Couldn't beat NL2 in 8 years, Will beat NL10 in a year

There is some weird promo on GG and i think i will be playing more and i will actually go back to 4 tabling(I will revert if i play too badly). I couldn't play too much in last 3 weeks, there is a week left. I will do some grinding, not so crazy hours tho.

i know in previous posts i said i won't be grinding much but i think it is more +EV to play with this stupid candy promo and it will make me so i have to play less in the feature etc. Will still try to study enough. But 4 tabling and playing more than i should for this week, but i will probably end up playing exactly as much as i should have for this month.

(Yes, GG succeeded in their weird promo)

Sent you a pm with a suggestion.

Well okay 4 tabling wasn't really that bad, although i think i am down 4 buyins in total(from the start of playing NL5), sucks to play 3 weeks and be down 4 buyins, i mean i know worse is possible but idk. I will be fair to myself and say there was some unlucky hands there although there was some bad calls, and there was decent number of failed bluffs that were supposed to work but they ended up making the hero calls with hands that they were supposed to not call with. I think they were okay bluffs. I am not justifying being spewy but I rather lose money running dumb bluffs than making dumb calls. I think one year ago i was playing so tight and straightforward, i am more aggressive right now, which is cool i think.

So playing slightly more because of candies. I was grinding for the stupid candies, i mean i didn't calculate but i think it gets me max 1bb/100(assuming i get the min prize). I get the min prize for like every single box i opened. Stupid candies. Not because i am down 4 buyins but i decided that it was stupid. I think from starting today until the end of the next week, i won't be playing too much. Will still hit the 35k hands tho(probably).

I will most likely be posting a losing graph for this month(on Sunday)

(pretend it is written on Monday 2025-10-27)

Hahaha, yeah, I also tried different approaches, saving up the whole day or cashing in when reached 10. Got an eye-watering 0.22$ for 133 candies, so my guess is, cashing in when reached 10 has the highest return even if it's almost no money.

Here a vid for NL5:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d1_Vqiv...

^

Haha yeah. I think last year i collected until the end and lost like $5 value compared to if i opened when i had 10. This time i tried opening between 10-20 candies, after opening like 10 boxes and getting the minimum i decided to open with 10 candy only. Seems to be most +EV thing to do. Stupid GG promo.

Results after 35k hands mean literally nothing. From my experience you get a rough idea of your winrate after 100k hands and after 200k hands you are homing in on your true winrate (still subject to variance). If I'd be you, I'd give it a few more buy-ins at NL5 and if you burn them, go back to grind NL2 + study.

I'm assuming you don't have access to other sites? GG rake is high man. The effect of it on achievable winrates is not always super intuitive, but I remember long ago an article made by the bitb guys showing that the top regs of 100nl on stars were winning at a higher winrate than the top 25nl regs. I mean, no way on earth that 100nl, two flights away from 25nl, can be softer, and even if the regs are better players, and more experienced, so are the other regs they are competing against. No, it's the rake.

If you don't have access to other sites, then first of all, remember that top achievable winrates will be lower playing on GG. You're still on the learning path, so don't create any huge expectations, other than that there are tons of things for you to study, train and improve. Embrace the classroom experience 😀

Cheers!

@FR-Nit

Yeah i know it means nothing and that is why i am not very upset (other reason being i am up after rakeback lol). I mean i'd even say 200k is low, but you can make the argument if someone played 200k in nl2 and lost that means they are losing player yeah, i mean you can always say such things. But to get your true approxiamte winrate u gotta atleast play like i think 1m hand.

@Peace&Love

I will play on GG for the foreseeable future.

U meant 100nl starts regs' winrate is higher than 25nl gg regs??. I think that may be true, but the net amount won differs because gg has more rakeback. But yeah rake too high.

about winrate, yeah i mean currently i play to get better but it would be nice to not bust my roll for now, or move down, which i don't want to.

https://bitbcash.com/2019/09/30/building-a-poker-bankroll-from-scratch-3-rake-rake-rake-rake-and-rake/

BitB Cash - Poker Training

Building a Poker Bankroll from Scratch - 3. Rake, rake, rAkE, rake and RAKE! | BitB Cash - Poker Training

I have yet to replicate his results, I respect d7 but maybe he was way off on that particular one.

