Hello everyone, I’m Gradefor.

I am a 22 year old student from the Netherlands, and I have a passion for poker. When playing games I always want to win, no matter what the game is, I just hate losing. This is probably the main reason for my passion for poker; the strategic aspect of the game makes me want to prove myself that I am better than others at it.


Why am I starting this thread?
I have struggled with discipline and my mental game. I have played stakes I am not properly rolled / skilled for (yes I am one of those degens that has jumped in the 500NL zoom pool when on tilt, and don’t forget the random roulette sessions).

Regarding my mental game I sometimes struggle to stay focussed, resulting in me just clicking buttons instead of thinking about my plays. And I suffer from the “wanting to win every hand”-syndrome, resulting in me completely spewing (triple barreling with no equity in terrible spots, comes to mind).

Anyway, I believe that posting my results and graphs here will help me to stay more disciplined in these aspects as I now have an obligation to share my journey with you guys; I would be embarrassed to show you guys how I donked away in higher stakes.


My poker career
I have only started playing poker about a year ago. But I have been spending a lot of my free time on poker, improving my game everyday. Lately I have played a lot of 25NL zoom, maybe some of you guys know my name Gradefor from there. I have had mixed results, when playing focussed I do believe I am good enough to be a winning player there but due to my tilt problems I tend to spew away a couple buy-ins regularly thus netto so far I have been losing (mainly because of my mental game I believe).


My challenge
I will make a fresh start, this time I want to properly move up from the micros; not just randomly starting at 25NL because I think I am good enough.

Start: 5NL zoom
Goal: 50NL zoom

Starting bankroll for this challenge: 200$
Bankroll restrictions:
0$-50$ - 2NL zoom
50$-250$ - 5NL zoom
250$-500$ - 10NL zoom
500$-1250$ - 25NL zoom
1250$+ - 50NL zoom


Personal to do list:
- Take care of myself first. Have breakfast; “wake up” before playing.
- Be disciplined, don’t deviate from my ranges without good reasons.
- Work on my mental game, read the book “The Mental Game”.
- Play only 2 tables; try to get decent volume in.


Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my post, I will regularly update this thread with graphs of my progress and interesting hands to keep you guys up to date!

Greets,
Gradefor aka the spewing degen

Best of luck with the challenge mate! Looks like quite an aggressive strategy moving up from 2NL to 5NL.

I am starting this challenge at 5NL, I hope to never have to drop down to 2NL, overall I'm using a pretty aggressive strategy because I don't want to hang around the lower stakes to long.

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Just played my first 1k hands of this challenge, good start hitting alot of flops and getting some donations.




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Although I played well during this session there was 1 hand were my brain shut off and I spewed away a buyin. Just going to post it here to shame myself, since these are the random brain farts I need to remove from my game to beat higher stakes.

Flop bet I think was okay because I have some backdoor equity and people have weak checking ranges at 5NL. But after the turn I have 0 equity and should've just given up.

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 153.6 BB
SB: 104.2 BB
BB: 210.6 BB
UTG: 49.6 BB
MP: 92 BB
CO: 100.4 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has 8 7

fold, fold, CO raises to 3 BB, Hero calls 3 BB, SB raises to 8 BB, fold, fold, Hero calls 5 BB

Flop: (20 BB, 2 players) T 4 Q
SB checks, Hero bets 12.2 BB, SB calls 12.2 BB

Turn: (44.4 BB, 2 players) Q
SB checks, Hero bets 24 BB, SB calls 24 BB

River: (92.4 BB, 2 players) T
SB bets 1 BB, Hero raises to 60 BB, SB calls 59 BB and is all-in

Hero shows 8 7 (Two Pair, Queens and Tens)
(Pre 23%, Flop 9%, Turn 0%)
SB shows K K (Two Pair, Kings and Queens)
(Pre 77%, Flop 91%, Turn 100%)
SB wins 203.6 BB

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Then two hands I think I played well (thank god for both turns) below

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 194.8 BB
SB: 100 BB
BB: 199.2 BB
UTG: 192.8 BB
MP: 100 BB
CO: 109.8 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has A 5

fold, fold, CO raises to 2.4 BB, Hero raises to 8.6 BB, fold, BB calls 7.6 BB, CO calls 6.2 BB

Flop: (26.2 BB, 3 players) 2 7 4
BB checks, CO checks, Hero bets 7.8 BB, BB raises to 15.6 BB, fold, Hero calls 7.8 BB

Turn: (57.4 BB, 2 players) 3
BB bets 55 BB, Hero calls 55 BB

River: (167.4 BB, 2 players) A
BB bets 120 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 115.6 BB and is all-in

