WHO I AM:
I just turned 23 and finished my program from graduate school this summer. I have a bachelor degree of construction management and environment engineering and a master degree of finance. Consider my current status and zero of obligations and commitments, I think it is a good time to finally give my poker dream a shot to see how far I could be.

MY POKER BACKGROUND:
I started my poker path by playing a 1/1 home game back in late 2014 when I was still in college. Everyone in our player pool was new to the poker and soft, including myself. As our passion grows, the game switched to 2/5 in the spring of 2015. I luckily ran pretty well at the beginning and built a decent roll very quickly. However, I had a very bad time when I turned 21; I got a gambling addiction with blackjack, punting around 20k to the house. I guess this the major leak causing my still in 2/5 street.

I become treating my poker career seriously from the beginning of this year. By my record, I am on $70/hr and 530 hours sample space (had a huge heater back in the spring).

WHY I STARTED THIS THREAD AND WHAT IS MY GOAL:
I want to give my poker journey a recap. And I also think it a good way to enhance my emotion stabilization by recording a blog and have a space to shoot some personal troll whenever I need lol.

Goal: August 2018-July 2019
-grind 80-140 hours per month
-try my best to move up stakes (hope I am able to take shots at 10/20 by next year's WSOP time)
-start PIOsolver GTO study (and prepare for my CFA exam in DEC)
-make 60k-120k in profit depending on the progress of moving up.

MY CURRENT SITUATION:
I have a 32k bankroll right now and a very decent liferoll, so in a foreseeable future I don't need to worry about sleeping in my car (Yes I also own a car). I currently live in an apartment with 2 roommates, Jerry and Kevin. Jerry is also a poker player who go grinding with me every day. Stacking and needling each other is our favorite event. We play 6 days a week. Monday is our day off. Kevin is a local university student who doesn't play cards.

I will update this thread 3-5 times weekly and do a monthly summary. Hope you guys enjoy it! When I figure how to upload pictures I will do the summary for Aug and Sep first.

Shout out to 6 bet me, his thread inspired me doing this, and I found his content is very...entertaining lol.

---Calvin

In - this sounds like it has potential.

Your BR seems quite high for the amount of hours/ grinding you've done so far, and as you've mentioned aswell you ran quite hot. Be aware of that and don't move up the stakes too fast, will be def checking this thread!

GL!

Thank you! I got some saving from previous grinding, but this year it is first time to separate a poker bankroll from life roll.

***Overall Stat***



***August***
I started driving to Vegas from Maryland on 4th August. Sounds pretty professional, doesn't it lol? I was so excited about crossing the country, but I ran into a cooling system alert very quickly. I had to stop by somewhere in Illinois to get the radiator fixed. This is apparently not a great start for me.

Somehow I managed to arrive Vegas in 10th, Aug. After moving-in and dropping my car at the dealership for a full inspection, I went to Bellagio play some 500 cap 2/5 to warm up. I ended up with stacking a same player 3 times and booked a win of $775. I was feeling great until I got a phone call from the dealership. My water pump needs to be replaced and the cost is...$1300??? Fine..I got owned.

I didn't remember too many interesting hand to share but here is a golden one. I was all in on J95r flop with 99 against AA and JJ for a 3K pot, and the turn is....9! This is the first time I outed someone, even though JJ was the shortstack, if I didn't quad up, I could still win a decent side pot against AA, but it still feels amazing!

I played 95 hours this month with a $69 hourly. My sleep schedule seems to be the first whacked; I kept waking up either 4am or 4pm. It is very frustrating.



Some chip porns from previous grind:

Subbed!! GL (:

That's a nice graph

Gogogo Calvin.

Any reason you take Monday off specifically? I’ve always felt Tuesday is the slowest night in Vegas.

Thank you! I'm glad you enjoy it haha.

Best of luck with your challenge! I shall be following this journey.

All the best, really looking forward to following.

Thanks Andrew! For the day off, my choices are Monday and Tuesday apparently. And I found encore’s Tuesday action is actually ok, so it’s monday for me.

Thanks everyone, really appreciate the support from all of you. Currently hanging out with friends from college who come visit me for this weekend. Will post Sep summary probably tomorrow!

gl

GL with your goals dude, sick graph!

***September***
I flew back to college town on the Labor Day long weekend to celebrate my friend’s birthday and play some home game. I booked a nice win of $750 to cover my traveling expenses. After returning to Vegas, I dabbled some PLO action; -$109 at Aria and won $484 at Venetian. I felt pretty uncomfortable at the table when it became reg-heavy. So I guess that’s it. Glad I was up overall.

