Crawling our way up again

Almost like me. I like play less study more part. I am doing same thing at the moment. Day is great when I have 2h for playing. Long way to go from 50$ to nl25 and above so good luck.

Thanks man, with enough hard work and practice I know it can be done even though I realize it's a long way but I'm fine with that. I'll make sure to take a look at your blog as well

When I was thinking about a title for my blog this song popped in my head. It's a timeless and great motivational song to start this new blog with and thought it fit well ♠_biggrin:♠_p:

At this stage my main priority is getting most out of my study sessions and slowly but steadily building up my bankroll again. I committed myself to at least 30 mins of study every single day. I invested in new books, regularly watch educational videos and articles here at pokerstrategy and be more active in the hand discussions forum whilst helping other community members with the similar goals.

Video of the day:

Books I'm reading at the moment: Purposeful practice for poker - The modern approach to studying poker by Dr. Tricia Cardner and Gareth James. Another book I have read but I need to reread: The Mengal Game of Poker by Jared Tendler and Barry Carter.

So how are we going to do things?

The Game plan:

My daily goals are:

+ Study 30+ minutes (full focus, away from the table)
+ Study or Recap latest study before the start of a poker session
+ Play 300+ hands at Pokerstars and even more in the weekend if possible (2-4 tabling shouldn't take much more then 1 hour)
+ Evaluate at least one hand in the poker discussion forum (which I double benefit from with bonus SP)

My weekly goals also include:

+ Play at least 1 MTT (Can take up 5-6 hours easily, but the reward can be great and I like playing them)
+ Update this blog at least once and review my progress (also the bankroll challenge update)
+ Always use proper BRM (don't want to make that mistake ever again!)
+ Watch some videos and/or read some books (learn from the pro's)
+ Get in touch with other members and learn from eachother (I think that's the whole idea behind this site?)

By completing these goals I WILL reach my poker goals for this year which include:

+ At this rate I play 9K+ hands a month or well over 100K+ in a year!
+ Gain gold status and become active member here at PS.
+ Keep working and improving at the game.
+ Build up a €1000 bankroll (might take quiet a bit longer than a year but we'll get their, eventually)
+ Last but not least: Have fun!

I will also keep track of my progress and tweak where necessary. And finally my non related poker goals (and life for that matter) should not suffer from playing poker. Some of my other goals in life are regular running outdoors and eating healthy food.

A nice tune to start todays grind ♠_grin:

I started with roughly €50 bankroll, just enough to get started going again and I play at 2 different rooms.

At Unibet we play with €30 grinding the NL4 NLHE Cash games and participating in MTT's (maybe with satellites?)
At Pokerstars we play with €20 grinding the NL2 NLHE Cash games, trying to move up ASAP to NL5 (When I reach €100 BR or maybe taking some shots sooner)

I'm considering participating at GGpoker too. I heard the tables are relatively soft and since I never played there I can benefit from the FDB which would be very +EV. But first I need some bankroll and confidence back.

I joined The Bankroll Challenge again to keep me extra motivated and have a chance at the $100 raffle and other cool benefits

Gg fdb is almost worthless unless you play nl25 or above. Maybe insane volume in NL10. At zoom I think stars have softer tables. Nice feature is that you can colourcode opponents in lobby. No need to open tables for that. Negative is that no tracking or HUD is allowed. If you have enough bankroll you should definitely try it out.

Originally posted by microfever
Gg fdb is almost worthless unless you play nl25 or above. Maybe insane volume in NL10. At zoom I think stars have softer tables. Nice feature is that you can colourcode opponents in lobby. No need to open tables for that. Negative is that no tracking or HUD is allowed. If you have enough bankroll you should definitely try it out.

I was a bit worried NL5 would not be good enough to clear the FDP at GG. Thanks for confirming my thoughts on that. I was looking forward to join there but that's going to be for sometime in the future. Didn't know about the colourcoding thing, that's cool. I know they have their own build in HUD I think it can be good for the game. Do you know it is still possible to export your basic stats like cash results graph, # hands played, bb/100, hand history, etc into HM/PT?

Video of the day and insta subbed to the amazing free content of Jonathan Little's channel:

We have been studying hard and grinding a lot today. Tomorrow, on Sunday I'll update the stats weekly.

The plan:

We are following the S.M.A.R.T. approach:

Specific: My poker goal is to beat the micro stakes and have a bankroll of 25 BI ready for NL25 which and grinding it up to €1000

Measurable: Playing 9000+ hands a month (300+ a day) at NL16 with at least 2bb/100

Attractive: Having fun! Having a bankroll that allows me to buy into MTT's and chase the dream without risking anything! Equals more financial freedom.

Realistic: I am studying hard and working on my game intensively and that will put my game to a higher level.

Timed: 12 months, before the end of the year. Although I realize this might be a bit optimistic but we'll see how far we get and reevaluate things at the end.

Goal: Build a decent BR of €1000 that allows me to play poker at NL25 and MTT's

Beat the micro's using BSS BRM/Tankroll strategy:

♠_pleased: You can move up to a higher limit when you have at least 20 stacks available and feel confident enough to beat this limit.
♠_frown: You have to move down, no matter what, to the previous limit when you have less than 20 stacks of the current limit left.

