Yet another fish with dreams of being a shark

Online Poker up to this point:

I live in Australia so even accessing online poker isn't exactly easy. Our government has decided to favour the forms of gambling that have well-established lobbying groups. Good thing some sites don't mind a little grey area business. Unfortunately those are also the ones that have the most questionable business practices in other ways too...

I started with tournaments. Had some rough beginnings, as all players do, but I made enough deep runs and final tables to keep the fire burning. Eventually moved away from Ignition to N8. The tournaments there were noticeably tougher fields and my unearned confidence was immediately shaken. I perservered and even managed to come 2nd for $1000 in a 5000 person micro bounty tournament. Would have been first but I suck at heads up. Now I know some of you have buy-ins bigger than that but for me it was a big deal. It at least gave me some bankroll to work with.

Unfortunately I then went on a huge downswing. For the life of my I could not have a hand hold when on the cusp of a deep run. I started to almost feel dread when being dealt KK. I am sure I was making errors left, right and centre and messing up the runs well before the stack gets to shoving ranges. But it is definitely being on the bad side of all-in variance that was making me feel powerless at times. Even if it was a previous play that put me in that position it is always the suck outs that stick with you mentally.

I know everyone says that they are running bad when they are playing bad. I made bad plays for sure. But even off the tables the run bad was hunting me down.

I have been studying hard and even noticed the more I studied the worse my results got. Almost definitely this was over-adjusting as I learned more. My play was becoming less clicking buttons and so it was easier for more studied opponents to figure me out. I was yet to find a balance and unfortunately the boom or bust nature of tournaments was hitting my bankroll hard while I was in this downswing.

So relatively recently I switched over to cash games as I was craving some more consistency. Almost exclusively reg tables as I prefer to get to know my table and try to adjust to player tendencies exploitatively. I have been enjoying this quite a lot and intend to stick to cash games for now with the odd tournament Sunday.

My bankroll management has been ridiculous. I started at 10NL with only about $500 left in the roll, quickly moved to 25NL, then 50NL and have even been shot taking 100NL. All with a bankroll that currently sits at $780 after losing 2BI at 100NL last session. I know... yikes... I am well aware of how idiotically aggressive this has been. My reasoning has been that I want to establish at what level I am comfortable at quickly and add to the roll if needed rather than grind out 10NL etc. I know this isn't the ideal way to do things but so far I feel comfortable at 50NL. I have only had one losing session at 100 but that session being a 2 buy-in loss was a nasty but necessary wake up call for how under-rolled and inexperienced I am for that stake. I know that I am under-rolled for 50 too but at least it's not completely out of line.

Now that we have established that I am embarking on a questionable endeavour in questionable ways for even more questionable reasons it is time to get into my questionable play...

How it's going so far:

I only have 16k hands in cash so far. I know how meaningless this is but it is what I have at the moment. I have been focusing on the learning process more than volume so I have been only been playing two reg tables at a time. I do intend to add more tables as I go but I really want to focus on fundamentals before volume right now.

Until last night's super rough session the roll was heading in the right direction. But after throwing my full hand history into Hand2Note the results are a lot more concerning. I thought that I was a marginally winning player as the balance was going up but I am clearly a losing player running above EV. Now this does include my initial transition from tourneys to cash. I certainly butchered some hands at 25NL before I started to figure out deeper stack play. At least at 50NL it says I am winning and at 100NL it was winning before the last session. This at least shows that my more recent play has been an improvement. Still very concerning though. I clearly have a lot of work to do.

I'm pretty sure that I'm a predictable calling station that overvalues marginal hands, stubbornly tries to bluff catch, chases draws with low implied odds and ends up at the river with hands that should have folded on earlier streets. If I can find that fold button, bluff more appropriately and fix my blue line without decimating my redline too much then that would be great.

I sometimes swing between between a passive whale and an overly aggressive puntlord and then justify it all as exploiting player tendencies. Sometimes my reads are right while other times I am just leveling myself into suboptimal play.

My studying and plans for improvement:

My journey has all been independent so far. Studying through YouTube and ebooks mostly. Training through GTOWizard and the DTO apps on my phone. I try to review my hands and analyse them through GTOWizard. Invested in DriveHUD for Ignition and the Run it Once course "From the Ground Up". I spend a lot of time watching hand reviews and other people's uploaded coaching sessions.

I have absorbed an absolutely mental amount of poker content and have no intention of slowing down. These days I live and breathe poker and, while I'm not where I want to be now, you would be hard-pressed to find someone more determined to succeed.

I'd love to some day get some regular coaching myself but I have yet to be able to afford it on top of my GTO Wizard subscription and life expenses. I know it would fast-track my progress a lot and pay itself off but it's kinda one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't situations.

Now that I have a 2+2 account I might be able to get a little bit of feedback on the odd hand from the awesome regular contributors that keep these forums going. You guys would be surprised at the number of lurkers that benefit from those threads and comments.

Also no more 100NL shot takes for a while. I'll be grinding 50 until I have more roll and experience behind me.

I'm not sure how often I will be updating this but I do intend to keep it going and be active on the forums. I don't have much else going on so it will probably be pretty frequently. If anyone is still reading then I want to thank you for taking the time and I assure you that not every post will be a sad essay about a life led astray. If my results so far are anything to go by then apparently it it will mostly be about getting the money in bad and sucking out. We'll see how things go as this is definitely just the start of my journey. Thanks for reading. "You got there Phil".