Afternoon degens and grinders.

I'm making this thread to share my progress towards moving up the 6-max cash game ladder, whilst also living off my poker winnings. Although I'm starting at the small stakes of 25nl, I've just moved out to Mexico where living costs are low, so it shouldn't be too much of an issue. This thread will encourage me to work on my game and keep me focused on my volume. I'm going to be open with regards to my poker playing, my finances, and my general mindset.

Let's get started with the goals I want to go through in the next 3 months:

• Grind out 200k hands at all stakes combined
• Comfortably beat 25nl & 50nl for a decent sample
• Have at least taken shots at 100nl to have a feel for that level
• Make enough to cover living costs (no more than 750usd a month here)
• Stay disciplined

As I said, these are my short term goals for now. I think they are reasonable, but welcome your opinions on them.

Here's my roughly 20k hands of 25nl as a sample:



I've been running at a 3.57bb/100 ev adjusted. Although as the graph shows, the last 10k hands or so have been relatively stagnant. I hope I'm just running a bit cold and it should start picking up again soon.
I feel comfortable at these stakes, finding a lot of weak, exploitable players and the regs aren't particularly aggressive. But for sure need to improve my game in terms of playing other regs, and may even look into some coaching.


My current finances:

• Poker BR 1.5k USD
• Liferoll 3.5k USD
• Cash 400 usd (roughly)

Since I estimate living costs to be 750 a month - although I could definitely lower this if I need to - I have a solid few months living costs in my liferoll. Currently I feel like I can do this, but I want to get a solid 50-100k hands at 25nl and show a consistent profit. Today is what I'm classing as my first proper session, and I'll try to update with a few hands and the results soon. I'm not sure how often I'll give a proper update, but at least weekly I'll share graphs and hands I'm not sure on. Whilst trying to include a daily update where time allows.

So time to start stealing blinds from nit regs and stacking off against the fish

Gl. What site are you planning on playing?

So yesterday finished my first day, but didn't get around to posting it. Here are my stats:
Hands: 2519
Profit/Loss: $12.78 (2.03bb/100)
New Bankroll: $1512.78

Not the best first day, but after a big downswing early on I was happy just to get above $0.

Here's a few of the big hands that I think I misplayed pretty badly. Happy to hear your thoughts:


Feel like I played this river real bad. Maybe a check/call line would be better unless I had good info on the villain.





Here I think I overplayed the flop. Maybe call his raise and re-evaluate on the turn?





Is this spot avoidable or just a bad beat? I mean do if I bet small on the turn do I not sigh call off anyway?




Honestly, not my greatest play this session. So hopefully tomorrow I come in sharper and make less mistakes

At the moment, just Party. Open to mix it up in the future for sure though, but for now will stick to just the one site. And thank you!

Day 2:
Hands: 3513
Profit/Loss: $-2.96 (-.34/100)
New Bankroll: $1509.82

Another day without much of a monetary shift in either direction. But I made an effort to put in a lot of volume and feel that the volume will be more important in terms of helping me improve as a player and my long term winrate. I think I played better then yesterday, but still yet to feel like I'm getting into the true A game poker that I've played before.


Lets get to a few hands, here's a couple where I felt I got unlucky to be in those spots:

This first hand I was thinking villian would be playing over pairs and maybe AKs like this. But perhaps my 3-bet jam is overplaying my hand? Maybe a call and jam into most turns is better.





At first this felt like just a bad beat, but now Im not sure. On most other turns we probably would of got it in before the river. But the fact he doesn't bet the turn probably rules out a lot of nut flushes from his range, so when he bets so big on the river and we jam can he really call us with the flushes he might have there? Would just calling river be more correct?




I called the flop because villain seemed fishy and not a strong player.


To show I've had a share of good luck as well



Here, do we go for a river jam bluff? Or just check and give up?

GL man, what part of MX did you move to?

Day 3 was a grim day for sure:
Hands: 2499
Profit/Loss: $-133.56 (-21.38bb/100)
New Bankroll: $1376.26

Clearly a bad day, but we'll get past it.
Couple of bad beats, like this one below:



And shortly after this hand I ran AK into AA pre, which was a clear mistake of me overplaying AK. I think perhaps I was tilted and didnt realise. Definitely need to reign in some of my poor decisions. Another one was calling off with an overpair against obvious trips, looking back I can see I clearly wasn't focused.


