Getting that HS gold or not? - blog crosspost.
Hey everyone 😀 . Decided to cross-post here the blog I had on our Discord community for about 1y now. I'd like to update it more often and also interact some more with people in the community. I used to update it every 2-3 months so the posts are quite long. I'll just post here one per day until I reach present time not to make it too long, however if anyone wants to read it before that I'll leave a link to the Discord
Greetings, everyone! My name is Alexandra, and I currently make a living playing and streaming cash games. Although I've been playing poker for some time now, I never took the opportunity to document my journey through a blog. However, I believe it's never too late to start, so here I am now, ready to share my experiences. My plan is to update this blog every two months, outlining my goals and tracking my progress. Not only will this be beneficial for my personal growth, but it may also provide some interesting insights for those who enjoy reading about poker.
Let's go back to when I first ventured into the world of poker. It was around 2018, but I didn't take it seriously at that point. I was pretty much a fish, playing live games, primarily tournaments, and occasionally trying out some cash games. I wasn't making much money, to be honest, but I thoroughly enjoyed the game. During that time, I was pursuing my Psychology degree in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, and poker was merely a hobby on the side. Gradually, however, I realized that by dedicating myself to the game, I could potentially earn a comfortable income, enjoy flexible working hours, and do something I truly loved. So, I started investing some effort into improving my poker skills whenever I could. Nevertheless, poker wasn't my top priority back then, as I had to complete my Bachelor's thesis, prepare for exams, and volunteer for a prominent European association of Psychology students. Additionally, I was also preparing to pursue a Master's degree abroad.
In the summer of 2020, I had intended to apply for a Master's program in Cognitive Neuroscience in Barcelona. Unfortunately, due to the chaos caused by the Covid pandemic, it wasn't the most opportune time for such plans. Consequently, I ended up staying at home and postponing my studies temporarily. This turned out to be the perfect chance for me to take poker more seriously and focus on playing online. I began playing at the 10nl, and although I studied some beginner poker courses (which, honestly, didn't provide much help), I wasn't achieving consistent winnings. Fortunately, a friend of mine, who had more experience in poker and was playing 25NL 😃 , provided me with some coaching. This guidance proved beneficial up to a certain point, as I started winning at the micro stakes and maintained a decent winrate at 50NL.
In the autumn of 2020, I made the decision to switch to playing zoom (which, in hindsight, wasn't the wisest choice I've made), and my progress stagnated for a while. I experienced a downswing, prompting me to seek coaching from skilled players. That's when I joined a CFP dedicating myself to studying the game. While the coaching was valuable, it dawned on me that joining a coaching program wouldn't magically make me a better player; I had to put in extensive personal effort and learn to apply correctly the concepts I had learned. Throughout 2021, I encountered both highs and lows. I managed to break even overall, although I achieved a nice win rate at 50NL but kept losing when I took shots at 100NL. Looking back, one of my biggest mistakes was not being mindful of game selection, often playing zoom without field selecting and basically staying away from reg tables. Moreover, luck wasn't on my side, as I ended the year roughly 50 buy-ins below EV.
Towards the end of 2021, starting in December, I decided to heed the advice of my coaches and focus exclusively on regular tables. I also diversified my play across different poker sites, always seeking out the best tables available. At that time, I primarily played on PokerStars, 888, and GG. As my skills and bankroll grew, I quickly moved up to 100NL and experienced an upswing. This propelled me to take another shot and start playing at 200NL. The first six months of 2022 proved to be highly successful in terms of results. With newfound confidence, I began challenging myself further by taking shots at 500NL in early June, and things were looking quite promising.
However, I feel like I was struggling a bit with volume and with keeping up a good routine as I was falling in and out of the good habits I planned for myself - meditate,exercise and journal daily - so now looking back at it I’d say it might have been a bit of winner tilt, overconfidence etc.
This is the graph for December to the end of June, and although it might not seem like much, most of my volume was on GG where the rake is so high I can’t expect a huge WR at the tables.
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Hey everyone….been a while, apparently I wasn’t as consistent with this blog as I intended… again, but I got an excuse, at least I’ve been journaling in pen and paper. Won’t write as long of a novel as I used to do, however… life is going good.
