Becoming a UK NLHE 6-Max Cash Supremo
Hi All,
This is my first ever thread/post so hello 😀
I am from the UK and in my mid-late twenties. IÂ’m joining the twoplustwo community and wanted to share my goals and seek some guidance as I embark on my poker journey.
A bit about me: IÂ’ve recently transitioned from recreational play to a more serious approach with the ambition of making a sustainable income from poker. My focus is primarily on No-Limit HoldÂ’em 6-Max cash games.
My goal: By the end of this year, I aim to become one of the strongest players in the UK at NLHE 6-Max online. I understand this is an ambitious target, especially starting out, but IÂ’m committed to putting in the necessary work to achieve it. What constitutes 'one of the strongest players'? I guess that is my own interpretation but if I ever get to the point of playing in 500NL+ games and games do not start just because I joined the table or if the main fish at the table leaves and the game breaks even with me at the table, I would have garnered the respect enough to tick this box. I am sure a few reading would see this as a bit of a joke with players regularly battling at 5kNL+ but of the overall poker population, a winning 500NL+ player would be considered in the <0.01% of all players, so that is my interpretation.
My Plan:
I have purchased Kanu7's Advanced Cash Game course, and using this as a base to learn. It is a few years old and strategy has moved on slightly and the software available has also developed since this time. However I still think it is relevant because:
- It is one of the few courses/learning tools that is made by a genuinely top player shortly after they stopped playing, I have had a browse around and there are not too many available by someone who I can confidently say 'yes they were close to the top of the game when they made this'.
- The structure allows me to follow a clear learning path, I had a look at RIO and Upswing for example but they either fell fowl of 1. or had random videos focussed on random situations.
- While it is heavily solver based, hearing the thought process behind how to implement solver outputs is timeless in my opinion regardless of if his results are different to my own/commercially available solutions.
So here is how I envision how I can get the most out of the course and improve my understanding of the game
1. Complete the course making detailed notes
2. Re-do the course but this time with PIOsolver to hand, running my own sims in tandem with Kanu7's solver, comparing how his outputs differ from my own, what themes stay the same and what differ [I imagine this will take the longest]
3. Summarise step 2, outline and commit to memory my overall strategy
4. Actually play some poker.
I have completed roughly a third of step 1 so far and aim to have it completed by the middle of the month, step 2 I will set an ambitious goal of completing by the middle of February and Step 4 by the end of February.
Reading through some other posts, I'm not the only one who has such lofty ambitions and pretty much all stop posting (which I can only presume means failure). I am willing to at least try my best, I hope I don't get mocked too hard 😀
Feel free to answer any questions.
My goals for January (including non-poker ones):
[ ] Complete the run through of the course
[ ] Complete 50% of step 2
[ ] Eat 3000 calories per day (I am trying to bulk)
[ ] Average 5 sessions per week in the gym (I already have this but want to keep on track)
[ ] Average phone screen time less than 90 minutes per day
[ ] Answer all and any questions in the thread
12 Replies
Good luck, how have your results been so far since taking poker more seriously?
Hey, good luck with your journey!
What platform do you play on? As far as I know, UK players are subject to additional taxation, which makes playing poker profitably a real challenge.
First update
As I responded to slyless, I didn't really conceptualise how complex this game is. Part of me thinks that I don't NEED to go this indepth but if I am going to achieve my goal, I need to take this seriously. So far, I have written 68 A4 sides of notes and haven't even completed the IP vs BB section of the course. I have a notebook I started writing in and I think there is a decent chance I will fill it by the end of the course... I kind of wish I had start in word now but I find writing while listening to this lecture style forces me to focus more. I am getting itchy feet to play but I need to rationalise my thinking that fundamentally, I don't have a strategy understood as of yet.
I have been having a look around different poker networks in the UK. The most obvious place to go is GG, they have by far the largest traffic however I am concerned with how they operate, I have an account but I am worried by some of their operations. I may drift over to them later on but I don't think starting there is a good idea. I want somewhere that has a good balance between fish and regs initially, I don't think stars offers that anymore so I will not start with them. One site I think is a goldmine is skypoker, I was watching their 2/4 games for 10 minutes at the weekend and the standard of play isn't high and there were two fish limping and the regs (or who I assumed were regs) making some really questionable decisions, they have no way of exporting hands though which is a HUGE annoyance, particularly when I am in a learning phase. I will start at iPoker as they have the network of sportsbetting sites where people can just move over which should give a decent number of rec players, the traffic is pretty decent too.