I won 9 out of 10 sessions I played until this one happened: after 4 weeks of grind, Jerry suggested taking shots at B’s 5/10. I had a lot of tough decision in this session and lost 2.1 K in 2.5 hrs. Luckily I immediately recovered due to 3.3 K win from Encore’s 2/5 session. At one point, I was in a 3 way 3-bet pot with AA; everyone in the pot was at least 4 K deep. I got to admit that I was nervous as hell even I had AA and I won this one.

On 21st, Sep, I encountered an ultimate villain in my life. He sat down with 400 and did a lot of blind allin/raise stuff (drunk confirmed). He quickly managed to build his stack to 2500ish. Then this hand happen: he blindly raised UTG to 65, I 3 bet to 200 with AA. He CALLED BLINDLY. Long story short, he flopped a flush and I doubled him again. I was shoving the turn DRAWING DEAD.

Overall, I finished this month with 11 K upswing, logging 104 hrs with $113 hourly.



stacks of two victims of the ultimate villain lol

Also wanna talk about an Armenian guy who is a high stake pro at Aria now. I first time met him was the first time I came to Vegas in years ago. I stacked him flopped straight vs top set in Bellagio 2/5 500 max. And next time we played at Aria 2/5 1 K max. I caught several his bluffs and won a pot straight flush over his nut flush. He called me luckbox. Days ago I saw him at Aria again. He's now playing 5/10/20 and has money more than my bankroll in front of him. I don't know how to address my feeling but I really respect his progress. A true poker hero.

I love your vlogs Andrew. I watch almost every video as soon as it comes out. You're my favourite vlogger and the more I watch your videos, the more inspired I am to get back on the grind.

(Sorry for hijacking the thread btw).

Do you and Calvin know each other irl?

Do you reckon he's actually grinded up a conservative bankroll slowly, or simply tilted and took a shot?

Like I've sat down at a 10/20 NL table a few times but I'm far from being rolled for that haha.

That villain sounds insane! We get a few drunk whales in Melbourne too, but rarely to that extent. I'm guessing you didn't leave the table until the whale busted?

Nice work on the huge win this month! You're crushing it! Let's do a competition on who can win the most at 2/5 NL during November?

I have seen him playing 5/10 at Aria almost every time when the game runs. I don’t think sitting on a 40 K stack is taking shots.

In - crazy graph mate, insane that your home games went crom 1/1 to 2/5 in a pretty short span of time. Definitely stay away from BJ.

Would love to know how you developed your live game, seemingly being a live only player?
Good luck and hope to see some HHs

Our home game is the golden one lol. After 4 months of 1/1, everyone wanted to play bigger, so we switched it to 2/5. I host it for a while and sometimes there would be around 20 K on the table for a 9 handed 500 max game.

I do play live only back in college, I mean why did I need to find online action when I had this game lol. After my graduation from college, I did play a while on an app called pokermaster last year. It is like pppoker, but clubs are operated by Asian players mostly. I was up somewhere around 4 K total (peaked at 7 K), but I felt the rake was too high (5% for winning, 0 for lossing sessions). If I couldn't maintain a high win ratio, the rake would eat my winnings one day, so I just quit. No experience for other sites like ACR or stars.

I definitely will put some HHs in my OCT report. For the HHs of previous months, I posted them in a discussion group called HandHistoryLounge hosted by AndrewNemee and BentonBlakeman, but I was too lazy to find out my old posts lol.

***October***
Winter is coming.

It has been a very miserable month for me, after another card dead/bleeding session, I decide to call it a month and take 3 days off to refresh my mindset. The first session I played this month is a 5/10 session; I lost 3.6 K in 2hrs. Ran KK into AA aipf, AK into random two pair on K high 5 way straddled $70 each pre pot, and other bleeding spots. The only one I could play differently is the AK hand, will post details at the end.

After another small L at Venetian, I flopped a royal flush at Encore and GOT FULL DOUBLE UP! 1 in 700 K to flop it! After that session, I won 11 of the following 14 sessions, all 2 to 3 figure win tho. And then it is a series of up and down (up less down more lol). I played another 2 5/10 sessions and got 1000ish back. On 24th, I won 3.6 K in at Venetian, suddenly all I need to do is clicking the call button to win all the money; something like villain check-shoving 44 on 7737 board when I had QQ. I thought maybe my comeback was about to start? Unfortunately NO, I took some other hits, like losing AA/QQ/JJ and set over set in 20 mins, and decide to call it a month.

