grinders future outlook

I mean why should you trust?

Guys who run those sites are psychopaths , only thing in their head is how they max their own EV - everything is calibrated around that single purpose

I am a winner so they stopped letting me win. Its very smart it just shows like I make a bunch of EV but oh Im just unlucky , like unlucky forever , lol .

I don't believe it. It all changed like 2022 . Many software changes etc. many many changes. Stars also changed their lobby to be a dark theme only.

Its the subconscious mind of those people signaling they did something dark. No way else they would want that ugly dark theme be forced in.

Then they also send me these "is your gaming under control etc. messages" like Ive taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from their site

but as i said those people are very smart they do these on purpose , they don't want regs there anymore. They want bad regs like Q8o guy.

I was saying similar things to my blog long long time ago, well we can't prove anything and people may call us crazy but it's logical top 1 site can make anything they like to get best results, they may make a code in the system to lets say variance favors losers when its time, with AI and stuff everything is possible i believe nowadays and if everyone went broke site wouldn't have many customers, i can say about myself that i never ever deposited any money, i never went broke but everytime i had terrible run, i hit my bottom still somehow i was able to recover from it like everytime, well i was moving down stakes but anyway

Like most grinders I have gone through the progression from online, to MTTs, to live, to PLO, to more cards PLO, to apps and private games etc... There are pros and cons to all. The more difficult it is to access a game, generally the softer it is going to be, but the trade off is you have to deal with the logistics and politics of getting into those games, and up some other risks. It's a trade off I believe is worth it but it might not be palatable for others.

The thing I 100% agree with you is that the dream of depositing $X on some site and grinding up from micro to nosebleed is likely over, outside of some truly outlier talent or sunrun up the stakes.

Based on what I can gather from your posts, you are clearly capable player but I think it would be worth doing a deep dive into your skills as a 'professional poker player' rather than just a NL cash grinder. I have felt a lot of what you've felt in the past. I see a lot of my peers who I think I am more technically proficient than have way more success than I have and question why. It is not like I have all the answers but I have spent much of the past couple years trying to figure out the answer to that question. There is some element of luck, maybe its a large element but its not all of it. If the goal of being a professional is to make money from the game, what percentage of that is technical proficiency, work ethic, mental game, BRM, performance and execution, networking and politics? There could be other categories in there but these are just examples. Anyone who's grinded for a long time and not go broke will have at least some level of proficiency in all these categories. What we think of as poker training/coaching usually only teaches technical proficiency, which I would argue is <20% of what it takes to be a good 'professional'. Given you've grinded your teeth playing MSNL zoom I'm sure you've jumped in live games where these live pros that are technically pretty mediocre if not horrific but seemingly have a much bigger bankrolls than you. I've certainly got some envy and asked how did this moron get so much money, where and how did he get so lucky. But when you think about it from a deeper level, while I am fairly certain I am a better player, who is the better professional? I spent a better part of a decade trying to be a good poker player, only in the last few years did I learn how to be a better professional. What can you do to become a better professional?

Ur post is true.

I set myself a goal to move to usa to play live-poker but have had my life elsewhere and as my gf gets her paperwork done so that she can work there we will move and i will focus on the live poker.

I did already started by getting much better at playing it , build a loose circle of friends around it where i m now etc.

Varies really with live-pros ive seen , as the skill required to win is low , the ones stuck to lower limits are having always some problems , tilt bankroll management etc.

calling it rigged online was bit of joking , i dont see it that way but how i see it is that if your winrate is 5 or below which is case for like 90%+ mid-stakes regs sooner or later you will have a stretch of break even for 500k hands and hundreds buy-ins below ev etc.

im not really a person who can focus on too many things at same time, this was like my first year of really doing so and maybe it was to see which of those things i see most appealing to me.

out of live-pros who probably have much bigger br than me can just think of guys who are like 10 years elder than me but its not like i had spend time in a country with many live-pro elites or where they even have consist bigger games .

