A new father and poker

June Goal : 10K hands in 11 days. NL200 and NL500 mix GGPoker. (FAIL)

Before we had a baby, we had a very strict sleep schedule in our family. We had a very difficult time because it broke down in the first week. For this reason, I tried to keep watch at night and make my wife feel a little comfortable. Some days I had no problem playing poker because he was such a deep sleeper. But some days he cried non-stop and playing poker became impossible. For this reason, it was not possible to reach the numbers I targeted.

Apart from this, being a father puts undesirable financial pressure on a person. I spent most of my non-playing time this week questioning myself and my poker strategy. I have been playing at GGPoker for about 3 years. I've never been able to get a very good winrate. There are many possible reasons for this.

1. Rake is very high and although my winrate is lower than other rooms, it is normal compared to GG. If I were to give an example from NL500. The average winrate of the 50 players with the most hands in the NL500 on Pokerstars is 2.5bb/100. In GGPoker, this is -1.5bb/100. There is 4bb/100 difference. They are couple of reason make that winrate difference. There is a rakerace so people can play more table and its makes them have low winrate. There is a BBJ rake which is around 1,8bb/100 from my calculation. Rake is around 6,7bb/100 without BBJ. In the long run from my calculation i get around %35 cashbak with all promo from true rake which is something like 3bb/100. If you get also some money you pay for BBJ 3+1,8= 4,8bb winrate. Its mean breakeven player actually something like 4,8bb player.

2. I never hit any BBJ or its never hits to my table. Which is crayz. Think about it if you play 250k hands per year and grind for 4 years its 1 million hands. Its mean if i played only NL500 Its 90K BBJ rake. Mathematical side of this very extreme but mental part is even harder.

3. High rake open for every possiblity.

This make me question my ability. Thats why i spend so much time on that topic. I can be very bad player who run normal or i can be very good player who run bad. It's really hard to deal with this.

4. My game is not that good so i need to change something but i also afraid about what if my game is so good and i run bad.

5. Lack of grinding. When i dont have great results and running very close to breakeven all time without rakeback playing become really hard.

6. Lack of vision. 3 years ago my goal was to become really great at poker and play vs good players. Now i still want to become great but i know that its very luck involved thing.

Anyway... Lets decide this month goal.

I want to take it little bit slow as poker wise because of the baby so will aim to play 20k hands.

first thing that comes to mind for me is you need to discipline yourself to play more than that, 62k hands after almost half the year isn’t a professional approach especially on a site with the most players

Yeah you are right but its not all the hands that i played that year. Those are the only regular tables. I also played some hands for RNC rakeback which is around 100k. Also i have some hands from app games played first 2 months of the year. But you are right that its still not enough.

GL! Poker with baby is tough!

My boy turns 5 soon, and I played PLO the whole time.. some advice..

At first, child is easy. Just takes time and energy.

Play poker when you can.

Than, the child starts talking and playing, (but sleeping thru the night), and takes emotional and mental toll as well.

Poker can be overwhelming if you are home for all this. Do yourself a favor and drop your volume goals.

As you said, you just want to be happy and a good father or something like that. Let that be your goal. Enjoy your child.

At the end of your life, will you regret not getting in more poker volume, or not being more present for your child?

This may well be the most difficult but rewarding part of your life. Brace yourself. Decision fatigue is a thing.

Grounding yourself in meditation or religion or whatever floats your boat will be the most important thing during this process.

You may have to change as a human and become a better version of yourself than you ever imagined.

Or not, maybe nothing matters, just be yourself lol

Ty for really good advice. You are so right. I need to remember myself that what is really important and focus on that more but at the same time we need money and i have some pressure about our future financal situation. I was having problem about that even wihtout baby. Now with baby try to stay at the NOW even harder. I have no problems about my past but i have some worrys about the future.

Total

My main goal this month was to find my rhythm and grind like I used to. I think I partially succeeded in this. I want to talk about what I experienced regarding poker this month.

I generally started playing at 11 pm and continued playing until the morning hours. During my sessions, I fed my 2-month-old son at the same time and helped him fall asleep. Some days I had to close my sessions urgently. While it made me very angry at first when my son woke up when the tables were in very good condition, I later turned this situation into a challenge for myself to stay mentally strong.

When I started the month, my goal was to play NL200 and NL500. Then I reached the bank I wanted to shoot NL1K, but things did not go as I wanted, then I started playing my old limits again and shot at NL1K tables again in the last days of the month. Actually, the problem was not the NL1K tables but my NL500 losses while shooting. I have been running badly as EV for a long time. I only ran -8K$ this month. This is actually a big amount of 16 buyins for my limit, 8 buyins for my own limit. My main goal for the beginning of next month will be to mix these two limits without reducing my bankroll too much.

When we look at this month, I have given a total of 14.3k$ rake (Rake+BBJ). My calculations from previous months show that I got about 35% of this back from GG poker. This corresponds to about 4.3k$ profit. I have not won any jackpot for about 3 years, neither side nor main. I hope this long wait will end when I shoot for the upper limit. In this way, I will reach a bankroll that can play these limits more comfortably.

Unfortunately, I have lost most of my routines before I had a child. I used to go to Crossfit 4 days a week, but now it is not possible to do this. I try to work out at least 2 days a week in my own way at the fitness center at my tennis club. I lost about 8 kilos. But I look heavier than when I was 8 kilos over. The biggest reason for this is that I have experienced a serious weight loss. I used to do really heavy weights and high consistency workouts. For example, after doing 10 reps of 150 kilo deadlifts during the workout, I could easily do 100 push-ups and 50 pull-ups etc. I can say that this is impossible now. At this stage of my life, my goal is not to do workouts with very heavy weights, but at least I need to not lose my sports rhythm.

My goal for the next month is to play at least 25K hands. The reason I don't set a very high goal is because table selection is very important to me. I can easily play 100k hands per month without choosing a table, but I don't think I'm ready to handle the difficulties this will bring me. Therefore, my goal is to play better quality games rather than playing more. For example, the games were terrible in the last week of this month and I had to grind 1 or 2 tables most of the time.