Hello fellow alchemists,

my name is bennie and I really don't like writing texts. This is because I think my written texts are poorly argumented in English and I can't express my thoughts well enough. So let me start from the beginning, I am 38 years old and I really like playing poker obviously. In my so called real life I majored in physics and history at the University of cologne. Currently, I am teaching on the one hand at the university of cologne didactics of physics by teaching students how to be a teacher because I am writing my PhD in physics. On the other hand I am working in a middle school as a teacher in physics, math and history.
So if you add up my working life I have 3 jobs at the same time. Writing my PhD, teaching, and poker. Sounds like a lot but additionally I really like doing sports and I have a loving family and recently new married wife who supports pursuing my dreams. The first and only thing I have ever wanted was to earn money by playing games. I somehow do this already with my pupils by playing learning games. I've always liked playing games myself from chess, skat, nes, snes to semi professional magic, cs and now poker. I started with limit holdem but always liked tournaments because of my tournament experience with magic. So sngs suited me until black Friday. I stopped playing because full tilt froze some of my br. 2 and a half years ago I started playing poker again and redeveloped my nerdiness for the game. I literally could spent countless hours with poker. Realizing this I knew I had to change my ways to keep improving.
I started with writing better targeted goals. I am still bad at it but I also got better. For me any kind of knowledge is not given I really have to work hard to understand all kinds of concepts that I want to use. Maybe I am a bit slow but I think I can only teach it if I fully understand it. This I have learned from Feynman because he argued that if he can explain any physics to his grandmother he had understood it well enough to build up on that.

As you may imagine by reading this now one of my goals is of course playing better poker.
My ideas of achiving this are first of course to teach poker to see if I have understood the basics. (just pm me if your are interested, for $25/h up to any $5 tournament).
Second, is to stream my sessions to improve my decision making process because in my opinion funneling ranges is key.
Third, is to improve my social community in poker. I work with a lot of people and luckily I am a positive guy with some very good friends in my life. But I miss enriching relationships in poker. So I thought if I open up a little bit more, write a blog and make a discord channel for everybody I maybe get to know more people who like to talk about poker on a regular basis.
Finally, I have to hold myself accountable and possibly, I join the br challenge too.
I really don't know where this route will take me but I just want to enjoy every bit of it because I want to become the best poker player I can possibly be. I try to write a post for every month or every two weeks if time allows. It's super tough to get all my jobs done and pursue poker as a job too. Especially if it comes to writing my blogs and learn how to stream. I played Abi 10 on titan and Abi 5 on Party and I mix mtt set and my sngs. Recently, titan has blocked all German players and I have to add other poker sites like stars, chico or wpn.

Attached you'll find my latest graphs for tournaments.

That's it for now guys.

I want to close my blogs with some funny/inspirational quotes:

You are what you think. You become what you think. What you think becomes reality. - Phil Hellmuths Mum

save1

Dear Alchemists,

Actually, I wanted to write earlier but I had too much to do with my other jobs. Sometimes in the teaching profession, unfortunately, you have to accept that it's better to leave the work at school to protect yourself better. Otherwise, the teaching profession really makes you sick.

Nevertheless I want to keep my promise and join a bankroll challenge. I have after the class trip next week in the vacations finally a little more time, what I am looking forward to very much.

For this reason I thought that I would like to give something back for my time in the forums. Therefore I offer until the end of the year every bankroll challenger of a free Tournament Coaching (sng/mtt) in the buyins of 0$-5$.
I would like to stream these coachings also over my Twitch channel however I am not finished with my layout yet. Is super much work to relearn everything. I imagined it would be easier. I hope I can at least finish the layout during the vacations.

Here is a small list of coaching offers from which may be chosen:

-Live play
-How to study poker
-Basic articles
-tracking software
-Overlays and HUDs
-solvers preflop (HRC, Icmizer, Equilab, etc.)
-solver basics postflop (pio, hrc beta)
-preflop play from rfi, cc, iso, 3bet, 4bet squeeze.
-What is icm and how its different from cev?
-postflop play from cbets to hero folds
-database analysis
-adaptations gto exploitable wtf
-mindset coaching
- writing goals
- How to improve your C-game
- How to manage your tilt?
- How to play closer to your A-game

Other topics on request.

