Omaha rollercoaster

My 5 PLO sticky notes

On the second page of this blog, following a downswing, I put in some "rules" I wanted to follow.

5 ecology rules, and 5 rules to follow while grinding. These rules were largely based on Phil Galfond's blog post here:

https://www.philgalfond.com/articles/the-five-post-it-notes

Philgalfond.com

The Five Post-it Notes Stuck to My Screen — Philgalfond.com

I've decided to edit my own rules for my own personal needs. For example, unlike Phil I might not struggle so much with protection betting too often, however given I spend a lot of time in solver land one of my leaks is I may play too "theory" oriented sometimes in situations where it doesn't call for that.

Here are my updated 5 rules, that I put up as a sticky note on my large desktop screen to read as a quick reminder each sessions:

1. Game Selection is key!
It really wasn't until this year that I cared much about game selection. I come from a spin and go background where basically my intention was to grind as many tables as I could to hopefully sit with more fish and make money from rakeback primarily. So when I originally switched to PLO this was my strategy. I originally started off with fast-fold PLO. Play everyone, battle everyone, just get experience, don't worry about money, don't worry about downswings, if I'm good enough I'll make my money.

But this year I've had my fair share of downswings, and each one reminds me how important game selection is. If I had game selected better I would have undoubtedly made more money this year. This sticky note has nothing to do with how I want to play the game, my strategy or theory. It is simply a reminder of one of the most important factors of being a pro cash-game player. I don't want to bumhunt, but I want to improve my game selection and this is one of my overall big goals in 2025.

2. EXPLOIT! What action will make me the most money?
This sticky note is more of a reminder that poker is still a game played by humans (hopefully as long as there's not too many bots at least). And that when you spend so much time in solvers and learning GTO-land stuff it can be easy to forget that people can and will play completely different in reality. A lot of times, the best play is not a GTO play. A question that helps me to think about what decision is the best is the question: "What action will make me the most money?" Often times this is going to be totally different from what a solver would suggest. This question gets me thinking and deep thought is needed when making good decisions in poker.

3. Always ask WHY?!?!
This one does come from Phil Galfond. It's that poker is story-telling. Don't autopilot, and to remind myself to always ask, why is he taking that action? I can even ask myself, what is the purpose of myself taking a certain action in game. It's simply a good reminder to stay focused and keep asking the right questions, important for every poker player no matter the discipline IMO.

4. PATIENCE! Some pots are not mine
Again, inspired from Phil's post. In PLO, people make strong hands, and I can't just try to fold them off everything and win every pot. Some pots are meant to go in the other direction. This can also serve as a reminder that some bluffs may be great in theory but in reality against a certain player it is punting. Again, sometimes the play that makes the most money, is simply folding. It isn't fun to fold fold fold, but in some situations, that is actually the best play.

5. EXECUTE!
This sticky note, is about execution. I study a lot of poker, but there are a lot of poker players who have a great knowledge of the game, but when it comes to actual execution something holds them back. I might know a raise is the most +EV play, but it also risks more money and therefore the psychology may hold me back. This sticky note is to remind myself to keep on executing on what I know to be best.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finally I leave you with my goals for 2025.

2025 plans:
I believe 2025 can be another great year. Having just gone through my sickest ever downswing, I feel ready for just about any obstacle. When I started this blog, I said I wouldn't stop blogging until I was playing PLO2k+. Well this remains the case today. I'm not in any hurry for that though, and if I'm not playing 2k+ in 2025 that isn't a problem to me. Even if I keep grinding 500 this year, it's alright with me. All I want is progress and a sense of growth and this doesn't have to come through the stakes I play or the money I make.

However here are some things I would like to work on. Some goals for the year.

Poker goals:
- 400k hands. High quality hands
In 2024 I played a bit over 400k hands. However the problem with these hands, is that they were not all very high quality. Some of the hands were spent playing RnC, some of the hands were spent 12 tabling the leaderboards. Early on in the year, there were periods of very sporadic motivation, when I would take unnecessarily long breaks.

In 2025, I want to focus on a higher quality approach. A more consistent approach that I've been building throughout the course of this blog. So I'd like to play at least the same amount of hands as in 2024, but of a higher quality. I don't want to think about the leaderboards, or hitting GG Platinum status or whatever, just focus on my quality, sitting in good tables, and playing with full focus and A-game. Hopefully this can lead to higher winrates.

- Grind every morning without exceptions
Well maybe the only exceptions will be for holidays, or some emergencies. If I am on a holiday I'd excuse myself of not grinding obviously. But I've gotten into the habit of grinding at least 1.5 hours each morning, often 4 hours depending on how I feel and how games look, and so it would be a shame to let go of this. I think it's a great habit I built and every morning after I grind, I feel like I accomplished something, and I got a bit better, and I'm getting closer to my goals. It's a great feeling to have.

- Add some other sites to play other than GG
One of the biggest critiques to my approach to poker, PLO and general tactics in this blog, has been my fandom of the GG Network and my general happiness to play there. I've already explained why I enjoy playing on GG and why I don't want to play on other sites for now. However in 2025 this will likely change. For now, most of my extra funds (other than being spent on my high living expenses), go straight into cryptos to invest, I believe that is simply the smartest choice for my situation right now.

In 2025, at some point (hopefully sooner rather than later tbh) I plan on taking as many profits as I can out of crypto, up to 100% if possible. And I'd like to start spreading my money accross multiple sites.

I play in the mornings in Europe, between 4AM to 10AM and so, it makes sense to look towards US-based sites, when these are the peak times in the Americas. WPN, Chico network, Coinpoker, these are all networks/sites I've got my eye on and am able to play from Hungary. However, this isn't likely to happen until I first take profits out of crypto, which is probably still many months away.

- Specialization and Focus
Along with the previous point, I've decided not to try to learn 5C or 6C PLO just yet. And not to focus on RnC. Obviously RnC conflicts with the goal of putting in quality volume, but it also conflicts with the goal of focus and specialization. And while the 5C and 6C games look quite soft often, I really want to focus on 4C PLO only, because I rather be a master at it before I try learning other formats. When studying 4C, I notice I still have a lot of leaks, and I still don't understand how several spots should be played. I believe I can still gain a big edge even against regs, by specializing and focusing on 4C instead of only trying to game select, basically bumhunt and sit in soft games within all disciplines of PLO without really feeling like the strongest player at any table. Personally, I care more about feeling confident and like I'm one of the best players at any given table, rather than playing in some 5C or 6C game just because it seems soft but knowing I'm not one of the strongest players on the table. This is another reason why adding extra sites is probably a smart decision in my situation. Since if I want to play only 4C PLO, there isn't always enough action on GG only.

That's it for my poker goals. Don't really want to create any outcome goals such as play PLO1k, or make x amount of money. Would rather simply focus on the process and see where it takes us.

Obviously got many life goals but yeah, won't elaborate too much on the non-poker goals for now. This post has been long enough. Next one will be a recap of 2024.

