A Loser No More

Hi Guys,

I thought I would start documenting my poker journey as a way to make new friends and get some accountability for improving. I hope to keep this blog updated around once a week, probably on Sundays, with my goals, progress, and any interesting stories/hands I come across. Maybe some updates on my occasionally interesting personal life. Anyway, here's the background:

BACKGROUND

I am a grad student in my late 20s working towards a Ph.D. in Applied Physics. I study experimental quantum optics, particularly related to photon pair generation for quantum communications and information processing. I'm also a musician, having played keyboard instruments since I was around 8 years old (with a 5 year hiatus).

I learned to play poker when I was around 10 while on vacation with my dad. He learned to play from his father, and they travelled to Vegas around once a year to play and see shows and the like. My dad hosted a monthly cash game with a group of regular recreational players and I would usually sit on his lap and watch until it was my bed time. He's pretty good for a recreational player: read some books, knows some basic odds concepts, final tabled once at the daily tournament at the Aria, but he never really taught me anything besides the order of hands and the rules for NLHE/stud.

I played poker here and there in my life, sitting down in my dad's game once I got old enough, playing with friends who were mostly into it for the gambling aspect, but never really took anything seriously. When I turned 21 my dad took me to Vegas and gave me a buy in for 1/3 at the Aria as a gift. Left that weekend with around $900, including giving my dad the buy in back. I probably got lucky, I don't remember the session all that well, but I was hooked and new I had to learn more about serious poker.

I did some free online stuff, learned about EV and odds and ranges and equity, but never took studying seriously. I thought that because I read some things about poker I must be better than all the people playing microstakes online at ACR, and boy was I wrong. I've been a losing player for the better part of 2 years, playing here and there and mostly blaming it on grinders who made microstakes poker their life. But recently I decided that enough was enough and I am going to become a winning player! Currently, my cash game results look like this:

This is almost entirely at 2NL, so it's not like I have some huge money problem in my personal life, but I can't be happy with it. And from here, I plan to only go up!

CURRENT PLAY

Right now, I consider myself a bit of a calling station. I overcall 3bets pre-flop and am not really good at determining my equity post-flop which leads me to overcall and pay off opponents when I'm dominated. Years of play like this has also made it difficult to be aggressive when I need to, and I think my post-flop bet sizing could use some work to keep my opponents from hitting cheap draws. Bluffing is somewhat of a mystery to me. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and I am not always sure why, or if it's working enough or if I am doing it enough. I'm definitely not getting paid off enough when I win, so I probably overfold some of my bluffs.

I don't really consider myself that good at reading/categorizing my opponents. I know who is good and who is bad, who's a maniac, but I need to fine tune my characterizations to separate the loose passives from the calling stations, the nits from the TAGs, etc. I think part of the problem is that I am so focused on my own game and making the right move that I have a hard time drawing long-term conclusions from my opponents. That and the constantly changing player pool you come across in the microstakes.

GOALS

I've narrowed down a few goals to hit at the end of the year:

1. Recoup my losses in big blinds so I can actually say I am break even. I know monetary goals aren't the best, but I am only down around 10 stacks so I think planning on getting that back by the end of the year isn't unreasonable. If I want to bust out of microstakes I think I should be able to win 10 stacks in 9 months, and hold onto those winnings.
2. Learn to use the poker tracker (I use DriveHUD 2) so that it is actually a useful tool and not an annoying reminder on the screen of how much I have lost. The features in there are deep and will help me categorize the players I come across. No reason I shouldn't be analyzing my sessions to learn what is really going on.
3. Categorize every player i have at least 250 hands against. That seems like enough to know what kind of player they are, but also limit the number of players I come across. Even if I haven't seen them in a year or so, I want to pick up on the characteristics that make up certain kinds of players so that it is easier to do when I am at tables.
4. Nail down preflop so I make a mistake ~7% of the time. Yes, that's still a lot of mistakes, but it's much less than I am making now and it's a quantifiable goal I can say I did or did not hit.
5. Improve my on-the-fly equity calculations post-flop. This comes from player categorization, because if I can estimate someone's range based on what type of player they are, I'll better be able to estimate my equity. I haven't found a way to quantify this yet.
6. Finish Jonathan Little's "Mastering Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em". I love Jonathan's exploitative style of play and I think he's one of the greatest poker educators out there. He's a skilled player and has documented so much of his knowledge, so learning a system like his will help take me to the next level.
7. Keep this blog updated once a week. Accountability!

Very long term goals are building a bankroll to play 300NL live at my local casino. Yeah... we've got a ways to go.

TOOLS AND BOOKS

Here's what I am using so far, suggestions welcome:

1. DriveHUD2. Track bankroll, track and study hands, evaluate the play of myself and others.
2. Poker Trainer app. Great preflop study tool for only $9.99 a month.
3. David Sklansky's "Theory of Poker." Yes it's old, and focuses a lot on limit games, but I'm about halfway through this book and have already learned so much about how to think about poker. It covers basic concepts so clearly, and seems extremely helpful for that reason.
4. Jonathan Little's "Mastering Small Stakes No-Limit Hold'em." See above.
5. GTO Wizard. I don't plan on paying for it because yeah it's hella expensive but it is good for studying different spots and practicing post-flop in a way the Poker Trainer app doesn't fully allow me to yet.
6. Youtube, discord, etc. So much free knowledge out there.

OBSTACLES

1. Time. I am a Ph.D. student trying to graduate sooner rather than later. I can't just sit around and play/study poker all day. I've got my band, my girlfriend, etc. Life is busy.
2. Preconceived notions. Poker is tough and I have decades of bad assumptions to get rid of. I consider myself to be an extremely intelligent person, as shown by my choice of career, which often makes it hard to humble yourself and say you're wrong or don't know something. This has primarily what has impeded my progress to date.

If you've read this far, thank you, and I hope you look forward to my first update coming this Sunday!