What's up gang. Figured I'd start a thread here to document my progress in the poker world.
Background: I got into poker because of its potential to supplement my income and give me something more social to do. I've been working online as a tutor/ freelance writer for the past two years. The gig's dope because it lets me make my own hours and travel. But it can get kinda lonely at times, and the work isn't always there during slow season.
Any way, I've been studying semi-seriously for the past 6 months, and I think I'm at least breaking even at the microstakes now. Here are my results over the past month:
Obviously the overall graph doesn't look so great. But the results correlate pretty well with how I've played (i.e, I was 6-10 tabling the first 8,000 hands and downswing in the middle and 1-3 tabling the rest), so I think there's at least some information there.
My ultimate goal is to play at a level that beats 2/5 live. Right now I'm in the process of building a bankroll, along with ensuring that I'm a winning player.
My current bankroll is around $3200. Over the next year, the goal is to play 400 hours of live 1/2 and 1/3 and add any winnings to the bankroll. I don't live near any casinos at the moment, but I'm heading to Cambodia for the next couple of weeks and the plan is to begin grinding there. When I'm not living near any casinos, I'll continue working on my game online and posting hand histories here.
Thanks for dropping by
Last edited by weirdmonkey; 11-18-2018 at 05:53 AM.
Hey hey. Reviving this thread because I want be more accountable about my goals and progress.
Since posting, I've played about 29 hours live, which is obviously a far cry from the goal I started with. Turns out I didn't feel as comfortable playing with 10% of my bankroll on the line as I thought, so I've mostly been playing online.
Results have been pretty bleh. I'm down about $150 playing live, and I'm still breaking even online. I haven't been very consistent with my volume/ studying either, which I'm hoping this thread will help me fix.
On the travelling front, I've played in Cambodia, Vegas, Southern Indiana, and the Czech Republic since last posting. I'm in Innsbruck, Austria, today and tomorrow, then I'll be in Slovenia next week. Haven't searched for any live games here yet. If anyone knows of any lmk.
Pretty meh week. I missed my volume goal by about 5 hours, and I missed my studying goal by about 1. It's been pretty hard keeping a routine with all of the travelling, but that's not an excuse. I need to be more diligent about time management. I've also been drinking more than I'd like (s/o to St. Patrick's Day), which makes it harder to get going in the morning and be productive throughout the day.
Here's the week's graph. If anyone wants to enlighten me on how to embed images, be my guest:
Obviously, that's pretty ****ty volume. I have no clue how I'm only averaging around 250 hands an hour. I've usually got one table of zoom going, which should at least be 200 hands an hour. Gonna focus on sticking to at least two zoom tables this week to get the hand count up.
Don't think I played very well in about half of my sessions. I attribute a lot of that to fancy play syndrome. Been trying to throw in some stuff I've seen in the solver without understanding it well. I think a good adjustment would to stick to an A,B,C postflop strategy almost exclusively while focusing on my optimizing my preflop game. I lost a couple of stacks this morning that Snowie recommended playing differently pre. On top of that, I punted off at least 3 or 4 stacks this week by trying to make some fancy moves postflop. If I can cut that out, think I can at least get the WR up to 3 bb per 100. After that, I'd like to gradually change my postflop strategy as I get more comfortable with GTO concepts.
Been in Ljubljana, Slovenia, this week. Went to Lake Bled on Sunday, but it was cloudy and cold so that kinda dampened the experience. The lady friend and I are heading to Croatia on Wednesday, hopefully we can run better on the weather front.
Some hands:
H1: Idfk
Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD Poker HUD and Database Software
We had another bleh week results wise. I'm running 26 BI's under EV between my PT4 and Poker Copilot databases (around 90k hands combined). Great intro to the game.
Here's the weekly graph.
I played exactly 15 hours and 2-tabled Zone the whole time. So I'm hitting about 294 hands per hour. Not great, but until my skills start to improve I don't think it would be wise to add more.
I've got about $230 left in my Bovada account. If I dip down another BI I'll probably move down to 5 NL. Told myself I'd keep topping up so I could learn to play against tougher competition, but the budget's a little tight now and the runbad is killing my motivation to play. We'll see.