Does this prop bet bankroll challenge feature let you set the date for more than a month? It would be cool if on January 1st, 2025 you set the end time as December 31, 2025. Posting this monthly, but it showing year to date stats would be interesting to see.

The only goal for 2025 that I see as a problem is getting 400,000 quality hands a year if you got 400,000 hands this year and it included fast poker and 12 tabling. Unless you took a lot of time off in 2024, how are you going to match the number of hands next year without fast poker and mass multi-tabling? There are about 52 weeks in a year. Give yourself the typical 2 week vacation and you are left with 50 weeks. If you treat poker as a business and do the 50 weeks at 5 days a week that is 250 days played in a year. You have just acknowledged that it is at times hard to find volume on only GG, therefore how do you plan on playing 1,000+ hands a day without fast poker or mass multi-tabling. Just a thought, but I see a upward limit of about 250,000 quality hands a year for your given stated goals.

The bankroll challenge does allow for setting challenges for more than a month yes. However I can only set one bankroll challenge at a time, and I like to use it to perfectly track my winnings on GG each month, so I don't think I'll create a bankroll challenge for an entire year, but keep doing it once a month to track winnings accurately.

Yeah this is the toughest goal.

Well this goal is based on the fact that in the first half of the year I was lacking serious consistency and this habit of grinding every morning is only something I developed since starting this blog through the second half of the year. September, October and December this year have been the highest volume months of my year (each hitting roughly 40k hands, December hitting a bit more with RnC) and that's because they have been consistent months of grinding each morning without needing any jolts of "motivation".

So I believe if I can keep up this important habit of grinding every morning 1.5-4 hours and maybe a few days when I'll spend an extra hour or 2 grinding in the afternoon/early evening, then I'll be able to hit the "quality" volume I want.

It will be a challenge for sure.

Yearly Wrap up

It's time for the yearly wrap-up.

But first, concluding the month of December:

December 2024: GG RnC200, PLO200 and PLO500:
Hands played: 43000
Hours played: 85
Hands per Hour: 505
Net Won: -$3784
Net won + RB: $1683
Net Won $/hour: $20
EV: -$1337
EV+RB: $4183
EV $/hour: $49
YTD: $71,659

Nothing too special happened at the end of the month. Took it easy after going robusto and will resume the grind January 2nd, since tonight am celebrating the New Years with big goals and aspirations for next year. Still haven't had a losing month since 2022 somehow even though this month and September+October certainly weren't good to me.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now onto the totals for 2024

Hands played: 403,122
Hands grinded/month average: 35,594
Hours grinded: 784
Hours grinded/month average: 65
Hands/hour: 514
Net won in 2024: $6885
EV in 2024: $6174
Money from Rakeback total: $64774
Money from BBJ: $9477
Money from promotions (LB, GGcares, other promos): $55297
Money made from PLO in 2024 including RB (Net won+RB total): $71,659

$/hour in 2024: $91

Which means, like 5bb/100 from rakeback of which like 1bb/100 is from the BBJ? And like 45%ish rakeback overall?! So basically everywhere I ran right around EV even in BBJ lol.
Not sure of the total numbers but should be close enough.

My results at 200 this year were slightly worse than at 500, although this could be explained by sample size or variance, I feel like it's mostly due to the fact that some of those 200 hands were played at RnC. Also at 200 I didn't game select nearly as hard as at 500 and I played more for volume.

As mentioned I'd like to play about the same amount of hands next year, however with higher quality. This means I'll probably play less hands/hour and more hours, so increase the hours/month to like 85-100 compared to the 65 I had this year. Hopefully this allows me to grind 400k hands with a better winrate next year. Honestly, grinding 65 hours/month as a pro is quite lackluster IMO. And the fact that I made $70k+ this year while grinding so few hours is kind of amazing. Obviously this doesn't count for the fact that I spend a significant portion of my time studying, while I may only have grinded 65 hours each month, I probably spent roughly the same amount of time studying each month. This means I still spent a good 120-150 hours each month on poker, which isn't too bad. I'm not proud of how few hours I put in, and I'd like to grind more hours next year. This is a mental leak of mine, it's a combination of the fact that I don't like to grind without feeling some sort of confidence in my strategy as well as the fact that I simply love studying and theory.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

2024 reflections:

Overall, I think 2024 was an amazing year. Despite this downswing/breakeven stretch in the second half of the year I couldn't ask for much more from 2024. 2024 was a challenging but consistent year, where I built great routines and habits. It was a year of growth, and a year of setting myself up for success in the future years to come. Miyamoto Musashi said it takes a thousand days of training for discipline, and ten thousands days of training for mastery. Well I feel like I have now completed my 1000 days of developing discipline in PLO, I've played over a million hands of PLO now since 2022, as well as put in more time studying than grinding thus far, and the start of my journey to mastery is commencing now. I've completed my 3rd full year playing PLO fulltime as my main game, which is close to 1000 days. And now a new world of strategy and theorem has opened up to me. In many ways it feels like a new beginning knowing what I know now, and knowing exactly what I want to work on and where I want to go.

At the start of the year, I had just moved in with my fiancé and struggled to put in consistent volume at the tables. I was kind of grinding at random hours of the day, and didn't have solid routines. When you have new living conditions it can be difficult to find something that works with both you and the people around you. But I was trying to find my way. Last year I was living alone and my grind routine was mostly based around the leaderboards, but in 2024 this had to change to a more "consistent" daily approach. My study routine was also taking up a lot of time it didn't need to. I was studying too many "useless" things, and not focusing on the important things.

As the year went on, I developed better habits, daily habits I could follow everyday. Many of which have been detailed in this blog. I decided to focus on waking up early and grinding in the morning hours. Forgetting about the leaderboards and grinding for volume, but rather grinding for quality. Making this switch was tough at the start, and focusing more on quality than volume is something I feel like I've only started to do quite well quite recently.

Poker wise, variance was on my side in the first half of the year. I was running above EV most of the first half of the year, and I basically had no troubles making consistent money from January to June this year. This all helped me to take some shots at PLO500. My initial shot went great and I was able to quickly establish myself as a reg at PLO500, a very important stake for me to be able to play, since this is a level where I feel, I could at least pay the bills each month and be able to save at least a bit of money over time.

Since June/July, things have been much more swingy, and basically every month I've been running under EV since that period. I made a bit of money overall in the second half of the year, but not so much and only enough really to pay the bills, enjoy a holiday and invest some into crypto which has brought a decent return and I believe will continue to do so for at least a few more months.

However the second half of the year brought about a few changes. Firstly I started this blog around May or June in 2024. This helped me to reflect on what I needed to work on, what habits I needed to build. And I started to implement many great habits. I started to grind almost everyday, almost every morning I would sit down and do my duties as a poker pro. I built several other habits and routines based around this morning grind schedule to help sustain it.

My study habits became better, I stopped wasting as much time being an accountant and filling out spreadsheets, and started actually learning the important concepts I could take away and immediately implement at the tables. I went from a new "weak reg" at PLO500, to an established and "solid reg" at PLO500 and obviously one of the best players at PLO200 which I still put a good amount of volume into.