What do you have to do to get a free coaching?

Send me a message via pokerstrategy, twitter or join my discord channel. We will choose a day together and chat for 10 minutes to get to know each other.

Week 1 | 03.10.21

Starting Bankroll: $3000
Goal: $15000

Dear Alchemists,

I am very happy that since this week I have more time to grind and work on my BR challenge. After only two days of rest, I am very motivated and excited.
Besides the continuous learning and reviewing I spend most of my time playing.
Since I have more time now, I can also choose mainly longer formats and so for this reason I rather focus on MTTs. Overall, I am very satisfied for the first two weeks. I still have to get used to the new layout and the poker site combinations.
This also includes realizing that since I play on BetOnline, Stars and Party, the player pools are also getting bigger. This tends not to be a problem for the medium to small buyins, as we don't often play with the same people anyway.
But when I go back to my original SNGs formats up to 22$ the whole thing becomes rather problematic.
So if I deliberately FR, 6m, 6m hyp and dons due to the few tables on Titan you have in the maximum 4 player pools. Sometimes regs overlap like I do, but we neglect that for simplicity's sake.
If I now multiply that over three pages and all SNG formats that's already 12 different pools. Normally I think it's good to try other formats of tournaments to develop and per se to choose the weakest one on each day. But this requires not only the knowledge of the single format, but also the knowledge of the player pools to be able to choose it.
However, the sheer number of sites makes this rather impractical. Sure I could play all on BetOnline and play no SNGs on Party games because of the tax, but even then I'm making life rather difficult for myself. I think it's easier to reduce formats and rather play more of the same BetOnline tables when playing SNG sets. From theory I put my focus on MTTs anyway, but I always played the SNGs and stabilize my BR on Titan until I learned MTTs. However, this is now falling away due to the loss of Titanpoker and I really only have the choice of playing the BetOnline SNG sets or continuing to play MTTs on the three sites.
What makes this even more difficult is that I stupidly didn't go down with my table count when I had to leave Titan. As a result, I have less time to make decisions when playing, and I make my life harder than it should be, because I have to read even more people than I did on titan, where I was pretty much done.
I think this is especially important when things don't go well.
For this reason, I advise everyone not to take it so hard and to accept that it takes time to get used to new things. That's why I think it makes sense to reduce the number of tables and formats for the time being and to analyze the player pools bit by bit. Even if I find it super appealing to mix the formats according to availability and quality, because it challenges me intellectually, I should first relax after the change and develop a solid grinding routine that I can rely on. I also don't want to seek my intellectual challenges in poker by mixing variants at the same time, I'd rather deal with more demanding situations.

Like you, this post certainly touches on some topics important to poker that I'd like to go into in more detail at some point in the future.
I hope I create the layout and everything around the Twitch in the next week.

Finally remains for me only to say that my offer for each BR-Challenger a free coaching up to the 5ver always stands. I am convinced that I can help everyone who is interested on his poker way a little bit further.

Week 3 | 17.10.21

Start bankroll: $3000
Today's Bankroll: $3227.54
Goal: $15000
Profit: $227.54

[twitter

Just followed!
Your goals look good. I'm in a similar poker situation. You have 12K games and 9K$ of profit. I have 8K games and 6K€ of profit. Looks like the same path until now, only I'm a little behind you. Hoping to become both better players.

Hey man! Just followed. Really nice read and nice to see how you handle your life with that many jobs and passions. I think that you made a really wise decision by reporting your routines and challenging yourself here, doing that is enriching for a poker player. I am a poker pro for over an year and will start journalling here and on other forums as well, since I see this as a great habit.

Nice challenge! I see a lot of players doing it, but since I am a MTT peak player it seems really impossible for me thinking and setting goals on $numbers, I always set my goals and challenge based on performance, volume and stuff. How do you perceive those things? I can see that you plays in smaller fields, on which thinking more of a $ perspective deffinitelly is more palpable.

Well you should go for numbers goals but I would focus more on process goals. Like how do you play certain spots you want to train. Like having a min rfi from a position or play a range oponoent dependent.