BR Challenge Week 1+2

Pokerstars + Unibet

Goal: €1000
Starting Bankroll: €50
End Bankroll: €72.33
Number of Games: 8046 hands + 6 MTT's
Profit: +€22.33

He bets OTF, I raise allin.

A little reflection on how things are going. My main game is the PokerStars NL2 6-max tables and the results from 2 weeks are shown in the graph in the post above. I manage to beat them but these are supposed to be the easiest softest games out there and it's shocking to notice how tight everybody is playing and the advanced plays I see people make for a $0.30 pot! Lucky there still are fish who have no problem with going broke on top pair no kicker, but they are very rare extinct bread and in those 8K+ hands I've only encountered them once in a while.

At Unibet I mainly try to focus on the MTT's. Mostly playing break even for now. But most also have a bad structure, bad payouts and as MTT's tend to be also a lot of variance going on. The cash games have at times weak players but at other times zero action going on, moving blinds back and forward.

I also downloaded a trial from PokerSnowie. It has some cool features and I'm sure it's a great learning tool. But like most of these useful tools it's largely overpriced and I'm also not convinced it's the best on the market. Maybe if it was a one time payment with lifetime license I would consider it but with an annual fee of $99 for the standard and 229.95 for the pro version that's just above my budget. It's just not worth it at least for now. Wouldn't mind to get a free month with the raffle, you never know There are other tools that also catch my interest but almost all of them are really overpriced. Sure if it can improve someones winrate at the mid to high stakes it might be worth it. But for all low and micro stakes grinders it's just too expensive and doesn't give you enough value for the money. For me I keep it in the first place by oldschool books and of course there's a ton of free content available on the web too. But worth mentioning there are some excellent free tools available too like Equilab. Equilab truly boosted my game and knowledge and is completely free! I can recommend that one to everybody who wants to learn more about equity. I know this is out there for a long time, but since I had a long poker brake I'm rediscovering these old treasures

Originally posted by FriskyArt
Video of the day and insta subbed to the amazing free content of Jonathan Little's channel:

I like his content a lot.
This one is particularly good — the flip side of "How to Exploit Recreational Players" is "How not to be one"

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by FriskyArt
Video of the day and insta subbed to the amazing free content of Jonathan Little's channel:

I like his content a lot.
This one is particularly good — the flip side of "How to Exploit Recreational Players" is "How not to be one"

Thanks for the recomendation. I remember that one came out recently and was on my watch later list 😄

I had a really rough week. I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible pain and had to go to the hospital. Kidney stones! The pain is indescribable So I didn't play nor study much this week. Tomorrow I go back to the hospital for a second treatment. I'm feeling better at the moment but still have a lot of painkillers and the stones are definitly not gone yet. Even worse is this is not the first and probably not the last time this is happening to me. Nothing much to do about it, I guess I'm sensitive for this.

Anyway the stats for the first half of the week:

BR Challenge Week 3

Goal: €1000
Starting Bankroll: €72.33
End Bankroll: €144.28
Number of Games: 4K hands + 6 MTT's
Profit: +€71.95

Originally posted by FriskyArt
I had a really rough week. I woke up in the middle of the night with terrible pain and had to go to the hospital. Kidney stones! The pain is indescribable

I don't know if this applies in your case, but the only person I know that had them described it as "like pissing razor blades"

Get Well Soon!
VS

Thanks appreciate it!

Sadly the pissing razor blades isn't the worst. The feeling of your kidney is about to explode causes the most pain one can imagine. Thank God for the good cares of the people at the hospital

Anyway still a lot of recovery to do so no poker at the moment. I try studying (reading books) but even that is hard to do at the moment. But hopefully I get back on track real soon.

BR Challenge Week 4

Goal: €1000
Starting Bankroll: €144.28
End Bankroll: €164.94
Limits: NL2 + €5 MTT's
Number of Games: 4K hands + 20 MTT's
Profit: +€20.66

And here are the total stats after the first month of our 2022 Challenge:

This is grinding our way out of NL2. We had a bad downswing when taking a shot at NL5 zoom tables, on that day I almost lost it all again. Very frustrating but I guess I was not ready to combat NL5 yet and I don't like zoom tables. It's nice for the volume, but I got my *ss kicked. We had to take a step back to NL2 and play standard tables again (both 6-max and FR) to slowly build it up again. We almost have enough to take a shot at NL5 again.

At Unibet I managed to finish 2nd place once for €226.5 but i also played 20 others where I didn't finish ITM and along with some rebuys that was only good enough to just break even. It is hard to be profitable with these. After playing over a total of 200 MTT's I'm about break even. It's not terrible but it's not good enough obviously. I worked really hard to get here and playing break even is not why we're here. So we have to work, study, analyse and continue to improve by any means possible. Failure is not an option.

+ At this rate I play 9K+ hands a month or well over 100K+ in a year! We played 13.7K hands in januari well beyond our goal!
+ Gain gold status and become active member here at PS. We are very active, but only silver for now
+ Keep working and improving at the game. We bought some new books and have studied a ton this month
+ Build up a €1000 bankroll (might take quiet a bit longer than a year but we'll get their, eventually) Still a long way but we're on schedule right now
+ Last but not least: Have fun! There was a big portion of frustration too, but we definitely had fun too.

Nice Giraffe!
...and congrats on the 2nd place!