The end of the year has been a true test of my mental resilience. I succeeded on all fronts as already written about earlier. I can't be more proud of how I dealt with the deadly December, and I am very satisfied overall with how 2024 went. I feel like 2024 set up some great building blocks. I became much better, in every way, not just theoretically or conceptually, not even only in poker, but in life in general. The future is very bright, I feel like I just need to keep going, and the rewards will come one day. Not sure how long it will take, but I'm in no hurry. I embrace the process, I love the challenge!

Happy New Years
and
GL to all of you in 2025

Ya boi has changed his screenname for this year to PoisonSnake

It's the year of the snake, I was born in the year of snake, forgive my spirituality and non-logical poker thang, but, this is my year. It's gonna be a good year!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bluffcatching in overbluffed spots:

In a 3BP BUvCO, we ISO against a weaker player, on the flop our hand is strong enough to bet/gii at 100bb deep. The Ad highly reduces our chances of getting XR, and so if we do get XR he will have a stronger made hand usually, but still our hand is too strong to Bet/fold.

Anyways, the turn is quite interesting.
A lot of people would just blindly barrel the naked Ad blocker. However his range has a good amount of weaker flushes, which won't be folding too much vs bet and barrels. In addition, we will actually be able to bluffcatch on a good amount of rivers. If we river a straight or the board pairs we can bluffcatch quite confidently. Checking this back also allows us to do some interesting BXB or BX/raise lines on certain runouts. In GTOland our hand is basically indifferent between betting and checking but I think this is a good type of hand to checkback a bit more than GTO. Population knows that if we CB the Flop and XB the turn, then they can take the pot away a lot on rivers, and so protecting our range with these sort of marginal hands can be quite interesting.

River pairs the 5.
And villain (a fish) decides to bet 75% of the pot.
On this river, OOP has to bet for value with his weak flushes a lot, and I'm not sure if people will valuebet thin enough here, probably people will just be betting the 2nd nut flush+ here. In addition, OOP doesn't get to bluff a lot. His best bluffs are 2P or preferably 3P combos, but most of those combos would usually be XR OTF by weak players. Air combos barely get to bluff and people will probably overbluff bare Tx too.

Our hand makes for quite a decent bluffcatcher here. We call and see him turn a hand that has good showdown value into a bluff.

I really like your line here. Keeping your straight draw live and also being able to SD/ bluff catch seems very good. Exploitative reasoning also being that we can not expect weaker players to fold flushes almost ever so using this hand as a bluff against this particular player class seems not great.

January so far is kinda annoying. I've played about 10k high quality hands but seem to be losing all my flips.

Hopefully I keep playing well and things can get a bit better.

Being less results oriented.

Honestly this is probably one of my biggest struggles. It's easy to forget that the first 6 months of last year I ran over EV, and given I'm playing on GG I'm really not very worried about collusion or anything like that. But now, for the past 6 months, I've been running under EV since the start of August 2024. Sometimes I run only 1-2k under EV, and then I have periods like this when I run 4k under EV in a short sample or a month running $7k under EV like last September. It just sucks and takes its toll on me. It affects the rest of my life. Since August my roll hasn't really changed much, because despite winning some money, it's only really enough to cover my expenses, that additional $17,500 in EV could be really nice right about now to help me feel like I'm making progress.
Results since August 2024:

with rakeback I've earned $22,437 in this period

But what is progress? Is it progress just because my bank account numbers are going up, just because my bankroll is increasing? I know I should focus on the process and the decisions and not on the outcome, but when month after month for half a year you just run under EV and aren't getting rewarded for playing well it gets tough to ignore the outcomes after a while. How does knowing I'm running under EV affect me? I feel a lot of pressure, to increase my roll, to be able to provide for my fiance and live my life. But things financially for me basically haven't changed for 6 months. It's ****ing weird, my human brain isn't meant to deal with this. Put in good effort and make good decisions but don't get rewarded.

But this is what poker is. It's weird because I'm actually very results oriented. I check my results constantly while grinding. I know how much I'm up or down during a session or during a month. I may grind more if I'm losing with this motivation to get it back, I may quit earlier if I win big to "protect my winnings". But the funny thing is, my poker decisions at the table remain largely unaffected by results. I'm thankful for that, that while grinding my poker decision-making is always good.

But outside of the actual strategy and theory, I still have a lot to work on in this arena. Just because my mental game doesn't seem too bad, in the sense that my poker decisions will still be dictated by logic and theory and I'll never make a huge punt, I can still earn a lot more money and also just generally be more happy and content in life if I could simply work on my mental side of things a bit more, outside of poker predominantly.

The fear of the unknown and the desire for control
I've come to realize that one of my biggest mental leaks in general, is the fear of the unknown. Which is kinda bad as a poker player, because poker is essentially a game of incomplete information. In poker, we always deal with the unknown.

In essence, I feel like a lot of this is about "control". In poker we control so little. We can't control the outcome of hands when the money goes in, we can't control stuff like bad beat jackptos, card distribution, running under or above EV, etc. And I've realized that "control" is very important to me. I always want to feel like I'm in control, because I have so little control in my life and in poker, that any extra control I do have is really nice and I'm always seeking it.

How does this fear of the unknown and the desire for control affect me?
- I constantly need to check my results:
Every big hand, I'll check my results. Everyday I know my results, every month I track my winnings and liferoll meticulously. I guess on a monthly basis it makes sense to make sure I can keep playing my stakes and nothing big needs to change, but on a daily basis or even weekly basis. I think this is really kinda useless.

- I overstudy useless spots:
Reviewing like the biggest hands of the day for example, checking every hand above 20bb or whatever, I find really kinda useless. I mean I know Matt Marinelli was bragging about checking every hand above 5bb in GTOwizard or something. But honestly I don't feel like that helps nearly as much as doing deep work and trying to understand new concepts. Simply quickly going over a hand a checking "oh yeah GTO this or that" isn't really so helpful other than relieving this "fear of the unknown".

- I don't take spots in game when I don't know the solution:
For example, let's say I studied a spot, and I know this is a good spot and hand combo to bluff with, well because I have studied it and know it, I'm going to execute. It's quite simple really. Now the problem is when I haven't studied a spot and IDK what the correct solution is. Maybe my brain will be nudging me to bluff, but will I take it? Without the certainty of having already studied some spot I'm a lot less likely to take that spot. This is also why for example, I don't enjoy playing 5C or 6C even if a table looks insanely fishy, as I haven't studied those games much at all. It's also why for example I haven't tried playing on other sites yet (although I also got other legit reasons for that).

- I quit early when winning:
Because if I quit now, I'm certain to book a winning session. If I stay, I could potentially lose my winnings, which would hurt. Losing hurts a lot more than winning, this is a proven economic concept called loss aversion.

I'd like to try and work on this.
I think the results and being results oriented makes this fear of the unknown and lack of control even worse.
I want to be able to accept, that I cannot control variance, and I cannot control my results in short samples.