I was kinda hesitant about sharing hand histories for a few reasons such as:

- I will share hands that i think i played bad but what if there are hands that i think i played good but didn't play good but i don't know about them
- I didn't see too much point in sharing them since people play different stakes and stuff differs in a lot of ways for example I was reviewing some hands i was like "okay call, call, okay this is a fold at %100 frequency, wait did i call, it should have been a fold, uhh i was right" it happened a lot, i just had some tell or thought that the guy was bluffing etc, i felt like this many times and found myself thinking too tight when replying to other people's hand histories.
- I may be doing something "right" for the wrong reasons
- i didn't think it'd benefit me much tbh idk
- some other stuff i can't think rn

But i decided to share hand histories, i shared one, in like 5 discord servers, because more people are always better, but i didn't share on 2p2 because i felt like it didn't have that good of UI/UX to have conversations compared to discord. But i feel like 2p2 is better for asking more general stuff.

So a few people replied(people who plays different stakes etc) they had all different things to say about how they'd play the hand and some of them made me think about different ways about how to play the hand which is cool. I think the point of sharing hands should be to fix the wrong thought process but people didn't comment that much on the thought process i included in the hand(may be it wasn't that wrong), a few people commented tho. I think it was +EV to share hands, i will be sharing hands with. I think i will include long thought process in future hands i share because i believe it is more important to fix thought process errors than to know what was the "right(subjectively) way" to play the hand.

Since from the monthly update i am running very very good, which is nice because i don't need to move back to NL2.

I currently am reading "daily dose of GTO" and will watch a few videos about GTO and how to like study using solvers and will ask a few questions on 2p2 because i want to understand how/why before starting to study with solver, i have a few questions about solver and some part of me believes most people study solvers wrong, get the wrong idea from solvers. I want to understand how the get the right idea and how to learn stuff that actually makes you money instead of what is and "unexploitable" strategy, i believe there is a lot, a lot, a lot of difference between solver world and the real world, i want to understand how to bridge the gap. (giving an example, in solver world we have a range, and opponent have range and we/they know our range and exact frequencies/action we take with our hand while in reality they don't, and in reality we have a hand and we know our hand, tho i made a 2p2 post about this topic i wasn't very expressive and not very convinced of the answers).

Bought GTO+ btw, but not GTO wizard. It is kinda huge deal that i bought GTO+ imo, like i spent money on it, i take poker serious etc, my goal is to drill, and study common flop etc spots from hands i played and study turns/rivers using GTO+ with nodelocking feature

One thing i don't want to be is to end up being mediocre, i feel like just mindlessly browsing sims and talking about MDF and balancing your range you just end up being mediocre, i feel like i need to take a different approach and learning path to the game.

I was watching Joe Ingram(he is so horny, i don't like women talk, i don't like it,i feel kinda weird how he behaves about women, weird) podcast with Matt Berkey, and he said something like "you need to learn why you shouldn't limp, people being told not to limp without being explained why, you need to understand why, why you don't limp" and i wanna be same, why why we don't limp, why we don't open 5bb, why we can't fold QQ to 5b jam, why we bet, why. I want to understand, i will try to write and ask many questions as they come up, some part of me says i shouldn't but i will try to.

I was gonna write a short update about hand histories but ended up writing a long post with bunch of stuff lol.

I am running really really really good, i am up and i don't think i will have to move down to NL2. I also feel confident in my plays which is nice, i feel like i play better. I think it is important to be confident in yourself while acknowledging you may be wrong and always strive to improve, think you are worthy and good while thinking that you need to improve more, being humble.

I am doing plays that i would almost never do 4 months ago, i 4b KJ cbet %10 raise vs river bet after turn goes check check and i am also value betting better, i think i used to not get value wide enough. I have realised that i was folding too much to 3bets, so i started to fold less and 4b more.