Life updates: still living in Romania, but my mom moved back home from Italy so I decided to move out and pay rent. We have a good relationship but quite difficult to live with my parents after so long living by myself. Anyways, had to pay a few months rent in advance which affected my roll quite a bit… had some issue with a chunk of money being locked so couldn’t play properly for about 1 month and a bit… so:
Poker: been going quite slow due to what I said above. Playing 200 as my main stake now, trying to reduce life expenses for a while and go back to 500. I feel like I play well though, I’m disciplined with the amount of time I play, with table selection, mental game etc. Considering all these feels like I’m doing better than ever. Been on a bit of a heater recently too, so easier to feel this way when you run good, I admit that.
Content: Although I haven’t been streaming recently I’ve started puting up some more content on YouTube, you can check out the channel here https://www.youtube.com/@FNCPoker , which I enjoy a bit more than Twitch, as it doesn’t really affect my play… had a bit of an issue with that while streaming. Posting a mix of strategy content, hh reviews and mental game videos. Kept up with producing content for RIO, and also streaming on their YT Channel weekly - hand reviews, not live play, but again… I find that much more fun. Not sure if the audience would agree though ��
Coaching: I’ve had some more students for mental performance coaching, both live and online players, and I realize it’s an area I quite enjoy and want to dive a bit deeper into. Sometimes I feel that online poker kinda misses this “human connection” part, and for me this is quite an important aspect. So I feel like doing these coachings, getting better at it, constantly learning about the human mind and the way it works, completes poker in a nice way. Also, Me and Paul have been running a mentorship program designed to help players escape low stakes. We’ve been putting quite a lot of time into it to make it as much value as possible, and I was quite curious if the feedback would be as good as we expected it to be… and I could say it was even better.
“I remember you making a casual comment on the first or second call like ... 'oh all you guys will be out of micros soon and at NL100..' or something like that. That seemed a little crazy to me at the time but i'm already crushing NL50 and i'm probably a month or two away from 100. I could probably shottake now but i'm more conservative than you recommend.”
We are planning to run another one soon, and we think it might be the last program like this that we run before taking students only under CFP/ hourly deals. I’ll leave a link if anyone wants more info.
https://alexandra-fagaras-s-school.teach...
Plans for the future: As I mentioned above, nothing too interesting or “out of the ordinary” to come. I’m just planning to stick to putting in the hours- 4,5h grind / daily. 45m-1h study daily, keep up with the content production and dive deeper into the mental coaching area ��
Can’t say when I’ll update this blog but I promise this isn’t the last post. If you wanna keep in touch sooner, here’s our Discord again.
Cheers!
Hi everyoneÂ… Second time I write this blog entry cause I wrote it once and deleted it all by mistake at the end. Cool, no? 😂
IÂ’ve read my previous entries (some of them) and realized that after I read the first ones I edited some with ChatGPT - right after I started using it for the first times cause I found it so cool and impressive - and now IÂ’m reading and thinking wtf have I done that?! Anyways, as IÂ’ve mentioned before IÂ’ve had an issue with consistency, and the initial purpose of this blog was to keep me accountable. ItÂ’s been almost 1 year since I didnÂ’t update it soÂ… what does that say? 🤔
I havenÂ’t been as consistent as I wouldÂ’ve liked to. But been better than I used toÂ…
Quick life & poker update: Last spring things were going well, been quite consistent, been happy with my volume, and study time, results were good too - was shotting some 500NL again, however I had to move house once more (still in Romania), lost a deposit, paid another one and had a few complications which also led to a lot of lost time, so that was a bit of a setback. Then summer came when my volume was honestly quite far from what I thought when setting my goals. Picked up a new hobby - climbing - and even though it didn’t seem like that turned out to be quite expensive and time-consuming… so another “setback”. Didn’t really reduce expenses, maybe quite the contrary, so had to go back to playing 200 for a while. Even with low volume, the second half of the summer was really good, went on a heater, won about 60BI and moved up again. In late September I planned a trip to the Dolomites with my friends (was on the bucket list for a while) and two days before that everything seemed to switch and started running horrendous (lost like 15BI in 2 days) and after a longer break in the mountains the luck still didn’t seem to be in my favour. Downswing continued and now I am quite far from shotting higher again.
