Micro Zoom & odd MTT's as a 65$ to 1250$ BR Challenge

Hey there & welcome to my blog, good to see ya! 😀

WHO AM I? WHY POKER?

A complete newb here or poker forums in general, been a lurker for years though! This is my first post.

I'm a 31 year old dude from northern Europe. I've had an interest in poker since early 2009. I was in high school and I played with a guy year older than me thinking he was pretty cool and friendly.
He introduced me to High Stakes Poker and I binged all the seasons within a year moving on to Poker After Dark and so on.
My friend and I played more and more at school and he introduced me to online poker, iirc he was playing 25NL at the time and wanted to play some playmoney sng's with me online for money with his friend also participating who occasionally played with us live too.
I agreed and lost some cash which was fine and all smiles. I found out later he had scammed me and he and his friend had shared their cards while playing the sng's against me online. I said it was alright and they gave me some money back (it wasn't much as a high school student) and we never played after. I wonder does he still play today...?

I still wanted to play so I explored online poker on 888 in 2010, first playing the freerolls and then moving on to deposit a bit after making around 20$ in the freerolls and losing it in cash (Don't think 20$ is good to play 5NL by any means...)
My initial deposit was about 50$ and I ran it up to 150$ in 2NL & MTT's in a few months but then hit a wall moving on to 10NL and losing 5 BI's in a session, tilting really hard. I can't really remember what happened with the money, did I gamble it away or withdraw some of it. Can't really remember a ton of detail of those years due to having a personal crisis.

I deposited around 100$to Pokerstars again when Jason Somerville was doing Run It Up on Twitch. Playing cash games and MTT's again at micro's, logging in hundreds of hands a day. I tried to fit in some SnGs and even tried hyper HU's but those were not for me. Eventually I found about Zoom poker, it was a tough adjustment but it seemed to fit me, I liked playing a lot of hands and I had experienced the HU hyper variance (I lost bad) so I didn't think Zoom could be that bad.
I made it to barely beating/breaking even on 10NL Zoom 7+ years ago and had ran my deposit up to 700$ in a few months (most of it came from a Jason Somerville's RIU HU tourney I won for 500-600$ but I lost a ton trying out sng's and I didn't have many deepruns in mtt's)

Then I went broke. Not because of poker but due to life. You know how life sometimes just comes at you and goes "Yikes, we need money.." so I withdrew all of my bankroll and handed it to life.

And now years later I'm here, again! (technically for the first time if you think of "here" as the forum post, eh?)

THE GOAL

Run it up from 60$ to 1250$! (50BI for 25NL)

HOW?

Playing 2-4 tables of Zoom and cash, also adding in MTT's when they feel right.

I try to put in at least a 1000 hands a day or 7500 a week on the cash tables. This might vary, I think the goal is set a little low but it needs to be manageable.
Playying several 15-45minute sessions a day with a stop loss plan of 5BI's for the day. Meaning if I'm down 5BI's a day, I stop and don't play anymore that day.
In between sessions I stretch, walk about, juggle or just watch something on Youtube (snooker's nice) to reset my brain, whatever feels right.
I mark opponents as Regs, Rocks, Whales, Fishies. Planning to add a separation between LAG/TAG once I got enough hands on people. I use a HUD, so I will also mark hands that I question or feel unsure off. Not sure if I'll be posting hands here yet, hmm.
Studying several hours a week by watching Poker, doing work on my tracker and reading forum posts.
Adding in a MTT or two whenever I'm in for a longer session or just feelin' it.

Bankroll Management for the challenge

Cash games
Move up at 30BI (eg. 5NL at 150$ and 10NL at 300$)
Move down at 22BI (eg. from 5NL back down to 2NL at 110£$)

For MTT's 100BI is required (eg. 1.10$ tourneys need 110$) in 300+ played fields, at lower fields 60BI required. A shot here and there doesn't hurt.

Funny thing is I had all this written before today and I've started the challenge a couple of weeks ago...
The results will be in the next post, so stay tuned.

-Lurja

Please let me know what else should I add in this first post?