Dropping out and my Journey to Pro - 500nl-2knl app games

I've been playing 2/5, 5/5 in some NYC private/semiprivate games. It's super soft and the rake is great, and the games are safe. It's really hard to take pictures there as I already don't fit in a ton, but it's a really cool experience. I'll try to get some pictures to this thread.

Those are my results the past two weeks, only started playing there. Currently the plan is to play ~15 hours a week there (2 sessions), as well as 5-10 hours on global/club games. My starting bankroll was 20k, after making some stupid decisions (gambling, purchases, rolex) w my bankroll as well as necessary stuff like rent and a laptop.

Had this interesting hand as well if any live players want to share thoughts -

• it’s 5/5/10 2-3k avg stack, Utg raises 40, HJ,CO calls,
  
  
• I sqz 160 off btn w AQcc, utg and hj calls
  
  
• Flop is Q34ss I bet 200, just utg calls who covers me (2.5k),
  
  
• turn is a 4, I bet 700, he calls,
  
  
• river is an As and he donk shoves like 1500
  
  
• I imagine you just have to call this live considering people spazz, I tanked a minute or so and people looked at me like I was crazy when I eventually called
  

My 2023 results btw -

About 70% of these are on GG, 20% on ACR (mainly 200z) and 10% app games. Keep in mind I was probably getting an average of 40% rakeback on all this, but playing low volume so my hourly wasn't good (4-5 reg tables or 2 zoom tables mostly). Probably around 50$/hr all told and somewhere in the vicinity of 6-700 hours played.

I also played ~300 hours of live 1/3 and 2/5 untracked with ~7k in profits, and played a LAPT w net profit of ~5k

As I said before, a decent amount of money I spent or had to use to cover living costs etc., but I'm mainly going to play 200 online, and 2/5 live for the time being.

Hi, I dmed you but I didnt get a response yet. I'd appreciate that recommendation if the offer still stands=)

Responded, sorry!

lol, such a degen buying a Rolex and having 20k left in your BR. I fkn love that ****, gl for the rest of 2024.

I don't regret it, always wanted one

Doing well playing live anywhere from 1/2 deep to 5/5 or 5/10

Also started playing clubGG games and will probably start battling a bit on ACR taking shots at 600 and 1k bumhunting soft tables to mix in since my club only goes up to 2/4. Bankroll is around 40k so not the largest roll but willing to take the variance.

Once I start playing midstakes on ACR I will share some strategy insights and thoughts

Having super swingy sessions. I was playing 1k when it ran, but the bankroll is kind of low at 30k so will probably stick mainly to 500/400 and sometimes 5/10 if its very soft.

Playing for this amount of money is a bit nervewracking ngl

Buying a rolex is crazy idiotic. When your bankroll isn't even worth a car your urgent and only goal is to grow it into a real (six figure) bankroll as fast as physically possible. There are soooo many live / private / app games where if you can sit 5k deep comfortably you are absolutely printing cash. The first thing I learned about poker and gambling is that money makes money. Enjoy impersonating a baller, I guess

Or imagine if you put that money in literally any stock or dumb crypto coin...

It's crazy, I know three guys who played pro poker and bought rolexes before 25. ALL THREE sold it for a loss within a year when their respective upswing ended

Not having at least ~100bi for your games as an online pro seems kind of wild to me if you don't have a double digit winrate or at least very close to it. Poker is stressful enough as it is. Granted I certainly like your approach with bumhunting lol, I think reg battles are a waste of time unless you're clearly better than pretty much everyone else in the pool or are trying to start tables

Great results though, will be following along, gl OP

agreed

I'm not really playing pro, I'm involved in school as well as work, when I was playing full time I tried to have at least 60 or so. I think there are defintitely ways to mitigate risk without needing 100+ bi, just like table selecting, playing less tables, playing at the best times all reduce variance. And taking shots is +EV in many ways imo.

Oh I didn't realize you weren't like officially a pro, in that case I'm sure you're totally fine then

I saw you were putting a lot of volume on ACR and GG, playing on those sites with the low avg winrates I would assume you'd optimally want a larger roll, but again that would only be if it's your only or primary source of income

Yeah at the moment I'm playing live and clubGG for the most part, so I don't really need a huge roll. I kind of miss playing on real online sites, I might hop back on to GG and see if I can still spin it up there and how the games are looking.

This is such a good thread, thanks for kindly sharing all the results. I just leveled up to ignition reg NL50 table, your thoughts and experience helped me a lot to revise my plan and get some understanding about high stakes online poker. GLGL

Thanks, that means a lot to me. I thought I was just writing my thoughts/goals/insecurities into the abyss.

I recently listened to this podcast which was funny since I actually played a bunch with the guy and didn't really realize he was printing that much. It kind of inspires me to try and study, put the work in and be able to battle my way up to high stakes online like I wanted to before. My picture of the guy was that he was another mindless leaderboard grinder playing midstakes, but I didn't ackowledge the work he was putting in and his ambitions to get to high stakes. I have a ton of respect for the guy, and listening to a lot of podcasts I do realize that these guys often spend 5-6 years getting to high stakes, if not a full 9-10 years. I've only played poker "seriously" for less than 4 years, and I'm very young. My trajectory in poker thus far was this ->

2020-2021 fish era: playing microstakes, grinding up rolls learning the game. Terrible mindset, terrible brm, grinded a 4k roll from 100$ and busted it in a day

2021-2023 staked era: got staked for 50nl, moved my way up the stakes insanely quickly to be playing up to 2k (staked), built up a real bankroll and started studying hard. eventually stopped the stake as the variance of high stakes was too much (I was 18 y/o swinging 5-6k a day, at the same time my parents gave me allowance of 10$/week).

2023 Summer: this was when I decided I wanted to go pro and was at the height of my ambitions, trying to shottake whenever possible. Moved to Costa Rica and ran up my roll to almost 60k quickly and was at an all time high after a deep run at LAPT. Was super ambitious and started playing 1k believing I was top of the field

2023-2024 sad era: breakeven results at 500/1k despite coaching, studying, etc. Spent a lot of my roll, super busy with life/family things, not much ambition. overall in a rut in poker. lack of ambition was the biggest killer and caused me to spend my roll on frivolous things since I believed I wasn't going anywhere in poker. (embarassed to admit this, and a lot of the stupid things I did with money).

I think that moving up the stakes so quickly at the beginning of my poker career, although it had tons of positives, definitely did some damage to my expectations for poker and my idea of how fast I should be moving up the stakes, which impacted my mindset. Ultimately, although I feel that I am in a roadblock in poker being stuck at midstakes, I am just at a point in my poker career and it is up to me to navigate up and onwards. In the spirit of this, I want to slow down in poker and be more disciplined in a few aspects. For starters, I segregated my bankroll and liferoll which is something I have been meaning to do for a long time. For the time being, I'm going to be mainly playing live 2/5 5/5 as well as 200nl on GG. I'm not going to set any timelines or goals, I just want to play the game and refind the passion I had for it, rather than just trying to "complete" poker by moving up stakes as fast as possible and expecting big things to happen to quick.

P.S. I think that having started playing poker so young I am extremely desensitized to money in a weirdly beneficial/harmful way. I didn't grow up wealthy by any means, in fact the money that I spent on myself selfishly probably would have meant a lot for my family, but to me I just have such a warped perception of money that despite 2-3k being in reality a sizeable amount of money for someone in my financial position, losing or winning it barely even touches a nerve for me. This is partially what led me to poor financial decisions and is something that I try and reconcile daily.

I just watched that podcast too, ****ing amaziing.