I am Magorko's lost son - From Micros to SSNL 2024/25

Very likely to having been my most profitable month ever. Finishing early to focus these last days to study. If I end up playing some hands, it's just to help the integration, and I'll update the graph.

Actionable steps for next month:

- Improve the volume. I definitely want it back to 30k hands minimum. Doable with studying if I put the effort.
- Keep looking for all spots pool deviates, with an eye always open to the fact max exploitation likely requires previous streets adjustments.
- A particular focus to spots regs underbluff (and I underbluff), to make sure that A) I am not making the same mistake B) My range actually has bluffs and I'm not making mistakes earlier C) With a particular focus on early full ring streets where this is even more blatant.

Important actionable point I conveniently forgot to add:
- Make 50nl at least 50% of my total volume (subject to game quality ofc).

Good intro, will follow your journey. Good luck with your goals!!

Hey man, thanks a lot! Your blog has been a big source of inspiration. Hope you're doing well.

Not that I want this poker blog to be the most professional and formal thing in the world, poker's still just a game, but paying a bit more attention to detail is a nice trait to do well in the poker world 😀 I meant early full ring positions and formations, not streets, it made no sense the way I wrote haha.

Played just a few more hands, here is the true EOM as promised:

Let's all crush August!

Well, wasn't playing much, or better said, any NL50 this first few days, so time to correct it. Now, does NL50 feel substantially different, and tougher, than NL25? No way.

Main issue is, less recreationals. At NL25 no game runs long enough without a very decent (decent meaning bad 😃 recreational), while at NL50, probably for them having no choice but games never running, recreational definition seems a bit more general, meaning sometimes even just a random unknown who in the end is just a big nit. That is what may potentially make decent winrates way harder to achieve than at lower stakes, even though by 2p2 definitions NL50 is still microstakes.

Minor but important factors is that, yes, regs are better, otherwise they would be playing lower, and rake is higher (4.5% at NL25, 5% at NL50, so small pots that see the flop get punished more).

Anyway, leaks of the average reg are more or less the same, same places, with the difference being the intensity only, and I firmly believe NL50 can be beaten without any substantial pain. Just keep trying, working on my game and never giving up.

Hello everyone! So this is the 9th post in this thread and I am here to announce my early retirement from online poker. At my top 😀

The short explanation, as I am not too sure whether I will or will not elaborate on this later, is that what I thought was love for the game always bringing me back, does not look like love if I think about it a bit deeper. It looks a bit more like that english word that begins with an a.

Anyway, I will keep on 2p2 as there are other parts of the forums that interest me, and may come here to make a deeper post if I feel like it.

Thanks to everyone who took the time to read my posts, thanks to everyone who helped or encouraged my previous persona in the forums when I was struggling, and that's it.

Cheers

I think there are definitely workarounds for the addiction problem, when it involves poker, and it might be easier than for other stimulating games, like, videogames for example. I did it before and, at the time, it worked well. Also, the desire for stopping playing and retire, having come at a day I ran bad, was most likely the opposite side of the same coin.

Motivation in general seems to be more or less a biological process ocurring in our brains where we seek some sort of reward. The anticipation of such reward motivates us to pursue it. Maybe I skipped or got 1 or 2 things wrong, but in general I think this sums up well what I read about this theme so far. Also, I am sure anyone here will identify with this: Exciting things, pleasirable things, rewarding things, are good. Boredom, pain, are bad. We must seek the good things and avoid the bad ones.

What I think make games, and online poker in particular, somewhat addictive, is the speed with which we get either good things, or bad ones, winning and losing, winning and losing, endlessly. Then, at the end of the session, or at the middle, or many times during the same session, we go see our results and get another high (or low? haha). It goes and goes with the weeks, months, years, then an even more interesting thing happens: we grow resistant to the same amount of pleasure, seeking even more, while losing keeps being as hurtful as ever.

I believe that fighting human nature in this case, and building our brains to seek only one type of gratification: the delayed one that come from time, hardwork and pushing thru pain and boredom, is the only way to move out of the matrix here.

Do not avoid the boredom and the pain of working hard consistently, every single day, for a very long time. Do not go for the easy dopamine hit. In fact, make your poker, or whatever project you're working as boring as possible. Embrace the difficulty, befriend it, and become enemy of the easy pleasures. Embrace all the urges, temptations, pain, that comes from feeling the boredom, be happy when they come, just for you to be able to ignore all of them and keep going. Be happy that you were able of feeling as you did but still didn't stop. Then a year later look back and feel proud of what you did. This is the only dopamine hit that should matter to you.

