My Journey to High Stakes Poker: A New Chapter Begins
Hello, 2+2 community!
I’m starting this blog to document my journey toward high stakes poker (1000NL+). I’ve been a professional poker player for some time now, but I originally planned to start this blog in the new year. However, after becoming a dad, my volume took a hit as I adjusted to life with a new little one. Now that things are settling down, it feels like the right time to share my progress.
I’ll be posting weekly updates on my results, insights into my strategy, and reflections on my journey. I plan to create a variety of content along the way—YouTube videos of live plays, Instagram posts, and occasional streams. I want to give you all a behind-the-scenes look at my poker journey, including the mental game and everything else that goes into leveling up.
While I’ll dive into more personal details and share more about my poker career in future updates, for now, I’ll start by sharing my results for the year so far. I’ll also be including a link to my Linktree where you can find all my content and socials in one place.
I’m excited to take this next step and share both the wins and the challenges with you all. Stay tuned for my first weekly update!
RESULTS FOR THE YEAR SO FAR:
Spoiler
by (tracked) stakes:
LINK TO MY SOCIALS:
http://ascend.poker
Hey everyone,
Here’s a quick and simple summary of my poker results for Week 8. It was a challenging week with some ups and downs, but I’ll share the key numbers and what I learned.
Overall Performance
Profits from Tables: -$1,929
Rakeback: +$407
Total Net: -$1,522
Hands Played: 15,200
Hours Played: 24
Hourly Rate: -$63
I played a lot of hands this week, but the results were tough. The rakeback helped soften the blow, but I still ended up with a net loss. My winnings graph showed a lot of volatility—starting strong, dropping into losses, and ending close to break-even before the final dip.
Note: I also lost an additional $655 on an untracked site, which isn’t included in the graph (but it's included in the above results).
Spoiler
Reflections
This week was a reminder that poker can be unpredictable. I put in the volume, but the results didn’t go my way. I’m planning to review my play, focus on improving, and keep grinding.
Tomorrow I will record a live play video and post it here.
Next week my goal is to increase my play to 30 hours minimum.
Also, I forgot to include some of my long term results here.
I lost a lot of older hands but this is a recent sample of 450k hands in BB. The stakes range from 100NL to 600NL.
MONTH OF FEBRUARY RECAP
I will just post about my month of february, will dump the data and graph below.
quick note: disappointed about my volume and hours played. will do better in March of course.
total table profits (some sites are not tracked): $4672
Rakeback: $1144 (some of the rakeback is postponed because I don't receive right away, so this amount is actually higher but I dont include what I didnt receive yet).
Total profits: $5816
Hours played: 72
Hourly rate: $81/hour
i will keep posting weekly recaps but will also include these from time to time
week 9 recap
pretty good week overall. disappointed with my volume again but let's make it better next week.
let's see if i can reach 30 hours which is my goal!
Overall Performance
Profits from Tables: $4209 (reminder that some sites are not tracked on the graph)
Rakeback: +$386
Total Net: $4595
Hands Played: 12000
Hours Played: 19
Hourly Rate: $242
Good luck!! Will be following
Thank you sir! I will try in the future to post some content for youtube or some streams to actually provide some value.
WEEK 10 RECAP - Tilting week
So this week was pretty tilting. First my volume was half of what it was supposed to be. Baby is going through a rough stretch and so my sleep got completely destroyed.
Next, the last 2 days (yesterday and today) I got destroyed on the tables in terms of results.
below are the results. as always, 2 sites where I play are not tracked in the graph but the results I post below are correct.
PROFIT TABLES = $1634
RAKEBACK = $250
TOTAL = $1884
HANDS PLAYED = 10k
HOURS PLAYED = 16 hours
HOURLY RATE = $118/hour
WEEK 11 RECAP
Very good week in terms of results, very bad week in terms of volume. Again lacking a lot of hours due to sleep problems and some minor tech issues on WPN.
I feel that I'm getting closer to the point where I can start putting in more volume at 400/500nl. My sample on 200nl makes me confident that my winrate is good so the rake difference makes up for the skill upgrade of the regs IMO. Not sure if next week I will start adding some more tables of the higher stakes.
I'm lacking on everything right now including my plans to make some youtube content or some streams but will try to get to it in the next couple of weeks.
Anyways, here are the results. Note: some of the results are not included in the graph because some of the sites are not trackable. The image below the graphs contains the total info including these sites.
WEEK 12 RECAP
Swingy week. Tried to shot take a bit, went wrong, had to go back to 200 but climbed again out of the hole. Next week will start strong with shots at 400/500. Volume improved a bit this week, lets keep going next and try to push at least to 25 hours. At the end of the month I will provide a monthly recap.
2 reminders to everyone following: a lot of my rakeback gets postponed to receive later, this rakeback is not included in these totals so there will be weeks where I get a lot of rakeback out of nowhere. Also, some of the sites I play on are not tracked so the results don't match perfectly on the pokertracker graphs and stats.
WEEK 13 RECAP
So, Im calling this week earlier. I will take a 2 days rest until 2nd of April and then comeback. Basically feeling pretty burnt out at the moment because Im not sleeping well at all. Averaging about 5-6 hours of sleep per night.
In terms of volume for the days I played this week Im actually quite happy with the volume I put in.
Happy with the shots I took also!
In this post I will also do the month of March recap.
