Making a living with STT SNGs

Monthly update for June

Expenses: 2019$

Profit: 3087$

Saved: 1068$

Poker graph pre RB:

PT4 more in depth stats:

Profit more in depth:
Poker pre RB 1200$
Poker RB 520$
Total Poker 1720$
Teaching Music and Poker 1367$
Total 3087$

Key things regarding expenses in June (that are not common otherwise):
- Family expenses
- Investing in 36 personal training sessions
- Investing in dentist visits
- Other forms of Investing

Just those things mentioned are 1294$ which leaves remaining 725$ for actual living expenses (rent, bills, food etc).

Key things about June that should be different in July:
- Less investing overall. Expect to spend here not more then 300-400$ tops.
- Dentist visits will be more expensive in July for about 300$ or so since I have 2 tooth implants which will be charged as 4 tooth (4x60 euro, 240 euro expense)
- Another investment will be my birthday but I don't expect that to be very expensive (up to 200$)

So overall, July expense wise should be 1.5k or less vs 2k+ which was in June.

When it comes to profit in July, idea is to save 2k and to do that I will need to make 3.5k if expenses will be 1.5k.
From teaching I expect between 700-900$ and the rest will come from poker (another 2.6-2.8k$). To make such money I will likely need to play 3k games with over 80 cents per game post RB which is very achievable.

So, the goal for July then is to play minimum 3k games and when possible go for more then that. 3.6k games or 120 hours of poker will be extremely difficult since my birthday is in 7 days and my very good friend is coming from London around 23rd of July and I will spend with him full week here. 90 to 100 hours of poker should however be achievable and that is something that I am going for while keeping all the activities that I have done + reintroduced in June (working out and dentist visits).

Key thing poker wise in June!
I feel like I was playing a lot more very bad auto pilot then usual. There were some triggers and tilts for sure and it something that I have to absolutely minimize since I am positive that my game plan is very profitable one and I can certainly have much higher cEV then 60 while 4 tabling. The key thing then is for me to play as focused as possible, not let anything affect me even those 20x multipliers that I get and loose...

Interesting fact:
Since I started challenge on 1st of April 2016, I have saved 6108$ and there is 5892$ left to save to complete it.
Money wise I actually have 7157$. That 1k$ is part of money I brought back to Serbia from USA on 13th of March and money I earned for the remaining of the March!. That 1k does not count for the challenge however but its good to know that I am less then 5k shy of completing the challenge including that money or that after 3 months I am half way through it!

Hope your June was productive, fun and enjoyable as mine was. I will see you all in July!

Good morning to hard working people and early risers

I just did quick analysis for June vs all dates. Turns out that my HU game has evolved and improved by 2bb/100 on BB and 3bb/100 on SB. However, my 3/3 game seems to have dropped in June by 1bb. Also, I see that my 3/3 game has a lot more space to improve and on the other side I am quite happy with how my HU is doing.
So July study wise, depending on how much time I will study,could be anywhere from 5 to 30 hours, I will focus on 3/3 game plan and in grinding sessions set goals to improve those.

About to play 2 sessions before going for dentist appointment at 11am. Enjoy your July and may it bring you lots of things you wish for!

3 days in and I have about 5 hours of grind in. Yesterday taught guitar and music lessons + watched Partizan Belgrade 2 friendly matches and in the evening Euro. At 3am this morning woke up with huge toothache and took pain killers to get back to bed. Whole 1st part of the day toothache and getting more rest and then after taking pain killers again spent time with friend from 6:30pm until 1:30am solid 7 hours hanging out talking and laughing - great times!

Look forward to getting back to grind soon. Tomorrow have dentist appointment 11am where this trouble with canal is supposed to be cured and solved so that I can get to tables. Otherwise it is very annoying to play and have tooth/canal pulsate strong and try to focus while 4 tabling with such pain. Definitely -EV to grind.

Enjoy your July!

You are beast. Nice $$$ numbers for Serbian standard :f_drink:.

Originally posted by Pnnkaznk
You are beast. Nice $$$ numbers for Serbian standard :f_drink:.