Cheers

Good stuff! After listening to mrBuilderman podcast, in which he opens up about his struggles with addiction (which is a great podcast imo, would recommend if you haven't listened), I was really thinking about this aswell. Ofcourse poker is a bit "too much fun" if you can have infinite tables, with all sorts of high and lows and emotional swings. On a site with a brilliant software where it almost feels like a computer game, with all sorts of "gambly" promo"s. And it made me think how to deal with it the best I can, and make it more boring. For example no music/youtube/news sites on the side. Or only play x amount of tables for x amount of time helps me. And what helps me is to force myself to think, even about the boring spots. Embrace the strategy game basically, and set standards for yourself for focus while playing (now don't get me wrong, I still sometimes fall for the trap of 12 tabling with music on, im not perfect).

I'm sometimes a bit concerned I'm leaning towards addiction aswell. When I lock into too much, and skip social activities, there is just so much poker on my brain. But usually when I zoom out and take a few days off this completely fades away. And I'm barely thinking about it anymore/feel the urge to play. And this shows me that it's not so bad, but also shows me that it's really important to fully zoom out for a day or 4/5 (I guess the amount of days is different for everyone). I learned to accept that in the short term poker is a very emotional draining game. But I'm also getting better and better to learning to deal with this well on a daily basis: mediate, exercise, off topic food for brain what interest me like a book, podcast or documentary, embrace social interaction on a daily basis with non poker friends or friends you can talk about other stuff than poker. And in combination with taking frequent breaks of 4/5 days I"m dealing with it better and better. Also pro tip is to not have too much poker related stuff in your social media timelines. I once unsubscribed from all poker channels on youtube, because when i wanted to chill and do something else I still auto-pilot clicked on poker videos that popped up in my feed. And this way your brain never gets a rest from the game.

I know everyone experiences are different, but maybe some things that I mentioned still apply to you/can help you. And self-honesty, what you seem to have an a healthy amount of, is also important.

Interesting to hear from other perspective. I wish I was addicted to poker, but maybe the grass isn't greener on the other side

My point was, since poker is so emotionally draining and stressful you just automatically think a lot about it on a day to day. And then especially when you have a lot of grinding days in a row without taking breaks you might start to question yourself if you are not addicted to it. In my case when I zoom out couple days it fades away and I learned to accept that it's part of the game to just have my brain occupied by it quite a bit on grinding days. I was suggesting this might also apply for op. Btw, I think this is still kinda unhealthy and I still question sometimes if it's worth it.

I was suggesting OP might experiences it a bit the same as I do. If it's an actual addiction, than I think a lot of self-honesty is required. Mainly ask yourself if it's manageable and not sucking up too much life quality or other important parts in your life etc.

Hey KidCudi147, RyanWCollins,

So, many successful players (public names that I used to follow are the one cited in this thread title, Magorko, but also Ishter, Linus, OTB, and others I can't remember right now), are people who, basically, played a lot, studied quite a bit and, judging from what they wrote, thought about the game a lot. Not the most balanced approach, judging from what those guys were talking about in their blogs. Oh, obviously mrBuilderman also, but his blog wasn't so open and long like the others (or I am confusing names, he is Mayox here correct?).

I don't remember many people who led what could be judged as healthy, balanced lifestyles, with the right amounts of work, leisure, social contact and so on. Which is why I question whether those goals are compatible.

Can we say that what guys like Linus were doing when playing smallstakes and playing massive sessions is addiction? Or is this just an example of a very driven guy who went all in? Maybe this is different from someone who plays poker out of a compulsion to experiment the emotional swings, and this would be the true addictive behavior.

Back to balance, I read Snowball (Warren Buffett's biography) a few years ago, and the guy was basically all work. I mean, he literally put a bigger priority to his investing/business pals, over his own family, wife and kids, from most of the 60s to the 70s, and still seemed to be caught by surprise when his wife left home.

There are even worse examples in the business sector of unbalanced behavior, and I can't really remember anyone who got to the top doing things the "right way".

Lots of rambling and confusing thoughts badly written above haha, but what I am really curious about is, do you guys agree with my perception that yes, leading those unbalanced lifestyles is bad for you and will likely make you pay a high price in the future (bad mental/physical health, bad social relations etc), but successful people lived unhealthy lifestyles nonetheless? With the main point and question, to close the post, being that it is impossible to get both at the same time? (big success/ healthy balance)?

