5-point plan: From break-even grinder to winning player

Won less than 2,500 BBs at NL10-NL100 in your last 200,000 hands? Can't make the jump from break-even to winning player? We're here to help!

At what point are you considered a break-even grinder? Typically a break-even grinder, often also referred to as a rakeback grinder, is a player who couldn't win more than 2,500 big blinds over 200k hands at his limit.

Jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none

Often break-even players know a little bit of everything but haven't really mastered anything. They've picked up most poker concepts at some point, knowing, for instance, what a range split is and why it could be considered a problem. They also have a strong opinion on a lot of topics, for instance, some find proper GTO extremely important while others think the complete opposite.

At the same time, these players have never really thoroughly calculated a river spot. They might have constructed a 3-bet range with some of their friends at some point, but coming up with an entire game plan has always been asking for a little bit too much zest from their side.

Sometimes they forward their bad beats interesting hands to their buddies to discuss those in more detail: "Yeah, I don't think he's bluffing on the river either."—"Exactly! Nobody's bluffing in such a spot!"—"Right, folding should be better here." They've already played more than 2,000 hands against Snowie but they still don't call with due regard to exactly one single combo on the river.

Overall, break-even grinders invest a lot of time in poker. Their training, however, is very unstructured. And that's a shame because the step towards becoming a winning player is actually not that far away.

PokerStrategy.com recommends this 5-point plan to take that last hurdle:

Phase 0: Define the importance of poker in your life

• 1. From vision to concrete goals
• 2. Planning goals
• 3. Reaching goals

Phase 1: Make sure you get the basics right

• 1. What are Combos?
• 2. What's the Gameplan concept?
• 3. 6-max Walkthrough series

Phase 2: Find out what are the real issues in your game?

• 1. Uri Peleg reviews our users
• 2. 10 tips to get out of the micros
• 3. Red Line Rampage series
• 4. Fix that Leak [more coming soon!]

Phase 3: Understanding Game Theory

• 1. Calldown Frequencies
• 2. Calldown Frequencies River
• 3. Barreling Frequencies
• 4. Barreling Frequencies River
• 5. The Nemesis - Deadly range construction

Phase 3.5 (optional): Make CREV your strongest weapon

• 1. CardRunnersEV - Solving simple questions
• 2. CardRunnersEV - Dealing with preflop and postflop questions
• 3. CardRunnersEV - Analysing Button vs Small Blind scenarios
• 4. CardRunnersEV - Complex range analysis

Phase 4: Apply the theory by practicing

• 1. NL200 Live Play session with stasia4242
• 2. NL500 Zoom with mbml
• 3. Having fun at NL600 with Lackoogcb