i dont think its the money which directly motivates me , obviously im getting elder would want to have a family at a point , do my part and so on so it is like a good time to just say its not worth it to play these zoom games or whatever nlhe online where you are 60 times all in AK vs QQ or like bumhunt on some nitt/fish . On site I used to crush the whales became just guys who sit 3 mins and quit then come back for 1 minute playing these childrens games and not wanting to really punt . And it feels to be a bit same on stars everyone is just huge nitt or what has also happened is there is fish who play total reg stats have about total right vpip 3b fold to river bet etc . mimic the right sizes etc. but are just real fishes its crazy thing .

Im happy to play that kinda dude in headsup but if a ring is filled with regs, nitts, and then those fake regs its not best game. I think zoom games are a bit wrongly looked as so much lower EV as u get hands so much faster in 4 tabling it is like having active 12 tables and who can really play 12 tables and be +ev these days .. its rare ... so i can have like 2-3bb playing 4 tables for online standards its quite good ! Comparing it to playing lots of live hrs there is still no way it could be higher EV or more sustainable mentally .

I moved down a stake to nl100.

Started to run everything with deep equilab calculations using some pio / gto-wizard ranges as just assistance studying things deep down from starting pre-flop.

I combine this with thinking - how does this nl100 guy think of this spot here (they don't think) in other words what kind of button he will click and while I have a deep technical understanding on how one thing will lead to another thing I will be able to crush those guys.

This is how nl100 guys play. 65s with this rake dont 3b this sb but .. if ever.. dont call the cold 4b of bigger size... since the turn at nl500+ i fold river to jam vs anyone at nl200 think who is the guy at nl100 like to call it bcz they see things differently .

lm explain this : higher u go the more u think the turn is just bad card for oop and ip has easily an over-protected range so u want to have zero bluffs there

so if u are not familiar with this kind of concept then u just might turn some pair to bluff and try fold higher pair and then go to gtowiz to see if it is done there or not

needing to bluff the bottom range is also just a misconception

u want to bluff when u have enough value to want to construct a bluff range and when u think u get enough folds

here I overprotected my range and I exploited U on top of that bcz ur only values are JJ , 88 and tiny bit of AQ which I block

I hard exploited

Lol

I have no idea .

Probably his jam comes down to be good if the QQ/KK / whatever Kjs is in there are folding too much

My call comes down to be good if he turns pairs to bluff which is not so common

I called to protect him from exploiting me in a spot where IP range is too strong on avg to be really exploited (people check their ace too much on turn)

So I exploited myself.

This call is like a statement of saying you are an idiot and you will make -EV bluffs (not saying 56s is one at that point) , turning pairs to bluff would certainly be vs this pool at least

So my call is most likely pretty bad.

Def. very bad call no matter what limit we play , lol.

This is tricky spot u need to look at what you block firstly

then you need to look at his value range

then you need to scale ur blockers from tier 1 blockers to tier 2

ace is tier 1 blocker it wants to call

this is tier 2 blocker mostly its an auto-fold ( but not always )

Then you go equilab fill up ranges , build 3 scenarios think which is the most accurate vs different player-types and your getting closer to having an answer

Here I would say ruling factor is the IP range after turn Ace gets to be over-protected meaning OOP has no incentive to bluff this river by much at all he is at range disadvantage so all these tier 2 hands can snap fold without giving up any EV whatsoever

This is like how u want to study poker

I don't want to think of these types of things its not fun for me anymore .

Yeah - like you need to analyze like this 7 hands every day .

Then after a week or two your brain node-locks all these to more correct direction which increases your winrate .

These are not easy things to understand there is always something extra or something like positions being different or whatever to make each of these a bit unique .

But its like stuff you want to understand very deeply to not get crushed at high-stakes bcz those guys break down like 10 4bet pot equilibriums for lunch in a day and if you dont call certain stuff enough their strats will crush u if u call too much their strats will crush u ...

This is what you need to do non stop , study like this non stop!