Dear Alchemists,

Unfortunately I have to tell you that the last 2 weeks were very sobering for me. I had actually hoped to get more for poker during the vacations, but unfortunately it didn't work out. As you know, I'm still teaching at the university and I unfortunately forgot that the start of the winter semester fell exactly over the start of the fall vacations this year.
In detail this means that I didn't have any time off as I would have needed it. On the contrary, I have to go to university five times a week. Although the semesters are in hybrid form due to the pandemic, it is super hard in terms of motivation when you actually thought you could relax a bit.
To make matters worse, I have to do postgraduate studies for my PhD. In my old state exams are no doctoral eligibility like the new bachelor's/master's students have. This means I actually have to take courses at my department again myself. This means I spend a total of two days at the university taking courses myself and another two days lecturing myself. Together with the mostly obligatory PhD colloquium on Friday, I have to work five days a week at full time at school and then five days a week at the university or on videoconferences.

As you can imagine, I will be very happy when the winter semester ends in February and things will be more relaxed.
Nevertheless, at least in the last week I only worked at the university and could use the evening to play.
I always find it incredible how little I care about this more work with the workload. I think this is only possible because I really like to play poker. I'm doing the same at the moment, since school started again this week. In every free minute I train myself pairrd workers hands after, teach poker in private coachings and work myself on my game with the raise you edge courses. I'm really looking forward to the weekend where I can play two days a week and try to implement everything I learned during the week. I think I have now found a good measure, not to learn too much new to process the learned first safely. It's better to first understand concepts correctly and also apply them while playing than to try to learn too much content too quickly and then have to repeat everything all the time. I stick to basic neuroscientific principles, which at least work quite well for me. This competence model is described very nicely in the books "The Mental game of Poker" 1+2.

Week 5 | 01.11.21

Start bankroll: $3000
Today's Bankroll: $3441.17
Goal: $15000
Profit: $441.17

| twitter | discord | blog |

Dear Alchemists,
In the last two weeks I could hardly play at all. Except for my private coaching sessions, I had only 4 small sessions myself. It was my wife's birthday and I was a bit sick myself, which is why I didn't manage more. The nice thing about playing semi-professionally is at least that I have no pressure and can take care of my family. Nevertheless, I really hope that things will get better in the next two weeks.
As if that wasn't enough, I had to deal with the new partypoker software which I find very interesting to say the least.
This version is only available in Germany but with a little luck others will enjoy it soon or not so much.
Party relies a lot on throwables, which there was already before with the diamondbalance, but I have the feeling that these unnecessary child rows are now even more present. I think for beginners they definitely have something for me it's rather annoying. I write about it because the software is still quite buggy. So you can not properly turn off the throwables, at almost forward tables you can not wait for the bb and then go from the table. Just a lot of teething problems, which is why it certainly makes sense not to try it out right away in the English area. The new layout also takes a lot of getting used to, as the card font has been changed. On the positive side, the mtt overlay on the table is now smaller and thicker at the top left and you can click on it. It looks like live tournaments. So a mini lobby on the table itself without having to open the lobby. The timelines are now colored and the player icons are a bit bigger, so they look something like they do on ACR or GG. I think also the cards were not diagonally on top of each other before, but rather side by side. It all takes a little getting used to, but I think in the long run it will be fine. I actually like partypoker as it is the first site I started playing on. I'm curious to see what new features make it into the English version. In this sense in times of funny Gokus and Gandalfs on live events. See you soon.

Week 7 | 15.11.21

Start bankroll: $3000
Today's Bankroll: $3539.55
Goal: $15000
Profit: $539.55

Dear Alchemists,
From a poker technical point of view this is the first week since the start of my challenge that didn't go so well. I simply had a lot on my plate privately and had almost no time to play. I don't blame myself if I made the wrong decisions that led to this result.

At least I was able to learn some new poker material, because I managed to finish reading "Whe Math of Poker by Collin and Douglas, which I can really recommend to anyone who is looking for a logical approach to poker. I also started reading the new book by Barry and Dara "Endgame Poker Strategy - The Icm Book. Since I have already read the two books in the series and found them great I am really looking forward to it. For me as a SNG and MTT player, there are a lot of things in it that I already knew, but also a few subtleties that I had not yet noticed in the way. I'm super excited to see what the rest of the book is like.