BB shows T T (One Pair, Tens)
(Pre 67%, Flop 67%, Turn 0%)
Hero shows A 5 (Straight, Five High)
(Pre 33%, Flop 33%, Turn 100%)
Hero wins 382 BB

And

PokerStars - $0.05 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

Hero (BTN): 176 BB
SB: 123.8 BB
BB: 112.2 BB
UTG: 100 BB
MP: 100.4 BB
CO: 87 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has Q Q

fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (6.4 BB, 2 players) T 4 9
BB bets 1 BB, Hero raises to 6.2 BB, BB raises to 11.4 BB, Hero calls 5.2 BB

Turn: (29.2 BB, 2 players) 4
BB bets 28 BB, Hero calls 28 BB

River: (85.2 BB, 2 players) 8
BB bets 69.8 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 69.8 BB

BB shows 9 T (Two Pair, Tens and Nines)
(Pre 16%, Flop 71%, Turn 9%)
Hero shows Q Q (Two Pair, Queens and Fours)
(Pre 84%, Flop 29%, Turn 91%)
Hero wins 215.4 BB


Is this format of HH's oke to read?

good to read that someone from the same country has the exact same problems. Will start over from 5nl too.

Good luck!

Thanks for the support, I also wish you luck my friend!

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Oke, today I actually decided to play a bit of 25NL zoom (already going away from my original challenge... sorry for that).

Felt pretty good, thought about alot of my descision and I played better than I normally do. I did notice myself making a couple mistakes but no major errors.

So I am going to deviate from my original challenge, since I felt grinding up from 5NL was just not worth my time. After playing a couple thousand hands at that stake I realized that I did not enjoy playing there as much as it was less challenging because of the more straight forward play. I personally enjoy struggling at 25NL more, I need the challenge to motivate myself.

Because of this I just decided that I am going to make this thread about my grind in 25NL. Posting graphs, hand history's etc of my grind there.

I don't want to give up on this thread, since I do think recording my play here will help me to improve.

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Graph of first short session at 25NL (running above EV to start is nice):


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Intresting hand of the session, not sure if I played this terrible or great; overall pretty weird hand. Normally I would take a completely different line.

PokerStars - $0.25 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4

BTN: 94.28 BB
SB: 100.64 BB
BB: 92.52 BB
UTG: 67.32 BB
Hero (MP): 125.76 BB
CO: 383.12 BB

SB posts SB 0.4 BB, BB posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.4 BB) Hero has 8 A

fold, Hero raises to 3 BB, fold, fold, fold, BB calls 2 BB

Flop: (6.4 BB, 2 players) 4 5 4
BB checks, Hero checks

Turn: (6.4 BB, 2 players) 6
BB bets 4 BB, Hero raises to 11.92 BB, BB raises to 26.84 BB, Hero calls 14.92 BB

River: (60.08 BB, 2 players) 8
BB bets 62.68 BB and is all-in, Hero calls 62.68 BB

BB shows K 9 (One Pair, Fours)
(Pre 42%, Flop 22%, Turn 14%)
Hero shows 8 A (Two Pair, Eights and Fours)
(Pre 58%, Flop 78%, Turn 86%)
Hero wins 177.44 BB

Played close to 1k hands of 25NL zoom today.
For the first 300-400 hands I played really bad, chose a couple spots that were bad to bluff and overall got really annoyed and just didn't play well because of that.

After that I calmed down a bit, played better, got a bigger stack which got me more confident and I actually think my edge is bigger against other deepstacks. Really felt like I was able to put alot of pressure in hands with other big stacks, redline skyrocketed mostly because of that. Obviously I started to run very good aswell for those last couple hundred hands, holding all my all-ins and my bluffs getting through.

Ended up with big stacks on both my tables (stack size in BB's, using Starshelper for that):


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Graph of my hands at 25NL so far:

Played pretty poor today, was 3betting to much and calling to much against aggression. Especially river bets I should just call less.

At the end I started 4 tabling instead of 2 and it actually went better, playing more tables makes me play slightly tighter which in my case is good. So managed to climb back.

hey man hows it been going????

Hey, thanks for asking!

I haven't played more hands since that session, I had to work.

Challange for today: Play 5K hands of 25NL zoom
Challenge for the month march: total atleast 50K hands of 25NL zoom

Good luck dude. Seems to me like if you want to be serious about this, sticking to the BR limits you set for yourself would be a good idea. Obviously awesome you've had some success, and I hope it continues