I'm going to work towards checking my results less often. It will be one of the hardest things I've ever undertaken because it's so easy to check and seems so harmless, all I need to do is click a button or open a tab. But right now I see how helpful it can be. It can make me feel much more at ease at not needing to "control" everything. Hopefully this can help decrease my fear of the unknown and be less results oriented and not worry about poker in my day to day life.

How will I work towards being less results oriented?

I'm going to work towards checking my graph less. Ideally I'd only be checking my graph and results once a month. It seems like samples less than this are meaningless, even a 35k hand sample in a month is quite meaningless tbh, so there's no point in checking anymore often than that. This is one of the best blog posts I read on this topic by mobius poker: https://www.mobiuspoker.com/blog/when-an...

Right now it's really hard not to check my graph even after a single big hand. So I'll take a few small steps and build up towards not checking my graph for an entire month.

For the rest of this month (Jan 25) I want to check my graph only once a week each Friday.
In February, I'll only check my graph once every 9 days. On the 9th, 18th and 28th.
In March, I'll only check my graph twice, on the 15th and 31st.
And finally from April I'll try to only check my graph once a month on the final day of each month

Perhaps after a while of doing this I could try to check even less often IDK.

I hope this will result in some positive changed, help me be more comfortable with the unknown and feel less like I need to be in "control" of everything.

Funny timing on this post, for the first six months of the year last year my net worth didn’t change at all, just stayed stagnant and it was driving me crazy, felt like I was unsuccessful. That caused me to also obsess over checking results, waiting for the cashier to increase, seeing if my ev line was positive to make myself feel better, exc. It was one of the most stressful periods of my life. For some reason looking at cashier doesn’t affect me as much as looking at graphs. I think it is because if I am losing money but do not know the results of the tracker I can tell myself I am just getting unlucky so no big deal but if I load the hands into a database and I see my all in ev is plummeting as well it drives me crazy and I feel defeated. So funny because all in ev is only small part of the luck factor and in grand scheme doesn’t mean much. My advice is start by looking at cashier instead of your database if you have to manage your funds closely as your taking shots and the itchiness to look at database may start to diminish.

Thanks for sharing that. I'll take your advice and make sure not to check database for a while.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

In other news, I won the BBJ today, first time I won the big prize in my 1M+ hands on GG. Running above EV on BBJ for this year 😃
Def feels like a bit of a relief.

Post BBJ Clarity

If the BBJ fee is worth roughly 1.6bb/100, then if I play 400k hands in a year at PLO200-500 then my BBJ EV should be a bit more than $20k? So ran 50% under BBJ EV last year, and haven't achieved my EV for this year yet (unless I stop playing on GG for whatever reason). Well, normally the BBJ at PLO200 is a bit bigger, like $12k or something. I guess it was a bit lower since they are putting a bit more money into New Years promotions? IDK.

But anyways, $9k is still something to be celebrated. When I won it, it was a huge relief as I said. I literally jumped out of my seat, danced with my dog a bit, then immediately proceeded to withdraw some money, redistributed money accross my accounts and investments etc. It was a big deal for some reason. Bigger than I thought it would be.

The post right before this in my blog I was talking about being so results oriented and wanting to decrease this. I was complaining about having been at basically the same net worth for the past 6 months despite playing good poker with decent volume. This BBJ was a quick and sudden boost that I felt very relieved and happy about.

I felt so relieved that I decided I'd go out and buy my fiance a new apple watch for her birthday (which also happened to be right around this period), and enjoyed a fantastic relaxing date at a spa. Well I guess spending 10% of what you just won on a luxury product for the most important person in your life can seem worth it, and tbh it brought me a lot of happiness and joy, to see how much she loved the watch and experience.

But now that it's been a couple of days after winning that big prize. I can reflect, and I see I was spot on in my previous post. If I was so affected emotionally by winning the BBJ, clearly I'm too results oriented and probably also playing quite aggressively with my bankroll management.

I'm a professional poker player, and tbh I'm being quite aggro with my bankroll. It's for many reasons though. I kind of have to be a bit aggro with my BRM. My living costs are high (much higher than for an average person living in Budapest, much closer or even more expensive than what people pay in West Europe). I'm not sure I'd be able to cover expenses without playing PLO500, and it's in my interest to at least play this stake. TBH when it comes to BRM, I'd say it's super aggro when it comes to play PLO500, but then much nittier when it comes to playing PLO1k, as PLO500 is really this cutoff point for me, where I can safely keep building a roll and saving some money. That's why downswings and long stretches of not increasing my bankroll can feel so terrible, because I'm living on the edge. On the edge of having to move down to PLO200 where I'm not even sure I'd be able to cover living expenses.

This **** really affects me, basically since the crypto crash of 2022 I've felt like I'm in this constant state of survival. Just trying to make a bit more, pay for the next month. Over time, it's been slowly getting better as I've been moving up stakes and slowly increasing my roll. A lot of people reading this blog may think it's funny, that a guy who just made $70k last year feels like he's in survival mode. But it's the truth, basically since 2021/2022 I've felt constantly in this state. And this is why I've been so results oriented, and tbh I have only been becoming more and more results oriented over time. You'd think for a seasoned pro being results oriented should be a thing of the past, already dealt with, but this problem has been becoming bigger and bigger to me over time. It shouldn't work this way, but the longer I've been a pro, the more results oriented I've been getting. It's only until very recently when I started working on this issue that I've started to improve it.

Winning this BBJ, it all of a sudden felt like, I'm no longer in just survival mode. I have a bit of wiggle room, I can fail a bit now, I can go on a decent sized downswing and things will be fine, I'll be able to keep playing PLO500. TBH, I've received a fair share of luck in terms of timing. This BBJ seems to have come at a beautiful time, when I was feeling quite frustrated about having not made progress financially for 6 months. At other times in poker, some seemingly random things totally out of my control have also seemed to save me such as going on a sick downswing last month, to the point where if I lost even a tiny bit more I'd be forced to play PLO200, only to go on one of the sickest upswings and get all the money back. It really makes me believe in god and that he's out there watching over me. But this is a totally separate topic I guess.

The point is, I got some post BBJ clarity. No longer in survival mode, and now more on growth mode, to build a thriving life.

At the start of the year I got a membership for RIO elite while they had their annual elite sale.
I thought I'd spend a lot of time watching their PLO training videos, but tbh I've been spending a lot of time binge watching the mental game and mindset videos 😃
Especially Chris Pimmer, I really love his style of videos, with interesting story-lines and narratives. And he also has a lot of videos on topics that I relate to, namely results oriented thinking, fear, consistency, etc. Here is a free video on the RIO channel about this topic, which I related to a lot:

Now that I've won the BBJ, I feel like I can focus on what matters more without so many mental and mindset obstacles. Make a good plan for my future endeavours.

Well, tbh, one thing I've realized, is that it's going to be important to me at some point this year to expand my games.

