Call of Duty: Modern Bot Warfare

Thank you!!!

My Best Month Ever

Unequivocally, February has been the best month of my poker career so far:

We're only 19 days in and I'm just 800 hands off my personal record for most hands played in a month. I've more than doubled my previous best for EV captured in 6max (~$33k vs ~$16k). 6max hourly is up to $200/hr and $EV/hr is higher than that.

Of course, I did lose about 8k to bots HU in the early part of the month so my total profit is only ~19-20k which is still ~1k off my best.

The big change here came when I decided to trust myself to take a shot at 1k. A big thank you to MM for the push. In the first 20k hands of this shot, I am winning 8+ EV bb/100 at 1k which is far more than I was ever hoping for. Of course, maybe I'm just running particularly well, but it doesn't feel like I'm doing anything special, subjectively. The games feel the same as 500 with the sole exception of it being a fair bit harder to find recreationals.

I can only hope that the transition to 2k is half as smooth as this one has been.

Either way, it doesn't matter. I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that it is just a matter of time and effort until I can establish myself as a winning 2k reg on Ignition.

Thanks for reading my latest diary entry, 😅

GLGL with your grind!
***__WAGMI__***

First 2k Shot Results
Tracker:

By Stake:

Graph:

Debrief:
I wasn't even going to play 2k today. I had fully talked myself out of it... but I got a timely DM letting me know the games were incredible and that now was the time to pull the trigger. I took a big gulp and popped another 10k onto my account.

Good thing I did. I ended up capturing 11k in EV -- by far my best day ever. I didn't win nearly as much, but **** happens. I actually thought it was even better than this, but I had my tracker set to "today" and my session started before midnight. Still, complaining about a ~6k day is ridiculous. This is still my second biggest win ever.

2k has been demystified for me. I couldn't tell a single difference between the 2k regs and the 1k regs. As weird as it sounds, the smaller pool made the games feel a bit easier to me. It wasn't wave after wave after wave of tables with x2 good bots.

I played my first hand of online poker on March 12th, 2024 on ACR. Less than two full years later, I am putting in winning sessions at 2k. I will stop short of saying it is surreal because, and I know how this sounds, this is the result I envisioned and the result I expected. Overwhelming effort will always pay off... somehow.

Anyway, let me not get too carried away with the results of one insanely whale-y Friday night session. Let's see if I can consistently book wins on Wednesday nights, too. This shot hasn't landed yet. I need to stay locked in.

GLGL with your grind!
WAGMI

Going Back to Back... +11.5k!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=72ykBvPO...

Tracker:

Graph:

By Stake:

Debrief:
Well, what can I say? It's been one hell of a start to shooting 2k. I won $28,000 this weekend. The bad bots were back at 10/20 tonight and, if anything, it was easier because it seems like less 2k regs are aware of how to exploit the bad bots compared to 1k and lower. I went absolutely ballistic with the exploits and got lucky with a couple preflop all-ins and that turned the session into a monster.

I don't even know what to say. Can you believe I almost didn't play 2k this weekend? Well, this ain't horseshoes nor hand grenades so here we are. There's no going back. I know I can be a 2k winner now.

Right now, I'm feeling extreme gratitude. There's been a lot of... **** on the way to getting to this point and I'm not really talking about poker. I am talking about twenty years of self-development. I think I will look back at this little blip in time as a moment when so many thousands of little seeds planted over so many years finally came to fruition. There's nothing quite like taking something that only existed in your imagination and making it cold, hard reality. I hope to live long enough to have more such moments in my life.

GLGL with your grind, fellas!
WAGMI

Such a sick start to 2k! Congrats and hope it keeps going 😀

Amazing feat, congrats!

Thank you, fellas!

When the Bad Bots are in...

You must play. It's really that simple. Didn't run well, but captured close to another 10k in EV tonight. I wasn't going to play. I haven't taken a single day off of playing this month -- let alone poker itself.

However, the word came down from several Nachos that the bad bots were in at 1k+. At that point, for me, taking a break is not a serious option. I made several vs bad bot blunders that could have made this session significantly better, but it is what it is. You can easily get rusty and forget a few important things when you don't play them every day.

