Starting the grind with $20

I think gg poker is better than PokerStars even though the rake is higher. gg has a lot more and different rewards that replace the lost of rake tough..

Even at microstakes?

I've heard that a lot of winning players are at a negative bb/100h when including rake, but are winning because of the rakeback system.
Seems a bit confusing.

Also I've heard multiple times that the rakeback percentage is way lower in reality than what is presented on GG.

thoughts?

They sounds Not so good players tough. If you crush Micros decent winrate like 30-50bb/100 and put some volume you Will get More rewarded in gg

I did some research on PS vs GG rakes and it seems like pokerstars has increased cash game rake in march 2024, making it pretty similar to GGs.
To the best of my knowledge PS doesn't have the pre-flop 3-bet rake that GG has but the rakeback system on GG looks very appealing (even though they aren't exactly transparent about the rakeback%).

Anyway, i switched over to GG to see for myself. I deposited $19 instead of $19.99, which technically makes this a $19 challenge now 😃

Here are todays results playing 2nl Rush on GG:

I've never played cash games on GG (only Stars), so other peoples playstyles took some getting used to. Finally my first 1hr session came to a good (the first big spike in the graph)
Start of my 2nd session (2hr) was rough. I even visited the negatives. Aswell as a couple of VERY unfortunate flips (~250BB pot and I lost a 90/10 flip), It didn't take me long to realize what I was doing wrong.
Players seemed to be more passive than I was used to even with good hands so I was way too call/raise happy. I adjusted and managed to end the session well in the profit.
not too mad at 19.36BB/100 post-rake 😃 (I recognize this is an extremely tiny sample size to say anything about my profitability). My play at the end felt very solid.

I was 2 tabling rush for 1300 hands. I only got around 3 hours of playtime. Not even close to what I wanted to get but I had other things i needed to get done. Hopefully tomorrow will be the first full 6-7hr day of the challenge.

I'll keep updating whenever I feel like it I guess 😀

Oh and my GG name is the same as this profile: mumamimu

I woke up 90 minutes after my alarm today, but still got a good 5 hours of play in.
The first half of my game was feeling super solid and I got crazy results.
The start of the second half, as you can see from the graph, was tilting to say the least. I feel like I mostly played pretty strong but lost a good 5 flips in a row. On I believe the biggest pot of the day, I think I was a 98.35% favorite to win..... You might be able to guess what ended up happening. The unluckiest pot of my life (I'll post a couple of screenshots below of some bad beats)

Nonetheless I kept playing pretty much the same. Just tried to be a little more risk-averse and I grinded myself into the profit.

Todays results:

Current BR: $27.54
(before leaderboard prize AND I have no rakeback on GG yet since I never played cash games there. My fish buffet rank is the lowest possible one. That won't be the case for long 😀)

I suffered from some bad luck today but I gotta keep reminding myself that it's an inevitable part of the game, that I have no influence on. Like Tony G said: "The game all evens out"

Still a good day overall

unlucky moment #1

I misremembered. I was a 98.89% favorite on the flop and we ended up chopping the pot.

Unlucky moment #2

Flopped a straight. I kept losing to unlucky river cards sooo much today. Villain had a Q and the river was a 9 so the pot chopped again. Annoying.

last but not least 😀

Villain had a pair of jacks on the flop. By the RIVER (ihatebadrivercards) he'd made a full house... against my flush.......

anyway. I know i could play these spots better, but lack of luck was certainly a huge factor in atleast two of the pots I posted. There were a few other ones with similar themes of a river card destroying everything but that's a part of the game. No can do but to get better. Overall happy with todays play.

Also note that my PT4 is set to EUR instead of USD

oops i posted the wrong image. here's the one I was talking about:

Hi, im in a very similar spot like you rn! How do u study?

Basically I'm "studying" 3 hours per day.

I divide it into three 1hr sessions.

The first hour I focus on researching just one specific concept that I'm struggling with or that I know would be very benefitial to learn in the beginning. For example yesterday I focused on range construction (could be more narrowed down since range construction is quite a broad concept, but at the start I don't want to go too specific. I think it's important to understand the bigger picture before narrowing down).
Then I basically watch a video/videos on the subject (either on youtube or on GTOWizard), and read articles and discussions about the topic while taking notes.

The 2nd hour I just try to understand the thinking process of players that are better than me so I'll usually watch either play & explain / hand analysis videos on Run it once, gtowizard or youtube. Youtube has some good play and explain content to be fair. Run it once goes into much more depth though.

