Poker is Still Profitable in 2025! Mexico/ Real Estate/ GG MTT Grind
Cliffs from previous PGC´s and an update on what's been going on in life since the last one:
-36 year old living in Mexico for the last 15 years.
-My wife and I have a property management business and manage our own portfolio of rentals (short and long term) here in Mexico which we have built up over my time down here.
-I´ve played off and on over this period of time, but never completely given up on poker. I have had years with very little volume and some years where I´ve been dependent on poker income. Most of that volume has been live cash with some tourney series in there, and always with a healthy mix of online cash/tourney.
-During the pandemic I had a ton of real estate related debt coming due and very little income coming in from said rentals, (especially 2020). This forced me to get back on the poker horse with mixed results, including a pretty brutal 10-month downswing at live mid stakes cash/tourneys. I was playing a lot on the untracked apps and not enjoying playing at all but was basically forced to keep going. The added stress of needing to pay down debt didn´t help mentally, but I was convinced, and still am, that the games are still VERY beatable. It took longer than I would have hopped, but between poker and the real estate business taking off things got much better the last 2 years.
As of January 2025, I am debt free with no outstanding mortgage or personal debt. For the first time in a while I have breathing room and the RE portfolio is completely stabilized. This, along with my kiddos getting older has left me with more free time, and I have been grinding pretty regularly (for me).
I´ve had a really profitable start to the year, with about a 35k upswing on exclusively GG tournaments and cash in January playing roughly 80 total hours.
I jumped back on 2+2 last week and have been trolling around the PGC´s and NVG and am shocked by how negative and down on the poker experience this forum seems to be. Obviously 2+2 is not completely indicative of the poker communities' thoughts; but it seems that between bots, cheating, rake, game quality etc. there isn´t as much excitement about the future as what I currently feel. There are some really entertaining threads that I have read all the way through: Namaste90 and Portemillo are the two that come to mind. They seem to have found some profitable spots, and I like reading about people having success and with a slightly rosier outlook on the future of the game.
So instead of setting goals for this year, which I have abandoned in the past anyway, I am just going to document what a year as a semi retired poker player looks like. And (hopefully) show that the game is still beatable and profitable even without putting in insane study or grind. I am tired of dealing with agents and all the BS that comes along with the apps so this will all be taking place on tracked sites. For now I am just going to be playing on GG. 80% of the volume in MTT and some Zoom and Reg table stuff and some shot taking thrown in.
I started a bankroll prop bet on GG yesterday so that people can follow along with the journey. Got someone to bet $20 at 2.0 markup that I won´t make 35k over the next 3 months lol. I will definitely be looking to win that prop, but the main goal is to just have some accountability to put in volume and track the journey.
First day in the books, small winning day to start the challenge. I will post a mix of stuff, including real estate and Mexico related stuff but the main goals will be volume based. I want to be playing 300 tournaments a month at an ABI of $50. I want to study a few spots per month which I will post here but for the most part just a fun PGC which hopefully has some fun binks along the way.
Cheers! Hope everyone has an amazing 2025.
8 Replies
GL subbed
Looking forward to see you winning at blackjack. hit those 21s
GL
First week in the books.
Happy with results and effort overall and great MTT volume for me.
MTT Results:
146 Games
@ $83 ABI
Happy with both of these.
Couple of scores.
Should have won $320, massive 50bb punt nearing bubble, really high equity mistake that annoyed me.
Played roughly 5k hands of zoom ran above EV for a small winner and a few 100 hands of PLO and broke even.
Biggest reason for the uptick in volume is that the family was gone for 4 days to the States; so I had less commitments than usual, and more time to grind.
My daily schedule, between life, work and kid commitments is the biggest hinderance to more volume for me. I have already committed to having one day with zero work or family commitments on Friday´s so that I can get a full day´s grind in. Other than that, I basically have to play the late afternoon early evening schedule which I don´t mind. Smaller fields is actually fine with me. But I would really like to commit to at least one day from 7:00am to 7pm+ available.
Poker Goals for upcoming week:
Volume: 100 games @ 50$ ABI
ABI was a little higher than I would like it this week. Bricked a 1k and a ton of 215s but I actually don't really have a problem with any of the bigger stuff I fired. More so I feel like I skipped a lot of good value stuff between $15-$44 because I had some bigger stuff up on screen and just couldn´t be bothered. I will be more dilligent, because this is a pretty weak mentality and probably punting a ton of EV considering my limited playtime. I always have a lot of respect seeing some good high stakes reg playing the $30 marathon or whatever, its not that hard just keep clicking register.
-Dedicate at least one full day to the morning GG schedule.
-Play zero hands of PLO and only play zoom if the session is winding down and I have less than 6 tables.
-Study 2 hours of small field itm ICM spots. I pure guessed 3 spots in 1 final table.
Cheers!
Played a shorter session, out of necessity, with 75% of the volume turbo/hyper.
12 Games @ $98 ABI
$1,117 buy ins
$2,120 cashes
$+942 profit
Couple Scores:
Uber frustrating 3 handed and HU, was AI for the win 6 times with all the bounties. Even though it sounds crazy to say there's any edge in a 10bb starting stack: I think there is a ton of value in these Speed Racer formats. Especially before late reg closes there are some pretty dramatic errors being made preflop considering how easy to solve this game type is.
Although I am probably just biased since I seem to sun run this format.
Basically a SNG but we will take what we can get!
Semi Interesting ICM spot.
This could very easily just be a ¨trivial fold¨ spot but I really feel like in these super top heavy bounty games I need to be looking more for spots like this as a way to build big stacks heading into the money against what is essentially as close to an any 2 spot from villain as you will find. Maybe A7o is pushing the boundaries a little too much. But I really feel like I can expand my range more in these bubble spots when the min cash is tiny and super top heavy structure.