Study wise, I wrote down Snowie's preflop recommendations in the BB this week, and I've been memorizing them/ consulting them in game. Definitely think it's helping; I've been calling and 3betting with hands that I never really considered before, and I'm starting to feel pretty comfortable with my range there in general. I think I'm going to do the same thing for all of the other positions this week so I can have a thorough list to consult in-game/ get back to studying postflop.
I've been staying in Split, Croatia this week. A lot of the town is built into an old Roman fortress... never seen anything like it.
Anywhoo, goals on the week:
[] Play 15 hrs
[] Write the rest of Snowie's preflop recommendations down and study them.
[] Make a daily schedule in the morning and stick to it 5/7 days.
Some hands
H1: Tilted
Hand History driven straight to this forum with DriveHUD Poker Tracking Software
What's up gang. Been taking poker more seriously again so I figured I'd bump the ol' thread.
Since starting this I think I've transitioned from a reg-fish to a slight winner. Over the past couple of months I spent a lot of time battling Snowie, watching videos, and studying flop textures on a solver. I'm LOL'ing at some the earlier hand histories, so pretty sure that's a sign of progress.
I started studying/ tracking progress seriously again on October 11th. Here's the graph since then:
On the travel note, I just got back from two months in Europe. Stayed in France for two weeks, Spain for three weeks, and a spent a month in Portugal. Also went to Morocco for a few days. Really loved Spain and Morocco. Portugal ended being more expensive and rainier than I thought, but I still had a great time.
I'm staying at my parents house in the U.S. over the next month so I have a lot time on my hands. I'm currently trying to grind up a bankroll for low- mid stakes on Ignition, and I'd like to get there in the next 4 or 5 months. So the primary goal is to get in some good volume this month while continuing to work on my game.
The current online bankroll is $540, and I'm playing 25 NL. Gonna try to work the BR up to $750 then start shot-taking 50 NL. I'd like to be a reg there by the end of the month.
And on a general note I'd like to get more serious about my income/ work ethic. I've been putting in less than 1000 hours annually over the past few years, and my income would put me in the bottom quartile of the wealth distribution. As I enter my late 20s, that's getting less sexy. I know I can do a lot better, so it's time to start realizing some of that equity.
Finally, I've got a bet riding on a weight loss challenge that I'll also track here. I need to lose around 15 lbs by March 1st. I was making good progress before I went to Portugal, but the Port Wine did me in these past few weeks. The plan is to burn about a pound a week and go ham on the last week if necessary.
Monthly goals:
[] 40 hrs of writing/tutoring grind
[] 160 hrs of poker
[] 12 gym sessions
[] 10 mins daily meditation
[] 14,000 calorie deficit
[] Practice foreign language and read a novel on 20/31 days
Last edited by weirdmonkey; 12-01-2019 at 12:28 PM.
Solid week productivity wise, but results were shite at the tables. Dusted off about 10-11 BIs playing 10 and 25 NL. I think my play was okay but my mental game was pretty weak. Gotta work harder at being results-neutral.
Decided to focus on my writing/ tutoring grind this week. Business slows a bit during the holiday so it only makes sense to throw more hours at it while I can. Might shoot for 40 hrs this week and try to hit a higher hourly. I average around $23 an hour but I think I can go higher. Gonna aim for $30.
My diet was pretty terrible. Way too much junk food and beer over the weekend. This week I'm gonna try to stick to an intermittent fasting approach (eating between 12-8) and cut out as much junk food as possible. Goal is a 4000 calorie deficit.
Reading and language studying went okay. Kinda hard to make time for it with my other goals but I always feel good when I do it. I'm reading East of Eden and studying Thai at the moment. Love the book so far. Thai is fairly easy to learn but I've been lazy about my progress.
LAST WEEK
* 20.25 hrs of main grind @ $22.7 an hour
* 17.75 hrs of poker
* 2.75 hrs of poker study
* 3 gym sessions
* Read on 3 days
* Practiced language on 3 days
* 5 days of 10-min meditation
* 1800 calorie deficit
GOALS THIS WEEK
* 40 hrs of main grind @ $30 an hour
* 10 hrs of poker
* 2 hrs of poker study
* 3 gym sessions
* Read 5 days
* Practice language 5 days
* 7 days of 10-min meditation
* 4000 calorie deficit
Had a better week at the tables. Bankroll is back up to $503 -- almost crawled out of the mini-downer. I played fewer tables and focused on spots for most of the week. Working on cutting some of my worst habits and shiftin dat inch worm, yo.
