Poker is hard! A honest insight on my journey to become a poker pro. Discussions desired!

Hi @fallingjohn,

maybe this can help you (it is free)

https://www.raiseyouredge.com/courses/un...

tbh you can probably sell a course on how to do this, but the key is not only VPIP but also PFR and 3b. A fish who plays 50/5/2 is gonna lose, but not close to as much as a 50/30/15 guy. Also fold to 3b is a good stat, if they are rarely folding to 3b you can crush them especially IP.

Yeah, need put some effort on this to figure it out. Now the data I gather is like this:

hands/winrate
VPIP/PRF/3bet/fold to 3bet
BTN steal/SB steal

and also red/blue line tendency. if a -8bb loser with 20k hands have a positive red line, I'll call with all bluff catcher and never bluff him. If v SB steal more then 55%, I'll deviate more to 3bet. The method is pretty straightforward, maybe it will take some time for me to have a better understanding of all status.

Bit late but still kicking.

August overall did not go that well, especially on GG plattforms. (PS was very good though)

I tried to red line hard at the beginning but kept getting put into bad setups and stuff, so blue line suffered more than red line could compensate for.
Another problem: I payed 14bb/100 in rake at NL100 reg tables red lining and playing more loose. With PVI I only get about 2bb/100 back from rakeback.
This is unbeatable for me.

So next I did sit down and think about how to pay less rake on every street.
I did find a more passive and tight way to do that and got down to 7bb/100. (red line tanked hard again of course)

Next I tried to implement some red lining stuff into this paying less playstyle and the results are mixed.

Another issue is that having a low loss/win rate means it takes a large dataset for any meaningful analysis.
Something I don't have the time or patience for.

So what do we do?
Since I got more and more confident with my game (yes I know blunt results in this high rake environment don't show that) I decided to move back up to NL500+ again.
Rake there is significantly lower (on sites apart from GG it's even insanely lower) and the games anyway run around a fish.

Advantages:
- Less rake
- Stakes are higher which makes me think even more about each decision
- I Play less tables (also because there are less good tables running)
- It's a stake where the money actually matters compared to living expenses and in case I succeed it's a nice side income
- It's a move forward

Downsides:
- Regs tend to be better
- Downswings cost me a lot more money

GG Results from August:

Current Status:
I worked together with agents and got access to a lot more sites now with much better rakeback deals.
Motivated to crush NL500+. Let's see how it goes and give it some time!
Don't freak out if a month or two are in the red.

Greetings

Tryagain

Here are the explicit graphs during the red lining part:

Greetings

Try Again

Tough graph. Looks like not fighting enough for pots. I'd drop to 25NL/50NL and start building again from the ground up. Go back to the solver.

GG insanely high rake has ruined years of your life. But you are not alone. However it is sad that people enabled this crazy rake structure site to become this big instead of die at the beginning.

Your blog is well written. It is refreshing to see something written this in depth. But a key word count would probably count "rake" as the most written word. This journey which appears to have started at NL200 and then increased to NL500 in hopes of lowering the rake, still is going to be a nightmare at NL1k on GG from this rake structure comparison. The skill level of players at NL1k is going to make the 6.5bb GG rake a boulder on your back. Your different style attempts and experiments with red line and blue would have netted interesting results in money and knowledge on any other poker site beside the high rake at GG. I understand if you can't walk away from GG. You are not alone.

But if you find yourself digging a hole, stop digging.

Did you even read anything I wrote?

I read it. But I think that moving up to 500nl on GG for rake reasons, given the samples you have provided above, doesn't look to me like the best move. Just feels like you're going to be crushed.

Why not just move to a site with lower rake, work out exactly where you stand by starting at 25NL/50NL there and working up through that - putting in volume clearly isn't an issue for you.

Are you banned from other sites?

Hard to believe that you should have read a lot here since I addressed your question already in previous posts.

No I am not banned on any site. I do have some country restrictions though.
Nevertheless I play on GG, Club GG, Pokerbros, Pokerstars, Ipoker, ACR, WPT and Coinpoker.

I do however only share my GG story here. (it's my main volume simply because of traffic reason and there is no point in posting monthly 10k hands or lower since it's just possibly variance anyway)
Maybe this changes in the future.
And yes, GG is my worst site so far in terms of results.

Working out exactly where you stand, imo, is not a thing since it would take millions of hands to be somewhat sure (and during such a timeframe you will change your game many times, so starting over again all the time).
It's actually what I tried to do the last two years and I still don't where I exactly stand.
So I give up on this attempt, try my best everyday to focus and improve and see where it takes me.

Hey mate

Thanks for your post.
I don't see it in the way that it ruined years of my life.
Sure not everything went as planned, but I still did learn a lot which will help in the future.

At least I try out new stuff and don't try the same approach each time.

We will see how it goes.
Longterm goal is still 5kNL. Hopefully, some often mentioned issues will disappear there.

Greetings

Tryagain

A month has passed and we take a look at the September results.

I only played NL500+ this month.

Main stake is NL500.

I ran hot in all-ins this month which helped my bankroll.
Not sure what to make of the results yet.

NL1k

Month was okeyish with a bad stretch at the end. We will see how this continues the next month.

All together:

September was a rollercoaster with the worse end for us, unfortunately as usual.
On the two tops I hopped into a 5kNL game and nearly lost a stack for each shot. Happy with my game though (during these approx. 100 hands).

I did 3bet/4bet more during the second half of the month and also played overall a bit more aggressive.
During the first half I lacked it a bit, also because of confidence issues.
Feeling pretty confident now and think that I am currently playing my A game again.