Appreciate it man!
I wish you to have even better $$$ numbers in Bosnia.
CG zoom has so many advantages (like spins) and improvement wise once you reach NL100 with good win rate, you will be set with 3k+ months.
Also my key suggestions for any poker player: Pay attention to your hourly, study it as it will show you realistically where you are for example on 100k hands samples. More importantly, work on solving the game, fixing your leaks and picking up on player pool tendencies. That could be as sample as opponents fold to 3 bets a lot so you start 3 betting more by default, all the way up to specific textures and sizings that will exploit certain opponent.
Finally, for me poker is about freedom and rich life it gives me. I can do other things that I find of equal or even higher value. Anything from being able to take a taxi ride whenever I want, drink coffee with friends, go to restaurants I like, buy things I want, all the way to more important things like saving for apartment mortgage, Asia trip, other forms of investments and life bankroll. Learn to save soon and start saving asap. Numbers are brutal and set up a challenge for yourself with number in your mind that you will aim for. For me that number is 300k but that includes the apartment mortgage 12k that I am saving for now, so 288k after that including poker and life roll as well as Asia trip in January. With 300k I can invest in multiple streams to bring me income, focus on my music and guitar teaching as a priority and have a lot of additional money for dry months and years while playing poker just enough to keep it interesting and fresh for me.

Good luck with CG zoom as I read your new blog and will follow it from now on!

This toothache is really annoying.
It started as simple filling change, a week later of unsuccessful canal medication it was discovered that I actually have a process on that particular tooth.
Tomorrow night, 7pm, I have scheduled it to be taken out by surgeon. Taking medication and using currying methods is much longer, hurts like hell and it messes up my productivity so bad. For example yesterday and today I slept in afternoon due to pain I just crushed in bed. Yesterday I woke up at 3am from pain just to take medication and go back to bed... Not a cool way to spend a week that's for sure.
So tomorrow I am really hoping all goes well and that I won't have to worry about that tooth anymore. Time lost can't be made up but I can always seek and find the best solution in the given moment.

Enjoy your week!

Thanks for advices, i am trying to move up as soon as posible. Dont have much time to play thou, as i have full time job.

Originally posted by Pnnkaznk
Thanks for advices, i am trying to move up as soon as posible. Dont have much time to play thou, as i have full time job.

Work on your DB and watch a lot of videos from 1 coach. That's what I would do with limited time and focus on playing as much as possible to test all these things at the actual tables.

Couple of things to say

Since yesterday, I have 1 less tooth After they took it out, pain went away and I can finally start putting serious hours in and try to get to those 100 hours by the end of the month. Currently have 8 hours in so 92 more in 26 days. I can still afford 2 days off but the rest of the days I will need 4 hours steady grind.
Results so far for the July in those 8 hours:

Tomorrow is my birthday! Today spent time with family, had lunch at my favorite restaurant. Now going to hang with a friend, have coffee and grind on laptop 4 tabling (practice my read less strategy). In the evening watch with friends Euro and hope for Wales to beat Portugal.

Very much look forward to tomorrow as I consider birthday and new years the most important holidays that I celebrate. I will turn 33 tomorrow. I might share some picture here from the celebration will see

I am now below 90kgs. Today when I weighted myself I lost 5kgs since 1st of June 2016 when I started 12 week challenge to drop 10kgs.
My Sensei is coming back tomorrow early morning and very much look forward to continue training with him. Training by myself is good but with him everything seems easier and more achievable + he gets me to over deliver in every training and push myself harder.
Intermittent fasting is really awesome but I noticed lack of energy in training in the morning past 2 work outs (Saturday and Tuesday). I will check with Sensei and see how to proceed. Most likely I will start eating 7am and finishing with food by 3pm with current training regiment.

Enjoy your week on and off the tables!

Happy Birthday! May pokerstars grant you 25x gift.

Originally posted by Schrader69
Happy Birthday! May pokerstars grant you 25x gift.

Appreciate it really!
Stars should grant me 100x on 15s. On 5805 games evROI is 4.98% while running at 3.27%

Today finally did a bit of grinding. 3 sessions total with lots of multipliers and OKish focus in 1st session, very strong focus in 2nd and weakish in 3rd session. Won 39 buy ins with 100+ games for the day.