I've been waking up at 4AM each morning and immediately grinding, but often times there's literally only 1 or 2 tables accross both stakes of PLO200 and PLO500. It's not enough action. I'm going to have to expand by either adding 5C and/or 6C on GG or by adding sites. And as I've already mentioned, I want to focus on adding more sites this year. I would do it now, but as I said, I view my money in crypto rn as too important, I don't want to take money out of crypto to put it into other sites. That time will come. I'm actually hoping for a decent crypto upswing soon and to be able to take out a bunch of profits end of Q1 or early Q2. When this happens, there's a high likelihood I'm going to be putting some money onto some other sites.

Right now, it's a bit depressing looking at the state of the games on GG for 4card.
I mean I wake up at 4AM, sometimes there's action, but sometimes like today there's only one or two tables running, so I'll play for a bit, fish busts and since I'm not playing another few tables on other sites I just have no motivation to 1 or 2 table... This is why I have time to write here right now. Well on days like this I generally spend the time in the morning I dedicated to grinding to do a bit of extra study, study that I would have done in the afternoon normally. So this way maybe in the afternoon if games look good then I can jump in.

So yeah, it seems like games aren't always running around my early morning schedule, so it forces me to be a bit more flexible. This is why as I mentioned, I'm going to have to find ways to add some more action soon. Well for now, I'll keep going like this, with a bigger sense of calm, and hoping that without needing to be in survival mode I can make better decisions while staying consistent. Still haven't checked my results since that BBJ, and being less results oriented will still be a big focus of mine going forwards.

are u a 9 in numerology?

no

For my date of birth: I'm a 5

For my real name:

bro just reading your posts and I can guarantee that your BRM is way better than mine and I play 500+ on other sites(American). Its plo, youre gonna swing swing but just retable if you get up a few buyins until youre more comfortable w it.

Id prolly remove this as it fully doxes who you are irl

not so worried, I like to be transparent

Specialization and Focus: Why I've decided not to play 5C and 6C

I look around the lobbies, and it is clear, there's a lot of fish playing 5C or 6C. A lot of the fun players have moved over to those formats. So then the obvious question becomes, why not follow them? Why not join them and play in softer line-ups?

Well, I've never enjoyed games where I feel like I can't come up with my own strategies. Ultimately, I'm a strategist. I love strategy, and I love coming up with my own personal strategies. I love trying out new strategies and testing them, seeing how other people will react to them. Probably the most fun part of any game is finding the correct strategy, developing it and testing it out. After a long time you get an understanding of how it works and a master of a strategy will be able to execute relentlessly and earn his rewards, but that is just the end of the story and not the most fun part. The most fun part is always the beginning, learning and developing your strategies. Sure without a solver you can create a strategy, but you won't have as much clarity or confidence in them.

I love this in other videogames. When Valorant came out, I was trying to figure out the best strategy. When playing Valorant, my prefered role was the initiator, not only because I had great aim, and initiators are the second players in, supporting the duelists (entry fraggers), but because they are crucial in directing your team into certain areas of the map. They are crucial players whose utility needs to be used to effectively execute your team's plan. Ultimately what lead me away from Valorant is the need to collaborate with other players. It's hard to always be on the same page. Poker doesn't suffer from this problem.

So back to poker. Why 4C PLO if strategy creation is my biggest passion? Well I've played a few formats in my lifetime. I enjoyed spins, however the level of depth I could go with strategy creation in spins wasn't so high, the game was too simple. At some point I felt like I knew 90%+ of spot at a decent enough level to approximate the GTO solution. In the end spins came down to mass repetition and putting in volume and executing a relatively simple strategy, without needing to go deep into the inner brain thought processes. The ecosystem as I already explained earlier, was also something I didn't like about spins. In the end, spins was for me, only a short-term format, a good learning tool and a great way to start my poker career, but it was merely a stepping stone towards bigger things.

I dabbled in short-deck, or 6+ hold'em. I was able to create my own strategies with the use of GTO+. I was able to gain an edge through hours in the solver that others weren't putting in. But there wasn't much action, and again I felt like it was basically a simpler version of NLHE with lots of variance, where in the end all the profits came from a whale punting. Not my thing. While it was profitable, and most profits come from fish anyways in poker. I still love to battle, I still love to feel like I am outplaying other thinking players. I couldn't see myself playing spins or 6+ for the long term.

In swoops 4C PLO. A game of great depth, a game where I would never be able to learn every node of the game tree. And a game where I can test my own strategies against not only players, but also a solver. The thing that 4c has that 5C and 6C has that other games don't have is a public solver that everybody can use. And for me that's very important. I'm aware of 5C and 6C solvers existing but as far as I know they are fenced and exclusive only to huge sites/teams such as the guys behind PLO trainer or Vision.

Now hear me out, I'm not a "theory" guy, but I still love the solver. I love to use it. To learn from it. To study with it. The solver is my friend. With the help of a solver I can create my own strategies. Do I want to create one that is GTO approved, or do I want to create a strategy that only certain parts of the solvers strategy would approve of? How many sizings do I want to use? Do I want to use the highest EV sizing(s) or use another sizing exploitatively? How can I simplify a strategy to make it implementable? These are all questions I ask myself when creating my strategies before implementing them.

Without a real solver (not a GTO library), I cannot answer these questions. Most people simply like to study with the use of a GTO library, which is obviously fine and will still shows improvements. But I prefer using a real solver. Because then I am simply following the strategies that others created for me. 5C and 6C may have GTO libraries available, but GTO libraries are simply tools to follow the strategies that other players/teams/coaches have created. What if I disagree with the strategy? What if I want to implement my own strategy different from what the GTO library shows? Why would I want to copy a strategy that every other player is using and has easy access to? Until 5C or 6C PLO come out with an actual solver that I would be able to use to create my own strategies, I have no incentive to play those games. I don't play poker to make money or to simply bumhunt.

4C is in the perfect spot right now for my demands. In some ways, when I see how I play, I feel like I am a pioneer in the area of strategy creation. There's many things I'm doing that I haven't seen anyone else do or try, and yet I've tested and studied them and seen they are approved in both solver-land and reality-land. I enjoy being a pioneer, I enjoy a game being unsolved but at the beginning stages of humans getting some clarity of how it is meant to be played. And I feel like I started playing PLO at the perfect time as it is only now that solver strategies are actually starting to be understood by players in PLO.

The great thing about 4C PLO is that the game is so deep and complicated, that I feel like I would be able to spend my entire life figuring out the strategies. I look at different spots, and I tend to find things I hadn't even thought about before; still after 3 years of playing PLO I find these spots often, it shows how much depth to PLO there is! Perhaps the strategies I create will change, perhaps the sizing I choose to use now, will become another sizing in the future. As people adjust, so do I, and so does the strategy. The strategy always evolves, and I have found the game I love to express the strategies I would like to implement. I'm sure the same can be said about 5C or 6C, but as long as a solver doesn't exist for them I wouldn't be able to verify my theorems. 4C is complicated enough for now, maybe one day I'll learn 5C and 6C but I'll wait for the solver, so that I know I can create new strategies for that new game.

