Making a living with STT SNGs

March Challenge

Day 7

Worked on the game with fellow reg 1 hour + reviewed 1 hour hands on my own (total 2 hours)
Grinded online CG 5.7 hours
Went with best friend for coffee
Watched Partizan vs Donji Srem game
Watched in between grinding Alleigence

Total of 7.7 hours of Poker activity today.

Semi productive day considering only 7-8 vs 9+ hours I have been putting in.
It all started with going to bed at 5am last night, waking up around 10:20 then sleeping for 40ish minutes more and then getting to work with fellow reg right away.
We worked together 1 hour as he had to finish his other life obligations, but we reviewed some lost hands from last night. We found standard spots where I got bad beated but also some missed spots for bluffing. My working on the game was looking into those lost hands and I have to say that I did find some leaks again on river but I found brutal bad beats really that would probably make people quit poker like right away

Grinding was just brutal. I don't remember last time I had such a brutal setup day, besides yeseterday. Today I lost about 400$, 200$ on each NL50 and NL100. On NL50 there were tons of setups (JJvsQQ,KKvsAA,lossing with 77 vs K9 on K97Kx after flop went x/r on my end etc) and for NL100 was even bigger joke. I will post 1 hand just for laughs along with graphs for the day of course. I also reloaded my Stars account with additional 500 euro. I will clear 40k FPPs tomorrow and will consider buying that 600$ bonus right away to lower variance.

In general, again I felt that my game for NL100 is not far away from 3bb/100, would say it is BE at worst at this point of what I have seen so far. I am putting opponents on ranges very well and I feel that I am really close to making this switch there within 2 months tops from today(my wish, hope towards which my action steps are leading into). In the meanwhile NL50 is just full of bad river call tendencies that kinda remind me of live poker type of calls which I am just like laughing at. NL25 is far easier and more exploitable vs NL50 and NL100 but NL100 is the closest to poker level that I want to be playing at really - without sunding too judgmental to anybody playing lower than NL100!
I will also consider if dropping $ happens in future more to just step it on like crazy on SNGs for a month or two and really just do 1 hour of CG grinding + reviewing while I rebuild roll and make like 3-4k$. With this money I can buy myself some additional time with life expenses + shot taking at NL100 while playing NL50 steady.
Tomorrow I will most likely do just SNGs since I left them behind in this week so far and from Monday I will make a decision with my coach wether or not to do NL25 before I rebuild (which I feel is the safest option now considering how big swings can catch me on NL50 and NL100) or to stay on NL50 with my level of play. Will update the blog with decision on Monday of course but my decision right now due to roll restrictions will be to drop down to NL25 and play for a week and rebuild roll with more emphasis on SNGs as well in the next week!

March Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
CG studying 17.5/45 hours
Coaching 8.7/30 hours
CG coaching sessions 3/12 hours
CG grind 24.36/60 hours
SNG grind 11.77/100 hours (225/2000)

2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
90.5/300 Study hours
52.3/300 Coaching sessions
248.13/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)

Here is the plan for tomorrow (8th of March):
Wake up earlier and spent time with family from morning to lunch time
Afternoon work on the game 1 hour minimum, going over hands from past 2 days with saw showdown lost hand
In the evening go for 2x50 games SNG grinding and take a day off from CG grinding
In between eat dinner and take brakes to regenerate
Respond to Daily Tracking threads of students
Update blog and challenge + reflect on mission and vision

Here is the graph for CG today merged for NL50 and NL100

Now onto some brutal hands I mentioned

HAND 1

HAND 2

HAND 3

HAND 4

You get the idea

1.5 hour more of studying before bed time.
Went over some crucial filters, marked and exported hands in notepad + hand converter. Prepared 18 hands to analyze with my coach on Monday. Some of them are to check somewhat standard line to find out if I did it right; some are perhaps missed play on flop which lead to less fold equity later on; some are just bluff catcher hands and finally some are to check if I still have unrealistic expectations about people folding out hands that they should fold out on draw heavy run outs such as AA and KK in 3 bet pots. I will keep checking those filters as part of my daily routine on working on the game as I find that I am really improving a lot and my thinking process is growing stronger by each day which makes me very happy.

Will add those 1.5 hours of studying tomorrow, now heading to bed as I need to be up in 5 hours.

Family time finished, back to work. About to go over rest of hands from filter, export them in note pad and hand converter for coaching session tomorrow.
Watched this video and found it very inspiring. Hopefully it bring some things up in all of you as well.

March Challenge

Day 8

Spent time with family
Worked on the game 4 hours (1.5 hours with reg and 1.5 last night before bed and 1 hour after family time)
Grinded online CG 3.5 hours
Had a coffee with best friend
Had a 2.5 hour afternoon nap (7-9:30pm)
Responded to daily tracking threads + uploaded 2 videos for students and tables 1 hour

Total 8.5 hours of Poker activity.

