Hello guys.
My name is Paul and I'm a 24 year old Dutch guy, recently got my bachelor of communication. I'm also a poker enthusiast and have been playing the game for 8 years now, and considered myself as a semi-professional for the latest 3 or so years.



My poker ''career''
The picture you see above is me playing a €440 Deepstacked WSOP circuit tournament. I do mess around in live poker every now and then, having pretty good results, but I am mostly an online player. I've been playing since I was 16, it took a long time before I really got serious about studying, but for the last 3 years poker has been a nice little side income for me while being in college. I have both experience in cashgames and MTT's. I've had two 5-figure scores in MTT's as well as several 4-figure scores across multiple sites, but spent most my time on fullring cashgames.

Latest situation
I graduated at the beginning of 2017 and didn't play or study hardly any poker while I was graduating for half a year. After I graduated I got a job offer for a limited time at the company I wrote my thesis for. My contract ended at the end of August. I've been on a 3 week vacation to chill and think of what I want to do with my life. I think I've, like every poker player ever, dreamed about playing poker for a living. So why not try it? I've got all the time in the world right now. I at least want to try this, and I certainly don't want to regret it later that I didn't try this.

So, what now
I didn't play a lot of poker and certainly didn't study for a over a year, and have mainly experience in fullring poker beating up to 100nl. Since it's a fact that fullring poker is getting less and less popular, and I have to study a lot to get back into it, I figured I might as well get straight into 6-max.

I've been doing quite a lot of research and decided to play on a euro site with pretty decent traffic on low and midstakes cashgames. I've contacted some companies and got a rakeback deal for that site worth about 35-40%, depending on how much I rake.

I've started out for 2 weeks playing 20nl-100nl, but I'm noticing I'm a bit rusty and still need to adjust to 6max. These are the results of 2 weeks playing in september:



50nl and 100nl seem definately beatable, but I still feel like I need to adjust to 6max and being rusty, so I've decided to start out exclusively on 20nl from now and try to improve my game again from here. Also this feels like a bit of a challenge, I would like to be comfortably playing 100nl by the end of 2017. I've withdrawn all my funds so that I have €400 left on my account, but ofcourse I can top that up in case of a pretty bad run. This shounldn't happen tho, I'm pretty confident that I'm still beating 20nl even though it's 6max.

That's all there is for now, thanks for reading, if you have any questions please ask. I'm aiming on regular updates and some interesting hands. Let's see where this will end.

Gl man.
Subbed
Looking forward to see through your journey.
Cheers

glgl

GL! Will follow your journey.
Any advice for a beginner who want to climb the limits from zoom NL5, NL10 ?


Envoyé de mon iPhone en utilisant Tapatalk

gl, show us how its done

tyty guys appreciate it

Thanks. That's a really broad question, since there are tons of advices You probably already know the typical sum up like don't move up too fast, post hands, review, use trainingsites etc, which are all good tips. I could write half a book about how to start off but fortunately there's already a lot of information in for instance the stickies in the beginners question section One big thing that really set me 2 steps forward was understanding ranges in poker and play accordingly. If you don't know already how ranges work, look it up, read it 10 times, think a lot about it, then read it 10 times over. That's also a tip by the way, don't just soak up information like you would when you have a test. You have to reflect and think about what you've read, and think about how you can apply what you've read in your own game.

On to the progression:

Had a decent weekend, played 20nl exclusively, I'm certainly not happy about all the hands I've played, had some punts which I'll review this week, but in general I'm feeling pretty confident at the tables right now. Played 15 hours this weekend, with 11,5 of that on sunday which is decent imo :P



By the way, note that the rakeback line isn't 100% accurate, it's close, but I can only calculate it at the end of the month.

Also, I couldn't resist firing up some MTT's since.. well it's sunday. Ended up being HU in a €20 donkament with a pretty big field. Had a big chiplead but lost 3 flips so took 2nd place for a solid €2000. I'll take it. I've withdrawn a chunk of it since I don't need it on the site right now



I'll be adding some 50nl if I see good tables since I feel confident enough for it. I've seen some people who I've played with before at 20nl and are bad, lurking around at 50nl every now and then so I'm more than happy to sit down next to them

Some fun hands
Well, I do have some fun hands but I need to figure out how to use the HH converter in combination with the site I play at since copying it out of HM2 doesnt work so stay tuned for the hands.

Thanks for reading and I hope you all have a fantastic week

Nice thread! I'm currently in my last year of university (graduate in the spring) and am wondering about your experience once school finishes. Are you currently only working on poker only or also looking for a job/or have a job? I'm playing 25nl and have around $950 BR right now. I'd obviously love playing poker full time, but am hesitant to try it once I'm done with school. Also would make way less money playing poker starting off than a regular job. Tips? Experiences? What's your plan?

Thanks man Well, I do have a parttime job I've had since I was 15, and it's only for 8 hours a week currently. Its not that I need it fiancially, I just enjoy it and a lot of my friends still work there. It's basicly a part of my social life. I'm not looking for a fulltime job currently.

