Welcome everybody,


My questions are fairly typical and I hope they can be useful to other young poker enthusiasts longing for a poker career like me.

I really want to set some reasonable and realistic goals for the upcoming 2016, so any answer as well as constructive advice on my goals is welcome.


Background :

I'm a college student in computer programming. I've been playing poker for two years since entering college. My ultimate goal is to become a professional poker player.

I started out playing 6-max SNG and soon turned into 6-max and HU cash game. I deposited 100 euro 3 times and lost them all. In the mean time I started learning basic poker maths including bankroll management. I watched all the televised poker shows on youtube. The fourth time I deposited 150 euro and turned it into 1500 euro in 5 months. I then withdrew all and changed the site. Now I have 400 euro on the new site.

Now I play 6-max nl10, HU nl10 and sometimes super short handed nl20.(Never played higher)

I can play two hours a day during the week. But during weekend and vacations which are fairly often I can play way more.


Questions :

1. Is it not possible or hardly possible to become a poker pro from scratch today within a fairly short periode of time? We can't compare today with the poker boom, but how much harder?(real life story welcomed)

2. If I want to speed up and play say 4-table nl20 with 400 euro, is it ok to deposit to match up a certain percent of loss in losing sessions or just deposit more money from the begining?

3. I take 3 days off every time I have 2 consecutive losing sessions to shake the loss off my head. What do you guys do because I think 3 days are a bit too much?



Current new year goals :(to be modified)

- Concentrate on playing poker once I have free time instead of losing time here and there. Watch poker videos eating instead of tv series.

- Start with muti-table nl10 and nl20 and try to reach muti-table nl100 by the end of the year.

- Never think about poker on class. It's been proven by me that thinking about poker all the time will have some negative impact on your state of mind.

- Review hands with HM every week and post some interesting ones on 2+2. Read some of the others' posts as well.

- Watch pokernews even though I'm not concerned to most of which. Try to keep on track with the poker world.

- Find a new useful poker book and read it.

- Sleep at least 7 hours a day to avoid being tired when play.

- Try to reach 5000 euro by the end of the year.




I will post more questions in the future.

Some of the questions may seem apparent or idiotic to you, so please don't judge a young starter

Thanks and Happy new year in advance!

Welcome, OP. I think you'll get a lot more responses in one of the strategy fora. This forum is more about following the journey once the goals are set than advice on what goals are good to pursue.

I no longer play online, but I'd guess this will get the best responses in Beginner's Questions, or maybe Micro Stakes No Limit.

its going to sound cruel- but here's some reality.

if you're wanting to start off at nl20, i would abandon social life for 3-6 months (not entirely, but youll need to treat this period as your gf and spend all the time you can with her).

Look, you have a very short window to make it or not. And youre going to need to be studying/vid watching, hh checking, in order to improve well enough/fast enough to get to the point you can be normal. It's more than a full time job. youll need to study/read, play, rinse repeat. Now is the time to clear up all the easy to moderately hard leaks you'll need to plug in order to advance and grow a substantial BR.

- if you can only play 2 hours a day, youll need to study/watch vids 1-2 hours a day as well, if not more in this period. It is possible to build yourself up from scratch, but every hour not devoted to poker, school, or sleep (at this time) is time wasted (for now). (im going on the premise of you having 2-3 years left in college).

-honestly, find more time to play. youll get the most out of playing learning right now, 2 hours a day just wont cut it. even assuming you can win at 10bb/100, 4 tabling that's waht, 24(euro) per hour, subtract any expenses off of that and maybe you're at 15-20(euro) per hour now. I know you can play more on weekends, but these are hours you wont get back. try to find 1-2 more hours to play and 1 more hour to study until youre at NL100. Maybe this means missing hanging out with friends saturday night or sunday afternoon. but if this is your dream this when you need to change what youre doing in order to get what you have never had to this point.

- per the taking 2-3 days off each time you have two losing days in a row. again this is the time its precious. are you taking time off because you think youre playing bad? or because you're mentally not handling the swings? if its the first, ok, take that 1 day off and study study study during that time. If its not being able to handle the swings- drop down to NL5 for those 2-3 days and continue to play. you have to accustom youself to the swings, and only a larger BR will do that for you. Perhaps increase your BR you think youll need to move up.
-read tommy angelo or some mind game book. its important to control your emotions and thoughts in todays game.

dont set a stake goal you want to be at by the end of the year. maybe youll only be mentally free at 2x the BR managment you want, so itll take slightly longer. maybe you hit fire and are higher. Just concern yourself with playing well.

-ignore pokernews. ignore how others are doing unless theyre talking strat w you or you've gotten to know them. reading about DN isnt going to help you. knowing who FT'd a WPT event wont help you.

find a happy medium of tables. I play much higher live than i do online and i find it hard to keep up with 8+ tables. I used to 8 table stars back in the day, but always found myself autopiloiting. 4-6 worked for me to keep my attention and A game focused. Playing good poker and thinking bout each hand is where you're at now, you're not nanoko or sauce you dont have it solved. you need quality.

Thanks Garick. I'll put it in the right forum and see what I can get.

First, thank you for your answer life3ps!

I think "cruel" answers are what I need the most at this point of my life since I'm determined to become a pro.

I can play more everyday if it's what it takes. I can always squeeze more time if I truly want. Apparently I have to be more focused on the game too.

Instead of setting a goal of bankroll, I will try no to have any tilt session or session during which I know I play bad or am in bad shape but still play.