I don't want to talk too much about my runbad, because we all have been here and will be here again. Instead, I want to talk about my LEAKS exposed by the runbad. I found myself floating too much in HU pot with A high and not too good backdoor equity OOP. Maybe I should mix in some check-raise bluffs and more folds. And I tend to call light after card dead and bleeding. By calling light, I mean calling KK on 9564T and 55 on K5764 for relatively reasonable price, but I still estimate this leak still caused me around 2 K this month. The only good things are all my massive bluffs went thru like 5 out of 5 and my tolerance for running bad is going stronger.

I also played with the world most famous Vlogger, the rockstar, Mr. AndrewNemee several sessions together. It is an amazing experience only in Vegas lol. Also I played with Jordan Young, the co-founder of SolveForWhy Academy, several session while he was waiting for the bigger game. He seems pretty talented to loosen the game, like all in blindly first hand (I saw twice lol). My roommate Jerry actually correctly called Jordan's all in bluff twice for 1.5 K each time. However, when Jordan all in $1300 on flop against me in a $300 dollar pot, he had AQo on KJThh board, luckily I only had 99.

For the sake of revenge to Jordan, I will sign up an account on SolveForWhy (Annual fee up to around $2,000) and use the 1 week free trial to study all the reachable material on it with Jerry during these 3 days off. I vow for a comeback next month.

***Hand History***
Do you guys think should I include results in HHs?

***H1: maybe I could do differently?
5/10 straddle is on 1.5 K Effective
I open UTG1 AcKs to 70, got 4 callers.
Flop(350): Kd7d8h, UTG check, I 230, folds to UTG who make it 600, I sigh jammed and got called by K7hh and couldn't get there.
I probably could do an very exploitable fold on flop, but tbh I was not in the mood due to stuck 1.2 K already.

***H2: 1 in 700,000
2/5 1.4 K Effective
1 limp, I raise AQhh MP to 30, got 3 callers.
Flop(120): KJThhh, check to btn who bet 125(!), folds to EP who flats(!!), I call as well.
Turn(495): check to btn who bet 400(!!!), EP fold and I jammed for the rest, btn tank call.
It is unreal to flop a royal and got maximum. I think btn might also flop a straight or smaller flush because EP claim he had KJ.

***H3: he folds AA face up!
2/5 950 Effective
I open 75hh MP to 15, HJ fun player 3 bet to 45, CO fun player cold call. I call.
Flop(140): T83hh, I check, HJ 90, CO fold, I call.
Turn(320): 9o, I check, HJ 125, I 275, HJ call.
River(870): 7o, I jam 530, HJ tank fold.
HJ definitely shouldn't bet the turn, otherwise I had way slight chance to win the pot. I personally don't like leading the turn or leading the river if turn was checked thru.

***H4: I knew I was bluffing
2/5 1 K effective
UTG open 20, I call AsKc in MP, HJ 3 bet to 75, UTG folds and I call.
Flop(170):K34ss, I check, HJ 75, I call.
Turn(320): 8d, I check call 175.
River(670): 8s, I jam 680, he folds AA.
When HJ bet the turn I felt he got either AK or AA. If I checked the river, although it is highly likely got checked thru, the results would not be good overall imo. So I decided to use blockers to nut flush and nut fullhouse to bluff. Maybe it is too ambitious, glad it worked out this time.

***H5: it is way greedy
2/5
I open KK UTG 20, MP and BB call.
Flop(60):569dd, BB check, I 40, only BB call.
Turn(140): 4h, check, check
River(140): Tc, BB lead 125, I?
I felt I would be check-raised so often turn so I check back to pot control. On the river, I know I really can't fold there after checking the turn, otherwise I would be too easy to be exploited, but I do feel this sizing is so greedy. Like If I had nothing I would not give any action, but if I had something, I was going to pay him off big. I sigh called and got shown 78o.

Hope you guys enjoy it! Thanks again for the support.

subbed. Best of luck to you man! Maybe we will run into each other some day in the live poker streets.

Back to work, about to start first session of Nov, wish me luck!

Bad luck on the breakeven month. Does it demotivate you to play when you have a long breakeven stretch?

Best of luck for November! May results be better then.

Btw, do you normally just flat a raise with AKo in MP vs UTG? You don't 3bet?