't sleep much but I'm also someone who operates on 6 hours of sleep very well so I just need to be sure that stays the same. Still need to try out meditation!

2. The aforementioned tourney and PLO sessions will be put on the backburner for sure, especially when I'm not rolled for it!

3. Absolutely what I'm doing right now, with great results and +ev so far!

4. I am wondering about shot taking. I've jumped in some .50-$1 online just for fun and done well in the very small sample sizes. Certainly positive variance but I am kind of fearful of depleting my bankroll this early into my growth attempt. I used to play live 1-3 recreationally and know that I COULD be a winning player but just want to get the bankroll for it first.

5. With my stable job and dabbling in investing, feel pretty good there. Looking to pay off my house before I get into too many other streams!

6. BIG thing my wife and I have been going over the past weeks/months. We've been trying to figure out if we want kids/where we want to live/etc. so once we set out those goals I'll feel a lot more set. Also setting vacation goals is a big motivator for me.

Thanks for giving me the thought exercise!

That was my thought process coming from a live background, myself! I think call with the K, fold otherwise. Live, I fold faceup with a smile to tilt V with his set of 6's

WRT #4, imo in live poker if you wait til you’re rolled, it’ll never happen. Imo, just skip the online thing and start taking shots and if you go busto, you still got money coming in from work to take another shot.

Focus on building a roll for 1/3. Then when you can afford to lose 1-2 buy ins in the bigger game and still be rolled for 1/3, take a 2 buy in shot up there. Rinse and repeat, imo.

You're really tempting me with a good time...I might keep grinding during the week for practice and to get my fundamentals solid and then spend the weekend getting back into the live streets. I mostly wanted to start the online thing to get the fundamentals down and really to practice bankroll management

Nothing wrong with continuing online. Just don’t wait to play live til you’ve run up a bankroll online or else you might never play live.

Good luck OP. Ignition is pretty easy up to and including $1-$2. Gets harder after that. And tourneys are also soft at every level there. And you shouldn't have much problems cashing out from them either. You will probably have to provide ID and proof of residence I think, it's been a while. And if you used a card to deposit make sure you keep it because they may ask for that as well. But I've withdrawn 6figs from Ignition so far no problem . They're not trying to steal your money, they make plenty off of rake and entry fees.

And yeah as water69 said take shots at whatever stake you want from time to time. If you're a winner in the game you'll eventually catch a hot enough streak to roll yourself and if you've got a job you can always replenish that way. Just be realistic with yourself about whether or not your a winner in the game regardless of results.

Get out of the micros ASAP. Try to move up to $0.25-$0.50 (50nl)+ as fast as possible. Take shots as necessary. Be aggressive with shot taking. (If you're pretty sure you're a winner)

Also, out of curiosity how old are you? Also, do you have a HUD for online play?

That's good to hear! I hope to experience that in the near future.

I think I'll experiment a bit with shot taking this weekend, looking forward to it! I don't have a TON of history to pull from to prove I'm a winning player but I've always won in live cash games and have a nice solid upward graph in my limited experience online so far.

I'm 30! No HUD because I was under the impression that Ignition didn't allow it...but I'm certainly open to being wrong about that!

Pretty sure HUDs are allowed. Even on their internal forums people post pics of their HUD operating on the site. I've never had a problem withdrawing money and I use a HUD.

Here's a HUD screenshot someone posted onto the ignition internal forum with their account linked.
https://forum.ignitioncasino.eu/t/be...eaway/26957/18

Good luck.

I appreciate it, I'll give it a shot!

Tried out .10-.25 last night to great success! +$90 in about 4 hours on two tables (and plus $5 on a freeroll tournament I had a ticket for), and that's with several bad beats of running boats into bigger boats and quads. Not too shabby!

I've gotten my bankroll above $1k on Ignition and am considering taking out my initial deposit. Any thoughts on on withdrawing from that site?

Cash it out in Bitcoin and it will double in a few months

I've yet to get into the crypto world...hahaha but I do know it's much easier to conduct transactions on poker sites that way. I dunno...maybe I'll just suck it up and get an account

Interesting night last night! Was down close to 3 buy-ins at .25-.50 due to some pretty bad variance (boats into quads, flush over flush, etc.), when all of a sudden I binked 2nd place in a freeroll tourney for ~$400

Bankroll is up to $1320

https://imgur.com/a/GuViHZD

Decided to post a bankroll image. Started at $500 and dropped off a bit last night (I'll blame the major lag on Ignition!)

If anyone has any suggestions for better bankroll apps on Android, I'm all ears!

Edit: I'm not sure why the image wouldn't work so I guess here's the link?

I took $600 into the live streets last night and I had almost forgotten how swingy it can be! Hit a set and was up +$400 at one point, got double board bomb potted down to -$300 not long after, hit a few more sets to get up +$150, had a ridiculous scoop of a DBBP to get up +$1200, and finally lost with AK to JT on a flop of AK2, turn Q before deciding to leave up +$800.

Biggest hand of the day:

$750 effective, everyone (7?) in for $5 pre-flop. Hero in SB w/ AA94

(Pot $35)First board: A75
Second board: K83

Cool, top trips and nut flush draw. First to act so I pot it for let's say $35 because I can't really remember. 4 callers.

(Pot $210)First board: A
Second board: 2

Well, I'm not really concerned about anything now. It's not often you're guaranteed half the pot in these dumb hands. Bet pot ($210?), 3 callers (one is all in for way less, I think)

(Pot ~$900)First board: x
Second board: not a

Not much else for me to do but shove ~$500, V1 folds, V2 is already all-in, V3 tanks, asks if I can beat a boat on the first board, I just stay silent, he says eff it and calls. I turn over my hand and V1 apparently would have won the second board because he's pissed off, V2 had a boat and flush on the first board and nothing on the second, and V3 had a boat on the first board and nothing on the second, so I scoop with quads on the first and a pair of AA on the second +~1200
Absolute nonsense. I'm pretty sure I was down about $400 on the day with the Double Board Bomb Pots to that point, so a nice swing to be sure but I may or may not sit those out in the future...or at least only play hard with the mortal nuts on one board

All that to say, I'm glad I got back into live play! While I'm not quite sure how to measure my win rate in a ridiculous session like that (or if it even matters), I played for 4 hours, won some money, and enjoyed myself!

Bankroll up to a little over $2000