Hello, I'm a 21 year old Computer Science student looking to improve my game.

Background:
As of yet I've played ~19k hands and done badly (net loss of $78):



The Goal:
The goal of this challenge is quite simple; Become a winning 2NL player.

I'm a broke student right now and considering my historically dreadful results my starting bankroll is going to be $10 and as mentioned I'll be playing 6max 2NL.

In order to achieve this goal I have created this thread to maintain some kind of schedule and accountability to my learning. Also, I'm aware that being a part of some kind of poker community where you can discuss hands and general play is a very useful tool for improving so hopefully I can use this to that end as well.

Study Plan:
In terms of studying, I like to read a lot and this will most likely be my preliminary approach to studying poker theory. It's been a while since I played or studied poker (4 months ago) and at that stage I had nearly finished reading The Grinder's Manual (TGM) by Peter Clarke and all of my knowledge from poker derives from this book. The plan right now is to re-familiarise myself with the book and then complete The Mental Game of Poker by Jared Tendler in order to work on my tilt tendencies. After this I'll be moving on to Applications of No-Limit Holdem by Janda.

Aside from reading these books I'm going to create a designated timeslot after each session to look back on my hands and try to study them as that's something I've neglected since starting and I see a lot of value in that. Maybe I'll post some here if I'm not too embarrassed to show how much of a fish I am.

The Approach
As I'm at university, I won't have a massive amount of time to play poker so we're looking at between 2-3 hours a day if I'm lucky. In terms of play:study ratio I'm not too sure yet what that will look like, but considering I'm feeling quite theory deficient, it may be at around 50:50 until I feel comfortable with the basics.

I'm also not too sure if I want to go by volume/day or hand/day, this is something I'll experiment with.

In terms of my approach to this thread, I'm going to update as often as I can for two reasons:

To track my progress
To keep focused and curb tilt

Your graph just showed that you're pretty much a calling station. Stop calling lightly and fold much more then you shall improve, gl.

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I play mtt's and are always betting/raising/checking and folding. Rarely calling unless it's a all in. I think aggressive poker is better. Good luck with your cash game endeavours.

Don’t be embarrassed about negative results, being open and honest will help you improve fastest.

Thanks for the response, this is something I definitely need to work on, and my PT4 LeakTracker report definitely reflects this too:




Hi, thanks for the post. I really do need to work on my calling strategy, it seems I call very lightly.

Hey, thanks for the response! Have frequently read your thread and I also live in London, hopefully some day I'll be good enough to see you on some live tables!

Day 1:
There isn't much content for me to post here right now, but I thought I would force myself too in a bid to try to stay accountable to updating this thread and improving in general.

Reluctantly I'm also posting my stats so far for this challenge which as you can see are pretty bad.



On the flip-side, I can see why this session has been so bad and I know how to improve:

1. Whilst playing I remember pretty much no post-flop theory and I'm just blindly playing hands without any concern for basic concepts such as pot odds or implied odds. Every post-flop decision feels like a guess not backed up with any logical reasoning.

2. On the whole, my play is just super casual and laidback, which is exactly what I don't want it to be. It's like I'm playing on autopilot without really thinking whilst I'm playing.

I intend to fix these issues by reading a lot of theory instead of playing for the next week or so. Last night I downloaded a whole bunch of books which I intend to read in the next week. This will give me the theory and frameworks to base my decisions on going forward rather than blindly making decisions.

Maybe for anyone reading this I could get some feedback about my intended reading list (in order):

1. The Theory of Poker by Sklansky
2. Easy Game by Seidman
3. The Grinder's Manual by Clarke (again, as I no longer remember anything, this time I'll make notes)
4. Applications of No-Limit Holdem by Janda
5. ???

Just an update after doing some study:

Something I've been thinking about today is my decision a few months ago to exclusively play zoom instead of regular 6max cash games. My reasoning for doing so was to get in more hands than I was with regular 6max and therefore expedite the learning process.

However, thinking about this now, I'm thinking that starting with regular 6max would be more beneficial for these reasons:

1. Zoom enforces tighter ranges, something I have just realised I completely overlooked - all of my poker theory (and opening ranges) was based on The Grinder's Manual which focused on regular 6max and therefore a (much?) looser playstyle.

2. I feel like the zoom field level is higher than that of regular 6max. I don't really know why I think this, but I do feel like there would generally be a lower standard of play in regular 6max due to it being the default on Stars.

For these reasons, multiplied by my complete lack of theory I'm really thinking that moving to zoom was a mistake and that moving back to regular 6max would not only be more forgiving but would allow me to be more analytical at the table rather than simply fast-folding a hand and then being plunged straight into the next (completely new) table that holds a completely new set of players I need to read and play against.

Any thoughts on this would be great.