There's also something to be said for specialization. Specialization leads to mastery. I want to be a pioneer in strategy creation for 4C PLO. I care about that more, than making as much money as possible by playing in soft games and bumhunting. Mastery and becoming one of the best, strategically and theoretically means much more to me, than making the most money, or playing the highest. Maybe I won't make the most money, but I'll still make good money, hopefully enough to one day be financially free. And these are the reasons why I choose to stick to play 4C and not dabble in 5C and 6C at least for the moment.

Except if pure HU bumbunt, playing 4c,5c, 6c same time is tricky and can hurt overall game.

Other day i saw Gucci and Leikkonen discuss this topic in chat. Even Gucci told playing them same time messes with your head, other guy told he had to relearn playing 4c after grinding 5c.

Cool thread, will follow

It's a good point.

I did dabble a bit in 5C/6C and if I'm playing both 5C+6C+4C tables all at the same time, it's very hard to keep up with the action, so it definitely makes it even harder to multitable and can hurt my game. At the same time, at my stage of progress/mastery in 4C I can also see how trying to learn 5C/6C can simply confuse me and hurt my overall 4C game, perhaps one day in the future if I feel like I have an extremely solid grasp of 4C already, then I can look to expand, but certainly right now, I don't feel like I'm at that stage yet.

Though yeah, there's obviously other opinions as for sure the 5C/6C games look very soft sometimes. I was watching Jnandez new year or black friday stream about how to make money in PLO or whatever that he does each year. And a big point of his was to expand your game selection and be able to play the softest games even if it isn't your main game. And while I don't totally agree and have a different perspective (obviously judging by my recent post), like, he does have a fair point I guess.

Happy to hear that!

Caught back up a bunch in EV since the BBJ. Can't complain about the results so far.

EXCUSES! The excuses I make for not putting in Volume

Well, today, I want to talk about some excuses I make for not grinding.

A lot of poker pros have no problem with putting in volume, a lot of poker players have no problems sitting down and grinding everyday, consistently, day after day, week after week, month after month. This simply isn't the case for me.

I have no problem putting in the hours studying, but when it comes to grinding and putting in volume. I always find myself able to make excuses. The truth is, grinding is ****ing hard.

Grinding is painful: Booking the wins
Everytime I sit down to play poker, I know, anything can happen. I can win stacks, I can lose stacks, on any given day I can't control the outcome. If I lose it can be painful, it can make the rest of the day tougher emotionally. If I'm winning, I want to quit to protect the winnings, to protect myself from needing to feel the pain of a potential loss. It sucks to be up money and then lose it all back. This is why when I win, I tend to put in less volume. It happened again this month, since winning the BBJ I've been on a nice heater but I've been quitting my sessions early, booking my winnings happy with my winning sessions. This is why in my recent posts I've been so adamant on paying less attention to the results and being less results oriented in general. I've already talked a lot about these topics recently here, so let's move onto the next points.

Not enough action!
Maybe I'm not as patient or stoic as I wish I was. Maybe I just love to have 9 tables on my screen with constant action, even if it is at the cost of making the best decisions, I like to always be doing something. Perhaps it's a product of the 21st century, with all this instant gratification everywhere, social media, fast food, porn, etc, IDK. TBH I don't spend much time with any of those things but still, my brain loves action, I recognize I get some added dopamine whenever I play poker, it really gets me in the zone. Actually maybe it's one of the reasons I don't have too many problems with mindset at the tables, maybe I'm simply an addict who is smart and hard working enough to make it work in poker. But whenever I play poker, I simply feel this flow, almost all the time, not many people seem to be able to unlock this flow state so easily, but for me when I play poker it comes naturally without much or any effort.

Despite this, if I have say less than 3 tables running, I simply lose motivation. I make excuses. "Not enough action" I say, it isn't worth it to keep grinding only one or 2 tables. And the fact is, at the times when I grind on GG, it isn't peak hours, there's quite a few days when there's only 1-3 tables running and I simply decide to quit because "not enough action".

For these reasons, I've decided to add a poker site. I wanted to take some money out of crypto recently, and it seemed like a good moment to add a site. In the future I still want to add some more, but for now I've decided only to add one site.

And my first other site I will play on will be the chico network. It's a bit more of an ambiguous and less popular site, but there's some reasons I chose this site.
1. US-based: This means during the times when I play in the early mornings in Europe, it should be around peak time on US-based sites, allowing for more action.
2. High rake: So actually, a lot of people view high rake as a bad thing, but I, much like Daniel Negreanu (sarcasm) view high rake as having some perks. High rake discourages regs and so player pools tend to be a bit softer. Also as someone coming from GG, a high (maybe the highest) rake site, I shouldn't need to make almost any strategical adjustments. For example ranges can be quite different between GGpoker PLO500 and stars PLO500, or an even bigger difference could be coinpoker vs GG for example, since on coinpoker there is a rather large ante which almost completely changes preflop.
3. Integrated smarthud on site: Similar to GG, Chico has a simple smarthud available to view. I like this system and currently after having spent so much time on GG am not such a huge fan of needing or using an extremely detailed HUD.

I'm hoping that adding this site to my repertoire will remove this "no action" excuse as now I'll basically always have at least 4 tables going hopefully and that should be enough for me to stay consistent and avoid quitting.

FYI my screenname on Chico is: Sziasztok
It means "hey guys" in Hungarian. Anyways, I want to be transparent and let others know who this new player is if you run into me there. One of my main reasons for this, is because in the past I was "wrongfully" banned (and then unbanned) from stars, and I would really like to avoid that. I think by simply being transparent and allowing others to know who I am, the risk of being banned is much lower. And so anyone playing with me on Chico can rest assured I'm not a bot, just a solid reg 😃 Played my first session on Chico today, still getting used to the software a bit.

Lifestyle factors

It's kind of trendy in poker now to say you need to "train like an athlete" in poker. I mean I understand why. Recently I've not been eating too great and have been skipping workouts, it's lead me to feeling not so great in real life. And what happens when this happens? I lose mental clarity, I get a bit more anxiety in day-to-day life and I feel like trash. All this makes it easier to make excuses and skip sessions or quit early.

It's time to get back to eating healthy and having a good exercise routine. TBH my diet is kinda extreme when I'm on it (I prefer eating carnivore/keto based), but it truly makes me feel great. Recently though with christmas and winter I've been totally off the train, put on a solid 6+kg (probably a good amount of water weight), drinking alcohol, going out and eating high carb meals at restaurants. It's time to get back on track.

Lack of Urgency
I have a lack of urgency right now. After winning the BBJ and having a bit of an upswing, I feel less pressure to grind. I'm in the comfort zone.

I need to create a sense of urgency again, even if it's not necessarily "real". Lack of urgency leads to stagnation, leads to losing your edge. I can't do that, I need to keep going, keep pushing.

The truth is, I'm still so far from where I want to be. Just because I don't feel a sense of urgency right now, doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Things will come up, the urgency is real and I need it in some way. Perhaps some cold showers could do me good right about now, which I have also been skipping on for many days, those tend to be great to push me out of my comfort zone.

That's it for this post.