I haven't hit 3000 kcl yet but I am on track to today, gymed 2/3 days and will go later today making 3/4 days, my phone use hasn't been great - averaged 3 hours per day!
sounds like an in-depth study, nice way to approach the challenge
In regards to Slyless comment, there is no tax on winnings in the UK I think possibly on the UK PokerStars client we might pay more rake or get less rewards or something like that not sure how it is on other sites maybe they just pay the tax from their rake I think it it like 15% or something like that.
Think UK is a decent place to play really if you can make a profit.
Isn't iPoker bot infested and high rake?
I used to have a good rakeback deal there but I remember people mentioned a lot of bots on the network and there wasn't many tables running (although I was playing PLO).
Isn't iPoker bot infested and high rake?
I used to have a good rakeback deal there but I remember people mentioned a lot of bots on the network and there wasn't many tables running (although I was playing PLO).
The rake is higher but I think it draws a lot more recs so am comfortable paying slightly higher rake for this. Games run a lot on NLHE from what I can see in the lobby.
Your bot point is super interesting and has got me down a bit of a rabbit hole today. It is nuts how open some of these botting sites are (they might be scams tbf). I found this one: https://www.warbotpoker.com/ which just casually lists all the sites it can use and their security level. GG and iPoker only listed as medium security and 'regular stealth', the best is stars (not surprisingly) and party (which is surprising to me!). I know party traffic is down massively but maybe thats a place to start at least, I'll have a scout over the next few days. I think if I play on ipoker I'll have to be really cautious.
Edit: I just want to make clear that in no way am I praising or supporting these botting tools, I am just completely shocked at how open, cheap and blaise the whole thing is
Hi, good luck with your goals 😀 I would appreciate it if you could take down the links to these botting sites, don't help them promote unnecessarily. Much thanks in advance!
Hi, good luck with your goals 😀 I would appreciate it if you could take down the links to these botting sites, don't help them promote unnecessarily. Much thanks in advance!
Thanks!
For some reason it won't let me edit my post again, if a mod is reading this, happy to delete that post or remove the URL referencing the bot website
Second update
On reflection I probably should have started this blog AFTER the studying process as most of the first few months will just be me explaining where I am studying which is super boring to read. Too late now though.
Finally finished the turn section of the course, about 1/4 left overall so won't hit my target of the middle of the month for completing. I am comfortable with my progress as I am putting in the time and effort, which is the whole point. I've also started transferring my notes to word, thank god for AI as transcribing this by typing would be crushing, but taking a photo and letting Gemini transcribe for me saves a lot of time. Up to 2.5k words transcribed and that's only after the cash game fundamentals and first flop video. I'm guessing I'll hit somewhere between 15-20k words overall. Summarising and then learning the thing will be a couple of weeks in itself but I am confident that by the end of all this, I will be in a great position and will understand my strategy better than my opponents understand theirs.
For other life updates, managed to hit 5x at the gym last week which is pleasing. Only managed 3000+ kcal on 3/7 days so need to improve that for this week, I'm not a big eater so naturally I just forget to have snacks. Phone use was pretty shocking in the week but at the weekend was much less (even though it was above my aim of 90 mins per day), something to work on this week. One thing I didn't put as an aim but I am doing dry January and haven't had any alcohol so far this year, I'm really enjoying no hangovers, I might see how many days I can do without alcohol this year. Not drinking makes me realise how much of a waste of time/energy/money/life it is. I've reached that point in life where the truly memorable nights out are less frequent and people just drink socially because others do. But maybe life doesn't have to be like that and I can surround myself with people who don't need a drink to relax.
I think my next update will be once I have finished studying/learning so there'll probably be a long gap from this update but the future ones will have results/hands so you can all rip me for wasting all this time just to have a -ve graph 😀
GL all reading for your results in Jan!
