$250 to Heaven - MTT and Sit & Go
Hey everyone, I'm a 26yo based in Vancouver who wants to take poker more serious, and hopefully go pro in the future if everything goes well.
I've been drawn to competitive gaming since my early teen years: it started as competing with friends for high scores in PS1/PS2 games, then transitioned to speedrunning, and finally during the pandemic I met both poker and chess and fell in love with these games. I recently broke the barrier of 2000 elo in Rapid chess online, and now I'm looking forward to take poker a bit more serious.
The plan: stop playing poker as a recreational player, deposit $250 for the last time and turn that deposit into a living dream.
The approach:
* I'll be playing on PokerStars. It's the client I'm used the most, the rakeback and tournament structure seems much better than GG, and honestly my biggest goal for now is to get better at the game than try to find the most EV website to play on.
* MTTs and Sit and Gos only. No cash games. I love the thrill of reaching a final table, I find ICM concepts fascinating and thanks to my speedrunning background I'm used to playing for long sessions in a day. I may occasionally cut some sessions short during the week days I have a remote full time job.
* Strict BRM: 100 buy-ins for both MTTs and SNGs. I know that the variance for SNGs is lower than MTTs, but I wanna focus on getting better at the game and building a strong mental game before stepping up to higher buy-ins. There isn't much action on SNGs on Stars, so I may switch to only MTTs once I overcome the micros.
* SNG: 9 players turbo and 32 players turbo - they seem to be the better games on Stars. It's a shame stars don't offer more sit and go options.
* MTT: play every Regular/Slow/Turbo tournament that my bankroll allows. Just like for SNGs, I'll be avoiding hyper turbo tournaments.
I started this challenge 5 days ago and here are the results so far:
Playing the first ~375 games was exhausting. It's easy to doubt your skills when variance is not on your side, but that's part of the poker road. I need to train my mental game to not care about the short term results, and fully trust the process. It's a challenging mindset to have, but very rewarding when the results come.
The biggest jump in the graph is a 8th place in a $2.20 bounty builder tournament.
So far, the most volume I have in a specific tournament is the 9 players turbo SNG: 272 games with a ROI of 10.6%.
Here is the complete hands x BB won graph:
Thanks to rakeback, my BR is sitting at $396. I'll be updating this thread every 500 games or so.
9 Replies
Good luck mate! Nice volume
I hit the milestone of the first 1000 games and 50k hands! Here's the profit graph and hands/bb won graph:
I'm in the middle of a big break even streak, which is mainly due to running bad in MTTs. I've been doing really well in sit and gos, especially the 32 players one. Here are my SNG results so far:
(the first two should be the 32 player ones - I have no idea why PT4 tracks them as two separate description tournaments. The third one with 9% ROI is the 9 players sit and go).
I wonder if this 40% ROI is sustainable long term - I might be just running well in the 32men games.
Other than volume updates, I've got RYE's tournament masterclass and I plan to study at least one hour after my play sessions. Hoping to hit the $500 mark in the BR soon so I can jump into the $5 sit and go games.
Hey guys, I hope you all had a great week of griding!
During this week, I decided to focus more on MTTs and 32men SNGs, since these seem to have the best ROI compared to my 9men stats. The grind was pretty good overall, I managed to bink a $1.10 PKO for $68 and a Hot $3.30 for $77. SNGs were very break even-ish/slighly winning, I had a bad run in the 32men for a while but it eventually turned around. Peak bankroll was at $560 just before the sunday grind.
Today I had my worst session so far, straight up losing almost every tournament I registered and cashing only in a select few. I was playing every tournament under a 100BI management, and I felt it was too swingy for MTTs, as you can see in the big dip at the end of the profit graph. As a result, I'll switch to a 200BI BRM. It feels like the risk of having a few bad sessions and losing a good chunk of your bankroll doesn't overcome the benefit of possibly luck boxing a tourney and moving up in stakes. Sessions like this are good to learn about yourself and how you deal with discipline, patience and builds up resilience for the future longer downswings that have yet to come.