Another productive day
Time with family was much needed for different perspective. It made me realize even harder situation we are in and how much I need to find even more streght to push forward through these hard times.

Working on the game was very brutal. 1.5 hours with reg was sweat session 4 tabling 3xNL50 and 1xNL25. When I cleared 40kFPP bonus I took a shot at NL100 which didn't go as planed but also made some light river bluff catches.
Reviewed hands and marked total of 29 hands for session with coach!!! Also recorded 1 hour sweat for us to cover on Thursday. Session was $ and there were some interesting spots that I look forward covering. I think in that session I played close to my B+ CG 4 tabling ZOOM.
Towards the end of todays grind I made some bad calls on river which costed me whole days profit. Was up around 200$ ended up in 40$+ profit. All it takes is 4-5 miss plays and then everything else doesn't matter. CG doesn't allow mistakes like SNG does. I am totally aware of that. I am however making those river calls expecting that opponents will bluff me more than they actually do it as I know I would do in those spots.
Typical projection bias leak discussed in blog on many ocassions in past 2 months - still going on!

I do look forward to sessions with coach. Reviewing those hands, writting thinking process really improves my game significantly. My B game is enough to beat NL25 and NL50 for sure. The problem occurs when I make some bluff catch on river or two and they don't work out. It can affect my A B game and drop me down due to financial pressure starting to kick in at that point.
All these things basically point out to very obvious things:
- I need to drop to NL25 in order not to play money scared
- I need to continue with SNG grind to increase my BR
- Increasing BR will fix those river leaks and improving my IN ZONE playing when I know that I have way more $ for swings that occur
What this means is that despite the fact that I cashed in bonus, I will stay on NL25 in March, play less but review all my hands daily in 2 study sessions while in the evening grinding SNGs (go for 100 per day SNGs for 15 days or so)

For coaching I spent time responding to Daily Tracking threads, Skype and uploading 2 videos + tables for all of them. These videos are great (like all of them - I feel!) so look forward to their feedback and how much of it they will follow up with.

Afternoon nap was much needed cause past days I was always hitting bed at 4am or later , waking up by 10-10:30am. Today I went to bed after 4am and woke up at 9:30! So evening nap was much needed for sure.

March Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
CG studying 21.5/45 hours
Coaching 9.7/30 hours
CG coaching sessions 3/12 hours
CG grind 27.86/60 hours
SNG grind 11.77/100 hours (225/2000)

2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
94.5/300 Study hours
53.3/300 Coaching sessions
251.63/1500 Grinding hours
24/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)

Here is the plan for today (9th of March):
Wake up early, eat healthy breakfast and drink tons of water
CG session with coach 11-12:30
Studying with fellow reg 1-2 or 2:30pm
Coffee with best friend and 1 hour of CG grinding
Lunch brake + watch a TV show (if something is out from favorite shows)
Study 1 more hour (review hands from the session grinded)
Grind 50 SNGs to get back into the rhythm if there is energy another session of 25 also
Dinner brake in between
Respond to Daily tracking threads
Update blog and challenge + reflect on mission and vision

Hello Ivice! Im following your blog for a while now...and like you said, some things are repeating to you...same leaks. Well, people sometimes cant be objective in their own eyes, and i think that at least in 50% of your bad beats and leaks are one crucial problem... In my opinion you are trying to HERO CALLING some spots, when you know that you might have fold some hands and wait for better oportunity. And when you have that financial problem to hold your family on your sholders, i think that hero calling can wait for your healthier BR, and higher limits. My trainer told me when fish or spew reg is betting on the river its 95% nuts unless we have one, so its better to fold, and wait for better hand. Its not like you have unlimited BR, and you can hero call every hand. You dont need a special brain to see that you are better player from those players on nl25, nl50 and nl100, regardeless the hours of play and learning invested by you...but that doesnt mean that you are better in every hand against them...it only takes like you have said 3-4 hands to blow away your good day in matter of seconds in CG. So my advice, if i can give it to you is that, less hero calling and big bluff catching, and everything will be OK with you!
Your blog and devotion to what you are doing is really fenomenal, and i admire what you are doing...so dont get me wrong on my message here. Wish you all the best, and i hope you'll crush all these limits and complete your goals for 2015!
(a i malo je tesko pisati na engleskom sta sve covjek hoce da kaze...a i samo kuckanje slova moze pogresno da se protumaci...)
Pozdrav iz Novog Sada!