One question about the book you mentioned written by tommy angelo. Is that "Elements of Poker"? I've heard that some books even fairly new ones aren't useful anymore for today's game. I don't know if this book is the case. What do you think of it?

lifes3ps has definitely brought up some excellent points, you should follow his advice. One thing regarding the studying, the televised poker cash and WSOP broadcasts on YouTube should really only be solely used for entertainment purposes and not really for actual strategy or ammo for improving your game. The reason is most of the content you see are edited hands and most have a certain dynamic to them which is so villain specific it won't be really beneficial to you at the low stakes online/live. Instead, I would look to read the micro stakes online forum stickies as well as look for training videos on a paid site which focus on important concepts and hones in on them by looking at detailed examples. For example a site like crushlivepoker which doesn't really apply to you since you play online only but I'm sure there are numerous sites out there. Good Luck!

Thank you Shrewsbury,

I realised it too. At the very begining these videos helped me to select starting hands and some other stuffs. Dwan's crazy actions did give real joy and pushed me to learn more about the game But they are no longer helpful now. My friends online recommended deuceCracked, blueFire etc. Don't know which is better though. And it's really hard to find poker friends in actual world like in college. Everyone plays video games instead.

Good luck to you too!

I don't play NLHE, but

Get a RIO essential subscription ($10/mo) and watch Cameron Crouch, Felipe Boianovsky, DJunkell.

Get those software for NLHE like CREV, pokersnowie, flopzilla and run sims all the time.

Poker's tough and you're gonna run into downswings and get crushed by cooler's all the time and it'll test your psychological power.

If you want to have fun, well anyone can do that. If you want to make it, you gotta put in LOTS of work.

Thx. I can't really decide which site to learn. RIO seems like a good choice too but they don't offer a free trial.

Current new year goals : (to be modified)

- Concentrate on playing poker once I have free time instead of losing time here and there. Watch poker videos eating instead of tv series. Stop partying and spend every free evening at home playing/learning poker.

- Sign in for a poker coaching video site.

- Start with muti-table nl10 and nl20 and try to reach muti-table nl100 by the end of the year.

- Try no to have any tilt session or session during which I know I play bad or am in bad shape but still play.

- Never think about poker on class. It's been proven by me that thinking about poker all the time will have some negative impact on your state of mind.

- Review hands with HM every week and post some interesting ones on 2+2. Read some of the others' posts as well.

- Find a new useful poker book and read it.

- Sleep at least 7 hours a day to avoid being tired when play.

It seems like you're excited about this and that's great but keep in mind that life is about balance. These are warning flags to me. With that said GL. Which school?

Hi XFlopRRiver,

You mean which school do I go to or ?

yeah, definitely dont say stop partying and spend every night at poker, still go out once a week or so to keep sane and normal.

the only reason for my tone of harshness was that youre starting small, so itll take concerted effort by you to get out of the rake vortex and up to 100 or 200NL alone where rake costs less. Its a HUGE cost to you now. so getting out of that ASAP will help your WR additionally.

RE: tommy angelo. you're starting out. his books arent about poker, but the mental game, which if you're taking 2 or 3 days off after a few losing days, means you could use help with. The mental game really has taken up a much larger part of mid-stakes regs preparation as they race to repair leaks. you can get all of his books or start with the first and work your way up. Because youre still learning a lot about the game i wouldnt stop playing all together on days off, rather drop in stakes til you get in a groove then hop back up to your normal stakes.

sims and playing w/ PPT/CREV are going to be quite important as theyll accelerate your learning curve if you spend the time needed to learn how to ask the right questions there and toy with your lines.

but yeah, starting this low means putting in a lot of time and effort to get out to the rake-suck of nano/small stakes NLHE. and because WR/table are in teh $5/hr range, that means a bunch of time now concerted to getting out of that hole.

Probably the best bit of advice you'll get.

Yup, curious.

life3ps advice is the best in both posts he made

As for RIO vs other training sites. I'd go for RIO>DeucesCracked or CardRunners or DragTheBar as they have the best current content, but DC and CR do have some old content that's good that goes over general theory, but RIO is best if you want to know current playerpool tendencies as game's have evolved a lot. Another suggestion would be grinderschool, a training site that is made specifically for microstakes grinders although i've never watched any of their vids.

Overall though, training vids are kind of like entertainment tbh and not the best way of studying the game. The best way imo is just reviewing hands yourself in the "lab" using tools such as CREV or whatever. Also find a study partner or small study group who play around the same stakes if you can and talk hands or go over various topics with him/her.

Ok. I'll try to move up as quickly as possible.

Thanks again.

I go to UTC(University of Technology of Compiegne). It's an engineering college near Paris.

Thanks for the information. I'll sign in on RIO for $10 a month then. The shame is that I don't know anybody in real life who likes poker just as I do. A study partner would be so much helpful

Another question :

Should I focus on one site or two? The current site I play on is Winamax. It's the biggest french poker site. However its raking policy is "no flop no drop and 6.5% post-flop". That's kind of high in comparison no? I wanted to change PS but I've heard that cash game there is very tough and I don't play many MTTs. So should I change to Parypoker for exemple or stick to Winamax?

If you keep logging here and showing hard work, some people may reach out to you and want to study with you. Otherwise you could reach out yourself to whomever you're interested by PMing them, worst thing that happens is say they're not interested or whatever.

Otherwise there's some threads to find study partners/groups in the forums.
For microstakes NL (most relevant for you I guess): http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69...groups-894620/
General study group search in coaching forum: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/10...thread-702635/

Thank you! These threads are very useful.

[QUOTE=sims and playing w/ PPT/CREV[/QUOTE]

By the way, what does "w/ PPT" mean ?

With ProPokerTools

Anybody?