Hello everybody!!!

My name is Bogdan (everyone online call me dexter or dex - don't ask me why) and this is gonna be the thread where I will update my poker progress for the rest of the year.

Due to the recent pandemic, as many others in the UK, I have been furlough by the company I work for as a poker dealer. Not being able work, I had to come back to my old passion (the 9 max SNG's) in order to make ends meat.

Goal

The purpose of this blog is to meet players that are interested in this particular format, discuss strategy and keep progress of what I am doing poker-wise.


Background

I have started playing online poker when I was 17, back in my home country Romania, with modest results, but enough to allow me and my family to have a decent lifestyle.

In the summer of 2016 at the age of 21 I decided to move to the UK in order to seek new opportunities in life. From 2016 until the end of 2018 I took a break from online poker starting a new career here in the UK as a poker dealer. During this time I have worked for the major UK casinos and proudly dealt most of the major poker events in the country combined with some super high stakes private cash games.

After 2 years of absence I decided to get back online and make poker a lucrative side hustle. Finding a lot of value in the 9 max SNG's on PS and Party I decided to have a go at them. With very little training and very little time to invest, I managed to put in a bit of volume in order to have an idea about what are my capabilities in this format. The stats below are starting at the end of 2018 and go until yesterday.



And more detailed




I am planning on updating this thread on a weekly basis with an overall snapshot of my progress and the main goals for the following week.

Hope you guys will enjoy this blog and hope all the players interested in those formats will find value here.



PS: Big thank you Joshua Hoesel (aka jdawg91 here) and his blog for inspiring me to write one, even if I am absolutely rubbish at it

PSS: If you are one of the following 9 Max regs please PM here (or you play this format and you are a consisting winner player)
I would love to work on my game with you and form a study group together. (don't mind paying for your coaching as well)
tauruswow(PS)
rehakzsolt(PS)
rusatash(PS)
Tom1_AuAg_CZ(PS)
tijani8(PP)
joszunabot18(PS)
babangida14(888)
RGBnr1(PS)
simoes66(PS and PP)
MJordan2345(PS)

So here is the first update of the blog.

11-17 of May 2020


Volume: In terms of volume I can say I am kinda happy with 702 games. The main goal is to grind 5 days a week for at least 150 games a day with 2 days of rest and study + another 50 games as a bonus if I feel like. So everywhere between 750 games to 850 would be ideal.

Quality of the game: I was supper happy about the way I have played in the first 3 sessions. Saturday and Sunday sessions were a bit tiring for me due to the accumulated tiredness over the week I believe.

Study time: I am not exactly sure in terms of hours how much I have dedicated towards study but I can say I am not happy about it. Managed to look over few hands at the begging of the week and took some notes, but that is kinda everything. More to work on in the future.

Notes to learn from:

-I will have to find a way to structure my grinding days and alternate it with the days off.

-This week I decided to make a big change in the way I open my tables. Before I used to grind between 12 and 15 tables tiled on my screen and play them for 3 or 4 h followed by breaks. This week I played them in groups of 20 or 25 tables. I would open up to 25 tables on my screen and play them until I finish them followed by a 30 min break or smth.

-I realized I can focus better without any music or any sounds during my session.

Goals for the next week:

-min 750 games on PS + Party combined
-look over the previous week sessions/hands and take notes of the leaks I had
-work on at least 500 push/fold spots in ICMizer
-get out of the house at least twice for a walk


GLGL all!!!

If you have any questions/suggestions/recommendations about this thread or about those games please don't hesitate to ask.

gl man, very nice stats. I'm a reg on wsop grinding from $5 to $50 currently at 10 and taking shots at 25. Im a essential worker but caught covid so until im clear to return to work grinding a bit @ 9 man turbos and the games are great. Will be following for sure, good to see another 9man grinder around here.

Hope you will get better soon And thank you for putting yourself at risk, so we can stay safe

Give me a PM with your skype/discord ID so we can chat there about 9max, maybe in time will find others interested and we can have a nice study group.

glgl what's your sc on party? maybe we played against each other since I also play 5/10's

good luck with your challenge. the amount of volume you are putting in is insane! 20+ table sng's must require tremendous concentration, I barely keep up with 4

I'm down for that too. I also play&study 9max sngs and would be very nice if there is a study group/server where we can share some insight

Good luck! Im playing the same games on the same network.

Hi there. My sc name on party is acarajje99 (acaraje99 old party)


Thank you You get used to play loads of tables at once, it comes with time. I Pm you with all the details about the discord channel.

