Kid’s got alligator blood. Can’t get rid of him.

There ya go champ

Your job sounds like the perfect transitional job, but you probably want a solid sample of making at least 2-3x your work hourly. Taxes, health insurance, lack of 401k, sick time, vacation, etc all add up.

I quit my job to be an independent contractor in my field, and it was great, but I was always weighing life vs financial stuff. My grandma died and I was considering not going to the funeral to make $2k over a few days. Pretty ****ed up mentality.

Ideally, you can get in some higher stakes live games. Pretty low stress and less swingy if the games are soft. I have buddies in a similar situation as you who play about 70/30 live and online. Seems like a good mix.

I have too many BI for my main stake in my roll. And I'm slacking on shotting. 25nl basically feels like an ATM and I think it's causing me to regress. Came across some interesting ideas for BRM so I have some work to do on specifically how I will segregate it.

Pdope for hands recent 200k hand sample.

Pdope for most recent 100k+ sample.

It's no question that I am beating uNL. Currently BR is floating around $3500 (let's be real though it's not floating it's BLOATING) so that basically leaves me $3250 that I can probably segregate into 2 shotting rolls for 50nl and 100nl. $2k can probably go to shotting 50nl and transitioning into my main stake and I can use a $1.2k roll to shot 100nl games that have good line-ups. With 40 bi dedicated to 50nl I do not see how I could possible go broke and will likely implement a generous stop loss, something like 10-15 bi? 100nl however will have a tight stop loss something like 2 bi.

I would really like to read/hear any input about shotting/moving up from anyone reading this. Tell me your experiences and struggles, how you overcame false ceilings and misperceptions. Failures and successes both please, I'm looking for perspective here. I don't come from a rich family/lifestyle by any means (trailer park childhood) so there's for sure some dynamic going on that I don't have a way to verbalize. Part of it likely being afraid to have the money possible, part of it likely afraid to lose what I have generated, part of it is fear of failure, who knows what else. If I were able to put my finger exactly on the issue then I would at least have recognition and be in motion to do something about it. Feels like I need to just jump off the ledge and never look back because I can't put my finger on it. Been talking about moving up for months and months. Let's be honest though, if you asked me one year ago if I thought I was going to become a 10bb/100 player and I would have laughed in your face so all of this is still very green and new to me. When you ask me now if I feel like a winning player, the answer is still no. It's a very odd sensation. I'm winning and it's almost like I don't know why. If you ask me where I see myself in a year... I don't think I can answer that. Seems like I don't know myself as much as I think/thought so it's anyone's best guess.

Stakes this year over 10nl

50nl this year (started shotting not very long ago and was very selective with tables)

50nl hardly a sample but still don't see how I can't be crushing there as well... So what exactly IS holding me back?

-BP

the only way to get past the hurdle of the money amount is to see this kind of like a video game where you are just trying to beat the next level, and you need X amount of biglinds to play said level, that’s it, whenever you fall below this threshold you play the limit below

that said if you want to play for a living I would suggest setting aside 1 year worth of bills/spending etc. to make sure normal variance won’t stress you out

but yeah treat this like league of legends or something, you’re just trying to win and move on to the next rank

Here's an interesting thread about BRM and shot taking: https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/69/on...

Mathematically speaking: it is generally better to start shotting faster using small stop losses, rather than waiting longer and using bigger stop losses.

I know an extreme case... I guy that has played NL10 for 5 years, like 50 000 hands per month @ 10bb/100. He's probably got the talent to make $5000 per month instead of $500, but for some reason he just refuses to move up!

Also, even if you initially fail the shot, having played vs better regs and for bigger pots at the higher stake, moving down again it will feel like child's play.

@swerbs

I had a lot of the same feelings and approached it in a similar way as you. It is a very big mistake. You should very much aggressively move up especially when you have enough information to indicate your winrate is quite high at a given level (>5bb). I would strongly encourage you to move up much faster...

As Xenoblade says, you really can't view it as money.... got to just think of everything in terms of big blinds and go from there. When you are making/losing a lot of money in poker on a daily basis it does effect your view of money as a whole in a kind of negative way in my opinion, but you really just have to view it through the lens of "big blinds".

