Pro forgot to study for too long, now takes on z200
Hello you all,
Well i think the title kinda explains it all.
About life and poker
Spoiler
I'm playing poker full time for almost 4 years now. Was always interested in poker since i was a teenager, always had the dream of becoming pro. Started playing at 18yo but took it super lightly. Played MTTs during uni, but was more like a hobby and didn't study at all (i understood later passively watching poker vids doesn't count as studying). Towards the end of uni i decided to take it seriously and made a 500 deposit (which was a lot to me as a student obv) : "last deposit, now i'll take this seriously and cherish my roll". I started studying and doing things in a more professional way, even tho was still faaaar from what i would now considerer professional, but, well you have to start somewhere. Ran that deposit to like 11k in 3 month running absolutely insane and i thought I was some kind of genius. Moreso thinking that everyone else was so bad, and that this path would be easier than what i thought initially.
I obviously was running like god and was terrible at the game and went from 11k roll to like 2k in the same amount of time. That hurted because it was near ending uni and i was telling to friends and family that this master thing wasn't for me and that my plan was more to go live my best life in Thailand playing poker for a living: Felt cool a the time.
Well uni ended and i still decided to take a sabbatic year to try MTTs full time being more conservative with my roll. Got my expectations down and i was ok to live of 15k a year in some cheap place if that meant playing poker instead of working 9-5. Made like 5k that year and decided i'm not going to live with my parents grinding full time to make this little money so started working in restaurants. Never forgot poker but at the time i thought i had my shot and failed, and that i had to move on and do something better with my life than grinding MTT for 4 euros/hour.
After working a few months in a restaurant i got so tilted at the manager that i quitted. Work was hard enough that i couldn't take that we had to work even more because he couldn't manage properly.
Went on a little trip to Prague with plan to enjoy for a bit and play lowstake live cash. The plan was to go for a few weeks and extend my stay if things go well at the tables. I had no expectations at all at the time, just a fun trip and planned on going back to work in a restaurant after that.
Well things went well and i stayed there 6 month, went from youth hostel to renting a flat and it felt amazing. I was finally living off from poker, and i enjoyed every second of the freedom i felt. I had no clue how much it would last and didn't have a plan either to became a live pro. I was just enjoying the moment and not worrying about the future. Also had a little blog on a french poker forum at the time as that's the kind of stuff i enjoyed reading a lot when younger so i thought i'd at least gave that back to the community (this detail is gonna be important).
Then covid hit and that was tough. Had to go back to my parents and the whole country was locked. It gave my a lot of time to think about my life and what i wanted to do with it. I knew i still had the fire for poker and these few months in Prague left me with a taste of the kind of freedom poker can give you.
But i had close to no bankroll and obviously probably wasn't beating any stake of any format of online poker.
At this point came what have been probably the luckiest thing in my life, litteraly life changing kind of luck: While in a covid one of the best cash player of the country decided that he'd use his covid free time to coach 3 struggling low stakes guy for free for 6 months. I decided to apply even tho i've played close to 0 hands of online cash ever at the time. I explained basically what i just explained here and had the luck that the guy was actually following my blog about my Prague adventures. I got in.
I knew this was it.
This was my shot of actually getting good and really start my poker career. For 6 month i gave it all. Worked my ass off and climbed the stakes from 10nl to 100nl. When coaching ended i was playing 100 and shotting 200. I almost inmediatly found 2 guys with similar profile to share a flat abroad and here started my poker career.
Fast forward a few years later, i've been through a lot poker wise, and experienced a lot life wise too. I'm livin in Mexico for 2 and half years now. Been playing about everything you can imagine at average stake 250 300 probably. Masstabling nl100-200, few tables "higher stakes" like mainly 400-600, regular 6-8 tabling 200s and some 500. All sites basically and not a lot of stability. Quite a ride.
Last year was my first time having a stable grind for more than like 6 month. Grinding Bodog for a year and that went very well.Played like 90% 500 zone and god did i love it. But end of 2023 it kindda died and i had a hard time adapting to the 500 reg table. Also had the sensation of facing more and more bots which was confirmed a bit later by Patrick Howard and others. Wasn't happy about it but decided to quit Bodog.
Early 2024 i was kinda lost on what to grind and also a year of playing exclusively Bodog had considerably changed my game and i hadn't work at all on the game for a year except population exploits. And i could feel my game had suffer from it.
I was never the guy who enjoys working off the tables alone and even if i had a few working groups and got to surround myself with very strong players and got motivated from it, this time i was alone.
As you can guess fom my SN i then played on WPT. I thought well at least competition won't be so tough and i get to study a format that is kinda new so i can sort off get ahead of the curve at least for preflop. Did that for a bit and it went kind off well but really dislike not being able to track hands and results, as well as soft being bad, rake being huge and now 0 RB for regs so i decided to come back to regular 6max.
tldr: OP is a decent 200nl reg looking for a new challenge
About PS z200. I love the comfort of grinding without having to table select, take break when you want, play on a great software, having low rake and decent rakeback.
