March Bankroll Challenge - Starting Bankroll: $2,000

MrSink · 03-03-20, 07:02 PM

good luck . following closely

Ballerholic · 03-10-20, 11:44 AM

Thanks Sink - how is your poker grind going?

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Bankroll: $2,400

Poker profit: $28

Strange week in poker. I started crushing right off the bat, but then I started losing at a crazy rate. As you can see I only played 25NL this week and the reason is because I'm learning a lot of advanced theory and doing solver work so I want to test it out at 25NL and get comfortable with some of the strategies. I know 25NL are a bunch of fish and so maybe advanced strategies don't work as well, but I just want to make sure I'm taking the right lines with the combos I'm looking for and then I can review those lines in my DB. The majority of my volume this month is going to be 50NL and if anything I'm overrolled for it. Now as you can see I started crushing the regular table games up until the weekend where I started to play the zone games. I played zone because it annoys me how little hands per hour regular tables get and I figured I'd rather play a table where I get 3x the hands and is still very soft. The mistake I made was that while both tables are very loose, the zone tables tend to be extremely tight postflop. This is the exact opposite of the regular tables. So while I'm hand reading and understanding that looser opponents preflop are going to have an extremely enormous bluffing range on river, for whatever reason the zone players just either didn't or wouldn't bluff. So if anything I'll just have to play a lot tighter with my calling range on rivers if I choose to still play zone, but looking at the graph and the past week I think I'll just stick to regular tables for now.

Ended up hitting all of my goals the past week. I worked out 4x midday which was really nice since the gym is pretty empty then. But I definitely need to up my fitness and so I really need to start counting calories and then I'll move on to macros (baby steps first). I also did a large amount of studying on mainly oop spots. This week I'm going to continue with that section as well as 3bet pots OOP. Those are the two areas where I feel weak in my game at the moment. Finally, I'm going to try no FAP for this week at least. I've read and seen a lot of videos on how it is meant to boost energy levels and focus. In Think And Grow Rich (probably the most influential self help book ever) he talks about this and it is one of his core principles which seems odd but must be worth it. I also read this idea where middle aged men are on a large scale way more successful and driven compared to younger men since they don't have sex with their wives anymore haha.

Goals for March

[] 20x Workouts (4/20)
[] 100 hours of poker (26/100)
[] 31 hours of study (8/7)
[] No Soda all month (Somehow still haven't)

Goals for this week

[] 4x workouts
[] 6k hands
[] 7 hours of poker study

$50 Freeroll

Ballerholic · 03-18-20, 02:19 PM

Update

Bankroll: $2,300

The past week was the most productive week of my poker career. I put in some insane study hours and ended up playing a solid amount of poker. It's tough to play over 25 hours and still have a slightly losing week, but that's only going to improve my mental game and if anything it's motivated me to play even more. I was doing a lot of reviewing this week and I keep making the mistake of playing against a balanced gameplan when my opponents are far from balanced. So I need to just bump up my exploits, but it is kind of mentally difficult to study solver work all week long day in and day out and then go grind and just play simple ABC poker. I will say though that I have a pretty good routine going at the moment but I need to treat poker as a business and maximise all fronts such as making sure I am 100% focused before a session or that I don't check discord or have distractions near by. I think that's what separates the poker pros from just winning players who could never make poker a full time job.

On other fronts I ended up hitting my goals and I'm really feeling a big week of poker coming ahead. The games have really never been better so hopefully this sticks.

Goals this week

[] 8k hands
[] 10 hours of study

MrSink · 03-20-20, 07:05 AM

your approach is getting better and better . posts are way more detailed with your thoughts and plans very specific , which is definetely a good think . your schedules are also reasonable and you finally meet your thresholds !

I am about to start think and grow rich also . Heard many good thingsabout that book . I will let you know what are my thoughts .