I feel like this spot I played fine against a known fish:



An example of the sort of spots I was running in to. But also makes me think even more so that I can definitely beat these stakes, since there are a lot of weak players. Time will tell for sure.



I did a quick look back at my play, and I realised I had a lot of small-medium size pots I was losing. So I spent some time reviewing my game and studying. I noticed I had gotten lazy with my opening sizes, opening 3x way too much in CO and BTN, practically all the time. So in late position I was raising way too much to steal, and then building big pots with marginal hands post flop. I think this might of been a major leak in my game.



Losing 6 BI's in a day is rough, especially when I can see a few clear mistakes. I'll spend some more time studying and maybe have a lower volume day tomorrow. It could also be just poor variance playing a factor, but that is why I have the comfortable bank roll.

Cheers mate. I'm living in Guadalajara, in Jalisco. It's actually a really nice city. Might have to move too a beach when it gets warmer though.

If there's any poker guys out here give me a shout

Another day done:
Hands: 2010
Profit/Loss: $2.42 (.48bb/100)
New Bankroll: $1378.68

After yesterday, happy to just breakeven. And whats more, it really didn't seem like my day to make money. I think I did well to not post a loss. Here's a hand where I avoided spewing off:





And here's one where on the turn I'm kind of lost and not sure what to do. Villian is definitely not a solid player, but don't have enough info to know just how bad he is.



Keeping on my study grind, now that I'm building up a more solid amount of hands I can definitely start to see some leaks coming out, so its a good opportunity to start working on them.

So with it being holiday season I haven't played that much the last few days, but I still got in some hands. I also got a rakeback bonus of 62.50 dollars. So the total for the last few days:

Hands: 4497
Profit/Loss: $72.59 (6.44bb/100)
New Bankroll: $1513.77 (Inc. RB)

A pretty decent few days that I'm happy with. But the first day after I last updated saw me lose another 4.5 BI's, meaning I had a pretty rough downswing that was just shy of 10 BI's total. Therefore, I'm only actually above my starting bankroll because of the rakeback bonus. But I feel confident this is more of a bad variance period then me being a losing player. In fact, here's the 5k stretch of hands where I just seemed to burn money:



For sure, some of this was bad play. And some of which came from me being tilted due to a loss in a prior hand and then making a poor decision. I think this period has helped me accept that losing a few buy-ins really isn't a big deal if you can still play well. Of course, I gave myself a large enough starting bankroll to deal with these sort of swings, so I was always aware they could happen, but its different to actually experience it.
Here's the graph for all my hands since starting this thread:



So I was able to pull it back a considerable amount.
I think the gap between my SD winnings and Non-SD winnings is perhaps too large. At first I wasn't too worried about it, as I don't like to obsess over something like that in a relatively small sample. However, I think it might be indicative of my lack of aggressive 3-bet play and not combating light 3-betters enough. Likewise, my 3-bet % stat is slightly lower then I'd like. So moving forward this is something I will study and slowly experiment with.

My overall stats to date since starting this thread are as such:
Hands: 15038
Profit: -$48.98 (-1.30bb/100)

I think I'll be able to get another 5-10k hands or so in before I go on a short vacation for New Years, so will update tomorrow with some hands.

Again I've not had much spare time recently and am currently waiting to catch a plane. So just a quick update for the last few days:

Hands: 4866
Profit/Loss: $167.63 (13.8bb/100)
New Bankroll: $1681.42

Obviously, very happy with these last few sessions. I feel like variance is falling more on my side and that I'm making less mistakes.

I actually had today and yesterday off, and am about to go on a short vacation for a week. I realise it might seem a bit foolish to take time off when I've only just started this journey, but I have some money set aside for it and feel I can comfortably afford it. And the point of me wanting to play poker isn't so I can just play poker constantly, but so I can have freedom to do things like go to the beach for a week.

Haven't got much time for hands at the moment, but will update when I'm back and have gotten another session in. Happy new year everyone!

GL ! will follow !
Any advice for a husng player who want to transitionning to 6max ?

Gl

Got in a session yesterday, was perhaps a bit tired and didnt play my best game, but was overall happy with how I played. Also had a BR boost due to RB bonus of $50 pay out whilst I was gone.