The way month is going right now, seems like I will not hit 100 hours. Was sick in the beginning of the month + crazy toothache problems and then 3 days of celebrating birthday... By the end of the month my great friend will come around 23rd and I will spend with him several days for sure. Add to all of this teaching and training, I will be very pleased with 80+ hours
Numbers in terms of hours are looking 14.18 in 9 days. That is less then 2 hours per day. Remaining 22 days I will go for 4 hours per day grind although I know how difficult that is to maintain with teaching and other life things that I find of very high value. Also chasing those hours creates extra stress and from experience those late sessions are not as productive as earlier ones - will power goes down, up whole day since 6:30am completing other life activities along with some grind. So 3k games would be awesome but 2.5k would also be very cool. With current EV for the month results and hourly should also compensate 500 games less.

Graph for the month so far:

Enjoy your weekend!

Hi M8,

How you doing? missing your daily updates

Originally posted by rompas
Hi M8,

How you doing? missing your daily updates

Hi my friend!

It has been crazy July! Toothache problems, birthday, EURO, celebrating with friends, watching football with friends euro qualifiers, hitting up girls and hooking up, training 3 times per week...
I am close to 20 hours grind for the whole month, less then 700 games total. My cEV is between 70 and 80 for the month and I am running a bit over EV thanks to 25x I got and won today.
Plan for the end of the month is to hit those 60 hours , get to 2k games. To do that, including today I will need to do 3 hours daily grinding on average. Still have friends in and out of the town, on 25th my great friend will come for 5 days and stay with me. Grinding is one of the last things on my mind through out whole July. Not grinding however allowed me to reconsider game plan spots for post flop very specific textures, run outs, most +EV lines from GTO vs Exploitable stand point and how to adjust even better vs specific opponents as well as improve read less game plan. Feel that my cEV from this month on will easily be 70 and over which is very good hourly (50$ or so post rb (didn't calculate it yet).

Hope your month is going well and that you are having fun.

I will do proper in depth monthly update when the time comes,until then keeping it light ♦

Update in regards to weight loss challenge

I dropped 6kgs in about 7 weeks or so since I started training individually and had 1 on 1 training with my Sensei. During this time my diet and meal intake has changed and I have also cheated plenty of times eating ice cream and drinking beer and Serbian Rakija with friends and family. So when I take that into account I am nothing but very pleased with how I dropped 6kgs despite all those celebration occassions.
Actual working out is going really well. I did 65 dead lifts this past Saturday and training before that I did 40 burpees. Those were of course things taken out from context, main and lighter training within training really kicked my ass. So I am delighted with how working out is going and I will very likely increase it to 4 times per week.
In the meanwhile, found awesome food place that does fit type of breakfast where they make spinach omelet with vegetables. It costs less then 2$ and you get 0.2l of yogurt with it. Definitely planing to eat that every single day, ate it today and yesterday feel full of energy and great after it.
When it comes to dropping actual 10kgs in 12 weeks, I would say it is still very possible but I would need to do 2 things: 1) Stop drinking beer and eating ice cream and be more strict with my diet 2) Increase training intensity from 3 to 4 times per week.
I am not bothered by the weight at all now, I am more focused to improve my physical condition, strength, endurance and stamina. This is why I am more for 4 training's per week then worrying about 2 cones of ice cream or 2-3-4 0.5l pints of beer
In other words, I won't feel sad at all if I don't drop 4kgs more in next 5 weeks because I am sure that they will go out over longer term cause I am applying those habits to stick long term not to be hit and run type of things. I want to continue training naturally when I go to Asia with or without help from my Sensei. Those are kind of things I want to be doing long run!

Enjoy your week on and off the tables!

July so far graph 19.47 hours:

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77

Originally posted by Schrader69
Happy Birthday! May pokerstars grant you 25x gift.

Appreciate it really!
Stars should grant me 100x on 15s. On 5805 games evROI is 4.98% while running at 3.27%

I think this is a general problem with Spin&Go: You almost always run under EV. Imagine the following extreme payout structure:
1$ (rakeless) spins = 3M$ in BI
1 out of 1 Million Spins give you 1M as the first prize, nothing for 2nd and 3rd
999.999 play for $2
=> Almost every single player will run under EV, except for the lucky one to hit the 1M. Whilst this is an extreme example, it is true for most of the players with the normal payout structure - just not so extreme. Hence I would calculate the EV without anything above a 25 Multiplier to be on the safe side (especially since you need the money). If you hit a bigger one, treat it as it is: a jackpot.

wdyt?

