A 33-Year-Old Broke Reg in Existential Crisis Searching for Redemption

Hi,

Before becoming a poker player, at the start of my adult life, I spent some time reading blogs from people who ventured into what I thought was the “impossible dream” of being a poker player. In 2018, I started grinding Double or Nothings and ended up achieving some relative success, which made me forget about this type of thread on forums.
I’m writing this post to document one of those stories of someone in a tough spot who managed to overcome everything.

My name is Matheus, I live in Brazil, and I’m 33 years old. After working normal jobs and a more “alternative” occupation in sports betting—something I’ll talk about in future posts—I found in the nearly extinct DoNs in 2018 a way to make money variance-free and fell in love with it. It was pretty easy to profit, and until early 2020, it was basically what I did. Over time, though, besides being a very dull format, I started to feel the need to switch to something more scalable, so I moved to MTTs. I caught the pandemic boom, which made fields very soft, and I ended up having a relatively easy start.

Here’s my lifetime graph without Ignition—it would be convenient to say my best results were there, and… well, they were, hehe. Adding my Ignition and DoNs profits, I believe I’m around the $100k mark over this period.

Despite a consistent graph and a possible life of “a king among ants,” considering I earn in dollars while living in a country with a weak currency, I’m currently broke. I have almost no savings, owe a small amount to the bank, and there are several reasons for this:

• From 2020 to 2022, I lived completely on the edge with my personal expenses, always spending money on nonsense, without building financial reserves, and keeping my bankroll at the operational limit. In 2023, I started realizing how empty my life had been, due to some personal reasons I may address here in the future, and I decided to change. I succeeded, but unfortunately, the past came back with interest, and I’m still paying for my mistakes, which will take some time.

• Lack of ambition to improve. Perhaps this ties into something I’ll discuss later, as it’s closely related to my chaotic upbringing, but I quickly settled for mediocrity, achieving just a bit of success in poker without considering future steps. Without exaggeration, in the past 5 years, I’ve probably studied less than 50 hours total. I used to be proud of this, seeing it as proof of my talent, but now I realize how detrimental it was—it held me back and contributed to my current situation [especially since, at the end of the day, this is a cute graph, but made at micro-stakes].

• This year has been a total disaster. Everything went wrong constantly, especially outside the grind. Family health problems, my city being one of those hit by the worst flood in Brazil’s history—which cost me 40 days of work due to power/internet outages—and my poker PC, a significant investment, had every type of issue imaginable, none of which technicians could figure out. For 3 months, I had to switch from my PC to a notebook mid-grind about 40% of the time, which isn’t a great experience when multitabling 12 tables. On top of that, during the five-plus trips to get it repaired, someone formatted it, and I lost nearly a decade’s worth of my PT4 database.
Thankfully, the PC issue seems resolved—it was caused by a faulty USB port driver, which disrupted the entire system.

After exposing my weaknesses and struggles, I have to say I still believe in myself as a poker player. I think that, with the right mindset and work ethic, I can build a solid financial foundation through poker over the next 10 years. At 33, I see time passing and realize I need to take responsibility and set goals as a man. Living with the signs that you have potential in something while failing miserably is one of the worst feelings you can have, and it’s been haunting me for the past two years.

Speaking of goals, here are mine:

• Build a $2k bankroll by January. I currently work with a $1k bankroll and play micro-stakes. I don’t want to join a staking team because I prefer to have 100% action in a field I can beat with relative ease. I was part of BBZ for a few months and have to say—they’re amazing. I left after reaching my monetary goals under the contract, and for my current situation, it’s financially better to have 100% action in a lower-variance environment.

• Meet my study goals. Every week. Always. It’s crazy, but if I just study 10 hours a week for a month, I’ll have studied more in two months than in the last five years.

• By February, be playing with a $10 ABI (Average Buy-In) and a 40% ROI.

• Play 1,000 tournaments a month, peaking at 12 tables.

• Post twice a week here: one post translated by AI and the other written by myself in English to avoid getting rusty in my second language.

This is my schedule:

You can tell I really enjoy going to the gym, but it’s not about spending 3 hours there. That time includes transportation, showering, and walking my dog after the workout.

That’s it. I hope to use this space a lot and maybe become one of those inspiring stories for someone in the future, similar to the ones that inspired and encouraged me to enter this world.