My Journey to High Stakes Poker: A New Chapter Begins

Agree it’s pretty crazy. Esp since this thread is about moving to high stakes and he is moving down stakes while losing 30-35bi of a 600-700bi net worth/BR. This sort of mindset isn’t in line with getting to high stakes ever. How will you ever get to 5/10 if you think you need $600k minimum to play it and will move back down if you lose $30k?

Once you’re playing stakes where it’s very easy to pay all your monthly bills then shot taking the next level we should require LESS buy ins than we require for our main stakes

Some ppl r just nits. They hate losing so much more than winning.

The thing about bankroll management is we're all humans that have different responsibilities and ability to manage stress. You can live a much different life young and single vs having a family with kids - if your bankroll includes paying your own bills and you have a family of 4 that money can go quick. I remember having 10-20k downswings when I was in my 20s and single with a large bankroll - it stressed me out but since I had no responsibilities it wasn't the end of the world. Now older with a wife and kids to support it's a different lifestyle and my risk tolerance is much less. Would be much tougher to handle and ultimately keeping your mind in a good state is the ultimate goal.

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Thank you to everyone who participated in the thread. Quite a lot of valid points which I mostly agree.
Unfortunately the personal circumstances Im currently finding myself in are what caused this problem.

Until I left where I was (you can go back and read that I moved countries to a completely different timezone) I was absolutely crushing 200nl and taking shots at 500nl.
This might sound like excuses of course but I really feel that my winrate is not the same since then especially because I developed a very problematic sleeping problem.

I have to grind from 8PM local time to find good games. When I was in the other country I used to grind at around 4-5AM (so going to sleep very early and waking up very early also, perfect). Before that I used to be in Asia a lot of the time where I also used to grind very early (6AM+). Here in LATAM I created a severe sleep problem because I still want to wake up early. I have a baby and want to spend time with her of course!
The problem is that if I wake up at 8AM for example, I will be grinding 12 hours after waking up which is definitely not ideal for obvious reasons. What I started trying to implement was to sleep less during the night (around 6 hours) and then sleep for 2 hours more during the afternoon before grinding. Well, this is also a problem since I can't fall asleep easy so some days I would either not sleep at all or sleep for too little.

The point Im trying to make is that I have this huge sleep problem which is 100% impacting my life, my winrate and everything else. I didn't post about it because it might sound like excuses but since you guys are all making very valid points I decided to post about it now.
Anyways, I will be here in LATAM for a few months more but then I will go back to Asia where my schedule will be good again.

If anyone has any idea on how to fix this issue please post it below.

Here are my total results for this year between 1st January 2025 and 20th May 2025. If you go back and check the thread you can see that that was when I left the last place I was in and went to my home country to gather documents. From that moment on you can see that things completely change. It might still be variance but at this point its just too extreme of a difference for me to consider that. I didnt change the games I play in (except adding stars where im winning at a good clip currently). Everything else is the same.
This does not include rakeback and some results which I was not able to track before buying the new tracker I use in game. But the real results are not too different, maybe a bit more up than this.

Results 2025 until 20th May

WEEK 31 RECAP

So I had a similar situation playing live at one point where the game would start Thursday afternoon and sometime not break til early Sunday morning or even sometimes run til Sunday night, then might not run for a few days. I would basically just play 10-12 hours each day and then if I didn’t get to play at all the rest of the week I had already put in 30-40 hours for the week

I’d suggest doing something similar based on how your week looks and commit 2-4 days to poker where you are purposely waking up at good grind hours and playing til games suck then go spend some time with your family for the rest of the time you’re awake. It’s obv very important to have family time but also you want to make money and move up stakes while you can so you will also have even more freedom for your family later in life

You can also add some hours in at the sucky hours the other 3-5 days per week you’re less focused on poker. Use the good hours to play bigger stakes and shot take and the worse ones to grind the highest stakes you’re already confident and comfortable beating

Currently if you’re playing 100nl with roughly a 1400 buy in BR you need to actually see this for what it is which is bad BR management. If you’ve already proven to yourself that you’re willing to drop down in stakes if you lose 30 bi then you really don’t need more than 100-150bi ever and that’s if you’re incredibly conservative

On days you play during good hours you should be willing to play any stakes running up to 5/10 if you see a good game running with a couple big fish or just no crushers playing. You seem to really be boxing yourself into very arbitrary ideas currently which are holding you back and not serving you. I can speak from experience on this as I’ve done this myself in life at various points. If your mind works very logically you can use too much logic and put yourself in a box that when you step outside of that box it looks completely illogical for you to be in it. Playing .5/1 with a 1400bi BR is not the most logical option compared to playing 5/10 with 140bi BR even if we are game selecting heavily and playing 1/2 thru 3/6 otherwise. Reverse engineer how you got here and challenge the ideas that got you here then let them go as they are clearly illogical

I’ll also add…

You can operate under positive or negative rules for yourself…

“I’m going to play 100nl with a 1400bi BR until I get my 30bi downswing from 200nl back” is what I would consider a negative rule set since you’re at literally 0 risk of going broke at 200nl. It’s basically just a self imposed punishment.

A positive set of rules would be…

“I’m going to play 1knl when games are good and I won’t let myself lose more than 3bi at any table or 10bi total wo moving down and regrouping.”