Even guys ike Tim Ferriss who got burnt out from overworking himself, by being so driven, and got into the business of max productivity, minimum effective doses, 4 hour work weeks etc. I have the feeling that this is just the other side of the same coin, and thinking about all of this made him even more obssessed? LOL

But yeah, I still believe that these examples, and actual addiction, are not the same thing. Or, at least, it is a different type of addiction, like the exercise freaks who are addicted to pain and exerting themselves for long and long hours, and who also ignore everything else, sometimes even social relations. Maybe this was the bottomline of my post #10, but I couldn't express my ideas better.

Interesting question, I wonder what others think about this subject. And I don't want to pretend I'm some sort of expert. But I think the answer is, a lot of "succesfull people" just worked really hard and kind of lacked in other areas of life. So yeah there is probably some correlation between success and being obsessively driven/unhealthy balance.

But I also want to say poker is an interesting field in this regard. Because it's not only hard work with linear progress, it's a game of constant ups and downs and you need to keep your sanity. You can burn out super easy because it's very stressful and emotionally unhealthy. It's a game where you can self-destructive super hard if you can't handle your emotions. And maybe I'm projecting my own thoughts a little too much. But if I only have poker in my life and I'm neglecting other things in my life, poker always goes bad. I think a lot of successful players had there fair share of spending x-amount of time in no life. But I think atleast for a lot of people poker requires some sort of balance. I think in a lot of mechanic of poker podcast with successful players that's also the conclusion (Barak Wisbrod, Munezz_starr etc.) they reach.

Again maybe I'm projecting my own views a little too much, some people are just less emotional (I can't find the right term in English haha) and struggle with things like burnout, tilt, stress, motivation etc. way less than others.....

I wanted to mention this aswell! I read this book called "deep work". And this max productivity method is discussed in this. I wonder on a large scale how many people apply this

the only problem I see here is that we’re equating “big success” with money and nothing else

realistically if you’ve been an unlnown middle class random dude who’s never made even up to 6 figures your whole life but have had tremendous relationships, enjoyed your work the whole way through etc. you have objectively been more successful than warren buffet has, the only true goal in life is to be happy after all

Hey guys, thank you very much for all the input you gave, really appreciated.

Xenoblade, yes, there was an implicit assumption that success would mean big money, achieving the top of the business pyramid, top athlete in a tough sport etc. And yes, this comes from some conditioning a lot of us are getting from very young ages. I can think about an even more extreme example. Who am I to say that Warren Buffett is more successful than some nomads, let's say from Mongolia as I just watched a documentary about them a few days ago, leaving pretty much from what nature provides them, physical labor for sure, not many amenities, and yet, the seemed pretty happy leaving such life of complete freedom. With so little of any material goods we take for granted.

Well, 10 days ago decided to cashout my stars roll, take those days off from poker and reevaluate things a little bit. Came to the conclusion that Bodog is the way to go, at least til I reach SSNL. It offers the best chances that I'll reach it in a reasonable timeframe. It maximizes hourly. And it is better suited for the Detox methodology.

Downside is that I won't redeposit everything, so I'm at a bit over 500 USD regrinding 10nl. Gonna use 30 BIs for shots, 5 BIs for stop losses, so:

0 - 750 - 10NL
750 - 1,500 - 25nl (Back to 10nl below 625)
1,500 - 3,000 - 50nl (Back to 25nl below 1,250)
3,000 - 6,000 - 100nl (Back to 50nl below 2,500)

I don't really know how similar 200nl is to stars, or if the sites start to catch up in toughness at 500nl or so. I trust this will look obvious when I get there, so then I will make the decision on where I want to keep my volume, if it's worth diversifying, if the games dry up, if bot infestation is still a big problem so that games are worthless etc etc.

You can say anything about stars, but it still looks like they are the only site where security is made a big priority (not saying there aren't bots nor that they never screwed up, just that they take it seriously). Bots and how bad the games get is probably the reason I want to give myself the option to move back.

Anyway, let's goooooooo

The best way to summarize this year is: Lost. Still not finding what is the approach I actually want to take relative to poker. Been tilting at regular intervals, and quitting the game for a while. Only difference from years ago is that now, any time I come back, I take the first days to review everything I learned since the PDTC camp til today, so in a way, I am reinforcing my knowledge thru repetition.

To keep the thread alive, I will bring a results update:

Volume-wise this year is a total loss. And winrate-wise it's not great either. Gonna push myself to finish 2024 at at least 180k hands.

Cheers