Main grind is pretty slow over the next few weeks, so I'll be playing the pokes a lot more. Looking forward to putting in some good volume. Hopefully I'll be shotting 50 NL soon.
Diet is progressing poorly. I'm still eating too much and crunch time is approaching. Need to lose 12-13 lbs by March 1st. I'm tracking everything I eat in MyFitnessPal now so hopefully that helps.
Had a solid week with my normal grind. Didn't put in the hours or make the rate I was aiming for but I did okay. This is probably the first time I've logged two 40 hrs weeks in a row since graduating. Kinda ashamed I wasn't doing this sooner but c'est la vie.
Gonna mostly stick with poker and finances for the updates. Struggling a bit with my other goals but those aren't the priority.
LAST WEEK
25.5 hrs of main grind = +$674
17 hrs of poker (14.25 hrs playing + 2.75 studying) = +$179
Came into the month expecting to dedicate myself to the grind and hopefully climb up to 50 NL. On that front, I failed hard. I ran bad during my first week, and I think that affected my play/ confidence pretty sharply for the rest of the month. I dropped down to 5-10 NL after losing 5-6 BI's and did just as poorly there. All in all I finished down 12-15 BI's on the month and didn't come close to the volume I intended.
Here's my graph on the month (missing some from the first week because I got a new computer):
And here's my graph before I switched computers (results start in September-October):
So, I'm up about 3 BI's in AIEV over 40,000 hands since taking another serious shot in October. Variance calculator says that's still in the 70% confidence interval for a 5bb/100 winner, but I'm not sure if that applies to AIEV or not. Chances are pretty strong that I'm not as good as I need to be.
At this point, I think it would be unwise to continue pursuing poker as a professional opportunity until I build some more financial security. Banking on poker as a wealth-builder is pretty hard on my mental game, which in turn affects my play/ volume, etc.
On the plus side, I did take away some positives on the month:
1.) Between poker and my day grind I put in 165 hours. That's by far the most volume I've done since I started working online 3.5 years ago. This month showed me that I can put in a normal working volume if I try, which should be pretty valuable in the upcoming year.
2.) I became more familiar with my mental game limitations and realized the importance of building a roll off the felt. Over the past 3.5 years I've been subscribing to a sort of minimalist philosophy and thinking that I everything would be okay if I just, like, meditated and pursued my passions. I've also kinda been assuming that something would take off on the poker/ investment front by the time I'm 30 and not worrying about it. Turns out, being poor isn't very good for one's quality of life, and it's pretty damn hard to go from nothing to something when you're only putting in part time hours.
So while the poker hasn't worked out, I'm still grateful for the things I took away from the recent shot and look forward to applying them in the coming year.
GOING FORWARD
My main goal is to put back $15-$20k this year. I plan to do that by focusing on my main grind and putting in 150-160 hours per month. I'll try to save $1k - $1.5k a month and hope that I bink a few good investments.
As far as poker, I'll still try to get in 3-5 hours a week online to maintain/ improve as a player. I might start trying to focus on live once I've built up a healthy roll. But my main priority right now is to save money/ build a roll on other fronts.
Speaking of which, I'm making a pretty big play (relative to my roll) on the Dem primary this year. I think there's been phat value on Biden for awhile. I've got about $1k spread out between Biden/Bernie/Buttigieg/Warren (will double up if Biden wins and b/e if one of the other 3 does). Also looking to put another $1k on Biden alone before the end of the month. Basically I don't see a scenario where anyone else breaks through with black or religious voters, and getting 1:2 on him is just insane value imo.
On the travel front, I'll be back in Bangkok for the next few months. Not sure where the road will take me after that, but I might try to spend some time in Georgia/ Turkey after another foray in the Land of Smiles.
Onward and upward!
Last edited by weirdmonkey; 01-03-2020 at 07:25 PM.