Whether you play zoom or regular tables, it doesn't really matter that much. I would say play whichever you enjoy more. What actually matters is you don't have too many tables going at once to start. I know it seems important to get lots of hands in, but you're better off focusing on the quality of play to begin with. I don't know for sure how much experience you have multi-tabling, but based on how high much you're losing I would say 3-4 regular tables or just one zoom table will let you think more deeply about your play.

If you want my opinion, books are pretty useless these days for online poker. If you're paying for these books, you're much better off spending your money elsewhere. An essential RIO subscription is only $25 a month. If you liked the Grinders Manual, RIO is a good option because the author (Peter Clarke), is a coach and has heaps of amazing videos. He also has a course on RIO for something like $30, which is just an updated video form of the Grinders Manual.

Some tips I would give you for your play is the same as what other people are saying, and you seem to know already: fold more post-flop. Fold flop a lot more. It's kind of hard to tell for sure with those little bar graphs for stats instead of just the raw numbers. My advice for tilt is just instantly to stop playing as soon as a hand tilts you. Don't even fold to your next big blind.

GL with the grind.

Good advice, thanks a lot.
Regarding zoom vs cash, I've been thinking about it a lot and I'm definitely going to start with one tabling reg 6max. All of my prior poker theory has come from TGM which is based on an exploitative playstyle, with zoom unless you have a massive amount of hands, you're unlikely to have enough HUD stats to play exploitative unless you know the general tendencies of the whole player pool, which I really don't. Going back to regular 6max and playing it slowly at the beginning will allow me to apply what I'm learning in a calmer and more measured way rather than jolting from table to table as I would be in zoom. I do still see massive benefits of zoom and intend to potentially transition to it again at some point, but I just don't think I have the theory to play it right now.
Regarding learning styles, I think I'll read these books and see where it leaves me as i bought them a while ago and right now any theory is better than no theory. After reading these I'll reassess my play and then move onto RIO Essential/Upswing.

Also, good point on the stats, here are the actual values:







Thanks again for the response, I appreciate the advice.

EDIT:
Another thing I'm going to try to implement which I haven't before is calling ranges as well as 3-betting ranges. I know this makes me more exploitable and I should instead be trying to put my oponent on ranges and then basing my ranges on that but as many people have noticed, I seem to be calling too much, which is probably somewhat down to me calling too lightly preflop and having calling ranges may improve this aspect of my play.

Fold to flop cbet 33 is crazy man. When u miss just fold since you're not capable of maneuvering those bad holdings, wait for good hands and get the most out of it. Learn to play the premium(easier to play with a hand than without). FOLD FOLD FOLD.

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Really been working on this today and seems to have made a big difference, I'm now finding myself less out of my depth on post-flop, feel more comfortable folding now and have less of that panicked 'guessy' decision making of risking a call. Thanks again for the suggestion!

Update:

Changed a lot today. I decided to go back to regular 6max instead of zoom as explained in a previous post today. I found myself much more engaged with the tables and able to observe plays in more depth inbetween folds instead of going straight into a new table.
I also created call and 3betting ranges which I used in today's session. It definitely enforced a stricter playstyle and ultimately I feel it is helping my light calling problem I had before today.

Session graph:


Challenge graph:


Lifetime graph:


Obviously I didn't play that many hands today and sample size is really small but I felt a lot more in control and focused this session.

Weird day today.

Was negative for most of the day today and very close to losing most of the bankroll I started this challenge with. Reasons for this were some stupid decisions on hands and also a bit of tilt, I'm going to review some hands from today's session tomorrow and I'll post them. Overall, I'm pretty happy I was able to recover from the tilt and bring myself back to (nearly) where I was yesterday.

Today made me think that I should implement some kind of stop loss to stop the tilt spews (I went down to -400BB at one stage). Going forward I think I'm going to set a moving stop loss of 100BB.

Graphs:

Session:


Challenge:

I cant really agree with this. I feel that reading forces me make up scenarios myself and apply theory. More brainwork and easier to remember, at least for me.

Looking at someone play is good if you take a pause every now and then and really think about the spots.

At least read mental game of poker and applications. Ive read those and enjoyed both. Applications give you a good theory base, it helped me a lot.

Of course, everyone learns differently and it makes sense that some people would prefer reading a book over watching a video. I really just mean that some books become outdated very quickly in terms of content as poker strategy moves very quickly. Even looking at the Grinders Manual, some of the things Peter Clarke suggests in his more recent online course are slightly different to what he recommends in the original book.

I should also add that a decent chunk of videos from online courses like RIO or Upswing are theory videos. They aren't all just liveplay videos (although there is a lot of that too).

I definitely have to agree with you about The Mental Game of Poker though. I would say it's the only must-read book for anyone trying to take poker seriously.