Started with a $1/$2nl challenge, now we're here.
đŽWARNING!! IMA 2+2 VIRGIN!! FIRST DAY AT THIS!! FIRST THREAD!!
The Goal is Simple - $40k in One Year (starting Jan.1st 2013) playing only $1-$2NLHE, and $1-$3 NLHE cash games. Most of my play will be @HSIPoker (90% of play), @HollywoodPoker (5% of play) in southern Indiana, and other (5% of play). I will make the occasional trips Vegas, Chicago, etc. My buy-ins will be least $300 and no more than $800 in all daily sessions. If I lose a $800 bullet in the first hour of play, then I leave. Therefore a losing session will never exceed $800. I am committed to play an average of 30-35 hours a week. All statistics (running total $, $/hr., #of hrs. win/loss ratio, etc.) will be tracked through my Poker Journal App. The max buy-ins on both of these games @HSIPoker is $300 up to half the big stack at the table (i.e. big stack has $1400, then new player can buy-in for $700, or other players at table can add up to $700 to their chips). Also @HSIPoker players can straddle from any position, so $1-$2 plays like a $1-$3 or even $2-$5 w/deep stacks. Side note: Just yesterday a maniac player at $1-$2 nlhe straddled for $350!! I will also play no more than $5k worth of tournaments for the year ranging from $300-$1700 buy-ins. The tournaments will be recorded separately, and will be added or deducted from cash game total profits at the end of the year (ending Dec. 31st 2013). I will stay committed to this all year and I will not stray from my rules. I can guarantee I will post at least twice a week, and would even like to link a monthly video segments throughout the year. If you stay with me on this journey, I can promise you I will stay with you throughout the whole year. You can count on total transparency in my poker grind. I will share honestly the ups and downs, the brutal swings, and sprinkle in some spice and substance. All while trying to spare you the bad beat stories. I rather do naked snow angels in freezing temps than listening to someoneâs bad beat story. For future reference if you share one with me, I will act like I care, but I will really be thinking of when will this bad beat story end!! You can also follow - http://twitter.com/RayzRayl
Background â Starting playing seriously at age 25 during the Chris Moneymaker boom. Duh! It was around the same time I was teaching middle school math. I left teaching to create my own destiny. I started out playing low limits and have played as high as $25-$50 NLHE online. I am like most of you that have $ tied up on Full-Tilt. I am mostly a cash game player, and have played very few tournaments with very little success. I bricked the WSOP Main Event twice (I bought in once, and the other seat was a won through PokerStars). I seem to come up short on the big buy-in tourneys. My biggest score in tournaments are a couple of $20k cashes, and biggest score in cash games are a few $10k sessions. Sometimes poker was my full-time job, and sometimes it was supplement income. Right now it is my full-time job. I own a few rental properties, so that helps take the pressure off the grind. My girlfriend (15yr. relationship) and I have 2 girls (2yrs and 9yrs) that are joys of my life. My biggest challenge is explaining to them along with everyone else that I play poker for a living. I struggle with the fact that I am basically chasing money, and not doing anything productive. On the flip side, I do like the higher levels of thinking, the competition, and the pressure that poker offers me. Furthermore, I am not a gambler! I go straight to the poker room and straight out, nothing in between (no dice, no colors, no slots, no blackjack, etc.). Donât get me wrong though I will bet anything I have an edge on. Most of all, I am a man devoted to my faith. Side note: I donât see playing poker as sinful behavior, or gambling. I define gambling as anything where Iâm not a favorite to win long term. More about me . . . thrive on competition, unique, introvert, outside the box thinker, gym fitness member, a bit anti-social, well mannered, authored my memoir at age 30, every other weekend drinker, love my church, entrepreneurial thinker, tennis junkie, green thumb, and I think cats are skittish.