I have so much time to read, unfortunately, because I stupidly fell down Sunday and suffered a knee injury again. This is a big problem for me as I have already had two ACL tears and this time it affected my last healthy knee. I have big mindset problems to deal with the situation, because I felt like I was thrown back in time.
With me such things are always connected with emotional food, which makes my sporty goals not only physically, but also mentally in far distance and me me so to speak still another leg place. For this reason I looked for something in my mindset programs that helps me over time and found it in the Primed mind podcast by Elliot Roe. In the episode 07 - Vik Hothi - The Martial Arts Master who is to stubborn to die. He counts Vik how he had to learn to walk again after a serious illness and did not give up. Even when all wounds were reopened because of an infection and he had to start all over again a second time in a short time. For him, starting over again was not difficult at all, because he had already done it once, he knew that he could learn it again.
This attitude of him lets me look positively on my health and say again full of conviction, no matter what with the knee is I get it again. Because in life it doesn't depend on how often you fall down but how often you get up again.

Week 10

Start bankroll: $3000
Last weeks Profit: $81.32
Overall Profit: $539.55
Today's Bankroll: $3620.87
Goal: $15000

Dear Alchemists,
I hope you all have a wonderful holiday season and that you and your loved ones are healthy so far. For me, this Christmas season has been pretty Unfortunately I couldn't extend my streak and win another two weeks. I could play this time even only three sessions and have these completely in the sands set. This has different reasons on the one hand I did not run well and on the other hand I had several insecurities in spots where I was just not sure and often made wrong decisions. For this reason, this week I have been more concerned with educating myself on the theory side of the game. Going back to the lab is especially advisable in such moments, as it is the best way to clear one's conscience. I always find it very challenging that even after playing so much poker in the last few years, several sessions when you have lost always try to scratch your self-confidence. This always makes me especially aware of how challenging poker is in general and why I love the game so much. It always makes me want to get better, which I find much better than chasing defeats and not accepting the way things are. I think that would also be simply disproportionate after the last few weeks.
In my private life I also had a lot to do in the last weeks, because I finally took my last two exams as a teacher. A small digression at this point on the subject. If you want to become a teacher in Germany, you first have to complete a course of study in the respective subjects and then complete a 14-month preparatory service at a school. Once you have passed both final exams at university and at school, you either have a Bachelor of Science and a Master's degree or the older version of two state exams, like me. After that or towards the end of the preparatory service you apply for a school. I was lucky enough to have physics as a subject and to be able to stay at my school. Once you have overcome all these hurdles, you might think that that would have been it and you are a teacher at the school, but unfortunately no, that is not the case. In Germany, as in other professions, a probationary period must then be completed at the school, where you have to take two exams in the two subjects after one year and another two exams after three years, so a total of four more exams. After very long further years one then becomes a civil servant for life and can be sure of his job. For me, this moment had finally come on 17.12.21, when I could finally take my last exam. A face hour in which I did a lot of media literacy training with Ipads while teaching the kids knowledge about discovery trips. First the kids write storyboards and then they record little learning videos themselves. The kids had a lot of fun and my principal was pleased. On 21.12 I still have the reflection meeting and then that was it finally.
I am very happy that I have done everything and can now spend the next four weeks playing poker and also see my family back home especially my two little nieces again.
That's it for today from me. Happy holidays to you.

Week 12

Start bankroll: $3000
Last weeks Profit: $-380.43
Overall Profit: $240.44
Today's Bankroll: $3240.44
Goal: $15000

You sound like a very intelligent person. I will be watching the progress on the challenge to getting to 15k. I am very interested to see of what builds a bankroll the fastest. The tournament sng player or the cash game player. I am a cash player starting at 10nl building a bankroll hopefully to get to the higher stakes. Will be very interested to compare results over the next year. I am also not a gto player. I don't use solvers, trackers etc. My strategy is very simple. I just observe how my opponents are playing and try to make best adjustments to put them in tough spots. That will be interesting as well. Solver based player vs a observation player over the next year. Hopefully we both make a lot of money. Anyways merry christmas.

marry chrismas to you too mate. Its always good to give you opponents tough spots. GTO is nice a baseline but know how to deviate and give opponents tough spots thats the important stuff.