In terms of study last two weeks haven't been great tbh. Not that bad in terms of volume tho, next two week i will focus more on studying/hand reviewing and learning, exploring.

In my monthly update i had said i was gonna focus on doing yoga/meditation/cardio, but in previous two weeks i couldn't do them well. I feel like it is important to have clear mind, i feel brain fog sometimes, i get lost in spots while playing and do an action for no reason etc, doing yoga, meditation, cardio helps me to some extent. I feel more focused on days i do exercise and meditate. I will be doing more exercise and meditation in the future, they take time and kinda hard to do sometimes but they increase my productivity.

This week has been really bad so far, i was not very productive. It is Saturday and my productive hours are 1/2 of last week and last week was also bad. I feel kinda unmotivated not only in poker but in general, i feel low energy, i know it is probably a temporary thing that will pass in a like 3 days but i don't know, i was expecting this week to be better. Today i feel better than yesterday tbh, lets see what will happen from now.

I was really productive at first two weeks of the blog, but every week after that was less productive by a good margin.

I thought i share negative experience and feelings too in my blog, not only the positive good things.

3rd monthly update, 2025-11-03 -> 2025-11-30

This month was awful in terms of productivity, i studied way less and ran behind in playing, had to play a lot last week to reach 35k hands. I did a calculation and i actually have like 25 hours at worst case i can spend on poker but only spending like 15. I feel less motivated than the start and things seem to go worse. Bankroll: $380

Feeling of Mediocrity

I feel like i am playing a winning strategy and probably have winrate of 2BB/100 in NL5 currently but i feel **mediocre**. I am like when i am bluffing i think about his range and my range and choose a bet size that he will fold and just bet a little bigger than that, also sometimes i am like "he is capped i bet 2x he is gonna fold", when i am value betting i think about his range my hand's equity, my possible value bets and bluffs in my range and just choose a sizing that i think it will yield the highest EV then bet. I am also sometimes like "good hand bet". Well it seems to work just fine but i feel like it is mediocre and not interesting, like is that it, is being good poker player about it, is that really that simple, i don't think so, i feel like my strategy is too crude and something that everyone can implement and shouldn't be that simple. Also i lose EV missing small value bets and choosing wrong bluff sizes. Like for example if he will call %20 of the time and fold %80 whether i bet B133 or B150, i am actually losing EV by betting B133 even though it is a +EV option, the goal in poker is not to find a +EV decision but find the most +EV decision, choosing an option that is still +EV but less +EV than the other is a losing play even if you are winning, it is still losing. I feel like my lazy thought process and most plays are losing even though i may win since i am not doing the thing that is the most +EV. Though there were some creative and cool hands i played.

A massive change in play style

I imported old HHs and non-seriously compared my old stats to new ones basically i am playing more hands and 3betting more etc, by %25 more at least, i was basically playing too tight, i may write another post about it, but that is not the point right now. Biggest change in my style and thinking is that i am not **afraid** to lose and make mistakes anymore. I used to be hurt whenever i lost a stack in a spot where i wasn't sure of my decision, like bluffing, 4bet bluffing etc. Previously my heart would beat and feel so stupid when it didn't go through, i was so **afraid** to put my stack in and i am sure i would be bluffing so rarely like once in a month. But now **i am not afraid to lose, i am not afraid to punt, it is okay to lose 10 buyins a day, it is okay to lose**. I think that is a massive change in my mindset and very important. If there are other people who are struggled with that i will tell you my thought process that will help you: When i do a play for my stack i tell myself "I am doing this because it is the most +EV option, if i do anything else i will be losing in terms of EV, i am confident in myself that i will be making money in long term with this play whether it works this time or not, i wouldn't be doing it if it wasn't to most +EV thing to do, i believe in myself and my play"

Failure and Procrastination

Well my goal for this month was to learn how GTO works and how to study solvers effectively, how to study the output in a way that will actually increase my EV in real world. That is something i strive to understand and learn, but like i said i couldn't, i couldn't put enough hours. You may be saying "just start study you are overthinking and i would agree with that but i want to understand how to study solvers in a way that actually maximises my EV in real world. i was looking at some guy's course and he said "studying same tools as everyone else does will lead to only one thing: mediocrity". also there are a lot, a lot of people who study gto and still can't win, there must be a reason for that, because they study wrong and i want to know what is the right way to study.