Maybe tomorrow I'll take a break... Maybe. Not if bad bots are playing HS, though. I don't even consider taking days off when they're in and neither should anyone else playing 500+.

GLGL with your grind,
WAGMI

February Results

80k+ Hands, 200+ grind hours, $50,000+ Winnings

6max Results by Stake:

6max Graph:

Debrief:
A banner month, truly. There are times when I question the amount of time and effort that I put into things, but this month is not one of them.

On top of the results, this was one of the cooler compliments I've ever received in any field: https://www.runitonce.com/chatter/marine...

Of course, I feel like a complete fraud being mentioned in the same breath as guys like Pat Howard, but it means a lot to garner respect from peers at the very top of the industry.

Next up? Try to do it all over again, I suppose!

GLGL with your grind,
WAGMI

Weekly Structure

In January, I played ~16k hands and made $9,000. I completed NBC (anti-bot H2N pop-up), produced content regularly, and had no issues with availability for 1on1 coaching nor the weekly strategy calls.
Note: I only do 1on1 coaching with current, active members of the Nachos Ignition team.

In February, I played ~83k hands and made $51,000. I had to stop hosting the strategy calls entirely, missed all but two of the HH reviews, canceled all my 1on1 coachings, and barely updated the team Notion with new bot content. I even missed out on CV reviews for a big chunk of the month.

I'm sure this is an opportune time to start throwing the word "balance" around. However, the cold hard reality here is that any time that I do not play during playable hours, that is a -EV decision. If I can sustain 5+bb/100 at 2k, it is unlikely that coaching or CFP work will ever be able to pay me anything close to what I can make from just playing. Likewise, the marginal return on further studying, outside of looking at CVs to note pool trends and find new exploits, is significantly lower than just spending the majority of my working hours actually playing.

As a coach, this presents as a bit of a conundrum. I have quite literally signed myself up to a position where my job is to help other people improve their WR. At the same time, I am not rich nor wealthy by any realistic measure. My number one goal with poker is to secure my family's future and reach a point where my assets & cash flows outpace my expected cost of living expenses for the rest of my life. Further, the goal is to do this as quickly as possible.

All of this is to say that I do need to find some kind of a "balance" between producing a substantial amount of value for the team and simply playing a lot. I think, going forward, my approach, for now, is going to be to take one full day off per week on Mondays. My focus on Mondays is going to be to produce content that immediately increases both my EV at the tables as well as that of the team's.

With this approach, I should still clear 150+ hours per week of grind and still have time to make multiple strategy videos, upgrades to NBC, and host a weekly call. For now, in terms of "balance", that will have to do.

Maybe this isn't a very relatable "problem" for most people, but it's been something I've struggled with here in the first two months of the year. I have a strong sense of obligation to deliver extremely high value content to the Ignition team, but I also feel compelled to play as much as possible to earn for my family.

I have full confidence that I'll land upon a schedule that allows me to surpass expectations for both sets of obligations, but, in the mean time, I appreciate the team's tolerance for my unusual inconsistency with scheduling.

As per the plan, I won't be playing today. I have some upgrades to NBC planned that should be ready by the end of my work day.

GLGL with your grind!
WAGMI

March Update
Results so far this month: 46hr2m, +~$11,500, and +6.22 EV bb/100

I have only played seven days this month, :neutral_face: .

Let Down Effect
This may sound a bit odd, but I've been dealing with a bit of poker depression so far in March. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm quite happy with the direction of my life and, of course, with my recent poker results.

However, in my mind, this year was going to be an epic struggle to get to 2k and establish a WR. Here we are in March and it is beyond doubt that I'm a clear winner at high stakes. I've already accomplished every single goal that I set for the whole year... and we're still in Q1.

I pushed myself so damn hard in the past nine months to get to this point that, now that I'm here, I find myself asking... "Is that all? That's it?". On the one hand, getting to this point was the ultimate goal. On the other hand, I'm already a bit bored without something to strive for. The success has been a let down of sorts.