So I lost about 8k this month and got 6k back in rakeback and bonuses.
So net loss is about 2k.

It's now the 4 month without a BBJ table. So far still never won one.

In October:
- I want to play less reg battles. I usually sit at empty tables and sometimes I get challenged and I don't leave.
This seems a bad strategy for GG for obvious reasons.
- No 5kNL before I have 20-25k in the account.
- Try to fight more for pots, especially small ones.
- Only play when I have the energy for. Sometimes I start playing eventhough I had a rough day and am already mentally drained (from work, family etc.). I have to be more consequent on this one.
- Don't listen to the naysayers. I can achieve everything I work hard enough for.

Greetings

Tryagain

you played so many hands and tried to even play bigger than you can beat and had like a title on thread that everything will fail so its unsurprising it did

if you really want to win then why not play like nl50/nl100 somewhere else than GG rake trap and commit to some cfp deal just do what coach says fix the leaks start winning

this like experimenting with blueline , experimenting red-line, trying to exploit etc... means you lack fundamentals you need a coach ... after that everything is possible

Thanks for posting the updates. Keep going!

I am reading a book by Alex Fitzgerald, "The Myth of Poker Talent". It seemed to help my play, even though my sample size is too low to say this conclusively.

I'm wondering, how much do you adjust your play to opponent's stat on the HUD?

Poker as a career is sort of a waste of time these days unless you live in a super low cost of living area or are single with no kids/no people you need to support. The problem is you need access to funds just for poker, scalability is non existent and I don't see games getting much softer any time soon, and you need your direct time (labor) playing or else you don't make money. I think figuring out a way to leverage your time where you can make money without physically being somewhere is the ideal way to go. When you're trading your time directly for an hourly wage you'll never make a lot of money unless you somehow figure out some high level skill that's better than 99.9999% of your competition which is of course extremely hard to do.

if you want to reg battle go play the solver

This is a bit like telling the population of the world to not have a job but to be investors or innovators or something, poker is a job you trade your time for an hourly and it should be only compared to other jobs therefore.

Guys Ive met playing like 2/5 live (as long term job) are not smart at an in particularly high level. The avg IQ of someone beating nl200 online is far higher. But for both of those archetype mediocre level poker grinders similarities do apply : they might make money with something like crypto but rarely be real "businessman" launching and building business imperiums to coach poker or bringing their German food and beer to Vietnam in restaurant chains they own or launch a new taxi app somewhere in India or sell Microloans in Africa. Simply because succeeding with those is difficult.

It is totally out of comfort zone to get started with something like that for people who just wanted to grind poker in first place. Business is difficult mostly requires decent capital and decent network and some ambition and experience on the field to what your doing. Then there is competition and in all of those that are running on a cost of hiring people , having any kinds of inventory / rentals etc. is veeery difficult , talking about restaurants in particularly. For poker players coaching poker is the natural step for trading your time for an higher hourly and trying to make it courses and be a famous coach like Clanty is the obvious money path.

Poker is an OK job. Some are better, a lot are worst.

He's right in a lot of ways though. I would give the same advice to guys with 9-5 that at least some allocation of time should be used towards building equity in something. No matter how baller your job is if you're not building equity in something you're still just trading your time for money. It's not necessarily a bad thing but tough to create financial freedom doing that and if conditions changes even slightly you're in trouble. Completely disagree that that mediocre level grinders don't have the intelligence or whatever it takes to build equity in something. There are a lot of non-descript businesses out there that just prints some amount of money each month. There are plenty of morons out there that run multi-million dollar business empires. It is a different skillset than poker but if you can put your mind to beating 200NL online you can almost certainly figure out how to run some small businesses. Just because something is outside of their comfort zone doesn't mean they can't do it. It's outside your comfort zone the first time you move up to play a stake you've never played before, but the 100th time you play it you don't blink an eyes. Same translate to different forms of poker as well. If you can't deal with being outside of your comfort zone doubtful you'll be able to make it long term in poker since being technically proficient is such a small part of being a professional. Can you network your way to good games? Can you build a network to put you in games you can't afford to play on your own? Can you market yourself? Can you handle learning a completely new game when the game you specializes in dries up?

ok guess u are right.

time to build a business empire.

My point is poker is highly labor intensive, requires a bankroll, and offers no scalability other than moving up in stakes yourself. I think for most of us the ideal job is one that makes a lot of money, requires minimal in person hours, and is flexible on your time with scalability. Those jobs/businesses are out there - not all businesses require much capital to start up. Personally I'm in the Real Estate space - found sort of the ideal business that checks all these boxes, and use to play poker for a living years ago. It just sucks the cost of raising a family in the US and the time suck a lot of these "careers" take from you just to pay the bills. I think with where things are with Instagram/TikTok/etc there's a number of opportunities online where you don't have to leave your house. A better way to do it in 2024.

Are you a tik-tokker?

No but just see a lot of these kids on there presumably making some money

TikTok is mostly a "believe none of what you hear and half of what you see" kinda place.

Gen-z'ers crave popularity (followers + likes) like previous generations crave money.

100% agree with this. Poker is still my main thing but man trying to support a family in Canada is not cheap and extremely stressful when you're on a 3 month breakeven and crashing on your buddy's couch is no longer an option. Unlike most people on 2p2 I am desperately trying to be a recreational poker player these days. Think there is a lot of value in not being a professional because the door is now open to more good games where pros are not welcomed.

There are businesses for every budget. If you can't afford the dream business, can start smaller or start in a country with cheaper labor. With AI getting better and better building tech businesses with no coding background not even out of the realm of possibilities.