Reason for Goal â The challenge itself is the ultimate reason for this goal. I was recently in a conversation with a friend of mine, and he was stating that $30k/yr. was a realistic earning for a $1-2, $1-3 nlhe grinder. I discussed that an âAâ player putting in 40hrs/wk. can possibly make $40k/yr. He said, âno wayâ, and I said âIâm going to do it.â And thatâs how this goal started. Reason 2) Simple â the goal will keep me staying determined to play flawlessly, and it will keep me focused at the task at hand. This goal allows me to stay âhungryâ the whole year. I enjoy the pressure of striving to achieve something that is challenging. This challenge will keep me waking up each day and grinding. The satisfaction of achieving this goal will be half the fun, and the journey getting there is the other half. My subscribers, followers, and my post will keep accountable; and keeps me determined to play my âAâ game. Thank you in advance for subscribing/following! Reason 3) it keeps the pressure off me playing the bigger games. I always told people the âpoker lowsâ hurt more than the âhighsâ feel good. If that makes any sense to you! There were times when I was playing bigger limits where I would lose $5k in a sesh. Trust me those days sting! When I lost that amount of cheddar I would always think of what I could have done with that money; i.e. remodel the kitchen, go on shopping spree, buy a used car, get a golf membership at the country club, etc. When I win itâs like âcoolâ, but when I lose big it affects my whole psyche! With this goal I am managing my losses where worst case scenario is an $800 losing day. Reason 4) the $1-$2 NLHE is the most popular poker game around. There are more $1-$2 players than any other game. This will give a good idea of whatâs a realistic earning from a solid $1-$2nlhe player. I want to do this for all the grinders. There is not a truer grinder than a $1-$2 grinder. Big Ups to all the 1-2ers!
Cliff Notes â Can I? Or canât I? Make $40k in 2013 playing only $1-$2 and $1-$3 NLHE. Playing at least 30hrs/wk. and buying in for no more than $800 a session! I will also invest no more than $5k in tournaments in 2013 that will be factored into the $40k/year goal. I will post often with full transparency. I thrive on competition. My motto is look good, feel good, play good. I like puzzles. I have a degree in Mathematics. This is my very first post on 2 + 2 forum. 
All feedback welcome.
Thanks,
Rayz
does it, though? if memory serves me (and it certainly may not lol) I feel like you made around 50k in like 10 months with back yard creations?
Yes it does.
$50k is prob gd estimate. Never perfected it and didn’t want the interactions, responsibility, or reliability. Just a Covid thing, but poker >osc all day. Poker > everything all day. In poker, it just fits the family schedule so well. So flexible and I’m in control of my own destiny. Either I play A+ and keep the house, or I don’t. Gotta perform.
Still looking to invent a product. If that day comes, poker cd b on a back burner. Haven’t found any gd inventions worth pursuing so far
Most inventions or new products that you could possibly come up with are going to require more “interactions, responsibility, or reliability” (which you said you don’t want) than you have ever dreamed of.
Most inventions or new products that you could possibly come up with are going to require more âinteractions, responsibility, or reliabilityâ (which you said you donât want) than you have ever dreamed of.
Didnât want the âinteractions, responsibility, or reliabilityâ w osc. Cd deal w all that if come up w a perfect product. Thought of many, but nothing perfect. Always been a dream of mine, but canât think of the next George Foreman or Scrub Daddy lol
Nice job on the running! Best thing I can tell you is just go slow. Keep your pace slow for now (be able to have a conversation while you run), slowly increase your weekly mileage. To train for a 10K I wouldn’t exceed 25 miles/week. Your conversational pace will naturally get faster and once you get to March or so you can start incorporating once a week faster tempo runs to make further improvements. But the vast majority of your weekly miles should always be at the slower pace. It&#
r
Took @flpkr advice this evening. Personal long at a slow pace. #iamnotarunner
Ate wheat noodles w Rao’s sauce for dinner. Seeing the rest of family add the sausage and eating the breadsticks was a taunt.
I’ve worked as a trainer for 7 years.
You really going to cause metabolic chaos. Your body is going to use muscle as fuel at a certain point.
No good nutrition and workout plan involves fainting.
as long as we're all piling on.
idk. its hard to tell how much is legitimate vs exaggerated re the fainting. you really like to present your life within the context of a narrative particularly you overcoming hardship and adversity. but like your life has been pretty easy man. you jammed all in into a metaverse alt coin during a speculative mania because your son was 1 of 1200 daily users and made enough money not to have to work for 5 years. over the course of a 10 year thread you've probably played idk 5000? hours while identifying as a poker pro and maybe another 800 doing manual labor. that isn't really struggle lol
all of the weird random competition and challenges seem to me to be in place of accepting that you don't really have a purpose in life. it's pretty clear poker isn't that for you. you also don't seem to have much financial incentive / necessity to play. you don't seem remotely motivated to get better, make more money, move up, or play more hours. you're going to spend more money than you've extrapolated making with an entirely unrealistic winrate / amount of hours played and seem to take some kind of perverse pleasure in doing everything in your power to sabotage your "career". you grinding out rent money while short rolled every month at low stakes nl for eternity (i understand you're rolled now but predict your liquid cash 6 months from now based on winnings / spending) isn't proving anything to the haters, its just wasting your time. the guy earlier who said you don't seem to enjoy poker i think has a point too. from the outside you just seem to do it because you don't know what else to do with your life and don't want to figure it out. that'd probably be ok if you had like 4 million but you have 400k (tied up in equity in a house) and spend what seems to me to be reasonably close to 100k a year.
most likely, despite all the back up against the wall rhetoric and how you will be homeless if you dont make this 30k work, you are going to bust your liquid cash midway through the year and heloc again because time is a flat circle. hopefully it coincides with low / 0 rate environment and we can run the entire thread back
Should have asked this in prior post, you may have listed it and I missed it. Do you know your base metabolic rate ? Adding strength training and eating closer to your BMR would help you achieve goals way healthier and faster !
