Starting the grind with $20
About me:
I'm 20 years old and have been playing poker recreationally for a mere couple of months.
I've been playing online MTTs mindlessly without studying any theory. I've always felt a natural aptitude to poker and have recently found great passion in it.
for the past couple of weeks I've been studying a lot, trying to wrap my head around basic concepts of poker theory and I'm more keen to improve now than ever.
In fact my passion for the game paired with my personality has made me realize that this is something I want to turn into much more than a hobby.
I work as a video editor for a couple of Youtube channels in my country (Finland), but I don't particularly enjoy my job. The upside is that I can work from home, very few hours per week, allowing me to put a lot of time into studying and playing poker.
The "challenge":
I decided to steer away from MTTs for various reasons. I just find cash games to suit me much better.
I've decided to reset my bankroll to $20 (well $19.99 to be exact) with the iintention of starting to build my bankroll up all the way from 2nl, eventually reaching high stakes (I might need to reset my bankroll at some point and I will do that if needed ofc).
I'll start of playing regular 2nl aswell as 2nl zoom on pokerstars (my PS name: Meepmorp88) with the goal of building my bankroll up to around $75 before moving on to 5nl. Then repeat a similar process increasing my skill level and bankroll in the process. I'm currently studying theory for 3 hours/day and playing 2nl ~6 hours/day atleast 6 days/week
My goals:
Short term:
- Start playing 5nl in september
- keep up my study/play schedule
- track my progress through updating this thread on a weekly (daily? weekly? monthly? we'll see) basis.
Long term:
- become a high stakes reg
- play poker full time
- move to a different country/countries?
- Also to reach 100nl by the end of 2025????
The reason for making this post is to have some external accountability and to keep tracking my progress here.
I don't have any graphs to show at this point since i just moved from GG to PS because of rake. I also just yesterday downloaded Pokertracker 4 (14 day free trial. will be purchasing full version after trial). I will be posting graphs in the future though ofcourse.
Also I would appreciate any advice regarding pretty much anything.
Some advice/insight I would appreciate:
- how does regular cash game on PS compare to zoom in general? is one "better" than the other?
- your best studying resources/methods. (I currently use RIO videos, GTO Wizard, some books, equilab and free videos for studying)
I'm not sure when I'll be posting my first progress updates. Shouldn't be more than a week or two. I just finished my study session and am now starting the grind.
Current BR: $19.99
It's been more than a month since my last update.
I took things very slowly for the better part of a month, but I'm definitely back on track now.
I've been playing 5nl regular tabels on GG. I think I dipped below 20$ initally, but I've finally passed the $100 mark once again.
Hopefully this time I won't go on a 14BI downswing in a day
(looking back at how I played that day, I'm definitely embarrassed. Calling it just bad luck is far from the truth...)
I'll keep grinding 5nl. I'll be back here with graphs after I pass $200-$250. Cheers.
For the first time ever, I'm actually putting in decent volume.
Currently playing 6 tables and around 4000 hands/day. That's usually enough to get about $3-$5 of rb from the leaderboards on GG which is a nice bonus.
I'm certainly not studied in these post-flop situations so don't mind my probably horrible plays.
Nonetheless it's safe to say I was loving my hand on the turn, and by the end of it, I wanted to end it all for a brief moment.
JK I'm handling tilt much better now than I used to. Still sucks.
I'm getting tired. They just have it every time I guess ¯\_(ツ😉_/¯
oops that's not the right image 😃
I tend to have it preflop
post-flop on the other hand is a different ball game... clearly
I'm ****ing loving life. These hands are back to back
current mindset = If I don't have it, they have it. If I have it, they either have it better or they'll get there on the river.
literally the next hand. I'm not kidding this is a bit insane...
He's labeld as a punter hence the snap call with AQo
With that being said. Tilt is something I'll certainly still have to work on.
Variance is a huge part of the game and sooner or later I'll need to learn to accept that.
Something I've gotten better at is taking a step back when I sense myself thinking and regrouping before starting another session.
I've played about 3500 hands today, was up around 2 buy-ins pre rake and now I'm down about 2 buy-ins in the last 500 hands. It happens, I'll analyze my hands a little bit and we shall see if I can get in the right mindset for another two or so hours. I'm still up around $90 pre rake in the last 25 000 hands so all in all I'm not too mad.
You can't eliminate variance. I'll just focus on studying, playing and getting better everyday to minimaze variance and maximize profits.
Happy grinding to everyone who still bother to read my thread!
I've been playing regular cash game tables only for the past 40 000 or so hands.
I'm enjoying my time, but I've certainly improved since last playing zoom, so I think I'll be giving GG R&C another go for probably another 50k hands or so.
We'll see which suits me better.
Have the tides turned?
Just went ahead and played 1300 hands of zoom in about 15 minutes.
And OMG I forgot how insane the volume is in zoom.
Also the pace of playing four zoom tables seems ideal. (I used to only be able to play two)
300* not 1300 lol.
Should be about 1200 hands an hour I guess.
Much nicer than the 650 hands / hour playing 6 reg tables.
welp
after getting quads twice against a full house in about 3 hours, I can no longer cry about bad luck
Most of my hand posts here are heat of the moment tilt posts so don't take them too seriously btw
I played 30k hands of R&C in the past like 5 days.
I ran prety bad yesterday and I'm not really feeling the zoom tables. Atleast not the 5nl pool on GG
I reverted back to reg tables. I find them a lot more enjoyable. I have more time per decision, I can react to players playstyles better (and take notes) etc.
It just feels more like actual poker and not just everyone waiting for the nuts and being passive stations with anything less than trips.
4 tables of zoom feel like a grind for rakeback/lb. 6 reg tables feel like playing actual poker.
If I was in this to make quick money, I'd probably grind leaderboards everyday. But I play with the intent of acutally improving and getting better at poker. On regular tables my quality of game and time per decision is much greater., which is why I'll be sticking to regular tables for atleast the next couple of months.
Just a quick update of what I'm doing at the moment :3
I just succesfully value bet A high vs lower A high
What a time to be alive eh?
I have a presisting problem in my life where I start something new, but never stick to it.
Currently I've been switching between high vs low volume, trying to figure out what's best.
I might do a day or two of lower volume (4 tables) and a day or two of higher volume (8-9 tables). I'm tired of switching back and forth all the time.
I believem that for my overall improvement, It's majorly +EV to play lower volume with better focus on improvement and not making mistakes.
It's time I commit to trying this out for a longer time.
For the next 30 days I'll only allow myself to play 4 tables at a time, with full focus on making good decisions.
At the end of the 30 days, I'll analyzen whether I feel like this sort of style is good for me. If I'm unsatisfied, I'll probably do a similar trial period playing tons of volume. We'll see.
