Live Bankroll Challenge
Hi,
Writing this thread to keep accountable for my bankroll challenge, as well as other life goals.
Background:
I've been playing poker for the past two years, and seriously for the past year since I turned 18 and could go to a casino rather than micro-stakes home games. While I haven't seriously tracked my results, from playing 1/1 live I would estimate I'm up mid 4-figures in the past year off of a couple hundred or so hours of play (I could be pretty wrong in my estimates but I've never withdrawn to play poker and have made several 4-figure bank deposits from my profits and/or spent my winnings).
I am currently a uni student, and have tutoring as a supplementary income to support my life roll (charging heaps of $$ to rich, dumb parents off of my good high school results) so no worries about poker bankrupting me or anything like that.
Unfortunately where I live online poker is banned so live poker is the only option.
The plan is to start from playing 1/1 live with a bankroll of $2000 and take shots at 2/3, 2/5 games when I reach 20 BI for the associated stake (and move down quickly to recoup any losses)
Goals:
- 10 hours of tutoring work/week
- 10 hours of poker study/week
- 15 hours of poker gameplay/week
- Gym 3x/week
- Poker avg hourly of $30/hr at 1/1 (will re-evaluate for higher stakes)
10 Replies
Yesterday the challenge began:
Studied and prepped for a couple hours and then played 4 hours of poker, and was very happy with how I played although lost $175 , from being close to completely card-dead, followed by an AA v KK preflop all-in loss- yay king on the river!! what a great way to start the challenge. The 30/hr is absolutely possible in this soft game, even considering rake - there are a couple of "decent" regs who are effective in handling the live environment and the characters that come with it, but the standard low stakes donkey limps and 10x opens are pervasive.
Left early due to the beginnings of tilt, which is something I'll definitely need to work on if I want to be able to play longer sessions while maintaining a good hourly
The plan for the future is to play at least two 7+ hour sessions each week generally on the weekend or softer hours, and resolving tilt is absolutely something to work on for this
Totals (will continually track these and post here for accountability)
Hours played: 4
Hourly: -41.25
Profit: -175
2 week mark update:
Was away from home on holiday for pretty much the entirety of the past two weeks so unfortunately not much gameplay to be had except for the first couple of days. Did manage to rebound from the first session well though so at least hourly is on track in the smallest sample size of all time. Might have been poor timing to start the challenge now considering that but still got an 8 hour session in before I left. All other goals have been steady and achieved, managed to hit the gym and sufficiently study poker while away.
Now that I'm back home for the next 2 weeks before seeing family for Christmas, with not much else on I plan on getting some gameplay volume in. I think I can probably hit 20 hrs of gameplay, among my other goals and trying to have a social life, spend more time with gf.
Totals
Hours played: 12
Hourly: 4
Profit: $48
Best of luck in your journey, will be following!
Are you playing live cash in USA?
where on earth does 1/1 spread?
I now love PLO double board bomb pots. They seem to just print EV against people who can't fold two-pair on a single board.
Played one more session over the weekend since the last update and although I check-folded literally all of the bomb pots on the flop it's really easy to see a decent chunk of my winrate coming from these in the future, especially if I improve at them.
Anyone have any suggestions on where to study PLO double board bomb pots?
Looking forward to following along with this thread!
I now love PLO double board bomb pots. They seem to just print EV against people who can't fold two-pair on a single board.
Played one more session over the weekend since the last update and although I check-folded literally all of the bomb pots on the flop it's really easy to see a decent chunk of my winrate coming from these in the future, especially if I improve at them.
Anyone have any suggestions on where to study PLO double board bomb pots?
Not sure if it is worth it for you to subscribe, but there is a large amount of video content about double board PLO bomb pot strategy on Crush Live Poker. I don't know that there are going to be too many other options out there since it is a pretty niche area of poker.
If you want a sample, Bart Hanson (Crush Live Poker main coach) was a guest on the Third Man Walking podcast where he went pretty in depth into double board PLO bomb pot strategy. I don't play that game (it isn't available at any of the casinos I regularly play at) but the podcast segment made an impression on me.
Looking forward to following along with this thread!
Not sure if it is worth it for you to subscribe, but there is a large amount of video content about double board PLO bomb pot strategy on Crush Live Poker. I don't know that there are going to be too many other options out there since it is a pretty niche area of poker.
If you want a sample, Bart Hanson (Crush Live Poker main coach) was a guest on the Third Man Walking podcast where he went pretty in depth into double board PLO bomb pot strategy
Ok thanks
I'd rather use pretty much everything free I could find first before paying but have found lots of crush live poker bomb pot stuff on youtube that I'll have a look through now
From the 21st of deember on to new year I'll be enjoying time with family (unfortunately far away from any casino for a week or two) and live poker will probably be dead or depressing anyways, so might as well give an update now in case I forget to in the next couple of days. I will play probably 1 or 2 more sessions before that and then have a week or two off before the new year begins, which will be when the real grind of the challenge begins. Glad I got started sooner than later, just to get the ball rolling and then hit my stride heading into 2025.
In the meantime, the sunrun has begun. I am really happy with how I'm playing, but I'm certainly well over EV from the past few days - bluffs getting through slightly more often, value being called more often etc. It would be silly to expect 55bb/hr (or about 200bb/100) to be my long term winrate but happy that the run good hit me early.
That being said, there is certainly a whole world of exploitation as I begin to play more in this same place. It's a relatively small poker room with a lot of the same players each and every day so I'm sure I can start deviating HARD from theory against certain characters, especially as I play more consistent hours starting the beginning of next year. I plan on focusing a lot of my study hours on working on specific implementations of this which can certainly continue to increase my winrate as I become more familiar with the game.
Totals
Hours played: 25.5
Hourly: 55
Total profit: 1400