@submersidd I can’t really get on board w anything u said. Appreciate the post, but disagree w most. <—— that was what I was getting ready to post. But, read again, mayb and ur more right than wrong.
What wd u call myself. My neighbors been asking what I do? Do I say…
A) poker player?
B) own some rental properties and flat out lie.
*usually my go to to avoid the poker talk.
C)Day Ttader?
D)investor & Entrepeneur?
E)semiretired off binking crypto and poker?
Seriously, I never know. Ty again for the long post. Wish more wd post here. Trying to b as smart as possible. Learned a lot here and cd help for that next invention.
you aren't really any of those things though. you recreationally play poker a few times a week and have gone out of your way to approach it as unseriously as possible. you don't actually own rental properties, you had one 6 unit apartment building 10 years ago that you sold to gamble on stocks and buy a house lol. you had a small spurt of day trading where it seems like you tilt chased all of your money during an awful macro / rates period because you were upset that you had less money than a year ago. you definitely aren't an investor, you don't have any assets except 50% of 50% of a house you can't afford and some sports cards.
the semi retired thing is the weirdest part of your identity though and i think it's why so many people in this thread have tried to talk to you. you're acting like a 20 year old where 300k is all of the money in the world. you have an ok nest egg but nowhere close to retirement / do nothing for the rest of your life / fu money. even if you were a single guy you wouldn't have nearly enough money to live off of forever. the fact you got 3 kids, a wife, and impulse control / materialism (self esteem tbh) issues means you probably have 4-5 years until you have literally no money (assuming you pull the equity out of the house) at the rate you're going. like you can post a million random challenges in the thread that you take super seriously for 72 hours and drop the next week - im going to day trade!, im going to be a poker pro!, im going to lose 30 pounds!, im going to be a runner!, im going to be a pickleball court builder!, im going to collect all the rookie cards!, im going to buy a tesla!, im going to buy a rivian! but you just seem to be in denial about the state of your life. you don't need challenges to force yourself to work, you are going to have to do something to make money at some point in the very near future.
instead you just keep trying to come up with these wishful thinking lotto mentality type things - im going to be a day trader (anything less than a million dollar position is boring to me!), im going to be a poker pro, im going to invent something, where you stumble into a huge pile of money with zero effort. you dont really seem keen on putting in work into any of them and just fantasize that they will work out. its like something a child does lol. i get that that mentality worked out for you with the mana trade, but i cannot stress enough how much luck was involved in that. you had absolutely 0 risk management and put all of your money into an "asset" you didn't understand (literally zero regard for price / tokenomics / general market trends and pretty much no real knowledge or experience in crypto) and managed to return a 5x on your net worth over like a 3 week period during peak speculative fever / crypto bubble / 0 interest rate environment. that isn't replicatable and was an awful decision that worked out well. pretty good evidence of that is how much you gave back on the back end between xlm / the day trading debacle last year. its the poker equivalent of winning an mtt and deciding to quit your job and go pro.
idk i know alot of this is unsolicited but you just seem lost from the outside. its obvious poker isn't really the answer for you to anyone thats objective. you dont actually do anything that pros do and go out of your way to not have a schedule, play bad hours, cap your upside to an unsustainable earn by refusing to try to move up past 1/3, don't study, drink before / while you play (especially during shots!), not talk about strategy or try to learn and follow current trends, and hit and run to preserve your ego. you don't have the disicpline imo to be in a cash intensive business. look how quickly you've torched your net worth whenever you've had access to piles of money in the past on dumb things. if you're looking for more recent evidence, buying a single 2k dog while you claim to be in back against the wall me vs the world i have to make this 30k last forever mode would be ridiculous. the fact you bought two when your family didn't even want that so you could get more attention or a better story for this thread or whatever it is that guides your decision making process is sheer insanity.
anyways idk man. i know this doesn't really answer your question of what you should call yourself but maybe its worth thinking about. sorry if its annoying, i wouldn't have posted a follow up if you didn't respond to the first one.