Not moving up quickly enough is probably one of the biggest leaks I see when I work with my students. It looks like this really will be your breakout year, so just try to embrace the fact that when you move up/shot take you might lose some buy ins and just keep shotting. When you shot take, try to put an emphasis on playing at the best days/times (weekends/evenings) and prioritize good tables and when you're feeling you're playing well.... but definitely be aggressive with moving up.

I'll reiterate it again: move up now.

You play league? role and rank?

Jungle or run it down😀

Think I peaked masters elo a few years back (before the changes)

If you guys play pm me your sn

All I do is smurf these days and just play with friends. I peaked d2 -> d1 promos. I main support and play Sona usually.

Lol, I peeked at Platinum 2 before it changed.. Playing mid Twisted fate or Fizz... Elise jungle as second option.

And I wish you best of luck at 50nl/100nl and beyond. I know you belong with the big boys.

well ****. looks like we just need Top and ADC now and we got our 2p2 flex team

naw not really, I'm more of a starcraft guy, I used League as an example because well, everyone knows it lolol

I played C&C Red Alert 2 when I was younger which is another RTS. Multiple HOF, rank 1 solo, rank 1 clan, wrote some guides.

Kind of interesting a lot of successful poker players often were successful in RTS games.

I find a lot of similarities from my grind up in LoL and the Poker grind. And I have also come across quite a few stories about poker players being ex-LoL players, most recently the MOPP guest Mr Builderman IIRC

Mental is eerily similar. I held on to my elo like I am doing with my bankroll. Not gonna explain the whole thing but basically had a perfect storm... transferred my account from EUW to NA (EUW>NA imo) but my mmr didn't reset, only my ranking did. So I was able to go basically right from Gold 1 to mid Diamond but my MMR was insane the entire time (I was winning 30LP in diamond matches and still only losing 9, skipping ranks etc with >70% wr). But when I hit D3 or so and started to have to grind Masters MMR games it became too much of a grind so I just stopped altogether. Ended up decaying to Plat and never tried to grind ranked again. Basically would lose a game (not really lose anything like LP or anything) but I absolutely hated losing and it would feel like the world was ending if I would have lost my ranking from losses. Decay is whatever though lol

Realistically I was probably peak D4 if I had to play a conventional jungler... I had found out about RatIRL before he became popular so I was also able to abuse Twitch jungle for a few years (but I was a monster on Lee Sin too)

I had a friend who was grinding poker at the time I was grinding League and he was trying to convince me to play Poker. I often wonder what would have been if I would have been able to give up League back then. Game was addicting to me, worse than cigarettes.

yeah kind of a natural transition, there are a bunch of Magic the gathering players and chess players who have done quite well in poker too, it requires a lot of the same skill set

I did compete at a decently high level too, was playing broodwar initially and in 2005 made 2nd place in WCG Canada to make it to the WCG finals in singapore, was also grandmaster in SC2 during wings of liberty

I don't think I can compete anymore though being at the top in these games is incredibly time consuming

Uri and Barak shoutout for the Magic crowd

Yeah man just play 50 and 100 immediately and game select.

Before you know it you'll be at 1k.

What's happened the last 6 months.

- Quit my gravy gig that I left the Field for because couldn't take it anymore. Decided to go back to the Field and turned out to be not so bad honestly. I like to work hard, obviously love being outdoors.

- Wasn't able to keep up with poker as much. Can't complain though as steady paychecks every week plus bennies is very comfortable. The real reason I couldn't keep up though is because it was very exhausting. Most days coming home to shower/eat/crash and wake up to rinse/repeat. It didn't take long before I became very very bored of this routine. I'm not sure how much of the job circumstance etc influences that feeling though. Some jobs feel fine and some are so miserable for a number of reasons that you just don't want to get up and deal with these clowns.

- Found out going to Community College could actually be much cheaper than I thought. I have credits from the apprenticeship so I can toss them towards an Associates, which isn't much but it's better than just being Journeyman. I ended up having dinner with some friends of friends/family and talked for a while about career and progress. It's looking like I will at least finish the AD and try to leverage with that in the future. Hopefully I find a way to stay out of the business but fail safe is never bad.