I think what is important for you is to know what you want and where you are in life. I can't look into your financial situation, you can imagine that its for instance a world of difference if you still live with your parents, or living on your own and have no savings.

There's no shame in getting a parttime job for for instance 20 hours a week if you need to financially support yourself. You can still dedicate a lot of time to studying and playing poker in that way. If $950 is the only money you can spend on poker, then I would definately recommend getting at least a parttime job for financial backup.

And yes, if you live in the west and are playing 25nl you will make probably, at least in the beginning, (way) less money then you would if you get a job. I can't advise you in that. It's a choice you make, do you want to give up time, money, and have financial insecurity, in exchange for a CHANCE of playing poker for you own and potentially make more money then you would working 9-5. For me, it was and still is worth it. Ofcourse you'll build a gap in your cv so I wouldn't delay and try it for for instance 5 years. But taking 1 or 2 years off after you graduate isn't a shame, a lot of people for instance travel after they graduate, and in my opinion instead of that, it's the best time to try things like this. It's what I do now, but if I don't like it, or I end up not being able to support myself financially after like 1.5 years, I feel no shame in saying goodbye to fulltime poker and go looking for a job. At least I would get the feeling that I tried it.

Any more questions feel free to ask, u can also PM me with specific questions.

Small update
First 10k hands are a fact, punted off like €100 in the last cashgames.. But first 10k hands is about €250 profit which is decent imo (98% 20nl).

Binked another small €20 tournament for just under €400.

Didn't play much cash last 2 days, its hard to spot any whales on mondays and tuesday on the cashtables at the site I play, and I'm not rly thrilled to battle the regs all day. Did play a handful of mtt's and shipped one for $2.5k. Not rly part of what I was planning to do but hey at the end it's about how much money we make isn't it ? Fun fact, was down to half a big blind with 3 people left but managed to crush the flips and take it down. Fish on a heater aye.



Having some time off until friday, I'm going on a 3-day holiday with my dad to Limburg, a region in the Netherlands. No poker in the meantime. Catch you all up later!

Quick update. Almost played no poker last couple of days because of a short 3-day vacation and Oktoberfest on saturday. Had a pretty bad hangover so decided to do little poker today. Will be back on the grind from monday or tuesday and forward. Here's a nice picture I took when we went to Germany for a day.

Subbed! Looking forward to following your progress

tyty!

I'm done for october, after only playing for half of the month I ended up with a slightly dissapointing 30.305 hands resulting in a ~€550 profit (ty rakeback). The profit could go up or down a bit depending on where I ended in a rakerace, but I think 550 is a close enough estimate. I did end up playing some 100nl, especialy in the weekends, when I saw people I tagged as bad sitting on 100nl tables. I ran pretty aids there, im happy with my plays but running bad at 100nl has left it marks.

.

It feels good to be back on the grind again, but having such a long off time has left it marks. It takes time for me to get back in the zone and to show discipline towards long hours. I feel like october was my trial period, getting back into poker and most importantly, find and acknowledge what my leaks are. Not only pokerwise, also lifestyle and mindset wise. So I've come up with a plan, some rules, etc, for the upcoming month, which I think will help me improving my 6max game and overall game and lifestyle:

• Play at least 100k hands or 150 hours
  I don't like slacking and 100k hands or 150 hours is the bare minimum I want to achieve this month.
  
• Workout at least 4 times a week
  I'm not very fit so it won't harm me if I workout a couple of times a week. Also I believe being fit and excercising will help me concentrate more.
  
• Play no longer then 2 hours in a row (excluding MTT's)
  I've noticed that, especially with cashgames, I tend to get spewy and less concentrated if I play long stretches. I hate playing bad, so if I start playing I'll run a timer that'll sound an alarm when I've played 2 hours. I'll take at least a 15 minute break where I go away from the computer and do something else.
  
• Stick to 20nl for 50k hands, evaluate after that
  Even tho I feel comfortable at 100nl at the right tables, I want to have a good sample at 20nl which will prove that I beat it over a long stretch of hands. I'll even drop 50nl for at least the first 50k hands, to have a pure and clean stretch of 20nl hands. After 50k I'll evaluate the situation and decide if I want to get 50nl into the mix. No 100nl for me in november.
  
• Watch a trainingvideo/go trough hands for 30 minutes before the first session of the day
  I've got a few training video's of 6max 50nl saved from back when I had a subscription to a trainingsite. Even tho it are video's of 2013, it'll still be useful to watch them. And hand reviewing will never harm. This is to get into the zone again, since I've noticed I'm playing kind of bad when I start the day.

And I'll start updating this thread at least weekly

Time for a short update! I like the pace of the month. Ofcourse its just the 3rd day of November, but I've already played over 10k hands and am really pleased with the amount of concentration I have while grinding. I used to do other stuff while grinding, but being concentrated and only focus on playing poker really helps me get the most out of my game. Also playing more and shorter sessions helps with that.

Been sticking with 20nl

Also ordered and received this badboy:

So I have some new study material

Finally figured out how to post hands, so here you go. Note that all amounts are actually in euro's.