Everything in that post is entirely correct but none of it will be seriously listened to.
What are the odds that hero is trolling us and actually inherited a couple million or hit the lottery/stocks/crpyto/cards/rental property harder than we think and he is doing the old jean-robert bellande "i swear I'm broke" while buying expensive things?
What are the odds that hero is trolling us and actually inherited a couple million or hit the lottery/stocks/crpyto/cards/rental property harder than we think and he is doing the old jean-robert bellande "i swear I'm broke" while buying expensive things?
I think it's legit.
But I am a sucker đ
@submerside thats why im giving the multiple choice. I really dont know what to tell the neighbors.
Cd go w ‘semiretired’ since only been avg 20hrs/wk since lifetime of this thread.
Anyways I got a 24hr ban today, so we home chilling w 2 puppies. Before I left, went to hotel fitness center and got in a 45 min workout. #freemembership
Then we got a salad for the road. Gonna remove all tomatoes, keep 1/4th of the cheese, 2/5th of the chicken, 1/2 of fat free Italian.
lol at casually mentioning a ban and then not sharing why it happened/poker results
you're a lottery winner, rayz. when someone ask, that is 100% the most appropriate/honest response. let that sink in. I mean seriously, take a step back, look yourself in the mirror, and swallow that one.
Trainer tries to give advice yesterday you blow him off. You have no idea what you are doing to yourself, but decided however you get to 146 this is great! It isn’t. You are not eating all the chicken why? Or the tomatoes or anything else? Because saving 100 calories will do what for you? I thought pickle ball court was the measure of insanity. But it keeps going. I have no doubt you get to 146, however you are too lazy to do it the right way. The story of this whole thread is laziness until you give yourself meaningless challenges where you work as dumb and hard as possible for your “goals” for a minute until you find a new one.
@larrythelegend Iâll disagree w most of that.
Itâs cool tho.
Poker Reel #2 of $40k 1/3nl goal playing part time. #semireitred
You can disagree with the truth but it is still the truth.
What are the odds that hero is trolling us and actually inherited a couple million or hit the lottery/stocks/crpyto/cards/rental property harder than we think and he is doing the old jean-robert bellande "i swear I'm broke" while buying expensive things?
Very unlikely he would be playing the lowest stakes possible if he has that much $$$. Running out the clock until he receives an inheritance is a possibility though.
@submersidd I canât really get on board w anything u said. Appreciate the post, but disagree w most. <ââ that was what I was getting ready to post. But, read again, mayb and ur more right than wrong.
What wd u call myself. My neighbors been asking what I do? Do I sayâŚ
A) poker player?
B) own some rental properties and flat out lie.
*usually my go to to avoid the poker talk.
C)Day Ttader?
D)investor & Entrepeneur?
E)semiretired off binking crypto and poker?
Seriously, I never know. Ty again for the l
Tell them the truth, you are the third best poker player in the world. No need to b humble.
you're a lottery winner, rayz. when someone ask, that is 100% the most appropriate/honest response. let that sink in. I mean seriously, take a step back, look yourself in the mirror, and swallow that one.
Spot on. Won the lottery multiple times and squandered it. Currently squandering his health and family.
Butterly do your thing. Im rooting for you. I think as long as you can always find a job if poker doesnt work out, you'll be fine. Just be honest with yourself and the results. And 140-150lbs at 6ft (if i read correctly) is not overweight in the slightest. I actually think its probably underweight. What some people perceive as success and failure is different for everyone. Some people are negative regardless, no matter what you do, how you look. Ignore them.
@shynepo3 thanks man. For sure I ignore a lot here. They donât bother me. I actually love it.
These people donât know me, or how I operate. We different. Some advice i see here im def paying attention, but itâs like 10% 90%ignore.
Hit n ran today. W a record time of 37mins. I ran the whole table during the first dealer down, and got out. Still a little tilted from ongoing poker room saga ****. Didnât want to play in a mood/not clear headed.
+199 on 37mins #semiretired
r
Took @flpkr advice this evening. Personal long at a slow pace. #iamnotarunner
Ate wheat noodles w Raoâs sauce for dinner. Seeing the rest of family add the sausage and eating the breadsticks was a taunt.
Good job extending your run! I would say a good schedule for you right now would be 4x a week, 3 runs of 3 miles and 1 longer run starting at 4.5 miles and extending that longer run slowly each week. After a few weeks extend the daily runs to 3.5 and eventually add a 5th day if you feel up to it.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