Hoping the remainder of the month I can up my volume and consistency a bit.
Peace.

I grew up a spoilt brat

It's true, in my childhood I grew up a spoilt brat, and it affected so many of my life experiences. Why do I mention this here? In this blog? Because it's affected my current life so much, my upbringing has shaped me, and is a big cause for many of my decisions even now as a poker pro.

I think my childhood has had a deep effect on my relationship with money, and how I deal with my personal finances. I just watched the newest Mechanics of Poker podcast with Pieter Aerts:

.
It's a great watch, one of my favorite podcast episodes ever because it touches on many of my struggles.

Currently, I'm going through a spell of learning more about personal finances and improving upon that area of my life. Over the past few months I've been reading many books about this topic, including:
- The Bitcoin Standard
- I can teach you to be Rich
- The millionaire fastlane
- The millionaire next door

I plan to keep reading about Personal Finance, and improving upon this area of my life is actually one of my biggest goals this year. Not necessarily finding ways to increase my income (although that could be nice), but mainly more about how to build my wealth no matter what my income is through methods such as investing, frugalism, budgeting, etc.

The Millionaire Next Door is the current book I'm reading. And it's a great book. It has several chapters on how to raise children, and how spoiling your children can lead them to become big UAW's or "under accumulators of wealth". I've realized, that I'm a UAW! And when I think of my childhood, this makes a ton sense.

Let me tell you guys some things about my childhood. I didn't grow up some broke guy living a hard life. Now my childhood wasn't all sunshine and rainbows and I wouldn't call my parents "wealthy", but certainly I grew up upper middleclass. I'm an only child. And my entire childhood I got a taste of living a grand luxurious lifestyle. Why is this? Because my dad was a diplomat, and not just any diplomat, but the ambassador of Belgium.

This is one of the reasons, why English is my first language. My mother came from South Korea and so we always spoke English at home. Every 2-4 years we would move countries, I've never lived in Belgium for longer than 4 years, in fact at this point, Hungary is the country that I've lived the longest time in. I've lived in 9 countries throughout my life, and wouldn't be surprised if I live in more countries.

Now as the ambassador's son, you can imagine, that whenever we lived abroad (which was for the majority of my childhood), we would live in some amazing house (some of my houses were literally castles). With the insane house, came the maids who would take care of our cleaning and laundry daily. We'd have a personal chef, we'd have a chauffeur or maybe 2. Security guards to guard the estate. I would go to private schools my entire childhood and meet other children of "wealthy" people. We'd have 2 luxury cars. This was my socialization as a child.

The caveat to all of this, is that we come back to Belgium to live for a couple years, and I realize how "middle class" we truly were. The Belgian government would pay for all expenses whenever we were abroad. They'd pay for our house, car, education, healthcare, servants, etc. Every time I lived abroad I was living some sort of a "fake" life. Reality hit whenever I went back to Belgium. We'd live in some average small apartment, not much bigger than the one I currently live in right now with my fiancé. And we'd no longer have any servers helping with the housework. And our car would be some basic Toyota or something.

It was crazy, to go back and forth between living some super luxurious superstar lifestyle, to all of a sudden being completely "average". There were several pros and cons to this childhood of mine, it was an extremely unique experience. And I grew up extremely open-minded, with a strong education, and healthy without any mental problems. However there were some downsides. Firstly on the social side, I'd always say goodbye to friends I'd made within 4 years, it got extremely isolating, I haven't kept in touch with anyone I knew since before I was 20. I think another big downside, was my relationship with money that developed out of living like a king whenever abroad.

I developed a consumer mindset, that if you had money, it was there to be spent to buy the nicest things, not to save, invest and build wealth. It's took me going broke 3 times to learn this lesson, I'm hoping that now, having gone through what I've gone through I've learnt my lessons and I won't go broke a 4th time. But we'll see.

I went to college in the states. I went to the University of Tampa. Not a particularly prestigious university, but hey I didn't care about my education, I just wanted to get wasted, do drugs, get laid, have fun as a young adult. It's funny but my roommate at the time, was the son of a multimillionaire (or even billionaire) who owned a huge company. This roommate of mine owned a brand new $100k+ Benz and wore nothing but designer clothes from Gucci or LV. I felt this pressure to keep up with him. It seemed like looking cool and rich (even if the money wasn't mine and I didn't earn it) could bring more fun, more girls, more friends, higher status, etc. I felt like my parents money was my money, afterall they fully paid for my college education with their hard-earned money and I could buy a ton of designer clothes with it and go out and rent tables at the night clubs and spend $1000 at the stripclub or whatever, all this while my parents kept living their frugal lifestyles they built in Belgium.

This life of mine, made me lose all respect for money. To be honest, there's some benefits in poker, such as not caring about losing as much, dealing with variance better, not being too worried when shot-taking higher, etc. Some other benefits from this, was realizing eventually that I no longer wanted to be "fake". I no longer wanted "fake" friends with a person just because he could increase my status, "fake" relationships with a girl just because she's hot, "fake" clothes to prove my worth to others, etc. Another benefit was simply realizing that money has never been, and will never be the thing that makes me happy. I was equally happy in Belgium being a normal middleclass kid than I was living like a superstar in foreign countries. As long as I can sustain some baseline lifestyle, anything extra won't give me much extra happiness. The most important things to me, are in the end things that money cannot buy. Namely great relationships, my health, and great experiences.

But there's still some big downsides and lessons I had to learn. The only thing I wanted as a child and young adult in my early 20s was to fit in and live that high consumer lifestyle. The lifestyle of a UAW who thinks the person wearing the expensive clothes, watch and driving the lambo must be rich. Hint hint from The Millionaire Next Door books: To increase your wealth you got to live below your means, it doesn't matter if you make $200k a year if you spend almost as much, while a guy making $50k a year could still become a millionaire if he uses his money wisely. In fact most millionaires live far below their means, while most of the guys with the expensive cars and nice houses are living above their means and not in fact millionaires.

It wasn't until after college, when finally my parents decided to (mostly) stop supporting me financially that I had to deal with my own ways of getting money. Poker was my first job, I've never had a real job. I wasn't a good student, I didn't get particularly good grades. I just finished school because well, I didn't want to fail, but at the same time I never knew what I wanted to do next. So naturally when I picked up poker, I actually got into it because I loved the game, and not just to make money. But I wasn't disciplined. Maybe I was talented, maybe I enjoyed the theory and strategy, but I took way too many long breaks for several months for example to play some videogame that came out. Whenever I had a great month in poker, it was a great opportunity to spend all that money on some stupid **** and take a nice long vacation!

Poker is the thing that taught me discipline. Going broke 3x in my poker career is the thing that taught me discipline. Because when you're broke and you know that if you don't work, then you're ****ed and going to go live in your parents basement again, it's easy to get that motivation to grind. I can't believe that I've actually survived this long, with such a huge mental leak, being able to go broke 3 times (literally less than $10k to my name) and come back. Actually in some ways, I can say, I enjoyed that survival form of motivation. It's the easiest form of motivation to know and experience, although I hadn't really felt this until I started playing poker and wasn't relying on my parents financially. And tbh, with my increased living costs with inflation, and living with my fiancé, this survival type of motivation has stayed with me for basically the entire time since playing PLO.