Note: always keep in mind that some of my volume is not tracked. On of the sites is Chico network. Im afraid to use the HH converter because I play on other sites at the same time so afraid I might get banned because of that. Anyone knows about this?
MONTH OF MARCH RECAP
Pretty good month overall. Volume obviously lacked but Im trying to get better at this. My sleep has to improve in order for me to put some more volume in.
Also, some big changes are coming up in my life. Changing my setup completely - will change country.
OVERALL RESULTS IN MARCH
Profit before rakeback = 14.116$
Profit after rakeback = 15.593$
Hours played = 74 hours
Hourly rate = 211$/hour
I never heard of Chico banning for HUD use/converter capture
If the other sites allow HUDs/HH capture then I don’t see how it would be a problem.
A problem site would be like GG for example
WEEK 14 RECAP
like I wrote last week, I took a few days off.
very difficult week. the most difficult all year mentally. didnt feel like this for a long time. felt like I was making lots of mistakes and not playing concentrated. also had a big losing session (-$2k) which brought my confidence levels to a very low level - started feeling that I couldnt beat the game.
The graph is positive but thats because it doesnt include the not tracked sites. Anyways because of todays sesh I ended up about break even for the week.
see you next week
WEEK 15 RECAP
not much time to do this update because of personal stuff.
volume sucked. a lot of variance because mixing higher stakes (400+) so the monetary swings are quite being compared to only playing 200.
still had a profitable week - again, not all sites are tracked so the final results are different from the graph
FINAL RESULTS FOR THE WEEK
AntiGTO wut wut
tell me more about AntiGTO bruv
Journey to highstakes.. does that mean having $50k so you can bumhunt fish and whales at 1knl+? wow good luck I guess
WEEK 17 RECAP
I have good news for this week: I was able to find a way to show my results completely here with a new tracker, so that's good.
Regarding results, what a terrible week. I made money but ran pretty bad overall. But thats poker.
Also, dropped coffee all over my keyboard and desk which made me play one less session this week lol. What a **** show!
TOTAL RESULTS FOR THE WEEK
edit: just realized that the graph looks ugly as hell but at least thats the total results for the week. Theres a slight difference because the fees I paid on some withdrawals I consider as losses for the week so in the graph I made a bit more than the totals.
MONTH OF APRIL RECAP
this was not a great month both in terms of results and volume.
in May (end of May) I will be changing countries so this process is kinda stressful so I opted for playing mostly nl200 and will probably keep it this way until I actually make the move.
Since last week I started using another HUD which allows me to track every single site I play on but before that the results are not displayed on the graph. I will post the total results below. From now on everything will be tracked even though the graph looks pretty ugly. They should make it better.
TOTAL RESULTS FOR APRIL
Results before rakeback = +$3584
Rakeback = +$1250
Total = +$4834
Hours played = 58 hours
Hourly Rate = $83/hour
WEEK 18 RECAP
Crazy week, extremely swingy. Had one -2k$ session which basically destroyed my week. Ran pretty bad. Will also write something about bankroll/finances management as a full time poker player since someone before talked about playing nl1k with $50k lol.
Second week in a row with worse results than normal but this is completely expected variance so lets keep grinding.
Also, games were pretty dead at some point so had to grind a bit of zoom which turned out to be a bad decision lol. And WPN hands are not being tracked 100%. Im still using the new HUD but transferring the hands to PT4 to show them here.
Games have been awful recently. Lots of good players moving down, which can only be terrible for the ecology of the game
I am surprised you do not move up in stakes ever even although to are making 5 grand a week. This is bad bankroll management in my view. A constant four five degrees win graph is not maximum gain.
I am surprised you do not move up in stakes ever even although to are making 5 grand a week. This is bad bankroll management in my view. A constant four five degrees win graph is not maximum gain.
I’m only playing 200 right now because of the process of residence permit I will go through this month. I will have to make multiple long travels and it’s a very stressful situation so I decided to stop playing higher to reduce the stress. After I’m done with this process I will start playing 400-600nl again.
BANKROLL/FINANCES MANAGEMENT
I have some rules that make my day to day life much less stressful and that my career as a poker player will be lasting and also provide me with enough capital to either retire or venture into something else in the future.
1. Your average monthly expenses shouldn’t be higher than 10-15 buyins of your average stake.
This is one that a lot of people ignore but really important and a good factor for people who are looking to go pro to think about. This will ensure that your stress levels are not high since any winning player will be able to earn more than 10-15 buyins (on average of course) per month. This will also ensure that you are actually building up your networth which is really important for the next steps.
2. Your official shot taking (meaning you start incorporating games of higher stakes frequently) should start when your networth is at least 200 buyins of the higher stake AND when you have a significant sample below to prove your are beating those games. Also, small shots at first, building up confidence. 1-2 shots, if you lose move down again and rebuild.
1000NL? You should have $200k networth to start shot taking. In practice this means that you should be playing 1000NL with $400k at least and, in my opinion, you should aim to have even more (think 500+ buyins). A lot of people will say that this is mathematically wrong. I understand that it’s not optimal but the thing is that we are not robots! If you are playing with a short networth you will end up playing worse and having a terrible life because of stress.
3. I said “networth” in my points before because I’m not talking about bankroll or money specifically for poker.
You should have investments outside of poker for the future. If you are not building up this part of your future, you are definitely doing it wrong. This is why it’s important to have relatively low expenses. This will allow you to actually invest money into your future in good assets.