Then positionally you will develop the ranges that make really sense to be played everywhere , postflop the sizes will make the most sense.. its very very technical ....

Some dudes who think they r the the great HS players or whatever just copy solver but its not the way to do it you need to THINK and build scenarios

Solver calculates the equilibrium by specific parameters which in practice are always bit different because people play different ranges than what is there - mimicking it means you don't want to really do the work and get accurate results

Only way to understand it is you build different scenarios based on different opponent profiles leading to different types of ranges leading to different kinds of solutions

How can U coach people when ur game is just mimicking something and randomizing it with a tool that gives you random numbers

This is what Ive been asking and wondering from many people for years

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Like dude who 3bets 56s and calls a 4bet BvB is certain profile player whose ranges are always in certain direction so the strategies to play vs him are very different than vs someone who 3bets SB with 88+ and folds 88 to a cold 4-bet but both these player profiles do basically exist up to like nl500

Then at nl1k they play closer to like Solver so u might be able calibrate more around that ... But if you teach that to nl100 or nl500 players to copy it and just mimic it its quite terrible

Because when ur on the river or on the turn , the ranges which u both started with are the ranges you need to be dealing with on the river , therefore in practice some hands are just straight out +EV to jam and some are +EV to call and so on because we are humans , so if I were to be clairvoyant of this 56s guys strategy (I cant but by playerprofiling) I can get close enough to rough around the edges know his strategies in 3-bet pots and in 4-bet pots and then by building scenarios I can be able to tell that a hand like QQ there is something like -50bb call or +50bb call

But if I ignore all of this and just go there to look at wizard ranges oh its a mix call I will just rng it ... its like playing childrens games never wanting to be good at poker or make the right decisions in first place bcz no one will play it exact same as some solver .... So everytime I see a guy coaching and saying mix call here I rng it in spot like this I feel tilted . Because you should know better that its probably -50 bb call .

Myself I am washed up. I made this call which is likely a -50bb call thinking in solver its probably a mix call .

Because I haven't really been thinking much lately and this GTO thinking has somehow influenced me even I follow nothing related to it on purpose !!

Years back when i crushed it pretty hard i studied all spots like these, then i also used timing tells during hand to break-down the opponents range and i really often felt like playing with guys whose cards i can see , arriving at an amazing accuracy , i haven't been able to do this in years bcz of just clicking buttons more or less tilted and for some (very stupid) reason trying to play a bit like GTO

if the QQ is a good call , .. it really depends without even looking at equilab i can tell if its 56s guy then its the guy who play 67s and 78s and 89s and T9s by all likelihood same way so its a +50bb call against him ...

And this is where it comes down to what exploiting really is vs. guy like that i exploit by calling hand like this . Vs guy who 3bet 88+ from sb and cold calls 4b with 99+ (more like a nitt) this is a snap fold ...

And if you go GTO wiz stuff the hand could probably be a mix and if u make a coaching video and say oh a mix call RNG it its like you play like you would play vs a Gtowiz bot which u are not doing and you just want to be silly gto dude playing childrens games ....

But this is all like common sense but for some reason around poker these days there's little common sense in terms of how many think about it...

Worst is no one told me : hey DJ stop playing good start playing like a donk , what happened was i just stopped thinking , i gave up , i calibrated to the average player and ... unsurprisingly i became the average player myself

This is like a chapter of how gto coach uses gto as a tool to teach you how to not think and get better at poker

Exploit coach then trys mostly sell u tricks and ploys like : do this betsize they will overfold

Good coach tells u to go to do the work , build scenarios , it is like engineering work

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problem with it is u dont need a coach when u learn the model u can do it urself and study any spot u want

my gf loves to build furnitures like cabinets from pieces and stuff like this , she is the one building up a cabinet i carry from ikea

poker is like same thing u put puzzle pieces together and not want to look at a puzzle someone else builded too much bcz it wont give u the real insights

