An endless marathon with no apparent goal

Pretty cool, looks like you're certainly beating the game. I'm currently at 10nl, looking to move up to 25nl at some point once my roll allows it.

I'm curious how you find the pool at 50nl? I took a shot at 25nl but hit negative variance so I'm back at 10nl until I build my roll enough to take another shot. I think I'd like at least a ten buy in shot. My brief time at 25nl though it seemed very fishy, perhaps even worse than 10nl for some reason. I'm curious how 50nl differs? Does it play similar to 25nl or is there a difference in opposition? I would assume they'd be a more competent players and more grinders at 50nl.

Also what are your goals? Or do you not set them? Like 100nl, 200nl? Personally I'd like to one day reach 100nl and have a positive win rate. I feel it's an attainable goal, I'm not sure if I have strong desire to go past mid stakes however.

Hi!

There is a slight difference between 25 and 50. Also I need to clarify that I play only static regular cash games and almost never play zoom. The difference between zoom games and its pools in my opinion is a way bigger than difference between static tables pools. So I can only tell for that kind of game. NL50 regulars overfold slightly less, 3bet slightly more, barrel slightly more and all that kind of aspects. So I'd say it's almost the same pool but slightly more qualified. The "fishy part" of the pool is exactly the same with only difference (which is common and understandable): they have less money at the table. The higher your go the more shallow fishes you meet.

As for bankroll strategy, there is a common principle: if you can easily earn like up to 2k on a regular job, you can risk more to rush your progress. Because, obviously, it's easy to recover and take another shot. If I lose, for example, 3k bankroll in Ukraine, crawling upstakes, that would be a total rekt, a total disaster. That's why my bankroll management is very conservative. And, to be honest, poker variance can be a bitch and I would never suggest anyone to shot with like 5-10 BI's or so. Variance + blind tilt = disaster. You need to be extremely sustainable to psychological pressure when you're down 50% of your bankroll. Some people just decide to go all in after that. My game loses a tonne of quality when I'm down 10-15-20% of my bankroll. This is always an important part of the whole strategy.

To play higher stakes with positive winrate is an actual global goal, yes. Whether it is nl100 or 500, it is always a matter of bankroll, theoretical level, experience and psychological sustainability. As for now, I fit maybe in theoretical aspect but I can't even guess my imaginary winrate at nl100. I'm not ready to deal with its variance and risk a lot. It is still a lot of things to understand and to learn to move ahead. Of course it's always better to earn more and increase your EV or $/hour, but I chose more conservative method. My current income let me exist, cover my spendings and collect bankroll. So it's fine, so is the way.

Also thank you for the first post here and I wish you best of luck on your way to desired stakes and winrates 😀

(if my English is not clear sometimes somewhere just point it and ask for clarifying)

Your English is pretty good! So you're from Ukraine? You have regular job also? Trying to grind up from 10nl is a little tedious, I have done it before however. During lock down and covid I had 3 months with no work and managed to grind 100 bucks starting at 10nl into 4.5k, I also feel I was a way worse player back then, so I feel it's possible. But still, it takes time. I have considered boosting my bankroll on payday, I'm confident I can beat 25nl, so perhaps that's the way to go, or I can continue to grind it out until I have enough to take a shot at 25nl.

I'm curious which site you play on? I'm on stars. Also I assume you're doing some kind of studying? How did you learn the game?
I've tried lots of things, reading books, watching coaching videos, thinking about the game, I use gtowizard and the coaching videos there as well as the solver. There's just so much to learn, and I'm just the average guy with perhaps average intelligence, I may have a slight aptitude for poker but I feel to succeed I'm going to have to work very hard. My game is probably full of leaks that I'm yet to discover.

If you ever want to share hands and discuss spots I'm always eager to see things from a different perspective. At the moment I'm just trying to figure things out on my own through coaching videos and the solver.

I shall follow your progress

I don't have regular job, poker income is enough to live. I play stars 99% of time.

I mostly use gto wizard to study optimal plays and ranges, how they construct and what kind of deviation I should go against specific kind of opponent. And then I try to implement it at the table. That's pretty much it. I also have a huge "books, articles, videos etc" background since 2009 but the most effective way to understand the game is definitely studying gto. You don't need to play gto at nl25 table. but gto will help you to understand what you need to play.

I will follow yours too 😉

For sure that's true, I don't believe you need to play gto at 25nl or even 50nl, however understanding it is helping spot where I can make deviations. I'm not sure how I did it before, perhaps intuition through playing a lot, I think even without studying gto if you've played enough you can develop an intuition for where people are unbalanced and start to exploit them. At least that's how I feel, I'm also finding the coaching videos useful, particularly the ones by Saulo Costa.

I'm curious now about trying regular tables to see if I notice a difference, I gravited towards zoom as it allows me to fit a lot of volume in quickly, I also anly need two or 3 tables to do this. Having just my laptop to play on atm I'm not sure I'd be able to fit enough regular tables on to get the same volume, but I am curious.

Not too much to tell about the start of the month. Pretty much nothing to cry about. I donated like 3-4 BI's to the whales and made a couple of really bad bluffs. Still going fine.

22.06 Checkpoint 2

yes, that's an absolutely 100% massive upswing, not gonna pretend like it's not
i'm trying to enjoy the moment

the month was wow 😀
now a break for a couple of days

Gl gl with the grind.

thanks!