These (smallish field) Bounty bubble spots have some cool complexity to them involving later game and the ability to access the bounty part of the prize pool vs squeaking into $. In this particular case villain had been open shoving 80% of hands for the last 3 orbits. We can do a pretty easy calc of equity against a 60-70% range.
The harder part for me is how to assign a future game value to my would-be 22bb stack, 3 or 4 off the $, when villain would still be at the table with 60bb if I won.
Some parts of this spot are pretty easy to analyze or make assumptions on and others are more nuanced which makes the spot semi interesting.
The spot below is not the exact same but quite close. This is final 20% of field and BU shove for 5bb, huge stack SB reshove and BB range off of 15bb so pretty close. If anything, I assumed the late position jam and rejam would make the calling range looser. But this seems WAY too tight to me in Bounty format.
I might just be insanely off base here, but this seems very tight considering future game implications. Perhaps I am overvaluing that.
Basic inputs:
Villain has been aggressively shoving and reshoving for 3 orbits as overwhelming table chip leader. There is an essentially forced AI player, covering the remaining table by 60bb, overwhelming chip leader, 5 OTM etc. I can pretty comfortably give him a 65% range.
Against a perceived 65% range we have roughly 56% equity.
Forced AI bounty is worth roughly 1.1bb at this stage.
If we win, we have 22bb, covering the table but still with villain on my right with 60bb.
If we win, we have a top 7 stack
Min cash is 1.3x BI.
If those are the only factors, it's a fairly easy problem to solve for our calling range.
But if we factor in the value of the 22bb stack moving forward and what % of the bounty pool this stack entitles us to is much more subjective.
Removing the top 3 stacks (all 50bb+), the average stack is only 19bb, so the value of 22bb is higher despite the average stack being 25bb. With 22bb´s we would be in 7th, covering 70% of the remaining field.
There are 2 sub 3bb stacks and 9 sub 12bb. So even though we are 22/25 with 20 paid, our likelihood of cashing is still high. We can pretty comfortably assume that in a bounty format with 3 massive stacks, we could fold our way to the $ at an almost 60-70% clip.
Really, I just want to be able to apply some sort of metric to the value of the chips as a function of our ability to bounty hunt as the game progresses.
I think the relevant factors to solve for this are (% of field covered if we win, remaining bounty pool, remaining bounty pool we immediately can access as covering stack) probably missing some other stuff too.
Curious if anyone has tools or formula to solve for future value of stack in these Bbuilders.
Cheers, bigger and better manana!
.
Feb 18.
Games: 23
ABI: $88
$2027 buy ins
$801 Cashes
-$1,226
Not a lot of super interesting spots, but I still am going to do a deeper dive on these Bounty spots pre ITM as the covered stack. I still am not 100% confident I know what my ranges should look like in those spots.
We are in the process of turning two rentals from short term to long term by March 1st. That basically requires removing certain furniture, amenities and changing the layout. I have found that stuff like this gets done faster, and the way that I want it to be done if I am physically there; so I will be spending all of the day today and probably most of tomorrow turning over those two units and probably won't get any games in.
Cheers. Bigger and better manana!
Week 2
-$1779 overall. Really happy with my volume this week. 152 games at $88 ABI.
Had 2 full days to myself and put in a full days of tournaments.
The first day went well, we played 40 games from around 8am on. +$1,043 over about 9 hours.
Second day was much worse. I played an insane (for me) 62 games and got waxed. -$3819 over 12 hours. I made some really awful mental mistakes late in the day and had a 10bb misclick deep in my one run (top of BI range too) off of 23eff. I managed to drag my mouse over the table as it was popping up and minclick 4b from the SB with 94o and folding to the jam from original raiser. Highly tilting in the moment. But it was a pretty fitting cap to a bad session.
Almost score. We had him AI a few times for the win. Pretty wild how winning or losing this HU is the difference of a winning or losing week. Because I don´t play a ton of volume, these spots feel extra important. I am pretty levelheaded in game, but I am definitely more attached to my results post session with tournaments than I ever was with cash. I thought way more about the -3k day this week than say a 3k losing day in cash. Not sure what that is, but it is definitely a real thing. I am trying to focus more on volume obviously than results but writing a weekly blog about results probably doesn't help either haha.
Last Week Goals:
Volume: 100 games @ 50$ ABI
152 games at $88
I feel like I skipped a lot of good value stuff between $15-$44 because I had some bigger stuff up on screen and just couldn´t be bothered. I will be more dilligent, because this is a pretty weak mentality and probably punting a ton of EV considering my limited playtime.
I am happy with this one too. I normally don´t have the time to play the massive field $15-44 stuff but I mixed in a lot of it in on my two long grind days. Had some nice scores and one almost really nice one in a huge field.
It feels impossible to make it deep in these.
-Dedicate at least one full day to the morning GG schedule.
Check. Got two full mornings in.
-Play zero hands of PLO and only play zoom if the session is winding down and I have less than 6 tables.
Fail. Played a few hundred hands of PLO late in sessions while I was 1 or 2 tabling a tournament. It's not additive to the tournament at all for my brain and there´s really no excuse to do it.
-Study 2 hours of small field itm ICM spots. I pure guessed 3 spots in 1 final table.
Fail, but only because I went down a rabbit hole on calling ranges as the covered stack in bounty tournaments near the bubble. Not sure I have a completely coherent strategy yet, but I solved some spots where I had definitely been guessing too much.
Next week is a very busy one for me outside of poker and will be difficult to get a ton of volume in.
Week Goals:
75 Games @ $60 ABI
Study 2 hours of small field ICM spots.
Finish the 4-5 tasks in my business that I am heavily procrastinating.
Cheers.