I don't really have any desire to be one of the best players in the world or move up to 5k. The goal is to accumulate retirement money as fast as possible... but I just do NOT do well without some kind of a challenge. When I'm not striving for some kind of next level, all of the sudden the motivation to put in 300 hours months just dries up. I mean, I'm still on pace for 200 (lol), but the effort isn't in the same universe.

I took a full Friday off to enjoy a concert with my wife. We got back around midnight and I easily could've played, but I just went to bed instead. For me, this is... not normal. After taking something like three out of the last five days off of playing, I've kicked the blues a little bit, but I'm still feeling unsettled about the idea that my plan basically just calls for me to tread water for the next two-plus years.

That's just... lame as f. Maybe I will need to find some additional challenges outside of poker. I am not sure.

I probably sound like a first class whiney b, but, hey, maybe someone else will be able to take something from this. Everyone is human in the end.

Like any other challenge, I'm sure I'll find a way to overcome this feeling and get back to pressing at my maximum capacity. For now, I'm trying to allow the state/the feeling to just exist. In my past lives, I've learned that when I try to deny these things, they just get worse. Instead of trying to distract myself from the feeling, indulging it seems to create enough impetus to change... eventually. No one wants to feel the blues for very long after all.

Anyway, I will still do my job to the best of my ability. However, if you've noticed that I've been contributing/posting less, this is why. If I've been a bit grumpy or short with you recently, I apologize. I will, without a doubt, work through this, but I may be a bit less ever-present around the interwebs in the mean time.

As always, GLGL with your grind, fellas!

WAGMI

Solid results and glad to see someone hit their goals! What you're experiencing is extremely common. I think it's called post-achievement depression. It is, in a way, a good problem to have, but don't think it's lame or unusual or anything.

FWIW I've hit this point twice in my life and both times I completely self sabotaged myself back to 0 basically. I'm currently rebuilding and going thru the roughest/longest stretch of run bad I've ever experienced and feeling more frustrated than I've ever felt in my life. At the same time in the back of my mind I know I'm gonna make it through this and win and get back to high stakes once again

I would personally suggest finding some hobbies/things you enjoy outside poker to put your energy into to fall back on when all the success comes. Things that allow you to step away from poker for a bit wo sabotaging your life and offer you a form of struggle when poker or other aspects of life become too easy and boring.

I've noticed that trend personally that when poker got too easy almost I got bored with it and bc I didn't face enough struggle to get to high stakes last time I didn't even value it. I can say after this stretch of run bad I've been on I have definitely gained a sense of value in my skillset that I basically just took for granted in many ways before

I also find being able to take time away from poker and pivoting to other things as well as just taking some down time also really helps me appreciate all the freedom and optionality poker allows me to have in my life. I can go out for a bike ride at 2pm on a sunny Wednesday while most people are stuck inside in an office somewhere.

Maybe you don't struggle with self sabotage but what you mentioned in this post definitely reminded me of what I've been through. It may be smart to start a new hobby you're a complete beginner at and put a good amount of time into it so that you can value poker for giving you the freedom to pursue these other challenges in life

Just my personal experience, hope it helps in some way

This is really good advice man, thank you! I have always struggled very badly with balance. My biggest strength is my ability to absolutely all-in with the effort, but my biggest weakness is that I seem to fail at dialing that back to 75-80% for maintenance while taking care of other aspects of my life. I'm going to have to learn how to do this or I absolutely will sabotage myself.

My wife and I have decided to stop putting travel off. We've already planned a two week trip to Greece over the summer and we're visiting New York City next month. The hope is that spending some of the hard earned winnings while having some legitimately cool experiences will help ground what I'm doing to reality. It's really easy for the numbers to start feeling like a video game score and I find myself taking it for granted.

I know this is a challenge I'm going to have to figure out to make sure I can STAY high stakes instead of immediately flaming out.

In other news, I had my first +20k day today. Crazy stuff.

Congratulations again on the amazing success (60k month, 20k day, etc.) it appears from my vantage point to be very hard earned and you're an inspiration to us all. Enjoy some time off with the wife and make sure you strive to find that balance you're looking for!

Do you have any plans on activities or things to do in Greece or NYC?