And the third hour will be either drilling a very specific spot on GTOwizard trainer. Currently I've only been focusing on my pre-flop RFI spots and really hammering down my pre-flop strategy/ranges.
Yesterday I was drilling my RFI from CO. Today will be the same but BTN. I'll drill the same spot for the hour, and I won't move on until I hit around 95% "GTOW score" over 100+ hands:

Now my study methods will most likely be changing alot the better I get since I'm not sure whether this type of studying is more or less effective than some other methods. So take everything with a big grain of salt. For example I want to start alternating between watching pro play and explain / hand analysis and reviewing my own hand history

I still find it hard to know what/how to study but I've seen massive improvements in my game in just a week or so by doing this daily ¯\_(ツ😉_/¯

Today is an off day for me, but I got a little bit of play in anyway

Todays results (2nl R&C):

Overall ran really good. 13bb/100 post rake not too bad.

Results for the challenge so far:

Also got a free 0.25€ ticket to a spin and go. Won 1.25€ for free with that.

Also got a small amount from the leaderboard so my BR is looking healthier than ever.

still playing 2 R&C tables at once.

Current BR: $34.28 (+$15.28 in 3 days playing 2nl r&c)

no real updates for today. Decided to give a few mtts ago. Cashed alright in one, but overall down a few bucks for the day.
Mtts aren't my wheelhouse.
Back to cash tomorrow :3

I'll probably stop posting daily updates and instead post weekly/biweekly/monthly updates with graphs for the whole period.

a go*

by mumamimu k

oops i posted the wrong image. here's the one I was talking about:

Checkraise the turn to get some money in. Villain can have so many hands that will bet/call a turn checkraise but check behind a scary river. As played you're putting yourself into a negative freeroll situation on the river where villain can shove his KQ and just call worse.

Regarding Stars vs GG: Any format that can easily be grinded by regulars will always be tougher than the alternatives. RnC in particular is swamped by regulars and tight fish. Keep at it if you're enjoying it and getting some hands in. I've played around 45k hands of RnC NL5 in the past few weeks and it's beatable after rake, you just see some weeeeeeird plays that need some adjusting 😃

I recommend going through the lobby, sorting by name and giving some quick color tags on everyone playing 4 tables. Just use 3-4 colors. Extreme nits, average regular stats, 3bet-happy / aggressive players, complete outliers (I've seen 30 VPIP with 1% PFR, that sorta stuff). It's going to take a while because there's an insane amount of regulars in these games but it is going to help you tremendously to adjust opening ranges on the fly.

I don't know what rakeback you can expect on Stars these days, thanks to my government I am getting precisely 0% rakeback on Stars. Rake should be lower in general on Stars, but I have found that the majority of my "rakeback" on GG comes in the form of these flipaments that you get auto-registered in if you encounter a bad beat or a good beat. Just in the past few weeks I have cashed for around $100 in those. Obviously this is very luck-based but it's something to consider 😃

Good luck on the tables!

Looking back at that hand, I most likely should've done just that. Thanks for the feedback!
I gotta start tagging more hands and analysing them in detail.

I've been labeling and noting certain types of players on R&C whenever I recognise they're clearly that type of player. I've mostly been tagging players who have large stacks and play tons of hands pretty much daily as "regs". I've also tagged some very clear fish who have no idea what they're doing. Some weirdos play a strategy of betting 1BB every street no matter what hand unless its overpair or better... Those guys have a special tag that I probably can't mention here :3

I've run into a couple of players that have thousands of hands per day and literally play a 5-7% VPIP. Makes my life easy. When they enter a pot, I fold almost everything. they're labeld as nits ofc.

On top of that I'll type some notes on players that play a weird strategy and it's been helping me a ton.

I actually suffered a couple of bad beats yesterday and got entered into the GGcare tourney twice (aka i have a deeper stack than I would if I got entered just once. Hopefully I'll get lucky on one of those soon 😀

Having played 300,000 hands there, I can tell you that there are almost all bums. Most of the regs play mainly for Leaderboard prizes and their playstyle is easily exploitative. I myself tagged 2 good players and the rest nitfish or fish. For many regs, it's not even important to win a lot, it's enough to play even. If you get a top 1-4 place in the leaderboards a few times a week and on top of that GGcheers prizes, which inevitably come when you play a lot. Many times when you play all day, you get such a big stack for the GGcheers tournament that you can easily win 20-50d from there. Money wise if you have decent strategy to beat the pool i suggest to play alot and chase those extra money. If you want to improve, then I would invest in the quality of the game.

at this point I'm for sure sticking to 2 tables R&C max. It's enough to get a small leaderboard prize.
Anything more than that and I start making stupid mistakes

By far the #1 most valuable label has been "maniac" tbf.
Some guys have 60+%vpip and a crazy high pfr% and ats%

easiest players in the world to exploit

Gotta love it when Dnegs starts dancing for me every now and then :3

When you get rolled for 5nl, definetly move to Veikkaus. Games are much softer, and rake lower. And you support the government while you grind 😃

wow...

well.. the good news is I'm entered into the GGcare flipout with an okay stack. Can't wait to not cash that again.