Proving I'm profitable before moving up in stakes

In my experience GG is soft but the rake is just too damn high, don't play there if you can play somewhere else imo.

Roll 699.67, made some really **** plays. Played a bit of HU cash on iPoker, that gamemode is really swingy. GTO charts are crazy in HUNL, 4betjam 22 is a real thing lol. Ofc I had to try and got snapcalled by a nitreg with KK. Yeah maybe not vs guys that 3bet less than GTO.

had to withdraw 50€ for groceries because I don't get paid for another 4 days lol

played a bit after a long ass workday and getting super **** sleep, very bad idea. punted off 2 stacks quickly and just generally lost. again the same leaks are showing up as before. just not finding that fold button when you have a decent hand but you know opponent is underbluffing. just fkn fold.

roll 576. feels terrible because it feels like I'm down a TON. but compared to just a little over a week ago when I had like 150 it's not so bad.

23BI still for 25NL so it's ok. tomorrow I'm grindmaxxing after work. gotta sleep well tonight though.

the lesson is: just don't play when you're not in it.

Time to try out this thing called a demon finder. I've known about it for a long time but been too lazy to make one. The idea is that every time you do something stupid you mark it in the row. Over time you can clearly see what your biggest leaks are. The thing is, I already kind of know what my problems are but it's easy to forget. Maybe when it is an objective fact in front of you it's easier to remember. Going to have this open on my second monitor while I play, instead of having the client and constantly checking my bankroll. Might print it out too.

I'm also going to go back to emphasizing being in the moment and breathing while I play. I kind of forgot that.

Played about 2h, down -1.5BI. It's so weird how rungood/runbad always seems to happen in streaks. Like I'll lose 10BI in a row and then sunrun and win 20BI. Maybe you just forget the boring sessions inbetween. The most insane clown **** happened this session, good thing I'm not down more at least. Break and then grind more, leggo leggo. I still believe, 10BI upswing today. Fish coming online soon....

I kind of feel the same way as I did here. BR at 510 now. I'm only down 7BI since the peak if you account for me withdrawing 2BI for food, but it feels really terrible. It's hard to quit tho, I just wanna keep playing 5k hands every day even if I'm playing like ****. I won't withdraw my roll but I'll take a break, at least a couple of days. I HAVE to get better sleep.

of course I didn't take a break and just kept playing, roll 377.33. literally falling asleep while playing but I just cant stop because what else would I do? this game is super unhealthy for me tbh. I am going back to 10NL. I haven't had 8h sleep now since may 31, before I started playing again lol. I've also done cardio twice in that time, and I'm drinking way too much caffeine also in the afternoon so I'm going to bed at like 2am when I normally go at 10pm.

Reading your posts, it seems that you are falling into the old habits of trying to overachieve and burning yourself out soon enough. And most likely that approach in your previous efforts made you quit either from a mental or financial side of things. Try to keep in mind that winrate > volume. Would you rather play 20k hands per week of solid and focused poker with a winrate of 8bb/100, or let's say 54k hands while chugging caffeine and trying to have a normal life (work + social) on the side with 3bb/100 winrate to achieve the same $ results? I'm not trying to be judgmental or put you down, I respect the grind, but rather just encourage you to take a step back and think about your approach and focus on the long game since poker is rarely a get rich quick scheme but a long grind where consistent solid effort outperforms mindless grind. gl!

Haven't played for 5 days. I created an improvement list though. I think the demon finder works well for mental game issues but when it comes to strategy this is better:

I've spent quite a bit of time working on the common preflop spots that I was pretty much guessing on previously. It's kinda crazy how poorly I have been playing vs 3bets both IP and OOP. My BB defense has also been insanely bad, no wonder I have been constantly struggling with punting in some spots. I should never even get into those spots to begin with.

I honestly have so many weaknesses in my game that I could make like three of those lists lol. It's quite exciting to have so much to work on. Might play later today but going to drill the top 3 items on the list for a few hours now that I have downtime at work.

Been playing a bit, decent results but still have a lot of problems tbh. Roll 1020. I would REALLY like to not have to stay up late to play but the timezone for me to play on EU sites is pretty crap tbh. I'm the type of person where if I stay up after 10pm I just won't get **** done and with poker it feels really hard not to do it. I would love to get a shot at playing on the asian apps but you probably need a bigger track record for any agent to take you on as a player lol. (And I doubt anyone wants players that play under 100NL). If the best times to play are like 8pm-1am then that would mean I could quit at like 9pm local time and get to bed. **** it, I could even play on south american apps and wake up at like 6am to play lmao.

I have always been interested in HU cash my entire poker career, I think it comes from playing 1v1 games like starcraft II back in the day. Just something about battling one person heads up for a long time is really interesting to me, I feel much more passionate about it than 6max. So I've been playing some HU recently and I feel like the regs are pretty bad. They have a lot of really big leaks like opening too much to 3x pre and overfolding to 3bet, etc. Feels like extremely strong fundamentals is more important in HU since you are constantly in the exact same situations. I've even been practicing preflop charts specifically BB facing 2x, 2.5x, and 3x opens. The strategy is wildly different, especially because of the high rake.

