Hunting for max EV

#1: 150k hands before fatherhood

A conventional path... until the cards appeared

Hey everyone! My name is Pablo. I was born in a small city in Spain and, for a long time, my life followed the expected script: football, good grades, and lifelong friends.

However, at 19, something changed in my student residence. My friends started organizing poker nights. At first, I was a bit hesitant about the gambling aspect, so I refused to join. But curiosity and that competitive drive I’ve always had eventually won me over. I threw in a fiver and got stacked.

That first lost stack didn’t discourage me, it made me hungry. I started studying just to crush my friends. Once I pulled that off, I decided it was time to look for tougher opponents. I took all the money I had and went to battle online at... NL2. After 9 years on this rollercoaster, I now play mid-stakes for a living.

Why am I writing this?

For two fundamental reasons:

• 1. Community: For years, I experienced poker as a lonely path, but I’ve discovered that my biggest leaps in skill have come from sharing with friends, coaches, and students. This space was born exactly for that: sharing.
  
• 2. Commitment: There is a huge difference between promising something to yourself and doing it in front of others. Putting my goals out there publicly drives me to maintain a much higher level of discipline and accountability.

2025 Summary

I started the year fully invested in coaching at the BTS school. I felt it was the logical next step, but the reality was that my career as a player was stagnating. I was barely playing 50 hours or 10-15k hands a month.

Then came Seville. A trip to play live with a great friend reminded me why I fell in love with this game. That spark led me to make some drastic decisions:

• 1. Cutting ties: I walked away from the coaching project that was causing me frustration.
  
• 2. Seeking guidance: I joined Luismi1912’s coaching program.
  
• 3. Total focus: I shifted my energy back to playing and studying.
  

As I increased my hours, my mental demons appeared. I could no longer close the session at the first hint of tilt or take vacations whenever variance hit, I had to show up. My biggest victory in this area was understanding “disidentification.”

“Learning to detach my identity from the short term. Understanding that I am not a single day’s performance, nor a winning session, nor a brutal downswing: I am the system behind it. I am my habits, my discipline, and my consistency. That is my true value as a player.”

This mindset makes mistakes during a session much easier to handle. It helps me avoid getting anchored in guilt or frustration and simply let it go.

The 2025 numbers

I’ve always been a fan of tracking my habits, but this year I decided to improve the system’s precision so I could accurately compare what I planned versus what I actually executed. My big goal for the end of the year was to hit 100 hours of play per month without sacrificing technical quality. I started auditing my data in August, and here is the result of that tracking:

In this graph, each column represents my total work hours (planned vs executed). Although the bulk of it is playing and studying, I also count administrative tasks and coaching sessions. Even though it doesn’t show on this specific chart, I managed to surpass 100 hours of play in both November and December.

Beyond the hours, the volume and the levels provide the full picture of my 2025. With an average stake of NL314, this is how my year broke down:

• NL200: 126, 000 hands.
  
• NL400-NL600: 55, 000 hands.
  
• NL1000: 6, 000 hands.
  

The graph is in bbs. The EV winrate for the sample is 7.4bb/100.

Objectives for 2026

This year, I don’t intend to increase my total work hours, but rather the efficiency of those hours. My goal is to pick up the pace without losing quality in the process.

• Volume: 150, 000 hands in the first half of the year.
  
• Efficiency: Increase from 211 hands/hour to 250 hands/hr. This would allow me to hit 25k hands a month while maintaining 100 hours of play.
  
• Level: Raise the average stake to NL400
  

There is a specific reason why my goals are focused on the first half of the year: In July, I’m going to be a father for the first time! I know my life is about to be turned upside down, so I’ll take advantage of these months to work as hard as possible. Once the baby arrives, I’ll readjust my strategy for the second half of the year. On that note, I could really use some advice from any “grinder dads” out there on how to survive that first year without letting volume, winrate, and sleep plummet.

What can you expect from this blog?

My intention is to post an update once a month. I’ll be keeping an eye on the comments to read and reply to you all, as I’m really excited about creating this space for exchange.

In these posts, I’ll share my feelings, my mental state, and my results in broad strokes. However, don’t expect monthly graphs. I firmly believe that focusing on such short-term results only feeds the noise of variance and pulls us away from what matters. I will publish my results in BBs transparently at the end of the semester when the sample size is more significant.

See you at the tables!

PS: I know this 2025 summary is coming while 2026 is already underway, but I felt it was a necessary step to provide context for the starting point of this blog and the monthly updates to come.