Boriz123 thanks for coming in and posting this great post.
I agree not 100 but like 1 million % with everything you said!!!
I would just add that I sometimes have this feeling of feeling down that I am not yet on NL100+ limits due to BR restrictions. The reason is quite simple, all the river actions that I am making would work great on those limits and actually be +EV while on lower they are more loosing money. So in a way what I am fighting with daily is 3 main things: 1) I need to drop down my thinking process and adapt to weaker and worse players, degrade my thinking process on purpose to make +EV river decisions at those stakes 2) I need to realize that even tough I belong on higher limits, I can't go there yet without super solid life BR 3) Since I am splitting CG profit with my coach, I will need to step up my SNG grind to build that BR faster to have opportunity to crush NL100 in near future.
All this leads to things that I mentioned last night. This month I will keep playing NL25 , hitting those 60 hours of grind or 40k hands (already have 20k for the month) while going for minimum 1.5k games of SNGs until the rest of the month. If profit from SNGs keeps coming immediately I will be taking shots on NL50 steady, if not I will keep 4 tabling NL25.

Thanks for following the blog and writing such post - that was spot on! And of course I don't take it in any negative way, on contrary it just shows that you follow the blog and understood main difficulties I am fighting with daily.
Thank You for nice wishes also. I am positive that I will beat NL100 ZOOM by the end of this year with hours I am putting in and improvement I am making. Once the BR is there, I will have no problem putting in volume and continue to study to own that limit.

All the best and please do post some more in future as I enjoyed your observation in your post!

Pozdrav za Novi Sad!

March Challenge

Day 9

WORKED OUT
CG Coaching 1.5 hours
Working on the game 2 hours (1 hour with fellow reg + 1 hour on my own)
Coached 1.5 hour Darko
Grinding online CG 2.14 hours
Grinding SNGs 2.6 hours 51 games
Went with best friend for coffee
Watched new Tv show with my brother

Total 9.74 hours of poker activity

Productive day that could have had 1 to 1.5 hour more of activity since I returned to my regular sleeping cycle (3am bed time waking up at 9:30am)
Finally worked out after almost a month of brake since I was sick. Did push ups and squats, already felt way more energized and ready to accomplish more things. Need to get back into it steadily as this current lifestyle with just studying coaching and grinding will lead to bad eating habits and no sport. Working in my mind to find some balance for work outs as well, at least twice per week and then increase it gradually to 3-4 until I get back to daily work outs. I hope that Herceg Novi will happen this summer again, if it does I will be training there every single day, until then I have to deal with what I have at my disposal currently which is doing exercises in my apartment or outside in the school when the weather starts to be sunny and acceptable for such activity
CG coaching went great as usual. In 1.5 hour we went our 11 hands that I previously marked. Some new lines were covered which I taught of doing on my own but wanted to check with coach 1st.
Next session is on Thursday and we will go over live play I recorded 2 days ago where I was 3 tabling NL50 and 1 tabling NL25. Very much look forward to that as it will reveal auto pilot leaks and holes in thinking process. If the session goes well I will use the video to upload it for my students as well so that they can work on figuring out all the lines from the video.
Also addition to our coaching session is the fact that I will open DropBox folder for us where I will post all the marked hands with thinking process and coach will in the meanwhile (between sessions) check them out and respond. Fantastic idea and hope that it will work as it will require tons of time for busy coach outside of things we arranged (2x1.5 hours of coaching per week) to complete it all.

Working with fellow reg lasted 1 hour only and we covered 6 hands total in that time frame. In those hands we found 3 leaks which I wrote down and something that every reg has trouble with regardless the stakes. Our standards are very high therefore we are both perfectionist and want to crush this CG all the way - therefore there is lots of work ahead of us and critique to accept daily.
1 hour I also worked on my own and it was in the evening after my SNG grind. I was going through the lost hands from session and found 2 whole stacks lost with flush multiway; 1st was with 3rd nuts vs 2nd nuts ; 2nd was with 2nd nuts vs nuts. It was impossible to save full stack however river action in 2nd hand and turn action shove could and should have been played differently on my end.
Funny thing is that yesterday despite 4 tabling NL25, getting the volume in, while playing and during review I felt like I was burning money. There were all ins which I won and in the end I was still down 45$ or close to 2 stacks in 1917 hands. Most of the loss came from those flush hands I described but there were also missed or bad 2 barreling - something that I will also work on heavily!

