broke blog

That all sounds like it is going to be epic!
I started one year after you but never had a BR of 50k, maybe 10 or 12k, grinding NL25 or NL50 max.

GL and with 10k hands you should move up very quick!

Best of luck!
I was also in IT, but my job was never remotely close to boring!

I gave PLO a shot a while back, but I'm dismal at it.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Best of luck!
I was also in IT, but my job was never remotely close to boring!

I gave PLO a shot a while back, but I'm dismal at it.

Hey, I learned a new word today.
If you have the patience and time, fire up $2-$4 PLO tournaments to go with your grind.
Players there are truly dismal. More than Vorpal for sure.

@Nazgos thank you, I know that feeling: right now Im applying for jobs but I cant even get a contract atm.

@Sven thx for the kind words, lets see if it will be epic once more

@Vorpal Heyy, what have you done in IT? I maybe was a bit harsh in OP saying my job was boring: It wasnt that boring otherwise I would not have done it several years. Compared to poker it just wasnt that exciting and special

@nsavov: Funny that you mention MTTs: My mid-longtherm goal is to involve in PLO MTTs indeed. When I tried to make a living from poker I mainly played MTTs and 45s 180s on Stars. Just need to build a roll first.

Originally posted by efkay
@Vorpal Heyy, what have you done in IT? I maybe was a bit harsh in OP saying my job was boring: It wasnt that boring otherwise I would not have done it several years. Compared to poker it just wasnt that exciting and special

I managed the IT department at a brand-new printing plant the produced two daily newspapers.
We had a wide variety of operating systems — OS2/Warp, Windows 3.11 up to Windows XP, several server OSs, a VMWare cluster and at least two different database systems.

The "not boring" part stems from the fact that a newspaper must print each and every day. Every failure became a crisis.
We were prepared though — every mission-critical system had a backup, such that in the event of the failure of one system, we could start the backup and be running in a short time. However, in all the time I worked there, we never used a backup — it was always faster to fix the system that was down.

Good luck and success with your challenge!

small graph update to keep up with the challenge-reports:

I have decided to make a bigger analysis every 5k hands so keep an eye on the blog.
@mods: Why am I not being able to link in sig or pictures in my blog? thought beeing silver might solve the problem

You are linking an HTML page, but you should link the picture directly.
Correct link can be found by right-click on the pic in the site:

In your signature you need to have the link as following:
Name you want to display
(i deactivated the conversion to a link in this post)

Originally posted by SvenBe
In your signature you need to have the link as following:
Name you want to display
(i deactivated the conversion to a link in this post)

Well, well well... you learn something new every day.

I've always used code tags when I don't want links to be "linked"

[url=link]Name you want to display[/url]

works good in my post, not in my signature though :/

Originally posted by efkay
works good in my post, not in my signature though :/

In the panel where you change your signature, check the "options" drop-down at the bottom.
Make sure "Deactivate BBCode" is unchecked.

excellent

I painted a beautiful giraffe for you guys(girls):

Nice upswing to restart PLO journey Lets start with a misplayed hand: I didnt saw pot was 3bet already. Even if it wasnt 3bet, squeezing vs UTG without Ace blocker is not good. In the end fortune favoured the fool (me) :

We all make mistakes though and the game is about who makes the less. So many thanks to the donators of the last week, some Highlights:

Lets have a look at stats:

I think samplesize will have to be bigger to get meaningful stats but for now Im pretty happy.

Next deeper analysis will be my SB game: I think I should tighten up a little here and some first hand quizzes already showed me that Im leaking in this position. Fold to 3bet can also be a little bit lower but I guess that will be one of the stats that needs way more sample.

I have a Job Interview as DevOps tomorrow so for today I'm out. Upcoming Improvement: Trying to intensify studies for SB game.

Oh, in case somebody is wondering what music Im grinding to, last week it was this mix:

I got rejected from the job application unfortunately but I still look forward to get myself into a job as a DevOp Engineer. I also had some little headaches which f*cked up my sleep routine so there was no poker at all. Well, lets go again for some PLO SB theory. These are my current stats facing a raise from BU in SB:

These includes also pots with limpers since they are just so many. Sample size isnt that great so far but for my first clear goal to improve I want to push these stats.

GTO stats are like VPIP 12.5%, Call 2.7% / 3bet 9.8%. Now on PLO2 I dont expect anybody to play GTO: They will almost never 4bet naything else than aces, overall the majority of players limps in first so I expect a button raiser on PLO2 to be more on the tight side, unless they minraise

If we look at my stats again it seems Im playing a little bite too loose. Thats just what I discovered in some quizzes also. Searching through my DB I find myself 3betting KJT7s (just call), KK54nhs (call), AJ84s (fold!). Quite the opposite of being tighter than GTO.