Originally posted by SvenBe

Originally posted by IvicaIliev77

Originally posted by Schrader69
Happy Birthday! May pokerstars grant you 25x gift.

Appreciate it really!
Stars should grant me 100x on 15s. On 5805 games evROI is 4.98% while running at 3.27%

I think this is a general problem with Spin&Go: You almost always run under EV. Imagine the following extreme payout structure:
1$ (rakeless) spins = 3M$ in BI
1 out of 1 Million Spins give you 1M as the first prize, nothing for 2nd and 3rd
999.999 play for $2
=> Almost every single player will run under EV, except for the lucky one to hit the 1M. Whilst this is an extreme example, it is true for most of the players with the normal payout structure - just not so extreme. Hence I would calculate the EV without anything above a 25 Multiplier to be on the safe side (especially since you need the money). If you hit a bigger one, treat it as it is: a jackpot.

wdyt?

Yes this makes a lot of sense. I did calculations and for true ROI to get realized it is important to have consistency win rate % at higher multipliers too. However, say that I am having 60 cEV 4 tabling 15s. If I maintain such consistent win rate on multipliers up to 10x, my win rate in terms of ROI won't get damaged that much. When I say that much I mean instead of 32$ per hour I might get anywhere from 26-30$ per hour.
When I was 12+ tabling 15s 6 max turbos my win rate there was between the same hourly and it was much more intense and difficult for multi tabling because I had to worry about mass multi tabling HU's missing tons of value and playing bubble and abusing opponent tendencies. Now with 4 tabling spins there is really 2 main phases of the game, pre HU and HU. In both phases there is tons of post flop play so the best background for this game format is HU hypers (for obvious reasons - shallow stack play strategy and HU IP and OOP game plans) as well as CG (bet sizing, range construction, bluff/value combo construction when betting and calling etc).
In other words, I am OK and happy with my current hourly (26$+) on 5-6k games sample despite running bellow EV on such a sample. It would be nice to hit and win 25x and higher multipliers. That would make my saving money much easier but I am very OK with the way things currently are considering that I only time I invest in studying outside of tables is doing range construction analyzing my own game plan vs general tendencies and exploiting them + testing/experimenting new approaches while 4 tabling. If I was for example doing 9 hours a day poker, grinding 5 studying 4, I would be much more going for limit move up to improve my game in Spins and to increase hourly by increasing limits. I am however not going to do that because it will lead to severe burn out, it will lead me to stop teaching and helping people in music and spend less time with friends and family, eat junk food and stay in all day. Been there, done that with poker 9-12 hours or more per day. It ain't fun when and if you have other passions in life like I do.

End of the year we will see with about 20k Spins what evROI will be in relation to actual ROI. I hope it won't be more then 1% under EV (5% expected EV , running with 4% pre RB).

Enjoy the rest of your week on and off the tables!

Fun fact, if you calculate your EV without bigger multipliers, take your ROI and take this:

only 2x 71.07%
2+4x 87.37%
incl 6x 96.86%
incl 10x 98.16%
incl 25x 98.95%
incl 120x 99.29%
incl 240x 99.64%
with Jackpot obv 100.00%

So, if you have a $35 true hourly, your real hourly with never hitting the 25+ should be 34.3$, so not too far away...
Result is for me -to this extend somewhat surprisingly - that as long as you get in samplesize and are a decent winning player, hitting a jackpot is not important to be a winner in the game. But, of course it helps!

Awesome analysis. On paper it is true however in practice you need to run very well and play tons of games to have 98% of your win rate

Here is my all time graph for 15s Spins. Running below EV 20% of expected win rate (4% instead of 5%). 6k games is not enough as you see. I would go far and say that even 60k games will not be enough to get close to 98% win rate because even in that sample I can have bad variance on 10x and higher games.
Bad thing about PT4 is that you can't check how many of what type multipliers you played. I hope they will figure out a way to track that in PT4 or HM2. It will then show clearly how many of what multipliers I won or lost and explain running bellow EV part.

Here is the all time graph on 15s spins pre rb in my PT4 database: