More volume is better?
Hey everyone, I'm starting this blog for accountability purposes. I'll probably just post my results and hands played every couple of months, maybe even less frequently. I am pretty bad usually with this kind of things.
I've been playing poker for around 4-5 years, semi-seriously online, and more seriously for past 2 years playing NL online cash. Recently, I've realized how much time I've been wasting, especially in the early days. I’m treating poker somewhat seriously, but still half-assing it, viewing it more like a fun video game than a profession. I’m playing around 80-90 hours a month, with long breaks of 1-3 weeks when I just don’t feel like playing, but not really doing anything useful in mean time. I need to grow up and treat this as a real career with an uncertain future — but perhaps with some potential to build something for myself if I just apply myself properly.
Last 13 months, with 10-15k in rakeback/untracked winnings. The year before was a bit less, but pretty much similar. It's ridiculous that I played one-third of my volume at sub-NL100 stakes in this sample. I am not taking any risks, and my biggest downswing in the past two years was probably 4-5k (maybe 23 BIs EV), just a joke. Finally banned myself from NL100 this year — never going back to that stake.
I’ve got a few leaks in my game that I’m not happy about, but finding them pretty hard to fix, might not even matter that much and maybe the real leaks are somewhere else. Sometimes it feels like I need to fix all my leaks or at least in the top 10% of a limit before I move up, but I haven't been studying as much as I should. Maybe like 20 minutes to an hour a day of ineffective study, often just messing around with stats. Feeling like you need to be better + not putting much deliberate practice in is not a very good recipe for enjoyable poker life.
Right now, my hourly rate is probably around $60-90 playing mostly NL200, with small amount of NL500 mixed in. It's tough to get volume at NL500, and I have some confidence issues despite having +5bb over 100k hands at NL400+ over the past two years and no real reason why I would be losing there. Just sometimes I feel like I have no idea what's going on and make blunders all over the place/or feel I just play exploitatively wrong/have some stuff that might get exploited real hard.
I’m thinking of increasing my playing volume to full-time work hours, around 120-160 hours per month. I’ve got plenty of free time, nothing better to do and I really need to start compounding instead of just saving 1-3k each month. I think there are some real outsized benefits in trying a bit harder to get to a point where life expenses don't really matter much at all. I think there might still be some alright money in euro mid-stakes, and I could probably double or triple my bankroll in a year if I semi-nolifed, without changing my game as long as I get the volume in and games don't die off.
Goals:
Slowly increase my volume to around 120-160 hours per month.
Study 30 minutes to an hour daily, more if I’m in the mood.
Play more NL500, and play more especially during evenings and weekends (currently playing mostly during the day).
Improve my game and seat selection/multi-site more.
Long-term Goals:
Save up enough money and get good enough to consistently play NL500-1000 within 1-2 years. I might think about joining dark side of GG NL1000 then, if I am good enough and if it's significantly better hourly than playing midstakes on other sites/only way to get volume in. Trying to enjoy current, variance-free playing more though, hopefully without stagnating, because I might miss these times later.
7 Replies
Man you are crushing it. $60 an hour? That's inspiring. Will be following.
GL to you.
Month is almost over and 30 days since thread start so ill just post update now.
Played 51k hands in tracker, maybe 55-60k overall this month. I think I probably put around 120 hours in playing.
I played way too much and way too many tables some days. I don't think really that your game changes too much if you play distracted etc./too many tables honestly,
but playing too passively common spots and just going back to my tendencies + autopilot and again not fixing what I should fix.
Studywise I think I put around what I intended, I also tried to learn preflop of a new format, but not sure if I will ever do anything with it.
It's kinda funny how clueless you are the instant you leave 100bb 6max preflop realm.
I am/was not really burned out, but I took a monday completely off and it kinda spiraled as usual and suddenly I didn't play at all for rest of the week.
So I kind of played 40h/week for 3 weeks and couple hours for last week. I think I just had some IRL stuff to do, but I think I am already done with it.
Something I should try to avoid though, because obviously feel kinda guilty for it even though month went well otherwise. I am not even running bad or anything so I don't have that excuse.
I think 160 hours is a bit too much right now so might just try to hit 120 hours next month with evenly spread volume and feel happy about it.
I tried to fix sleep schedule, so that I wake up at 2-3pm and can just start playing basically instantly/can play evening/night games fresh, but it's maybe a bit too unhealthy so back to 11-12am.
This month I had my first downswing in a while/biggest downswing in 1-2 years, volume suffered alot i was kind of frustrated and didn't feel like playing at all.
Still played 40kish hands in all, so was not a total disaster month, and ran well untracked.
Probably made like 10k in total after everything, which is pretty ridiculous compared to how bad the month felt, just needless negative emotions again.
And again its ridiculous the dollar amount of downswing is just insignificant to complain about, like 2-3k with rakeback + probably not even negative with untracked results. I mean..
Going through a rough patch where when I play poker, I think I should be doing something else, and when I don't play poker I feel like I should be playing poker. Not great lol.
Been through a lot of these periods where I feel like I suddenly play super bad/differently, but I know this was mostly variance/coolers etc. + some bad play, but not to the extent it feels.
When redline + blueline suddenly tanks it's just variance usually for me. Still lots of leaks though. I studied reasonable amount, but mostly preflop of another format +
started exercising more consistently, but pretty light effort, always been skinny, tall guy type so will see what happens.
I wish I had some cool hands to show, but I really dislike hand histories, don't really ever see anything interesting in those and not really point of the blog for me.