I'm fully aware that i might get destroyed there but that gives me a ton of motivation. Love the idea of actually take on hard competition, going the opposite way of what i used to do which was being focus on finding the softest games and snap quit when fish does.
I'm not sure for how long i'll try if i really get destroy but i don't mind having a very low hourly or even not winning for a few month. I want to battle and improve my game. I want to focus on the game. I'm tired of table selecting, bumhunting and focusing on hourly, always thinking of "how much is this fish loosing, therefore how much will i make on this table?".
I know it might seem stupid because in the end the goal is to make money, and i don't plan on playing zoom for years. But I actually think it might be good on a larger scale if i take time to face a harder competition and work on my game, even if it's obviously far from my highest EV option right now.
I'm not sure yet what i'm going to share here but i felt i needed to share this challenge of mine and that it would probably help me along the way.
I'll share weekly about my goals. I find week format for goals way more effective than month.
I'll share more about how i plan to tackle this new challenge in next post.
All questions are welcomed.
GL everyone and GL me 😀
20 Replies
This is a supportive positive comment
Hi again,
So about how I want to approach this. I won't be targetting volume obviously and want to use grind more as a way to improve than to make money. I feel like play versus recreational always was a strengh of mine (relative to other regs) and i don't want to forget that either. So probably won't play too much z200 when pool is really full reg. My plan is to review litteraly all pots over 10bb (2barreling or facing a 2bar srp and any 3bp) and use it to create an overview of the game and having a better comprehension of theory myself, and where and how people tend to deviate from theory. Obviously not assuming all deviations are bad but just have a broader comprehension of how people play and get to understand the mechnisms of the game better in the process.
I'll use gtowiz and MDA and try to keeptrack of everything i learn.
I'm gonne use this format to keep track and access easily stuff i already learned about population tendancies
Well that's basically it, it's pretty simple and straight forward, but i think it's gonna be very effective if i do it consistently.
My weeks start on tuesday as monday is usually my day off
Goals for the week :
- grind 25 hours
- study 15 hours
- do sport 6 times
- not checking results
GL to all and big up to @chrisgaui also for motivation !
First day went fine ! Tried 3 tables but too much for the moment, i need time to check stats on vilains and take notes as i don't know the pool yet, maybe later. For now i'll stay with 2 tables and maybe add one or 2 reg tables if i want a bit more action or there's soft 500.
Went for it
Fine in solverland but now i feel like bit to thin cause many pp fold turn en then vilain is supposed to donk some 8x OTR and vs jam call stuff like AQcc which i think never happens
Not fine in solverland but actually think it's great against human, tough to have enough strong in xb range on flop and then vs b150 on the river vilain is supposed to call a bunch of 7x and Q8 and A8 that just called the turn (not gonna happen enough imo)
No brainer call for solver, but unsure without infos on vilain if des always go jam any 66/77 54s AQ, felt close anyway
Changed focus on studying, stopped reviewing tons of spots in a vacuum and will try to do it in a more organized way, toward constructing a solid gameplan.
Felt weak :(
Felt strong 😀
Well i read a few of blogs from guys who went from z200 on to being HS crushers and now i know how they did it. Pure luck. If i knew opening a blog here would flip the upswing switch so hard i would have done it sooner 😮
W1 results
Spoiler
Also made lots of EV dollars on Coin
So yeah pretty insane run, i'll take it ! 
So this is the important part
- grind 25 hours 24.5 hours was really tired last half hour today and decided i won't juste spew to make it a clean 25h so yeah ill classify it as a win
- study 15 hours 16 hours pretty happy about it even if it wasn't that high of a target, happy that i got back to studying pretty easily
- do sport 6 times 4 times got back into running after a light injury and it actually cost me a lot of effort to go out and run even if i know i'll feel way better for the whole day after that, need to be more strict with myself on it, it's worth the time and effort
- not checking results I did check but feeling how awesome i ran, how could i NOT check them??
I'm very happy about this week week, study went great and i now have a clear direction on how ill study and what i'll prioritize. Feel confident about increasing my level of play over the next weeks/months.
Goals for net week
i'll make it the MTO way, i think i saw it from Phil Galfond and basically you set a minimal, a target (being the goal you would have normally put) and a outrageous for each one, which seems smart to me.
- grind 20h // 25h // 30h
- study 15h // 18h // 21h
-sport 5 times // 6 times // 7 times
Tomorrow gonna be day off, i'll try do some running and then groceries, cook with GF and chill.
GL evereyone 😀
Not that easy 😮
Week 2 results
Not that good of a week overall. Had to take a vaccine shot and it put me down for like 2 days. Wasn't able to do sport, don't think it harmed my focus too much but still didn't played as much as i planned too. But i did study as planned so that's good. Also felt more comfortable knowing the pool a bit better and didn't pool select as much and played a lost of 3 tabling which may not have been the smartest thing to do, especially while not feeling super good. A few spews have been made also even if i think i played decent overall.