Hands: 1981
Profit/Loss: $-27.38 (-5.53bb/100)
New Bankroll: $1704.61

Am contemplating taking a shot at 50nl one day soon. I'm aware my winrate isn't great at 25nl, but it is positive and I have the bankroll to try it. Perhaps I'll wait till I hit 30k hands of 25nl and then have a 4bi shot. My thinking was that even if I lose money it'll still be a valuable learning experience. But we'll see.

Today started off strong, up a few BI's, then had a few spots that felt more unlucky then poor play. Here's an example:




Evidently, I don't think there was much else I could of done in this particular spot. Except perhaps check back river, but I think OP is calling off even if the river is a blank, maybe Im wrong there. But I've realised against such an obvious calling station I can consider betting pot or even overbetting it. Not sure what others think about that.




This one felt like villain flopped a set, but in retrospect perhaps he over plays a 78 or 68, or even a bluff, in this spot. Maybe a flop raise is better to figure out where I'm at, because by the river I felt a bit lost. Interested to see if people would of played it differently.

I guess the main difference will be making sure you isolate the weak players at 6-max. I think isolation is an important dynamic to get use to, especially when competent regs are at the table. But also if you're coming from a HU background you can probably do quite well sitting at empty tables and playing a bit of HU's before others join, as most of the 6 max players seem weak in that spot (myself included, definitely something I need to study).


Cheers mate

Not updated in a while due to being super busy with other stuff and just not getting around to it. So, bit of a big update. First, here's the hands I've been putting in and the results:

Hands: 14147
Profit/Loss: $-192.38 (-5.44bb/100)
Bankroll: $1512.23


Obviously, a frustrating 15k hands. I had 3 big losing days and only 1 strong profit day. Ive been studying more then before as well, which makes the results more annoying. I've consider the idea that maybe I'm executing what I'm learning properly, so will look back at what I've been reading/studying and see if I need to re-adjust. I think I've definitely fixed some of my issues with 3-betting spots, but I'm aware this still needs a lot more work and fine tuning.


I also took a shot at 50nl in this last week. No, I wasn't chasing losses, I just wanted to give it a shot. I played 2 sessions of 500 hands each, losing around $175 over the course of those 1000 hands. However, I did run KK into AA on a 72246 run out board, for about 60 dollars. I also got it in with a flopped set vs a villians flush draw, losing the hand for a full stack. So overall wasn't too taken aback by the losses nor did I feel like I got run over.
What I did find was there still seemed to be a good amount of casual players, and there was a couple of regs that I recognised. Overall, I finished my 1k hands at 50nl feeling like if I can beat 25nl, then 50nl isn't going to be much of a step up. As such, I'm looking forward to taking another shot at it. This also means my bankroll is actually lower then posted above, and when we add the rakeback I made last week in its currently sitting at $1372.90.


But that leads to the question, am I beating 25nl? Here's my stats since starting the thread:

Hands: 36032
Profit/Loss: $-101.11 (-1.12bb/100)
Bankroll: $1372.90

But if we look at my evbb, I'm actually sitting at 1.14evbb/100 for those 36k hands. Either way, it doesn't appear that I'm much more then a breakeven player, which is a tad disheartening. If we include the hands I showed at the start of this thread, then my stats are 58,424with a 2.6bb/100 winrate.
Here is the graph of my overall sample:



So, for a near 60k hands sample, I'm a 2.6bb/100 winner. This is slightly more re-assuring. I'm inclined to think these 35k of hands I've had have came with some poor luck and I've perhaps been in the midst of a slight downswing. As I see the crazy mistakes some of the casual players make and that some of the regs seem to have excessive amount of leaks, I feel confident I am capable of beating these stakes. Even if the recent run of hands has been poor. So my mindset isn't quite defeatist, but it certainly feels weakened.

Moving Forward
My plan now is to start with a chilled couple days. Maybe play 1/2k hands on sunday, or maybe take 3 days off completely. I'll spend at least a few hours studying to brush up on certain issues I've had, but will also be hitting the gym and socialising with some friends.
Then, next week, I aim to put in 15k hands over 5 or 6 days. At this point, I'll have a sample of 50k hands in mexico and around 75k total hands at 25nl. If the 15k hands go well - as in, a positive winrate of at least 5bb/100 - then I will take a shot at 50nl. If I breakeven or lose money, then I'll repeat the break and study time with the aim of trying again the following week.

So, time to get my head into the study grind and then crush the tables next week. Lets do this.