SNG grind took 2.6 hours for 51 games. It didn't provide any challenge at all like I Wrote on numerous ocassions before. With addition to ante players are making even more mistakes now which makes space for higher ROI. Also due to ante now you get to play HU even deeper which is great for me. So overall when I look at it I am super happy with how current situation is in SNGs because even before introduction of ante regs didn't work enough on their leaks and kept grinding like monkeys; now they have to adapt even more but I simply don't see them doing it cause they are lazy and it will take long time to study whole game plan from beginning.
Future on 15s is bright and I would say that 7% is achievable now more than before. Also ante makes games longer simply because HU is played longer despite the fact that people might bust out a bit earlier. I am happy about ante introduction as personally I have no problem adjusting my game plan immediately. It is guys that have fixed game plan, never learned how to adjust it and fail with studying that will have hard time maintaining or increasing their win rates. Also this ante addition might bring some recreational players back at tables. I don't have sample yet to discuss it but my Sharkystrator still takes sround 2.5+ hours for 50 games. I will be very pleased when I get to point of 2 hours for 50 games with table selecting while 15 tabling. Then I could say that recreational players are returning, until then this is still traffic problem which translates into low hourly compared to CG (will write about this in the future).
Overall grind was positive, think about 7% EV ROI ran with 8% ,37.something% ITM , more 1st vs 2nd for about 4%+ etc

Coaching with Darko was great. We talked about things needed to change for complete game plan with ante addition. How not to get exploited, how to exploit others, which areas to focus 1st on, how to do these assignments by himself + working with Jernej and finally we started working with HU. Very useful session, hope Darko got most of it, if not there is a recording which he can always look back and remind himself.

March Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
CG studying 23.5/45 hours
Coaching 11.2/30 hours
CG coaching sessions 4.5/12 hours
CG grind 30/60 hours
SNG grind 14.37/100 hours (276/2000)

2015 Challenge
Things completed so far in the challenge:
96.5/300 Study hours
54.7/300 Coaching sessions
255.8/1500 Grinding hours
25/150 Work out
98.5 hours Live Poker (tons of additional hours lost in waiting for games to start!)

Here is the plan for today (10th of March):
Woke up, updating blog, about to eat and call up best friend
Meet best friend for coffee and to grind minimum 1 hour CG
Work on the game 1 hour by going through hands and marking the ones for discussion
Lunch brake
Check and respond to Daily Tracking threads
Meet with fellow reg for coffee (after 4pm)
Work on the game 1 more hour but this time writting out detailed thinking process for already marked hands in the folder
Grind SNGs 50 games minimum, if internet is stable go for 2nd session also if not work on the game and grind CG 1 more hour instead
Update blog and challenge + reflect on mission and vision

March Challenge

Day 10

Worked on the game 2.5 hours (2 hours HH evaluation, 0.5 hour video watching)
Grinded online CG 2 hours
Grinded SNGs 50 games 2.75 hours
Responded in Daily Tracking threads 0.5 hour
Connected with another crusher CG player and coach via Skype 1.5 hours
Went with best friend for coffee

Total 7.75 hours of Poker activity.
Another productive day
Will just mention about working on the game and connecting with another CG crusher.
Spent 2 hours doing 4 hands in detail using both Equilab and FlopZilla to help me with range brake down of course but that was not all of course. I basically spent 0.5 hour per hand and it was very brutal experience as during the whole process I wrote for each hand a lot of eye openers in the conclusion part of the hand analysis. The idea is to write down both standard and alternative lines, understand how to play hand vs different opponent types and their tendencies and how certain cards on further streets affect my decisions. Besides this I also looked into what specific hands from both sides of the ranges are good to barrel or call with and how this can be exploited or balanced.
How well studying went today gives me wings and hope for future in CG as I am positive now more than ever that people are rarely going to put this many hours to work on their game and improve - only highly inspired ones who won't accept failure and have clearly defined goals. I will go that far to say that things I am doing now a lot of people on NL100 don't know + am sure there are guys on NL200 ZOOM who are starting or have started doing this fairly recently. So tons of space to improve and become better and I am trying while improving to keep up with the learning curve in today's games required to beat mid stakes and up. Very happy how things are going and obviously look forward to next 9 and half months and then looking back how far I have gone with my improvement.
0.5 extra work was on 1 video that uses a bit different approach then the one I was taught by my coach. Wanted to check out the other approach, see what they are trying to "sell" me with this information and take it back to coach for further discussion. Being exposed to new material can't be a bad thing, on contrary it can just get me to understand things even better and recognize what is more preferable approach in my opinion based on math analysis and from in game experience.

Connecting with CG was just brutal. I sent him message on Skype about video of his that I watched recently and studied, sharing my opinion on it. It turned out great since we had other things in common as well and had a great conversation that lasted easily close to 1.5 hour. I am happy about it obviously and in future we might arrange some collaboration of a sort but more on that when we get to that bridge. For now I can just say that I am happy that I made contact and talked with one of great CG players that even nowdays crushes with high win rates. Look forward to our future collaboration of any sort really! Perhaps one day in the future we may meet in person in USA - which was brought up during todays talk