$100.000 profit at 20nl

Hey ZKesic, sorry if you already answered this and I am just being repetitive, but is poker still your main source of income? If yes, will you still play for a living after reaching 100k? Finally, I just realized the title, and your goal, was to make 100k playing 20nl, and you're playing higher. That's cheating my friend 😃 😃

GLGL

Yes, poker is my main source of income. I also play on some untracked sites, which I'm not including in this challenge, and on the side I make money from coaching people. This together is more than enough to cover all of my expenses.

Even after reaching the 100k profit goal, I plan to keep playing. There's no reason to stop 😀

I made the first ~40k profit playing exclusively at 20nl. Eventually, as the speed games on iPoker died off, I transitioned to 50nl.
While it may feel like a slight "cheat," my hourly rate is better at 50nl, so it just makes sense to finish the challenge there.

vwp sir, and congratz on almost reaching your goal, not many people that I know keep updating their threads year in and year out til the challenge is complete, for the # of years you're doing it (I know I don't lol) so you have all my compliments for that.

wow, very great job so far. almost there.

Impressive journey.

I've been wondering about these spots:

Hold'em No Limit - €0.25/€0.50 - 5 players
Replay this hand on Pokeit

UTG (Hero): €41.44 (83 bb)
CO: €57.39 (115 bb)
BU: €17.43 (35 bb)
SB: €50.00 (100 bb)
BB: €45.00 (90 bb)

Pre-Flop: (€0.75) Hero is UTG with Q♥ J♥
Hero raises to €1.10, CO 3-bets to €3.70, 2 players fold, BB calls €3.20, Hero 4-bets to €41.44 (all-in), 2 players fold

Total pot: €11.35 (Rake: €0)
UTG (Hero) wins €11.35
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I've been completely improvising in them, but don't actually have a good strategy rn.

There were times when I got really burnt.

My logic for shoving hands like QJs are mainly:
Reg isn't gonna call with AQ, which is good for us as we have more equity vs AK.
If fish calls our shove he will mostly have low pocket pairs. This is why I think QJs > A5s / 66.

But then again, the best play might just be to call. It's really hard to decide at this stack depth.
You can apply the same question to 100bb stacks.

What do you guys think?

I'm not confident about any of the postflop decisions in this one:

But tbh, no matter which line I took, I'd probably end up in a gross river spot either way.

QJs jam is a thing vs SB 3bet esp if they use bigger size and I agree with this logic. In this spot in probably depends on a fish, they can show up with AJo/AQo/JJ/QQ making is probably bad imo, regs range is also tighter given its CO 3BET.

TJo I would just call vs 1/2 stab, its more polar so he dose not have that much pp trash Ax ect that make you want to raise. AP-Maybe tiny block otr, when you check he just bets better hands for value and some draws, putting you in close to 0ev spot.

November 2024:

Challenge progress: 81.3k/100k

Great month overall. Have been feeling pretty motivated lately and am happy with my play.

Towards the end of the month I've been playing 14-16 tables non stop.

I'll try to bring back the 3k+ profit months. Haven't had those in a while.

I agree with your points.

In my experience, when I 4b shove preflop, people (even fish) usually put me on AK. So the light calls are much more often hands like 99/88 than AQ/AJ. Meaning, QJs/JTs should be better candidates for those plays than low pockets or Axs.

Cheers

Itching for an update here

Yearly update coming?

no update? what has happened?

Nothing dramatic happened :p

I just ceased with the monthly updates as they started to feel a bit repetitive.

Lately, I’ve been playing on some untracked sites, which means I'm not able to post the graphs or hand histories for most of the hands I play. This contributed to the pause to updates.

As for the challenge, it’s still very much alive! I will update when something interesting happens or when I start getting close to the 100k profit mark 😀
You guys are also free to ask me any questions and I'll answer if you want to discuss anything particular.

Are you still playing 20NL and never above? Do you have any plans beyond the challenge? its crazy to see such multi-year consistency and such an ambitious challenge in terms of play hours necessary to complete it. good luck and don't hesitate to give us updates even if its just a random number on an excel sheat for those untracked gains, i'll believe you 😀

+1, waiting for updates, always interesting to read your updates 😀

I'm currently grinding 50z on PokerStars.

I'll only include hands from the tracked sites for this challenge. After all, the goal is to have a 100k profit graph by the end of it :p
I'm not sure about the day after.

Thanks 😊

I’ll keep posting monthly updates. As long as there’s interest, I’m happy to keep them coming.

April 2024:

Challenge progress: 85.5k/100k

Pretty average month. PokerStars is softer than I expected from what people told me.

Real life:

At the beginning of the year, my wife and I found out we’re expecting our first child. We’re both really happy. If all goes well, we'll have a girl in September.
A month later, my sister also got pregnant. This has always been our goal - to have children at the same time, so that they can be friends.

Preparing for a baby has been fun so far, but also a bit stressful.
We're taking our 'summer' vacation a bit early, in May and June, while my wife's belly isn't too big yet.

Here are some fun hands:

H1: Flop bluff 4bet by a reg. A rare sight.

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I was gonna fold the river.

H2: Debatable play vs a group of recs.

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H3: This has to be overbluffed, right?

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H4: Probably the worst bluff of my career

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molodietz)

Even if H3 he bluffs every hand that doesn't have decent showdown value, not sure he has enough bluffs to be overbluffing. Basically 22-55 like 24 combos + weird SC like KQs,54s like 8 combos. thats 30 combos of bluffs, he needs less than 22 combos of value to make that call worth it.

I will suppose he's checking back river anything that isn't a straight, and he would have bet his flopped straights on the flop so only counting straights that made it on the turn. that leaves 16 combos of AJ and 8 combos of KJs,QJs we're already above 22.

he would need to have KQo combos and always bluff with them to make this call good, this becomes profile-specific.

Your math might be a bit off. We have to call 24.58 to win a pot of 64.16. So, he should be bluffing around 38% of the time.

This means if he has 30 combos of bluffs, he needs to have less than 50 combos of value to make our call profitable, and I don't think that he has that many 😀

I'm not sure if he'd overbet shove river with all straights. I think he'd often bet smaller.

And even if he does, he only has like 3 combos of flushes and up to 11 combos of Jx. Meaning he's still bluffing ~70% of the time, instead of 38% :p

It's really easy to overbluff in these spots.

Congrats on the baby girl.
I went through the same a few months ago 😀

molodietz)

what's going on with the short stacks?

Zkesic plays short a lot. He's found out for him it does not negative impact his win rate and I believe it lowers his Std Dev. Seems he prefers it.