I always got talked out of playing HU before but I will keep playing it since I feel a desire to really master it that I don't feel for 6max.

This is a great example of why I love heads up. It's so interesting to see how diffeerent people's approaches to poker are. This guy was massively overfolding basically every node in the game tree lol. Just fascinating to see, also the fact that he pretty much didn't adjust at all. Shows how different of a mindset some people have, good to remember that not everyone is really thinking actively.

Had a really intense battle vs a reg who I actually thought is much better than me, but somehow he got kinda tilted and just punted off a few stacks to me? I think just being calm and having extremely solid fundamentals like preflop ranges is a big edge in low stakes. Roll 1500

roll 1300, whatever. was up to 1750 ish. ran 300€ under EV in like 20 minutes. it's insane some of the 50NL regs are genuinely dogshit. they tilt so hard but it doesnt matter when they suck out on you.

I need to take another break. its insane I still cant sleep right, I eat right before bed and wake up at 3am with hunger pains and cant fall back asleep. I should never play after a night like that

Decided to play some more 6max, I really think changing it up between HU and 6max is best for me since I get so bored so quickly if I grindmaxx one of them. It was really refreshing and I think I played really well but the runbad just continues. AA < KK 300bb pot, KK < AA 3 times, etc... this is by far the worst downswing of my poker career, over 10BI under EV and 30k+ hands. I thought my edge was big enough that this would never happen but truth is my edge deteriorates a lot when I run like this.

Idk what the solution is other than grind it out or take a break. I really don't want to take a break though because what else would I even do? At least I genuinely played well for the first 1.5k hands today.

Okay sure I ran like **** but you know what? I made at least 2 massive blunders that probably cost me 150bb or so in EV. So the session would not even have been that losing without my errors. On the plus side, I've been doing a ton of cardio lately. It's definitely helping me be less moody. I also noticed I looked a bit leaner in the mirror so that's nice.

I really need to get back into that extremely high edge overfold vs aggression from weak opponents mindset. JJ is a snapfold to a 5betshove. KQo is a snapfold to the check-jam on K93r. Shouldn't even have to think about it. In spot #1 they can have AA, KK, QQ and probably not much else. In spot #2 they can have sets and 2 pairs and they probably never do it with anything else.

I have been putting off studying with solvers for a really long time. I know my tilt issues are much worse than my strategy issues but I'm getting so bored of rangebetting 33% that I had to switch it up. I wonder how quickly it's possible to learn this stuff. At first I thought it would be impossible but I'm already kind of understanding why we wanna go B33 / B75 / B125 on different boards. It often comes down to how many nutted hands each player can have.

Interesting tidbit on flop sizing: in SRP IP, across all boards you only lose about 0.17% EV when using 33% as your only size compared to splitting between 30%, 70%, 140%. However, almost all of that EV loss comes from a few boards that really want a big sizing. Those often lose 1-3% of EV. Most flops in SRP IP do in fact prefer a small size so on most boards you lose almost nothing. It does seem somewhat clear to me what types of boards like to be overbet, but sometimes I'm thrown a curveball that I just don't understand at all. Why is A87ss such a clear ovetbet and A76 a clear small bet? Because BB is supposed to 3bet most 88 77 and not as many 66? Idk.

The same phenomenon can be seen in 3BP. Somehow my sims actually ended up with MORE EV for only B33 compared to 3 sizes. Of course this could be some noise but still.

I think that given how massive my issues with playing turns and rivers correctly are, I should definitely just run 33% on the flop SRP IP for now and focus on plugging leaks in other places.

Quick leak list:

• 1. c-bet% too high in 3bp oop.
  
• 2. I have literally no idea what I'm doing 3bp ip.
  
• 3. turn barrel too high SRP IP.
  
• 4. bluffing vs stations on the river. just.... dont?
  
• 5. I have no idea what my calling thresholds are vs bets on the river. I am pretty sure I'm overcalling one pair type hands by A LOT.
  
• 6. 4bet preflop is too low. Need to get more comfortable with 4betting those 99, 88, QTo, A9o, K4s type hands vs regs.
  
• 7. delay cbet. sizings, freqs?
  
• 8. everything in 4bet pots.
  
• 9. everything shortstacked
  

Tomorrow I will study 3bet pots.

I think it's become exceedingly obvious at this point that I'm not really made to be a poker player. It sucks, because I really like the idea of being a poker player but in reality it just doesn't work out for me. In order to actually play well and not punt I need to be at an almost impossible level of locked in, and I fall out of that state incredibly easily. Then I just punt. Poker requires you to be really focused for a long period of time, even when things aren't going so well. It seems I just don't have that ability.

Maybe my life has been too easy up until this point. I never really had to struggle so I don't know how to do it. I can play well as long as I'm winning but as soon as I start losing I just don't care anymore, all will to try is gone. I have no idea how someone would even begin to develop this ability.