Final BR: $513
Graphs:
It sucks that I'm consistently 2.5bb/100 under my EV line though, I can't wait for the green and yellow lines to eventually converge lol
Hi! GL on the grind! Results are pre RB, right? Your graph seems to be a good illustration of the old truth that most of your profit in MTT:s will come from a few bigger binks.
Hi guys, I hope you all had a great week! Time to do my update 😃
This past week started off with me taking a bad beat from my computer. My laptop was overheating and restarted in the middle of a grind session, luckily it was due to dusty fans so I managed to resolve it rather quick. Fortunately once I came back to the tables, I managed to save a few tournaments/SNGs and still get a few cashes. On the down side, this means that a few hands/results aren't properly tracked.
Week summary:
I decided to focus more on studying than playing, focusing on post flop IP. I took friday off to travel with my wife. Most of my volume came from the weekend when I played two looong sessions.
Sit and gos were very break even-ish, and Tournaments were great: I managed to bink a $2.20 zoom turbo PKO for $123 and got second in a $2.20 $300 GTD for $48. Bankroll is at $605.75
I took some time to create a filter in PT4 for the 32men SNG that I've been grinding, so get ready for some graphs and stats:
Overall profit:
bb graph wise, it feels good to finally be getting out of a 25k hands break even period 😀
SNG 9 players graph:
SNG 32 players graph:
the variance on the 32men is crazy lol, I'm in the middle of a 500 games break even streak and I'm wondering how the **** I even managed to get that upswing at first
Plan for the next week:
I found that studying more in week days and playing more in weekends fits very well into my lifestyle, so I'll try to do it again this week. I'll continue grinding tournaments and 32men SNG, taking a break from 9men for now. I'm still set on following a 200BI strategy, so I'll "unlock" the $3.30 buy-in at $660, which hopefully happens in a few days.
Hi! GL on the grind! Results are pre RB, right? Your graph seems to be a good illustration of the old truth that most of your profit in MTT:s will come from a few bigger binks.
Hey man, thanks for the good luck! Yea, the profit is pre-RB. RB wise, I completed two stars chests already ($40 each) and I'm halfway through my next chest. I'm doing about 1000-1500 stars rake points per grind session, so I estimate around 2 weeks for each 40 bucks. MTTs do feel like it's all about doing everything you can to lose the minimum until you finally manage to get a bink haha
Very nice results!! Yeah, the 32-man structure with only 15% of the places ITM is gonna make it very swingy. In low swing 9-mans I had over 10% roi on micros and still saw stretches of 700-1000 games breakeven. In these 32-mans even with 10% roi you probably have to get ready for stretches where you earn 0$ for 1000-2000 games, and it's gonna be quite common. You're doing really good volume so when that comes it shouldn't last that long.
Hey guys, sorry for no updates in a month - I managed to break and dislocate my right wrist bones while skiing - as a result I haven't been able to use a mouse with my dominant hand for a while. Recovery is going well and I hope to be back playing poker in a week or two, as using the mouse and typing in the keyboard is still too painful at the moment.
Hey guys, I'm finally back playing poker. Recovery took longer than expected, I had to go through a few sessions of physiotherapy to get the movement back. My wrist is mostly back to normal. I thought I'd have a badass scar from the surgery but it looks like just a failed suicide attempt, which is what skiing is sometimes
Spoiler
Some circunstances changed in my personal life as well - I got another work contract so I don't have as much free time to play tournaments. I decided to switch to cash games because unlike tournaments, I can play for less continuous hours and take breaks when needed. Started off at 2NL online and this is my graph so far:
Learnt a lot during this 2NL grind: fold more pre, avoid calling/being passive pre, 3bet more (especially from the SB), value bet thin and fold more to big bets on turns/rivers. My gameplay is still heavily focused on the blue line. I'm considering buying a cash game course so I can understand more how to attack more capped ranges and improve my red line. I'm playing 5NL now and trying to be more aggressively post flop + 4bet a little bit wider.