“I will leave the table if I’m up 4bi even if the game is still great to protect my wins until I’m up 25bi then I will change the rules to give myself more freedom there”

This is how you slowly and methodically move up stakes and set rules to help you rather than hinder you. You can set them for whatever you feel comfortable with obv

WEEK 32 RECAP

Im going to write something in the next post about everything I talked about and also regarding what @LucidDream said.
I think this was literally one of the most eye opening and transformative weeks since I began to play poker. I realized a bunch of stuff that Im going to write up about next. It will just take some time.

Complacency

This week I realised I’d gotten complacent. That felt big — not because it’s a fun discovery, but because it’s the thing that finally lets me move directionally, which I haven’t done in a long time.
Why complacency? I spent about 30 hours studying this week and, without over-explaining, I noticed the same pattern I see in a lot of regs: you start winning, the strategy works, and you relax. You don’t improve with a purpose anymore — you just get comfortable.

I have the same problem. It’s not that I don’t study or don’t use the solver and drills. The issue is that a lot of that “study” doesn’t actually push you forward. It’s busywork. It’s a way to prove to yourself you’re doing something, but when you ask: how does this actually make me better at the tables? — the answer is often “it doesn’t.” It’s not actively attacking leaks, and most of it isn’t even implementable in-game. It’s comforting, not useful.

The stakes play into this too. If you’re making money at the level you play, why move up and face tougher opponents and bigger swings? That’s complacency again. To move up you need directional improvements — you need to put yourself out of the comfort zone. That’s hard because your subconscious already prefers comfort, and it’ll resist the change.

Once I noticed how much of my decision-making was grounded in “I’m comfortable,” it got surprisingly easier to plan. Admitting the leak points you at fixes.

I’ve written enough for now. Maybe in the next post I’ll share the plan.

WEEK 33 RECAP

This week marks one of the most transformative weeks since I started playing poker. Its just crazy the amount of change mentally and strategically my game went through. I will definitely be talking about this along the way. I spent dozens of hours in the lab + playing this week. It was actually one of the weeks where I played the most this year. Also the week where I studied the most!
Actually mind blown by the amount of changes I had in this little time.

Played some 200nl again finally but ran like absolute garbage lol. These last 2 or 3 sessions went pretty bad, ran like absolute dogsh*t.

I will write something tomorrow or next day about a challenge Im issuing myself for the next 365 days.

Can you explain more about your study process? Do you review hands, do some drills or what?
I'm curious to know what is your approach, if you don't mind to share with us, of course.

I spent a lot of time in the past just studying solver heuristics in a lot of spots. I think this is key for execution since if you don't understand the heuristics you will never be able to implement stuff in game. Also drills help a lot with practicing these heuristics and getting a lot of spots so that you can learn new stuff.
But this past week it was mostly a mental thing.

I'm issuing myself a challenge.
In the next 365 days I will have to be playing 500NL regularly (with a mix of 200-600) ! If I don't complete this something bad will have to happen. Hope everyone can chime in and give me some ideas!

The challenge will end on the 20th of August 2026.

This is my graph since implementing the mental/strategic changes to my game.

Why is the challenge 365 days? Even though some people in this thread might think that this is too much time to get to my goal, I think its a realistic timeframe and one I feel comfortable with. I think it will be at least 500k hands which I think is enough to get to 500nl from here if Im actually good enough to beat that.

Lets hope I don't have to suffer the consequences of this challenge lol.

I think if you create the challenge of having to send a message to your ex girlfriend you'll eventually beat 500NL sooner than you can imagine lol

You have to give pileupcoins, chaany or paistings a 1000 dollar bankroll and then 10 hours of free coaching.

What a mega waste of time/funds that would be. Complete torture.

Terms and rules of the challenge (500$ inside!):
- It will end on the 20th of August 2026.
- I will have to be playing 500nl regularly. This doesn't mean I only play 500nl. I can mix 200-600nl to get enough games but I have to be playing it as a regular stake (not just taking shots).
- I will be making a weekly youtube video with the results instead of written form, unless I have some problems with youtube (seems like people have been getting these problems).
- If I don't complete the challenge I will have to pay 500$ ( amount might increase actually, but lets start with this) to one person who is a member of my discord group for at least 6 months when the challenge ends (so you have 6 months from today to join - link at the end of the post) and 2 hours of coaching (if you want lol).
- This discord criteria is just to not allow bumhunters to join the challenge and only active people
- I will contact you via discord when the challenge ends if you win so you will have to have an active discord account. The raffle will be done on video or live, to discuss later.
- The payment will be in crypto to make it easier.

Here's the link of the discord and good luck to everyone!
https://discord.gg/JEnjy55H8g

Lmfao I don’t hate money that much.
Prefer giving to someone who participates in the thread/discord.

WEEK 34 RECAP

if video is not working here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU-tB1Hg...

Not sure why the video is not working correctly here on 2p2 but in that video I show my results YTD and some other stuff.

WEEK 35 AND AUGUST RESULTS

LINK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jV9PSIva...

spoiler:
made $3738, hourly of $40/h

lol now I understand what I was doing wrong. Here’s the video.

WEEK 36 RECAP

WEEK 37 RECAP

i won 7 bucks.

week 38 recap