Hello! I am a long time lurker and this is the first time I've ever posted.

Playing small stakes and living in South Asia I have relatively small expenses compared to the rest of the world. I am really grateful I don't have to "play for money" as some good investments, coupled with a relatively minimalist lifestyle have me set for a decent amount of time.

One of the reasons I have lasted in (and stuck to) this high rake SS environment is my utter lack of motivation for playing higher and my inherent nitty-ness and big loss aversion. While I am no zen master I do control my emotions better than most and usually play extremely over rolled for my stakes.

I do, however, want to move ahead in life and make more money so I can pursue what my heart really desires; prime amongst which are to own my own place and backpack my way RTW as usual, using it as a tool to unwind after months of serious poker.

Here's where I stand rn:

Pokerstars: 100BI at my usual stakes(80$ BI in my home country). Players have no clue what they are doing and my winrate is (EV adj.) 22bb/100 over a 120k hand sample. It's pretty crazy but I know this is not achievable elsewhere.

GG: 3500$ and I play 25$ and 50$ BI games. The winrate adj is 5bb/100 over a small 75k hand sample.

AIMS:

1. Take shots at the 160$ BI games on Stars after when I have 75 BI. Lessen action and focus on making the correct decisions when shot taking. Also be okay losing here and not lose momentum when things go wrong. I want to own this limit, starting games HU and repeat the success I had at my current limit.

2. Get to 5000$ on GG and stick to 50$ games, take shots at 100$ games. Repeat for next limit at 10k. Repeat at 20k.

3. Always, always table select

4. Keep up my meditation and gym routine. Right now it gets difficult to do on days I lose.

5. Keep you guys updated here.

6. Keep putting out content on my @MissionPossiblePoker.

7. Play at least 40k hands/month

HOWs:

1. I re-discovered GTO when RIO came out with VISION after an unsuccessful tryst with solvers before. Can't recommend this enough. The clarity achieved in my pre-flop game alone makes it worth it.

Will continue to grind the 100 and 50bb SIMs throughout the year and check out all my marked hands on solver. This will be my study routine, like it has been for about 8 months now. Even on shitty days, this work gets done.

2. I'd really like to reach a 10k roll on GG before the middle of the year. I do think it's achievable and is not a crazy high aim. My goal is to be a 1/2 reg who is fully rolled for those games by the end of the year. If I can shot take 2/5 a year from now I will be really really happy.

Thank you for reading the entire post. I wish you well on your journey!

You might want to put this in PGC (as well?) if you keep updating. Good to see more PLO players.

I'm a big believer in not focusing on table selecting if you don't need the money. You want to get good first. I'm a big zoom advocate for this reason. I know a lot of people disagree, but thought I'd put in a different perspective.

It's one thing if your objective is to make money, but if you want to get good, it's better to not spend energy in that stuff and just get tons of hands and do studying.

Visions is great, though it's important to move to monker eventually. That said ime until you are moving from 1/2 to 2/5 it's not really necessary. I do some study streams with visions and monker, if you're new to it, you might find it useful.

Good luck!

Don't get too afraid to take shots. The play isn't that great of a difference as you move up the stakes, although sites are different.

One thing that I have noticed, but it might be different where you play, is that people are not playing GTO ranges, but they will reveal their hands through their actions, so focus on your thought process rather than the solver solution.

I have been moving up through the stakes and the play is pretty similar. There is some more aggression and less punting. There is still a ton of room for exploitation.