If the game you're playing at require you to be that technical is there better use of your time? Can you not find a better game? Imo in order to make a lot of money playing poker, you need to have some proficiency at it then its just about finding the best games. In a standard live 5/10+ game, say there are 2 whales and a variety of regs in the game, the reg with the highest hourly is not necessarily going to be the most technically proficient. The reg with the highest hourly is going to be the best at playing against the whales. Spending a bunch of time to be more accurate with your strategy is almost always going to be a giant waste of time. How do you get better at playing against whales? It is definitely not going to be by using an RNG. I second what you are saying about the migration of NL strategy towards using a RNG. That part has always seem dumb to me. I know a lot of super high level guys use one but if I am ever in a game where I feel like everyone is so good I need to use RNG to level the playing field I'm just going to sit out. If its a game worth playing using an RNG is almost certainly going to be pointless because you can arrive at a much better decision by using your brain and thinking about the situation.

This is primary reason why I moved away from NL cash after grinding it for the better part of a decade. Even at pretty high stakes you just don't need to worry about balancing your strategy because there are so many combos and the game trees are so large that most sims are incomprehensible by human mind. People that try to play like the solver just drive themselves nuts cause 2 hands that look the same have drastically different strategies in a solver. There are just spots where no humans can find enough bluffs while others where there are too many.

It sounds like you've had some negative experiences with coaches. Finding the right mentors is worth a lot. I have never really find video or GTO coaches that useful because I can just use a solver myself if I want someone to regurgitate solver solutions to me. Coaches pointing out specific GTO things to look for is useful. Coaches pointing out how to look for mistakes and how to create counter strategies is useful. A good coach can speed up the process to help you focus on fixing leaks that actually matter and create counter strategies that generate a meaningful amount of EV.

I was about to say that moving on to live-poker fully seems to be the smartest choice even its not perfect it is by all likelihood higher EV and more manageable to me personally at this point.

I got most my leaks fixed by buying coaching.

This being said how I see people play who sell their GTO oriented stuff and see some hands posted and explained them I tend to disagree often.

Just given the reason as described by players still fitting to profiles that play differently .

I'm not getting to play 5/10 live or up every day but rather something like 2/4.

Point with online grind is imo. you need to do quite consistent work playing livepoker is primarily just about the hours sit in there if you are decent.

Learning other game is sure a good thing I consider doing in near future but I have right now some other things needing to prioritize.

I didnt work on my game and won for 5evbb online for the 1M hands I posted.

Problem start being I had no ambition whatsoever thinking variance eats me if I move up and for staying where i was i didn't needed to really study which meant my winrate neither really improved and I needed to do a bit of stuff like change sites to softer ones when one was getting more dry and the amount of fish and EV there seems to be on slow and steady decline each year so mentally as see myself not have the capability and energy to really get to play primarily 5/10 and 2/5 online as minimum but the average bb just being somewhere around 2 dollars it is just much better to sit those hours at a casino at a step bigger game that is way softer even the hands / hr are very low .

Combined with some future growth option to play 5/10 as main game somewhere where it runs in the future .

This has been somehow a helpful conversation and I want to say thanks to everyone who participated . As now I have more clarity on what does make sense to focus on and some other future prospects I will be researching on.

As of now I will stop posting and come back after have something to update on how it is going.

could you share the name of Chinese app, I'm a Chinese player, I thought they all rigged or have some issue with agents.

The idea that there secret Chinese apps exist where a large pool of whales who still haven't figured out how to play, is plausible, but unlikely.

its The Great River poker. Agent is straight out of Beijing.

i mean poker is popular in china and there is restriction so im pretty sure there is hundreds of thousands of agents and tens of thousands of clubs out of which some can be trusted and others not and to most we don't have access if we don't start networking by getting to some china ug games finding those people and its not something i would do for everyone here, lol.

more seriously i don't play china apps i just call it that way because it used to be where the app boom started, people either played china apps or normal sites . Now those clubs I play have little to do with china, players are from latin america , russia , india etc. but as for mid-stakes action is just very sporadic and requires a significant time investment.