Few things I noticed during this though:
My mental game got much better - I was even finding some coolers funny, not really affected by variance. I was actually happy that if sessions went wrong, it was obviously due to bad luck. When I made mistakes, or even punts (like we all do sometimes, especially on DS) I managed to be much kinder to myself. Amazing how much of an influence more compassionate self-talk can have. The ” 2 years ago” version of me would have known these things, but not really internalized them.
Got better strategically - Part of the reasons I didnÂ’t hit my grind hours was I worked on the FNC brank quite a lot. Took a few more students in the CFP (trying to keep it small), did a bunch of coaching (which REAAALLY helped with deeply understanidng information and learning new things), some YT content, etc. All these really helped with poker knowledge, reflecting on concepts, and applying them better.
Feeling a bit frustrated with the fact that I feel stuck in a way. Meaning I’ve been playing the same stake where I don’t want to be anymore for quite a while now. I think that I could’ve done more, worked more, been more consistent, etc. However, if I think of what I’ve been doing with my time I did have a lot of wholesome moments, amazing experiences, and truly happy times with people whom I love, and in the end that’s what should probably matter most. Still, I think I reached the point where I’ve had a lot of those experiences and I am learning to say “no” from time to time and prioritize poker and working hours, cause I don’t want to keep being in the same situation.
Maybe saying I am in the same situation is a bit harsh, as IÂ’ve progressed quite a lot in terms of poker skills, FNC brand, coaching, content, mental coaching, etc.
Speaking of that, I aim this year to focus on mental coaching a bit more. Whenever I work with clients in this area, I feel like thatÂ’s what I should be doing, it makes me much happier than grinding, moving up stakes, coaching etc., especially considering the feedback has been good and it makes me feel like I can make a positive difference in peopleÂ’s lives, which poker kinda lacks, we all knowÂ…. All thatÂ’s needed is a marketing plan and some consistency in implementing it.
This fall, even though variance wasnÂ’t much in my favour, IÂ’ve been putting in the hours, played solid, studied a lot, and had a pretty balanced life with my main focus being poker, so quite pleased with that. First time ever I managed to properly track time everyday. This has helped with sticking to my goals. So this month, I plan to write my goals and time tracking here as well, not just in my Google Sheets file.
Goal 11 Nov - 10 Dec
Grind: 80h
Study: 30h
Coaching / content : 35h
TOT: 145h
11 nov: worked 6h 30 - prepared and hosted a mental coaching call, filmed + edited a YT video
12 nov: worked 6h 30 - worked to promote a new training program, finished YT video, filmed a RIO video and studied 1h30
I was planning to squeeze in a few grind hours these days, but it turned out to be … “that period of the month” . Felt horrible and if I did grind, it would have been terrible quality. So I’m happy at least I found some productive things to do (that had to be done anyway) and will hopefully retrieve on the grind hours.
Not sure if anyone reads this, but if you do, IÂ’ll make some short updates daily, with goals - h worked and a few thoughts.
Cheers, GL at your tables !
Goal for today:
- write a script for a promo video and record it
- grind 4.5h
- 1 yoga session
Unfortunately didn't manage to grind at all... again. Still feeling super down and I also thought that promo video would take 2hours. Well.... it took 8 :/ . I should just pay someone fml !
So total work hours: 10h (all brand work/ videos/ editing)
Should probably take the next week for grinding and studying only. That's the plan.
Cheers, GL at your tables !
First column is grind, second study time, 3rd brand work
Easier to update like this considering I've been gone for a few days from the blog again. Didn't really hit the time I aimed for everyday, however I did put in a bunch of work in other areas.
Hit a bit of a downswing in the past month, and yesterday I felt like I played well, however when I reviewed my hands I realized I made a lot of mistakes. And a few punts... I sat down a bit to reflect on what was going on and got to a quite valuable conclusion. It seems like when I have one of these sessions where I have to fold a lot, give up bluffs etc. after I invested a decent amount of money into the pot, if this happens for a while I start feeling like I'm doing something wrong, like "I should take some action on this" ... when in reality it's just the cards, the variance and the way the game goes. After that point, I get a bit more stationy and aggressive and start making some bad plays.
Not good this happens, but I'm really happy I became aware of this. Today's session I felt a lot of improvement.
Gonna update quickly. Cheers, gl all.