But now, I've had a great month, and slowly, I'm starting to feel like I'm no longer in survival mode. And what happens when I'm no longer in survival mode? I don't need to grind anymore, I can come up with excuses. I'm about to enter a big test in my phase in this life. Have my previous experiences of being broke and getting out of survivor mode built enough discipline in me finally? This is one of the reasons, one of my biggest goals this year, is to learn more about and improve my personal finances, regardless of how my "income" changes. In some ways, I loved the motivation being survivor mode gives, maybe I'm addicted to it, living on the edge. For some reason, I always manage to make it out, somehow god always gives me another chance in poker and in life. But I think I've made enough huge mistakes. I've suffered enough, and I know being in survivor mode all the time, it's not a good way to live. Especially the older I get, I can't live on the edge anymore, not if I want more peace in my life, if I want more stability, if I want to build and support a family. One day I'll be so old, I won't have the power or energy, mentally or physically to keep doing this over and over. I should take advantage of what's been given to me, stop wasting my potential.

I've had to find other ways to get motivation other than simply survival. I've had to develop discipline. I've had to look deep inside myself to find what truly motivates me, and keep me going, when I don't need to make money to pay for the bills. Poker has forced me to do this. Maybe I grew up a spoilt brat, but poker doesn't care about that, it will still strip you down, and teach you the lessons you need to learn if you want to make it in this game. And if you don't follow its advice, and you don't understand the lessons, then one day, your punishment is that you won't be able to play this game again. I hope I have learnt my lessons, and that I keep grinding, and stay disciplined over the next year and ensure I never go broke again.

This year has potential to be an amazing one.
Thanks for reading.

Great blog and can relate to some of the things you said in your last post. What do your parents thinking about you and poker and how do you go about explaining what you do to people IRL? Any shame to it, especially with more judgmental people (maybe your fathers friends who are more old school idk)

Thanks, I genuinely enjoy writing and sharing my story, although I'll admit sometimes I'll try to overdramatize what I'm writing here to make it seem a bit more interesting, though definitely nothing too exaggerated.

TBH, my mom was the main one who spoiled me. She was a housewife after she had me and actually came from more wealth than my dad (who worked from nothing from a poor area in a small city in Belgium), she still has considerable amounts of real estate she occasionally manages in S.Korea. Anyways my mom has been telling me since I'm a child I can do whatever I want when I'm an adult, she also gave me nothing but positive support and told me I am capable of anything if I put my mind to it, I think her support and encouragement are where some of my positivity and optimism come from. She put me through school and ensured I got an education and went to university as my education was very important to her. However once I finished college (which took me 6 years xD) she had no issues with me deciding to pursue poker, she always supported me and encouraged me. I'm sure she was a bit sad to see me finally become an adult and move away from the home (2 final years of college were spent in Belgium after almost 4 in the States), but I think she knew I needed it and to stop relying on my parents after college.

My father, was a bit apprehensive at the start, he never straight up told me not to do it but I could tell he wasn't very confident about my decision. Well IDK, it's been a while now, about 9 years since going pro and I guess he's experienced some of the ups and downs with me. He's heard about some of my insane months/years where I ran hot, he knows about my going almost broke sometimes. I think he's gotten used to it at this point and sees that "I'm handling it". I think overall he's fine with it now, although tbh me and him never spoke too much, when I was younger he was quiet and focused on work mainly, I feel like I know more about my dad from my mother than from any time I spent with him 😃 .

Generally everyone I spoke to thinks poker is "cool" and respect me for "taking a different path" and not just getting the typical 9 to 5. Most people don't know almost anything about poker but I haven't had anyone actually look down on me or think my job is scummy or anything. Some people obviously ask if it's possible to make money that way, maybe they hide that they think I'm a degen or something if I don't know them so well. But anybody I've gotten to know relatively well has always seemed to respect the fact I play poker since day 1 of meeting me.

Even my fiance's parents think my job is cool and respect it, perhaps it's because my fiance has spoken to them about it and told them about how much money I make and that it's considerably higher income than the average in Hungary and I live a great life here. IDK, but even the older people I've spoken to think my job is good and have no issues with me being a pro.

Actually nowadays if random people at some event I haven't really met yet, ask me what my job is I quite proudly say I play poker professionally, and if they want more info on what that's like. I basically tell them it's like being a solopreneur and brain athlete similar to chess. I tell them I spend a lot of time in front of the computer all day, studying and playing poker, and it can get more detailed after that if they have more questions.

I created a spreadsheet to track my poker results.

I created this because I wanted a more steady graph to look at.

The fact is 90%+ of my winnings last year came from rakeback. Playing on GG, that's just sort of the way it is if you're going to play on GG.

I think having a spreadsheet that uses a chart to track my winnings is quite a nice visualization. Because if you look at my graph in a tracker it is basically just a breakeven line and we can't see how much I earn from rakeback.
For example, here is my drivehud graph from last year:

Other than being able to see how much under or over EV I ran it doesn't show so much IMO. I think this visualization is much more useful:

This chart clearly shows how much I won each month from Net Won + Rakeback, and because of that it is a more consistently going up line, rather than some weird rollercoaster. In a weird way, looking at graphs that trend towards consistently going up is quite calming to the mind. If I'm in the midst of a downswing I think looking at this graph showing the truth of my winnings over the longterm timeframe of a year+ can be much more calming than trying to look at any graph in drivehud.

Finally I also created some sort of graph to visualize my net worth. And how that is affected by how much I earn from poker vs how much I spend.
I won't share my exact net worth or how it changed over the course of last year, as I don't want to get into those details or my bankroll etc too much. But I think the methodology is nice to share, and I took some pretty useful conclusions from

The green bars show money earned from poker, the red bars how much I spent that month. Above that I have a yellow line that shows how much my net worth/bankroll increased/decreased throughout the course of the year, though I hid that from the picture above.

Moral of the story for me is really. I need to spend less if possible, tbh it will be hard as expenses tend not to get smaller but rather bigger. But maybe it's possible, considering last year I bought a €4k ring and spent almost €10k on the holiday to Paris+Disneyland. Also got scammed for a couple k from some online shopping. This is why as I said, one of my focuses this year is on improving my personal finance, tracking how much I spend (since I didn't really start doing that perfectly until late last year, though it should be pretty accurate according to my calculations). I wish to spend less and be more frugal, especially when upswinging because you never know when the next downswing is around the corner, and keep learning more about personal finance, next book I want to read will be Broke Millenial.

So would like to at least not spend more than I did last year. And hopefully in 2025 I can also earn some more.

Chart looks really nice and of course total sum is most important.
There are different ways to win - for some its 90/10 profit+rb, for some its the opposite.
End result is the same.

Btw do you mind sharing what you spend your money on?
To me these numbers looks really high unless you live in a decent location in the US.
High rent/mortage or just general spendings?