Good luck and I'll be following! I'm a US grinder that used to primarily play 9 mans on stars years ago. I play Double or Nothings now but still play a few 9 mans when they're popping.

I'd be interested in joining the discord.

There we go with the second update

18-25 of May 2020


Volume: In terms of volume I can say I am a bit disappointed about it. I managed to play for 638 games only over 4 days pretty much... I managed to set up a routine and grind Monday,Wednesday,Friday and Sunday with 3 days off. Part of the initial plan was to play Saturday as well, but I realized that if I grind every day for more than 2 or 3 days in a row, the quality of my game goes down. I recon this is due to the lifestyle I have at the moment. Definitely my biggest leak overall.


Quality of the game: From this point of view I can say I had an up and down week. I started my week well, and for reasons I can't explain I started developing a really bad insomnia that lasted for few days and messed up my sleeping pattern. Because of that I found myself very often capable of focusing very well at some weird hours during the night when the games wouldn't necessary be very good, and during the peak hours I would be sleeping or just woken up dizzy and not ready for the action.

I think the fact that I am running absolutely rubbish on PP (still...) played a massive roll in me spewing some money at the tables. Very often I would find myself not paying attention very well at the smaller games and probably, because of that I performed very poorly on $10 buy ins and smaller.

This is the second week running when I managed to end the week few points away from getting an extra 5% rakeback on PP, witch is gonna hurt in the long term. Because of that I will have a dedicated day when the main focus will be grinding on PP pretty much exclusively.

In terms of the average buy in I was playing, I can say i am pretty happy to be able to move up in stakes a bit and open more and more 25s and 30s. The fact that I run absolutely gold in the bigger ones spiked the bankroll a bit and that will allow me to carry on taking shots even higher. My goal is to be able to open games ranging from $7 to $50 without even thinking if I have the roll for it or not. At the moment my average buy in is around $8 and my plan for the next few weeks is to move it up to average $10 or $11.

Study time: Fail catastrophically at this. I managed to clock in around 2h of active study time unfortunately. I blame the irregular sleep pattern for this. Very often I found myself trying to look over some hands and take some notes and my mind would simply fly away and whenever I would force myself to focus I would get terrible headaches.

Notes to learn from:

-Do not ever underestimate how important a regular sleep pattern can be in your focusing capability

-Starting a 20 games stint just after I had a big meal will always result in a poor performance, it looks like the stomach will suck up all the blood that would normally go to the brain and help you focus, like a bloody vampire, so in the future I shall avoid playing after a big meal

-Every game I play it is important regardless of the buy in ... This week I found myself focusing more on the bigger ones and kinda neglect the small ones. Because of that it looks like if I hadn't run good in the big ones I would easily end up loosing money.

-Trying to play stints of 25 tables + on my laptop looks like it won't be possible long term, therefore an upgrade will be necessary in the nearest future. If any of you guys have any recommendations for a buildup PC tower please hit me up, or if you know a good parts configuration that will benefit a poker player please let me know.



Previous week goals:

-min 750 games on PS + Party combined (638 games out of 750)
-look over the previous week sessions/hands and take notes of the leaks I had (review pretty much all the hands I saved during my sessions and took some notes on them, so I declare myself happy from this point of view)
-work on at least 500 push/fold spots in ICMizer (managed to do around 100, epic fail, tho I believe 500 is a bit ambitious)
-get out of the house at least twice for a walk (epic fail, been a slob in my days off and managed to **** up my sleep schedule, this quarantine will **** me up big time if I don't start to get out of the house and move a little)


Overall week: Overall this week felt like a struggle for me to keep up with everything, mainly because of me not having a good sleep schedule and a normal day to day routine. If any of you guys have any advice about how I can correct my sleep circles I would be eternal grateful to you. At the moment it looks like I am feeling ready to go to sleep pretty much every day around 7AM and I wake up around 3/4PM and most of my day is gone by the time I get out of bed. I get very little sunshine, very little time to enjoy the good weather, and because of that my mood is generally low. So, if you can please send HELP ...

Goals for the next week:

-play a minimum of 600 games on PS + PP combined during 4 days
-work on at least 300 push/fold spots in ICMizer/Sngcoach and take notes
-look over the hands I have played this week and marked them for review
-share and discuss at least 10 spots I find interesting with all the people in the study group
-take 3 days off grinding and focus on correcting the sleep schedule
-during those 3 days off get out the house at least once a day, even for a short walk if not jogging
-cook my meals in advance during the days off, so I won't have to interrupt my sessions all the time with that
-keep this thread posted every week with a detail summary of what I have been done in the week, it helps me a lot to reflect over what I have been going thru over the week and plan better for the future. Also, I hope people might find it inspirational and might get some good insights out of it


GL at the tables everyone!!! Hope you will have a good week.