...

so far so good , apps few hrs every morning , then drive to casino play until evening, go home eat dinner , go to sleep repeat.

put like 20hrs this week so far live poker , down somewhere like 2k or something not sure. Playing deep-stack full ring is not an easy game if ur used to play more online like 100bbs . Played quite terrible today , had some 3-b p where i have overpair on monoboard cbet it 50% dude calls board pairs he donks 2/3p was bit confused in my mind thinking he lead 1/3p continued w/o even fd but just overpair (then river double pair it to low card fd didnt complete called like 80% bet there to run to fh) - fold the turn obv. to 2/3p not even close without fd / u need some read . In my head it was 1/3p lead but it was 2/3p huge difference... And some other bad plays too . Fish and live guys just call 3bets with stuff like KJo etc . so need to count all those ranges differently they hit all kinds of board pair cards way different than if u play online vs some reg where u know his range basically always.

well there is plenty of people who play worse than i do and im still really learning with live poker , games play really different in different places . Easiest is to play some a bit nitty straightforward game but highest EV is pretty surely available in deep stack games if you play disciplined and good with those 300bb+ stack sizes in strange spots and that among other things is a learning process really I keep asking friends about hands a lot and it really feels like it gives me more like mental challenge than online playing .

had many hands today which i couldn't really think through bcz of tilt so will just step down play smaller few sessions at least because its pointless to play if feel tilted .

Just studied live 9-max preflop and wrote everything here like an amazing value study but unfortunately this buggy site decided to lose the whole post.

What I did anyway was modeling differences of EP opens with 3x and 4x sizes and BB defense and how to play when there is callers (just thinking level) ,,, what did I do wrong before and how to adjust now . How to adjust to a table by either raising 3x / 4x from EP . How tight to squueze or 3-bet the BB vs EP / MP.

Confident that I can play now better in those spots.

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Few thoughts of downswing and habits :

As of late going through a downswing of maybe net 12k after had two months where I won similar amount during both. I feel little nervous and tilt more easier which is why I will try to average my stakes down and do this kind of study on a daily basis and focuse on the games which I view being most profitable.

I had some issues with pushing too many hours leading to burnouts during which I did drink a lot of alcohol, slowly having improved with my working habits and actually keeping a day schedule to keep things more manageable even the EV would probably be higher to grind whole night but mental impact being depressive and changes of sleep pattern being pretty bad I think its overall a bad sacrifice to me personally . Also my live sessions have been averaging to maybe 6hrs (getting to casino takes energy). Currently staying away from alcohol as its net negative impact is too big and I'm not craving for it because of keeping things manageable in other areas.

Exercise has also been something I did too hard which did lead to having even more chronic stress leading to temptation to drink which just shocks the body as a combination.

So I only have one primary goal which is to stay away from drinking. Secondary goals are to do some exercise but ensure that there is a day-off between each working out day during which I do walking. I don't eat fast food more often than 1x in 2 weeks or so or a lot of sugar unless its like a birthday or something and soft drinks I don't keep in house so the diet should fall to moderate calorie deficit which is good. Observing these all and getting there with starting to run when I feel ready to get started with it.

Live poker is a completely different skill set and approach than online.
Depending if the table is std or loose passive, you need to open a normal size or at least 4bb with a narrower range (which, given that playing 1 table of 9-max live feels already boring - to me, at least - is not particularly a fun adaptation) since multi-way pots are super annoying/random.
It's a bit like a fisherman's activity, waiting for the right spot that may or may not come up.
Like I said, it really depends on the location/tables you are playing to know if it's really worthwhile.
Deep poker is also a special beast. In the same manner of multi-way spots, I find it too unpredictable to be able to hand read and take good decisions.
Ofc vs whale you dont care because they will make big mistakes that you get to exploit for more money, but versus regs it's a lot of nasty coolers imo.