But man, I have some disaster timeouts recently, sometimes I think what would happen if i just tried to play 3-4 tables and focus instead of looking at other screen while playing etc., but hard to play more volume without doing that recently, and honestly I don't really buy the "3 table = crushing winrate 6 table = mediocre winrate" argument at all.
Just broke even for second month in a row tracked (60k hands breakeven now), I played a lot more untracked these months, but was +/- 0 there as well for December. I think my volume was 40k+ for this month. I was 100% sure I consciously changed something in my playstyle e.g. check more to fish instead of betting or just stationing too much, but I tried to look at frequencies + stats past 2 months to see what has changed, but I can't find anything, my bet/call/raise + fold freqs of opponents are exactly the same +/- 1%.
I just think it's just mostly runbad especially given freqs are not changed, and it seems kinda unlikely I am suddenly making insane amounts of EV blunders that leads to break-evening on saw turn, probably just losing big pots, getting called when bluffing and not getting called when I have value. Even WWSF/WASD/WTSD are exactly the same on every action.
But just making 10 bb/100 when saw turn instead of 70 bb/100, I mean that's already 40 buyins over 60k hands (6.5k saw turn hands), so it's probably going to be whatever after sometime. I think 2025 is going to be way more interesting year than 2024 for me.
Another breakeven month BB wise, legit no upswings. I raised avg bigblind a bit which is pretty ******ed when breakevening so long, but hopefully will play less NL200 from now on.
Ran well higher stakes finally/over ev and won a lot nl400 untracked so can't really complain though.
Just annoying to play breakeven poker 100k hands tracked and definitely hits confidence somewhat. I think I table-select reasonable amount, but **** winamax incognito games (legit rigged jokingly) + IPoker seat scripters honestly.
Played like 45-50k hands but pulled some 9 hour days so bad volume + should study more. But whatever happy still about my effort, better than nothing.
My plan going forward for higher stakes is that I will punt something like 30k, which is like 50 buyins with 5-6 avg big blind, doesn't change my life at all if i lose that and upside is decent. But will see what happens, if I just breakeven for 200k hands or something, back to lower stakes.
Had a bit better month finally bb-wise, won probably like 12k in total with untracked with like 40k hands. Had my worst day ever as well at the end (-7k), which is a milestone.
I think I study decent amount nowadays and know what I need to fix, but for some reason I just don't implement it (story of my poker career). Redline is kinda big problem even when I am decently aggressive (42% agg pct) and pretty stationy in most spots.
Just missing river raises and bet-folding too much + folding too big part of range where I feel people under-bluff, but I am just throwing money away obviously because of results.
Need to focus and get out of comfort-zone and just play more sticky and stop deviating so much. A lot of spots where it's a node which I haven't studied and villain does something weird and I fold like a 5-10 bb hand. Like a lot of "this is probably a continue, but i just feel weird about it so i'll just fold this time". Then same story next time.
I have definitely gotten less aggressive in some spots when moving up as well, I think break-even stretch affected me for sure mentally.
My routine is pretty good now, I wake up at 11-12am, then go for a walk/store, eat breakfast while surfing on computer, clean etc./admin stuff, then study 1hr-2hr (while very distracted).
Then do some light workouts home, eat and try to start playing from 6pm+. Pretty hard to find good games/get a seat, so sometimes I literally probably play 100 hands/hour which is pretty annoying. Then go to sleep at 2am/3am. I think it's pretty enjoyable for me but I just need to stop wasting too much time on stuff that doesn't matter e.g. reading way too much on internet/watching videos/games/using phone.
Ideally when winter is over I will go outdoors more, workout harder, see friends more + play more. Just lots of time wasting right now still, and the days where "I go hard" are the most fulfilling ones always, so I think I just need more discipline and practice.
Finally running well past 4 months, feels like a pretty big difference to how I felt earlier this year. I actually had a 150k hand tracked breakeven stretch in the end with 25 BI downswing at the start, which was worst variance I've had in the past 3 years.
It's just normal variance though and it happens to every big winner as well, so no surprise it happened to me. Luckily I was winning higher stakes and losing mostly on NL200 where I had high historical winrate.
I think I am probably true 4-5bb winner or something in my games currently going forward, so naturally I expect more downswings and breakeven periods in the future.
Downswings, breakeven stretches + upswings - I deserve them all. That's how I feel about it.
Played 120k hands in total with untracked, hard to find games, but not many hours prob still. I think sometimes I feel like in a 6 hour day, I get like 1250-1500 tracked hands per day nowadays with lots of sites open, so gotta remember to open more tables in NL400-NL600.
Just need to maximize my hourly instead of comfort and just scan lobbies more often and open more marginal tables/play when games are there + play higher stakes, even if I am not feeling good. I am still thinking about GG NL1000, wonder if I should just play more volume there.
Had pneumonia/bronchitis after a holiday trip overseas for 3 weeks with constant 39c fever and really horrible cough, so studied a lot of hours during that time as couldn't really go outside and just played some NL100 + NL200 more casually.
During this I had random insane swelling for a month in one leg around/lower than ankle and actually thought I might have had blood clot from sitting too much sick etc. but scans didnt show anything.
It was ****ing weird and a bit scary honestly, no real explanation other than maybe a sprained ankle a bit earlier, need to workout/move a bit more.
Learned a lot of things during that time and I actually really liked really intense studying a lot more than I thought.
Milestones: -12k day, first +redline month after years of play (+0,5bb truly the most important thing!)