I will continue with some quizzes and share my results later to see how this develops.

e: I have 5 quizzes with a total of 45 questions regarding this topic. latest score: 68,89% I consider improved enough when scoring >80%

small update: I achieved 84.44% in my quizzes about SBvBU today so I continue with this situation analyzing more postflop since I really did not improve the winrate so far but with ~200 hands the sample is quite low . Some examples that are very hard to adapt for me are:

Hands like
K:d T:d 9:s 8:h
Q:h J:s T:d 9:d
K:c J:d T:d 9:h

are a 3bet but
T:c 9:s 8:h 7:c
K:d Q:s J:d 8:h

we have to fold. especially the last one would have been a clear 3bet for me. perfect T-high rundown I thought we can still call. now I have to be more patient for those rundowns

now for the good music vibes one can listen to the current livestream of tomorrowland:f_thumbsup::

You never believe your parents or other grown-ups when they say how the time flies but at some point realize it really does. I think myself I registered a couple of years ago, okay maybe five, but 13? And now you're saying about 17 which is absolutely unbelievable. It really does bring the feeling of the old PS.com atmosphere here and I hope we'll keep it up. Thank you for that and of course the very best of luck in whatever you challenge yourself in to.

Hey Bender,

yeah, time flies indeed. For the part of what I‘m challenging myself the answer is pretty simple: My ego.

When I started in 2005 I was just done with school and on my way to german army for 1.5y. In my school days I was heavily involved into playing Call of Duty in clans. I remember playing 1on1, 3on3 and 5on5 in ESL somewhat competitively.

I also was playing SC and CnC:Generals at that time. Now the eSports thing was tuned down because at the germany army there was no time for such things. But gaming must have lead me to pokerstrategy somehow back then.

I never felt like a gambler. I learned early in life that one lose in the long run so in my younger days I quickly wondered why my parents are playing lotto.

I started poker because the former SC2 pro basically told us about the strategy element and was very scared of running into an addiction. But since I got 5 bucks to start and if I will lose it wont be my earned money, why not?

Back then the game was fun. It was fun to move up in stakes. meeting strategy member in person. partying in Hamburg while the boss spend some rakeback by paying bottles of vodka red bull.

I met Supernova Elite players making a living in Liverpool. While I had a job at this time the idea of being pro thrilled me also. But once you see the game as a job the fun starts to disappear.

In my later career playing live on my local casino also gave my life a special note I really enjoyed. Not to mention that the extra money gave me insights to life in my twenties not everybody has.

But that all build up a very very huge ego unfortunately. I remember 2019/2020 before I had my 1-2 year pause. I was transitioning into PLO for the second time and grinded my way up to plo50 on GG.

I have a good friend I met at my casino that went to a very strong long term friendship. We sat together at a local masters NLH MTT together, Buy In 550€, starts every 3 months. I felt tired and back then went for an energy drink.

He went for coffee and mentioned why I do this to my health, it is like 20 times more coffein in these drinks than in a natural cup of coffee. I said ‚BS, its not that high!‘

We made a bet about the costs for the drinks for whoever is nearest with his guess (I think the answer was 2.5 cups of coffee in a can of red bull) and this bet I won. I have to mention that I lost many sidebets to this guy later on ^^ Shoutouts to my man Alexander the Great!

Later I remember Alex had to help me cash out 15k in cash from this casino because I went 2nd in one of those masters and if you cash out more than 5k in the casino you have to show IDs and get registered and everybody and their mama was afraid to get registered as a pro in a database that might get forwarded to goverment and pay half of the winnings for extra taxes.

while this was just some kind of paranoja, I had to trust some guys 5k in chips I basically only knew for some hours in the casino to cash out without registration. In the end one of these guys turned out to be a good friend for life!

Now this guy knows all about me, myself and poker. He staked me for PLO100 back then to give me a little turbo. Now the run on PLO100 was a short term disaster. Variance wise because of the short term it was fine.

The money also wasnt that big of a problem. The problem was me, thinking because I am into this since like 15 years, I deserve to make a living from poker. Having to play midstakes because been there once and hourly for micros is a joke, I can flip burgers to make better.

While this is true it holded me back from playing the game for some time now. I bitched around and when new german regulations with extra taxes came on top due to high rake enviroment I felt like the train is finally gone forever.

Fortunately, my ego is big enough to state that after all these years and hands while I might not be the top notch grinder like all of these I met in my life it would be a waste not of time but of potential. Lets have another try, in the end, what can I loose besides time that I already wasted by not playing but vegetating

I really think now for me to battle my ego I have to realise after 15-17 years of poker I never really ‚made it‘ but while this might be a combination due of lacking skills and some luck that is no reason not to play micros again.

Yes, the golden times are gone. Many crusher back then printed nice money just by grinding breakeven and earning huge rakeback. some made 6-digit rolls and when things became worse they opted out and went for flipping real estate or investing.

they wont hesitate coming back because they played full time and for them its a job that pays bad nowadays.

For me its a dream I failed at. But after almost 2 years pausing I think at some time I had the wrong dream. Like getting a trophy for my career.

I started to look for all the main event winners and to finish this blogpost for now lets just simplify my feelings and say: I went jealous. Jealous that while I made a pretty nice life with extras I still wasnt satisfied and reached for the whole thing.

I remember a former Supernova Elite player saying: One plays cashgame for cash and MTTs for fame. Back then I did not realize how true this is. But I recalled this by watching this new film recently: The dude makes a good living playing small cashgames. A backer hires him for the WSOP ME and of course he almost wins it but I really like how things turned down in this one so I can recommend it:

Hi efkay,

Your blog is really interesting, I wish you good luck in reaching your goal and I will follow your story with interest.

Quick update for the bankrollchallenge:

Week 03
Hands since start: 9,227
Profit since start: +$53.32
Profit since last report: +$20.13
Start BR: $50
Total BR: $103.32

after 10k hands milestone I will continue analyzing some stats