This Time It Sticks | 10nl and beyond

GL!

The challenge has begun.

With a $50.00 deposit loaded to my account. I started playing again after a long hiatus at the beginning of August.

I wasn't necessarily thinking about playing much when I deposited initially. I just had an itch. An itch that only online poker could solve.

Growing up I was a gamer. I'd stay up until the sunrise playing cs:source with my friends. I'm no stranger to long grinds. The thrill of a game. Winning.

Part of what will help to give me motivation to keep grinding is coming back to this thread. I want to share the journey with others. The highs and lows, the growth, the learning and the lessons. I want to show that online poker in 2025 is still alive and well.

So with $50.00 deposited, I hit the $2nl tables and started grinding. Or at least, that's what I should have done. What I actually played was $2PLO. Ahh, yes, the good old 4 card variant. What could go wrong?

Well I quickly lost 5 buyins over 400 hands.

"Ok, mental reset. Why am I playing PLO? My game is NL. Back to basics."

"That's better. This is the game I know how to play, let's stick to this one."

I quickly got back into the game of NL. The 400 hand PLO punt is gone. No more PLO (for now) I may come back to it at some point in the future, but my game has always been NL. PLO intrigues me for the higher stakes games. For now let's stick to NL though.

My first sample at $2nl went well. While sitting $2nl I was seeing the $5nl tables fill up with good games. So I hopped into the $5nl games while playing $2nl to get more hands in.

"Okay. We still have it. We know how to play this game."

I'm still rusty for sure. I have studying to do, but my fundamentals are there. I can recognize the regs and fish easily. I know where my edge is coming from in these games, it's just like the good old days.

As we approach $110 BR we're looking at the $10nl tables with a shimmering in our eyes. The next stake is upon us. Do we start shooting it and see how it goes? I think we should. And after all, why not? We're comfortable financially now.

The same fish that are playing $5nl are playing $10nl. The games actually look juicier at $10nl. Let's do it. Time to lock in and grow this bankroll.

It stuck.

Here's the $10nl graph for the last two weeks of playing. Winning at an incredible rate after our first 16k hands at the limit. Total winnings are approx $380 as of today. With our winnings at the initial $2nl and $5nl games (and additional $5nl games since), that puts our current balance on the site at $496.25.

Obviously we are now very well rolled to play $10nl with just under 50 buyins at this limit. I've also been throwing up the occasional $5nl table when the $10nl games aren't filling and when I want extra tables as you can only play a max of 9 tables per stake. The routine has been load up 8-12 tables and play for approx 2-4 hours a day depending on my availability. I've always been a fan of the big table grind, and find I get into a much better game flow when mass tabling.

Before someone asks, yes I know these graphs don't include rake. However, after reviewing my graphs and balance, I had calculated I am receiving just under 100% rakeback. I earn 40% flat rakeback in form of cash every week, and additionally on the days I'm playing, I am putting in enough volume to win leaderboard prizes. Resulting in essentially 100% rakeback at this time. I suspect this will stop being the case as I move up in stakes as the leaderboard prizes diminish in terms of buyins for the stake you can win each day. But for now, they're close enough to actual results that I'm fine using these graphs to showcase results.

It might be a good time to talk about goals. What are my goals? Well the first goal is to move up the stakes and eventually move on from $10nl. Setting my eyes on $25nl pool, and the games look equally as juicy as $10nl. Sometimes they look even better. To make the leap up in stakes I will be attempting to add in $25nl tables for each $25 in BR above $500. So for example, when I get to $525 I will start to add in one table of $25nl to my roster. And leaving the rest as $10nl. I will continue to add one table per $25 extra in BR until we are sufficiently rolled to play all $25nl games we want.

If these shots don't go well and I dust off some stacks I will step back to $10nl and grind back to $525 and repeat as necessary.

I might set some more long-term goals in future posts, but for now the next stake is where I'm putting my focus.

Nice read! Good luck with your challenge.

Which games are you playing? 6max or 9max Tables?

August results:

I had to use my PT4 results to showcase my august results as GG limits graphs to 20k hands. I played 31k hands in August for a result of +$551 including rakeback. The purple line represents winnings including rakeback.

My current balance on the account is $590.83. Overall I am very happy with the first month back, things went well and I found myself getting back into the swing of the game. It's a lot of fun playing again. Our initial shot at $10nl went as good as I could have hoped, it was smooth sailing through the stake as we are now properly rolled and tackling the next $25nl shot. Speaking of $25nl, I did start my initial shot at the stake and put in just over 1k hands thus far for a break-even/slightly positive result.

We're essentially break-even after the first 1k hands at the stake, but winning post rakeback. Will continue to shot the good games as we see them come up while maining $10nl for now. My criteria for shotting is playing when there's 2+ recognizable fish at the table. If the games break and fish leave, I leave the game. Not looking to reg battle as I aggressively shot take this stake. I'll pick my spots and play in the highly +EV games for now. Not that the regs are exceptionally good or anything, but until our roll is bigger I am attempting to minimize risk of ruin for now.

All play is exclusively at 6 max regular tables.

I did put in the biggest session of the challenge yet this past Friday. I played 7k hands over the night after work was done, putting in approx an 8 hour grind. I was ~10 tabling for most of the grind, putting in 6k hands at $10nl and 1k at $5nl tables. In addition to the winnings below, I also took down $45 in leaderboard winnings for the day. This marathon grind put us into the shotting territory for $25nl.

Nice start man, gl. Can't for the life of me put on more than 6 hours a day myself, meaning about 3k hands 6-tabling 😃. I just simply cannot play more than 6 tables without becoming a drooling button clicker for now. To be fair I'm probably playing looser than most high volume grinders (29/24/13), which means I'm in spots relatively often just 6 tabling XD

Not to hijack the thread, congrats to OP on making it stick this time around.

I've run into similar issues and would suggest just taking your time and letting the process happen organically. You don't want to sacrifice quality play for more volume.

I play PLO on apps where you have to scroll from 1 table to another for each decision so I don't have all tables on 1 screen where I can kinda keep track of what's going on and shift my focus quickly, I literally have to scroll or click the tab for my other table to pop up, act on it, move to the next for every decision

When I first started playing I was only able to play 2 then slowly could add a 3rd and play pretty proficiently most of the time but would sometimes struggle. Now I can play 3 very proficiently and sometimes 4. Not all sessions are created equal tho, sometimes you will be more focused or in the flow of good decision making than other times. I've found what works best for me is not putting rigorous stipulations on myself to always be on 3-4 tables but start off on 2-3 and see how it's going and if I feel like I'm playing very smoothly I'll add a 4th table if the games look good. If I'm playing a long session at some point I may close out 1 or 2 of the games and only be 2-3 tabling again. I also sometimes just like to take a break and exercise after 2-3 hours play and come back for another session later

I imagine if I played online where I could put all the tables on the same screen I would be able to 5-6 table pretty well but would sometimes 3-4 table some sessions where I don't feel as sharp

Try different stuff and see what works best for you and the better you get at the game and making what you know are good decisions the easier it gets to add more tables. Just find a system and routine that works good for you and realize some days you will be working that system better than other days