Goals for This Month

**yoga/meditation:** I said in last monthly update i was gonna put a lot of weight on getting rid of my brain fog and improving my focus but couldn't. This month i will.

**understand how to study gto in a way that actually maximise my EV:** Explained earlier. Idk how can i do that without paying for a coach, i can go ask in 2p2 or discord but i am not sure i will be getting a good answer. Ideally i would want to do a 1on1 call with a person who knows how to study gto in a way that maximise EV in real life, like Uri Peleg. I feel like that kind of people who actually know what is going and how to study are really really rare and won't explain to me for free. I am not talking about players who are good players who study solvers but rather people who are like Uri Peleg, whom i actually believe to be to have the right approach of all people and actually knows what is going on.

**come up with a structured study/play schedule:** I actually didn't want to go have set schedule because i thought just freestyling would be more fun, but i ended up not studying much. I will try to have a flexible yet structured study schedule. I will come up with it and start using it after first week, probably.

**(probably), "study group"???:** I was on Bencb's discord group other day and he was talking about study group. I am not sure about it, but i may want to establish a private, elite study group where i write application forms etc and decide whether they are good(i will care about the passion for the game and mindset, not whether they are good player or not). It will have small number of players whom are good and trustable. there will be max 10 people. Since i am a perfectionist i want it to be done good if i do it. I don't know if i will have the time to assemble such group, i don't think so, idk.

**NL10 End of Year(Calender year)???:?** I have $380 in my roll, but i won't be moving to NL10 until i have $500. I initially said I'd move up on 40 buyins, but i think 50 is better, because it will give me the freedom to spew and not be upset when i spew, can't get good without having freedom to lose. I don't know how likely it is that i will have $500 end of month but if i get lucky and run good it is possible.

Results

Ran really really hot this month, tho it would be nice to not lose 7 buyins in last two days, which i played to reach to 35k hand/month goal and punted. WR 5bb/100 but i think my true winrate is like 2bb/100 which is not good enough. Like i said i played very aggressive this month and run bunch of bluffs, there were times where i thought i play aggressive but this time it was for real since my red line is only losing a few buyins compared last month's graph where red was so down and blue was so up while green in middle, this month red a little down and blue and green close. I also PFR'ed more, 3bet wen from 8 to 10, and 4bet increased 2x which is nuts, i folded 3bets less but still end up folding a lot. Bankroll: $380, will move to NL10 when i have at least $500, which i hope will happen at the end of this month(28 days).

I was upset with myself when i start writing this update but now i feel good how my play changed.

2025-11-03 -> 2025-11-30, NL5

this month:

this month all lines:

all time in big blinds:

Solid results!

Out of interest: to how much bb/100 amounts rake on GG R&C for you?

^ @FR-Nit

> Out of interest: to how much bb/100 amounts rake on GG R&C for you?

NL5 70k hands, "My C rake attrib" is $190, dunno if it is the right stat, can't find a stat called "rake bb/100"

190/0.05 = 3800 bbs

3,800 x 100 / 70,000 = 5.4285 bb/100

People usually claim it is like 10bb/100. Idk id i looked at the right setting "My C rake attrib".

I payed on regular tables 8.5 bb/100 rake, playing 24/20/9, so 5.4 bb/100 seems to be realistic considering the lower rake-caps in R&C.

Unmotivated

Basically since the start of the 4th month, 10 days, i have been doing very badly both in terms of studying and playing. I didn't go to gym for a few days, i should have had more time. I only played 6 hours in past 10 days, it should have been 20.