Thank you for the follow.

I will send you a PM with the discord channel, I am not sure if I am allow to advertise it here, on public. Until I find out the rules about it, I will PM the link to everyone who is interested into joining.

3rd time lucky they say

Finally got some heat coming towards me this week

25-31 of May

Volume: In terms of volume I consider myself satisfied this week. I planned on playing 600 over 4 days of grind and ended up playing 561 games. I remember I could easily finish up with 600 games as well, but in my last session the games were really bad at one point and I decided to stop. I am not grinding for the sake of grinding anymore. I used to do that in the past and I realized in time that some tables are just not worth playing.

Quality of the game: From this point of view I can say I nailed it this week. Being forced to fix my sleep schedule and allowing me more days to rest and look after my lifestyle, helped me a lot at the tables. I managed to find good tables at the higher end of my buy ins and actually got some good run as well. This week I think is one of the most profitable weeks I had in SNGs so far.

I realized that because of the smaller traffic lately, in the morning it is super hard to play the games in groups, so I had to go back to the old 15 table grind, witch is fine during the off peak hours. If the online traffic will continue to go down this will become a problem for me ...

Study time: Unfortunately I did not managed to book more than around 3h of study this week witch is disappointing. Every time I had a day off and I would get ready to look over hands and stuff I would start to get bored and get busy with something else, very often drinking ) In the future I need to find ways to motivate myself to actually do some active reviews over some hands. I started already to diversify my PT4 tags more efficiently, so I can have better ways to pull out different categories of hands I need. Also I created a different tag for notes only, witch I am planning on taking at the beginning of each session.


Notes to learn from:

-Because of a good sleeping routine, I am able to focus more and better, so in the future this is gonna be a thing I will work on.

-Also, I think I have a problem with my eating habits. Because of the weird random, sleeping schedule I was running on for such a long time, I tend to get hungry at weird intervals and I can see how it affects my grind. Life leak to work on in the future. I will try to start eating at the same hours every day for a while and see how that work out.


Previous week goals:

-play a minimum of 600 games on PS + PP combined during 4 days (done 561, could do the target, but the games were bad in the last day, so I had to stop early)
-work on at least 300 push/fold spots in ICMizer/Sngcoach and take notes (done none unfortunately, usually I do them during my breaks at work, but now I find it hard to find the time and motivation)
-look over the hands I have played this week and mark them for review (done)
-share and discuss at least 10 spots I find interesting with all the people in the study group (done)
-take 3 days off grinding and focus on correcting the sleep schedule (done, super glad about that)
-during those 3 days off get out the house at least once a day, even for a short walk if not jogging (got out twice, not for jogging, but I managed to have some long walks instead)
-cook my meals in advance during the days off, so I won't have to interrupt my sessions all the time with that (done)
-keep this thread posted every week with a detail summary (done)

Overall week: Overall this week was one of the best weeks I had when it comes to poker. Had good rest during the night on most of the days, I was able to focus properly at the tables, had plenty of days off to do other things alongside the grind and had some run good as well.


This week goals:

-Keep up with a normal sleeping routine. If I have days where I can't sleep and I go well over my bedtime and it's daylight outside I will stay awake until the evening, rather than going to sleep at 9am in the morning and **** up my whole week again
-600 games on PS+PP combined during 4 days. My birthday falls on this week, so I will allow myself an extra day off to get pissed and also install my new PC
-Write down the notes on the hands I saved, at the beginning of each session
-Look over the saved hands I had over the week
-share and discuss at least 10 spots, with all the people in the study group
-Take 3 days off and during this time install my new PC, get out of the house once a day, cook my meals and buy groceries.
-No more takeaways, F U deliveroo and ubereats. I ain't your slave anymore )
-cook my meals in advance
-keep this thread updated



Best of luck everyone !!!

May snapshot

Pokerstars SNGs results: 1584 games with $2602 profit
Party SNGs results: 677 games with $223 profit + another (roughly) $140 in rakeback

Target for next month (if the lockdown continues as it is at the moment)

-2000 games on Pokerstars
-1000 games on Party
-25h+ of individual study

I would also be interested to join the discord, if possible. I also got recently back into online poker and play mostly 6max SnGs, but have tons of experience in other formats

Beasting it. Very nice bro. That’s heavy volume