- Had some **** go down at work that I don't want to tolerate, I don't want to be a pushover and be exploited too much. Mostly communication issues, safety issues, etc. I'm not gonna lay it all out unless someone really wants some drama talk but short story is dude's a meathead, company is corrupt and toxic. Shame because we are like the bottom of the barrel in the trades and they all love it, they eat that **** up. It's so weird. Anyway I ended up taking a lay off in the middle of the week after watching my Foreman be threatened by the GC Safety Rep to be taken off the jobsite in handcuffs lmao. Does anyone want to be a professional anything anymore?

Now unemployed. Well not completely. There is Poker.

What's the plan now?

I'm not too sure. I can't think of a job that I can see myself doing for any extended amount of time without eventually being bored/annoyed/done with and wanting to move on and it makes me feel like a big failure or on the way to being a big failure. I'm now wondering when it's going to happen to poker. I don't feel burnt out or anything and poker is nice in the way that it seems to always offer something else to brush up on or improve/learn. Which leads me to my next thought.

Turns out, I'm not as good at poker as I thought. I was getting pretty cocky (which is normal for me, I think it's a trait I've always had) and obviously those moments are always terribly embarrassing looking back. Kinda funny though. Good news is, I'm not terrible either. More good news is, I'm still winning, I have not gone broke. Like I said, I was making good money from my job and no stress to really produce winnings from poker. This let me try some new things, not worry so much about results etc. I think it developed some good perspective that I can carry with me down the road, detachment but not entirely. But it may have also led to some other bad things/habits that I have to plug now. I can't complain though, it allowed me to really get out of comfort zone. My biggest problem atm is I don't care if I spew off because I know I can just go grind it back. This can be a little frustrating as now I've experienced the biggest swings for me yet. I would maybe rather have hoarder mentality to amass as much as possible, who knows.

I am in a spot now that I have about 6 months freeroll to try out poker. Obv the goal here is to break free from 9-5 completely (well in my case 4-2 and I hate waking up early). I still put in quite a bit of time studying and trying to improve and it seems like everyday I find a new leak or something. Perfect Poker seems very very hard to achieve. I'm going to shoot for something like 60k hands/month. Ideally I would like to push 100k but I think better to work towards that than start there and burn out. It seems so long ago that I was grinding 10nl and 25nl but it's not like I rocketed off into space 2knl. I'm still down here at 50nl and 100nl. I have taken some shots at 200nl and it goes okay. Basically zero volume there but I do chase some fish when they end up there. I try to ignore stakes and just focus on making decisions for BBs and such. Not always easy when you get smacked at higher stakes and forced to grind back lower. I have to say I'm proud of myself for making it at least this far. Ideally at the end of this year I will be sitting 200nl regularly which would be cool but I'm not putting too much pressure on it atm because I feel like I make a lot of progress literally each week. December 2023 I was building my roll to 20bi for 10nl on like 3-4 sites and not many months ago wondering if I was even able to beat 50nl. So let's see how this goes.

Poker still mostly a lone wolf endeavor for me. Yes, I have found friends and community throughout the time but there's something still missing there. I imagine a good bit of it might be due to my own attitude and personality.

Anyway I also am getting close to 500k hands tracked, def way over with untracked but that was cool to see.

Here's some graphs then

480k hands graph, this is basically start of 2023 at ACR 10nl blitz to recent

10nl

25nl

50nl

Since taking layoff, had last month to grind all poker (now I'm embarrassed about volume)

and also tournaments last month

Few days late.

Wasn't the most happy with Hands Played this month, but I am happy with the quality of play. 30k hands/month though seems gravy af. I did want to shoot for something like 50k but about halfway through the month I ended up giving up on that and ended up finishing some studies/work. I do feel like I'm riding too close to the line for becoming too lazy, but I'm only feeling "lazy" because the Hands counter. If you still add up total hours dedicated to poker related stuff this month it is still very high so I can't get too bent out of shape I suppose.