Very happy with how studying is going, i'm pretty confident in having a decent baseline exploitative strategy in all spot in a few month.
Goals were :
- grind 20h // 25h // 30h I did grind 20 and a half hours , decent giving context
- study 15h // 18h // 21h I did study 18 hours which is very good giving context imo
-sport 5 times // 6 times // 7 times I did only 3 times - Not good even giving context
Goals for this week are :
- grind 20h // 25h // 30h
- study 15h // 18h // 21h
-sport 5 times // 6 times // 7 times
Focus priority for this week is gonna be on sport and studying, not excuse to slip off on sport this week so i'd be very disappointed to not hit at least 6.
Also need to chill the f*** down on cigarettes. I've tried to stop a few times already and failed. I'm not gonna challenge myself with that again yet, because i don't want it to be my main focus right now and it would have to be if i want to make it. But i want to reduce to only those i crave, while right now a lot of them i smoke more as a habbit than because of craving. Think i'll report daily on how many cigarettes just because of thinking or talking about it makes me uncomfortable because it amkes so little sense. Currently at around 20 a day which is borderline ridiculous.
Thanks for reading, have a great week 😀
$1200 rake in 12k hands. **** me.
Subscribed, also a lil bit curious which part of mexico do you live in?
Have you considered CDMX? I much prefer it to PDC.
Adjusting to the pool
week 3 results
Decent week in terms of results, feel more and more comfortable in the z200 pool, had a few short sessions of 400nl-1k, didn't went that well results wise but it's ok as i like testing the waters on stake i aspire to crush in the future. Also Wizard was down a lot this week so it kinda f*ckd my study schedule.
Yesterday i felt a lot of frustration after a few missplay. I inmediatly quit the session, so that's a positive as i wasn't in a good state of mind to play good poker, but the frustration stayed for a few hours, i traded my workout for a beer and few cigarettes and i felt kinda bad, for no reason really. I'm going to implement meditation and gratitude routines; I feel like frustration and other negatives feeling are part of life and it's normal to experience them (and honestly i'm not so often experiencing them) but it's not normal that a few mistakes produce this kind of state of mind. Especially when everything else in my life is going good, and even the run in poker is good so really i was surprise that this impacted me so much and i'll take it as an indicator that it's something i have to work on.
Goals for this wee were :
- grind 20h // 25h // 30h Did grind 26 hours
- study 15h // 18h // 21hDid only 16 hours decent considering wizard problems
-sport 5 times // 6 times // 7 times Did sports 5 times A bit disapointed, i skipped yesterday after tilted quit the session. Improving from last week still so i'll take it
This week is gonna be a short one as on Friday i go for a 3 days weekend trip with gf and a couple of friends, not sure if recap is gonna be on Friday or after the week end. I'm looking forward to it as i felt a bit tired this few days, it's going to be great to chill and reset.
Next report i'll call it a month since a started the blog and see how i've done overall and what i can improve on.
Goals for week 4:
- grind 13h // 16h // 18h
- study 10h // 12h // 14h
- sports 2 // 3 // 4
Vamossss, gl all !
Hey !
Forgot to do the recap, had some talk to make a CFP happen with player I respect a lot but I didn’t happen. Will be out for around a week, looking for a new home in another city with GF.
I’ll make the recap when I get home and plan for future months.
GL all 😀
z200 is not tough competition, its just a house game with rake, reg infestation and low vpips. Id consider other routes, it feels like some regs are just trying to pay for convenience at a high price + mental stimulation.
z200 is not tough competition, its just a house game with rake, reg infestation and low vpips. Id consider other routes, it feels like some regs are just trying to pay for convenience at a high price + mental stimulation.
Yeah what I meant by tough competition was more about the reg/fish ratio than the level of the regs.
Also you get high RB and low rake and can put way more volume than 6/8 tabling reg tables so not so sure that hourly of std avg 200 reg is way better than hourly of std z200 reg. If you know about that please enlighten me!
I do agree that’s it’s not the best way to make money tho
Late Month recap
It's been like 40 days since i started the blog and a lot happened. Studied and played a lot (considering lots of days off due to holidays + negotiating a CFP + searching for a new house + dias festivos with gf family etc).
It's been a nice month overall and i'm happy with my study progress, which was and will remain my main focus the next months. Also ran very good at the tables
I'll share a few pics and results
Few days off en El Cuyo
view from the house
Welcoming food in Queretaro
Home set up vs set up while staying at GF's dads
Results for all sites
did lost a bit on coin
+ around 2k5 in RB and 1k on untrack
I negociated to get a CFP with my study group but it ended up not happening. We managed getting hourly coaching by one of the 2 coaches which might actually be better in terms of $/hour for us even if CFP have others perks obv.
We did get some useful advices on how to study by main coach tho and i'm really excited for the coming months.
I'll expand later on plan for coming months
Hope everybody reading is doing fine 😀
PS: and we did found a very nice home, mouving around teh 10th of october and then will start a new cycle, excited about that too 😀