Heard about those no fap challenges . Many of my buddies did it . Actually , it is pretty difficult to persevere long enough . Opinions were mixed with some players really benefiting from it , especially in regards to their productivity and energy level

Thanks Sink - how is your poker grind going?

no grind 1st half of the month . been to France for skiing . now grind as usual . due to corona virus people staying home instead of working or having fun and tables are softer in my opinion . especially those that are connected with sportsbook , there is completely no sports action so recreationals need to pick casino or cards .

MrSink · 03-20-20, 07:13 AM

The past week was the most productive week of my poker career.

glad to hear that

it could be challenging to balance out solver work with your real time decision at the tables . Especially on lower stakes players playing way different from optimal solution. their frequencies are just far off. then solely trusting solver numbers would cost you money. after studying solver it is very tempting to use our knwledge instantly into a practise over the tables . so in learning solvers it is crucial to master more mechanics than straight up solutions . we need to understand : why there is value to play some groups of hands this way , why we pick this group of hands to semi bluff and with others we do not , etc . This way we will learn much faster from the solvers as we are analyzing more hands / scenarios at the time , and our knowledge is easier to execute on the tables when our opponents differ from optimal freqencies , which is almost always the case on lower stakes

looking for new updates and good luck in upcoming weeks

sweep · 03-20-20, 12:04 PM

At quick glance you are not winning enough small/mid size pots. Your All-in call profit is almost identical to your overall profit. Get more aggressive cuz. GL

Ballerholic · 03-24-20, 01:43 PM

Sink- Thanks sink! Man I wish I had been skiing in France this month. Yea I think with solvers it is necessary to not go too overboard and be able to take a strategy that is simple to implement. Games are way softer at the moment which is amazing, but we'll see how long it lasts.

Sweep- Yea definitely agree Sweep. I'm finding it hard to just go bluff off on some of these fish who just don't fold and so I'm trying the approach where I just mash when I have value. I need to find the right spots for bluffing though.

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Update

Profit: $600

So up about $600 so far this month counting untracked sites. This past week was really good as well in terms of $ won. The games have definitely been better, but I'm also making way less mistakes. I still probably made at least $100 worth of mistakes, but oh well. This week I'm going to heavily focus on dopamine detoxing. This is when you cut out all the unproductive stuff in your life that gives you a dopamine rush and takes away from growth. For instance checking social media or watching tv shows. Obviously this is going to be really tough to do, but I think if I'm going to make it, it needs to be done. For instance, I watch way too much Twitch following MTT players on their grinds. I even feel the urge to watch them during sessions and I definitely waste hours on this content that really doesn't benefit me in any way. I'd be twice as good at poker if I could cut this out. Even with all this I'm still extremely productive, I just want to get better. I played about 29 hours of poker this past week and studied at least 14 hours. Also managed to go workout 4x by going for a jog or doing some light stuff at the house.

Also in some amazing news, my mom is officially cancer free right now! She'll have to get checked every now and then to make sure it doesn't come back, but man I still can't believe it. It's been really tough the past while and it definitely has affected my mental state especially when playing. I'm just happy this situation is over for now and we can move forward.

Goals for this week

[] 8k hands
[] 10 hours of study
[] 4x workout

Ballerholic · 03-31-20, 10:38 PM

Monthly Review

Profit: $720.98

Had a pretty decent month finally. My mind is finally a lot clearer since my mom has beat cancer but it's still pretty scary considering Coronavirus is out there. As well I just found out my Uncle in Law has 3 years to live as he has stage 4 prostate cancer. I think we all just need to do our best to enjoy most aspects of life and during these times to make sure to make the most of our time with family as we are locked away. It's amazing how much mindset affects how we play poker. I'm playing stakes that I've dominated for the past few years and then I couldn't even beat them the past couple of months because my mindset was terrible. Even with meditation I just tilted so poorly because I think I felt really unlucky in life and so I figured I had to at least run lucky in poker and would make tilt calls when I knew I was beat. Then finally I get the amazing news my mom is cancer free and I proceed to just crush poker for the past couple of weeks. It's amazing, I never gave the mental side of poker that much respect until now. I also play on an app, but have no graph for that.