Dear Alchemists,
I hope you all had a nice Christmas time with your loved ones and could relax a bit. With me it went also so far quite well up to that I to my whole stress before it managed to tear me the third time my cruciate ligament. Unfortunately, I fell down in the evening and went to the MRI shortly before Christmas to have it examined. The nice doctors told me there that my knee was very good except for the fact that my anterior cruciate ligament was missing.
Since I already had such an operation twice on my left knee, I can tell the people who have so far been spared that it is not as bad as it always sounds.
From the physical side, you can actually walk again after 6-8 weeks and the pain is also within limits with the right anesthesia. What is a bit unusual for me is that I now put more weight on my operated knee, since my healthy knee is now also gone. At the beginning, this meant that my operated knee sometimes hurt more than the damaged one. It had to get used to the new load first. From the psychological side it is a bit more difficult, because you have to be very patient to cope with the fact that certain things just don't go faster. The new tendon taken from your own body has to grow in properly first, and if you get too impatient and overload it too soon, you can have another operation right away. So it is important to find the right balance. For me it is also always difficult, if I can do no or little sports, difficult to keep my weight, because I somehow also like to eat. Especially after Christmas, where I always have to lose weight afterwards anyway, it will probably not go without a significant reduction in my calories a day in the near future.
Since I will be operated on 23.01.22 and have gained weight at Christmas willy-nilly, I have to lose some weight until the operation. This fits me quite well because I'm getting married in the summer anyway so I kill two birds with one stone. It won't be that easy for me, but I will manage.
Before the operation it is very important to build up muscles rather than lose more. Everything I lose in muscle before the operation will be much more difficult to build up again later. Therefore I will have to bite the bullet and test myself daily on Covid. Here in NRW, the 2G plus rule has been in effect for gyms since 12/28/21 with the addition that even boosted people need a test to train.
On the poker side of my life I had more time to play small sessions in the last few days, but at least at Christmas my family comes first of course. So I just spent a lot of time studying after the difficult last two weeks. It was also better that way with all the pain pills I had to take because of my knee.
On a positive note, I still have time off until January 10th, so I'm looking forward to having a lot of time for poker. I hope I will feel better then. I want to use the next days to create more volume and to finish my desk with my new 4 monitor holder. I think I will tell you about it in the next blog.

Happy New Year and stay healthy

Week 14

Start bankroll: $3000
Last weeks Profit: $302.30
Overall Profit: $542.74
Today's Bankroll: $3542.74
Goal: $15000

Dear Alchemists,

I hope you are all well. My last few weeks have gone okay so far in poker. Slowly I have the feeling that more and more pieces of the puzzle are falling into place and I generally understand mtts better.
On the one hand, there's the theory, where I'm mainly dealing with single raised pots in position these weeks. On the other hand there is the amount of mtts you manage to play to see a whole variance cycle. The latter is faster with sngs due to the small number of players, as it is of course less likely to have long loosing streaks. With mtts, however, this becomes much much longer. Accordingly, the uncertainty and the question of whether one beats the limit at all will also last longer, if larger successes are statistically absent for the time being.
The more often you have gone through this cycle of natural winning and losing and come out with a plus the better it feels and the more self-aware you came to be.

Here you can not undervalue the work of reasonable coaches such as in staking groups or sites. Someone who can say, based on the analyzed game and own experience, that the chosen limit should be beaten, is super important for being self-confident.

Nevertheless, it feels even better when you manage to do that and do it on your own.
On the private side, I'm happy when I can finally have my knee operated on the 24th. I don't like the instability in my knee and the constant pills. Especially because the instability affects my hip. Nevertheless, I am still biting my teeth until the end of next week, because on Tuesday the cooperation agreement between my university and my school will be signed with the press. I can't cancel the appointment because there are too many other appointments and we were happy to have found a day at all.

That's it from me for now. See you guys soon and stay positive. Sometimes in life you take a step back to be able to go forward again.