Life has been actually much better this way for me. I'm more motivated to help out around home and also try to support chica better when I can make my own schedule for everything. I mean like full blown steak/chicken/chop dinners with the works, cleaning, errand running etc. Everything like chore related has some weight lifted and I find it much easier to push aside thoughts of procrastination or **** it and just do it. Even she has been commenting on how it's improved quality of life for both of us. I'm about 2 months in and I'm feeling just fine about most things. I would still like to move up a little quicker but not at the cost of some sort of set back just for the sake of forcing it. I am mixing in higher and it's going fine. Hmm, this month and next month though I should push it a little bit, yeah?

A local climbing gym has partnered with some parks to post up some walls at outdoor locations so this may be a way for me to find new motivation to get back in shape. I'm not out of shape so much just haven't really moved like I used to. I think I can feel some negative effects of less exercise in recent weeks. I feel sluggish, tired,etc. I built a woody wall in my garage and I also have weights right there but how funny that I can't even find motivation to just go over there and begin. It's a 10 second walk. RIP. I have a automated response that almost feels like my brain turns off when I'm asked if I want to go do something. I literally just answer "eh, not really." And then end up not doing much other than getting baked and getting lost in poker studies or some games or cat naps. THAT is starting to wear me down. Need to find a way to break that habit and I guess in those moments I should force myself to stop and consider the positives of saying YES. Big props to the chica for putting up with that. I know I would have given her ass so much **** about it if I was asking her to do stuff and she was always hitting me with a meh answer and staying home too much.

In total for month I came pretty close to $3k for about 40 hours played. I'm experiencing some level of complacency because a few month ago (like beginning of the year) I was seeing my most profitable months at 10 and 25nl with many hours played over few tables and not much cash to show for it. The last 2 months I was able to play very not much (compared to what I probably could, begs the question where could potential really lie). I think seeing basically 3-4x my January roll in winnings for a month is giving me quite a bit of satisfaction. I can feel near the end of these months almost zero pressure to play the last few days. I feel accomplished. But yes, I know I'm lacking probably quite a bit in the potential department. I don't think I'm depressed or something but I'm also wondering what levels there could maybe be, maybe I'm riding some edge that's just a bit too far away from being able to reach potential.

Time is ticking and I only have a few k hands at 200nl all time. it would be great to get somewhat near 100k played for 100nl+ before end of year

100nl^ I suppose I have survived the scouting period and could probably just drop 50nl altogether knowing it's gotta be very fraction chance I would lose. Does feel a little more bloodbathy than I'm used to

Month^

Tournaments I won about $250 or so as well.

I'm open sitting 8 game when I can, wish there was more action there but I'm doing pretty good in that format. Almost nobody plays it but w/e seems like free $ tbh. It's also around +$250/$300 and not much time invested at all. I think one tabling the hourly must be around $30-40 (obv sample is basically nonexistent tho lol) I'm gonna message Stars and see if they can send me the HHs then I'll see if I can find a way to get them easily recorded

Include the little bit of RB and turns out to be a decent month imo

I'm considering making another study group but this time for 100nl+ since my micros group ended up being I guess you call successful. If anyone is interested you can hmu. I've noticed that I really enjoy sharing some of the stuff I've learned and this makes me want to work with a few other players that also have managed to find their own way to win. If not, then I will probably pursue a close relationship coach/stake or try to get into a reputable CFP. IF CFP is the path, then sooner than later is better at this stage considering I'm still limited on time for now until I establish a bit higher.

Nice read.
Best of luck in October!

Don't got much this time around. Really ended up having like 25k hands or so for Oct, made a small amount from RB. Sadly I'm underperforming recently on main networks.

Biggest takeaways last month

-sit down and grind even if you only grind 10min, starting is usually the hard part
-trust yourself
-poker is something

I've been using blitz as a fill-in/warmup routine and it seems to be going okay.

Spoiler

Show

Cya next month

Swerbs, I can relate to some of the things you've mentioned about in the last few posts.

What sites are you putting the majority of your volume in on?

Forcing volume leads to significant leaks for me. I think a better strategy is to work on a high impact spot by hand review, trainer, etc. Like calling range vs various sizes in 2BP OOP PFC, 3BP IP PFC, etc with a "sit down and grind this out" mentality.