I am just not at a good state. I miss the days when i was younger and poker was the only thing that filled my mind but now i have a lot of negative/waste of time things in my life that is filling space in my brain. I feel like that is the barrier and the reason i couldn't succeed for a long time.

I want to also record and share negative things too, not everything is positive/neutral. When i feel good again, i come back and remember i felt bad but i feel good now, so when i feel bad once again i will remember it is temporary.

It should get to 10 bb/100 as you reach 25nl or 50nl, I think those are the worst ones.

So third week of the month is done. I think it was horrible, i said i was gonna review every hand etc, but couldn't after 2 days. I also couldn't play much first 2 weeks and had to play more in 3rd week and now i have to play like 3 hours a day to reach my goal of 35k hands/month. I am still 3 tabling and won't 4 table. Bankroll is still around $400 and need $500 to move up to NL10. Also it was bad in terms of studying too, i basically was just so lazy in first two weeks now i have to play more.

Someone had suggested i could record a session and we could go over it. I thought it could be a fun idea. I set up OBS and started recording then i ended up playing bad because i felt like i had to like explain and justify my plays. Most of my plays comes from intuition/feeling and it created a little awkwardness to think someone was gonna watch the video and i had to explain myself. May be it is a confidence problem, maybe i don't have confidence in my decisions or something.

I was playing a few days ago and ran 5 bluffs for my stacks that was "supposed" to work, i correctly assessed their range and how often they should fold etc, they ended up having the hands that they were "supposed" to fold but ended up snap calling. Lost 4 buyins that day then i start questioning if these plays was profitable in long term in these stakes. Then i realized that i was just being results oriented and wasn't realizing it was probably just variance/luck. I have been playing aggressively and making more bluffs for 10 weeks now, although there were times i got called by crazy hands, i am sure my bluffs were +EV. It is not that unlikely that i will get bad calls 5 times in a single day every 10 weeks. So probably just variance and it is important to realize that. I mean lets say you learn a new strategy and try to use it in your game then run into %1 of their range or %1 of opponents that that strategy wouldn't work against, then you think your strategy is not actually profitable even though it is but you are having the %1 unlucky run. I think it is very important to realize that.

4th Monthly Update: 2025-12-01 -> 2025-12-28

I was extremely lazy first two weeks of the month and couldn't study much or play much. So i had to play more in last two weeks in order to reach 35k hands per month goal and quality of my play decreased a little since i was playing more.

Looking back to the last month's update, i basically didn't accomplish any of my goals and i was as unproductive as last month. I feel my time management skills are really bad and i am not productive.

I feel like i am steady and not improving, i felt extremely lazy this month. There was no improvement at all apart from sharing some hands and learning my preflop sucks. I keep setting goals but not achieving them, this time i will set more clear goals with numbers and look back to it frequently.

Goals(that i will actually achieve) for the Next Month

- 100 hours of productivity(playing/study). It was around 50 this month
- Share at least 12 hands on Discord
- Meditate at least 14 days
- Do yoga at least 14 days
- Memorize preflop using flashcards: "vs raise" and "vs 3bet" nodes
- Buy gtowizard sub and start studying GTO even though i am not %100 sold on it.

I really need to do some changes on my routine because if i go like this i am not succeeding. I have to do stuff that i can say "if i keep doing it i will improve".

Results

I don't have too much comment on my playstyle this month but it was worse than last month since most of the volume is played in two weeks. I lost 2 buyins at tables but up with promos and stuff, i played every stupid game that i got ticket for the Christmas promo, like spingo and stuff, i also played every freeroll, didn't score big tho, also ran hot with thanksgg stuff. My bankroll went from $380 to $450, which is 4bb/100. I wish to reach $500 and move to NL10 this month.

can you like this post if you are reading? I wanna know how many people are actually reading this blog?

From looking at your graphs you seem to play fine. I think you just need a lot more volume to beat the variance. I can play over 100k hands in about 2 weeks. 30k hands is not enough unless you wanted to bum hunt. It still very hard to beat variance monthly without at least putting in 100k hands a month. I think if you do you will profit every month.