Poker BR Challenge

Sunday has arrived, so here is my update for the end of week 2. I will consider this as my second week, because I spent a week grinding from £32 to £61.

I have made the decision to transfer my bankroll onto Stars on Friday, because my HUD wasn't working on Party Poker, along with security issues I find with the site. Whilst the rakeback they offer is really nice, and the missions are also extremely good value, the site is reportedly infested with bots, and there is low security there...I know this sounds like the rants of a conspiracy theorist, but from what I have found this seems to hold true.

So, anyways, I lost about 4 buy-ins on PP, before transferring my role onto Stars. On Stars i started with some 2NLz, lost 4 buyins. At this point my BR was looking weak. I decided to switch up to 5NLz, the stake I had been playing on PP. Here I found extreme success, I actually ran at 30bb/100 for a few thousand hands, and so ran up a nice BR which currently stands at $111.70, at the time of me posting this, however i will likely grind out another hour of poker tonight.

Here is a graph of the hands I played this week, I already had around 5.3k hands on my stars account where I was -2$.

One interesting thing I have discovered is that my money won without showdown line has been increasing since I played a while ago on my stars account, which i'm guessing means i'm finding profitable bluff spots in my games...

anyways, I'll leave 1 hand from this week here, in future I guess I'll post more hands but for now this will suffice:

PokerStars - $0.02 NL FAST (6 max) - Holdem - 6 players
Hand converted by PokerTracker 4: http://www.pokertracker.com

BTN: 622 BB (VPIP: 0.00, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
SB: 105.5 BB (VPIP: 16.67, PFR: 0.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 6)
Hero (BB): 114.5 BB
UTG: 770 BB (VPIP: 25.00, PFR: 25.00, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 8)
MP: 121.5 BB (VPIP: 42.86, PFR: 42.86, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 7)
CO: 115.5 BB (VPIP: 18.75, PFR: 18.75, 3Bet Preflop: 0.00, Hands: 19)

SB posts SB 0.5 BB, Hero posts BB 1 BB

Pre Flop: (pot: 1.5 BB) Hero has Ad As
fold, MP raises to 2.5 BB, fold, fold, fold, Hero raises to 8 BB, MP calls 5.5 BB

Flop : (16.5 BB, 2 players) 2d 3d 6d
Hero bets 5.5 BB, MP calls 5.5 BB

Turn : (27.5 BB, 2 players) 9d
Hero bets 22 BB, MP calls 22 BB

River : (71.5 BB, 2 players) Td
Hero bets 79 BB and is all-in, MP calls 79 BB

Hero shows Ad As (Flush, Ace High)
(Pre 83%, Flop 93%, Turn 100%)

MP shows Ks Kd (Flush, King High)
(Pre 17%, Flop 7%, Turn 0%)

Hero wins 221.5 BB

:f_thumbsup::f_thumbsup::f_thumbsup:

Hi, I'm making this post a day early which can only mean one thing...I went bust, the dream is dead. This challenge taught me that online poker is rigged and micros are unbeatable.

Okay that was a joke, I am not bust, I'm actually sitting right now around $127, but that was after a huge huge downswing. I dropped to around $75, after a collection of both running bad but also not playing optimally, now looking back at my hand history. My biggest leak was overcalling, which I believe I have now patched. Of course I don't have a large sample size to prove this, but I have been making very good folds recently which I'm sure will increase my bb/100 by a decent amount.

So, I have been playing 6+ max this week because of how lucrative it is right now, with little players having a solid strategy. I have been studying the game a little and it seems to have given me a solid edge over the players, but unfortunately I don't have a graph to show my winnings on 6+ max to provide you with, but I won around $40 net I think.

Anyways, this post is to say I have exams starting monday, so I really haven't been able to put in the hours this week, and likely wont be able to next week, so there you have it

Week 5, by far the toughest, most brutal week of poker one could have faced. Bad beat after bad beat, running hugely under EV, losing 40% of my BR on a downswing, but finally making a profit from the last week of $48!

After making the last post, I ran up my BR to $164 playing 6+max games, however I managed to drop to $96 at one point. I made another thread talking about my downswing which you can find on my profile, so I wont go too deep into it here. But yeah, really had to love poker to make it through such a swing, otherwise I would have cashed out and quit there.

I've been grinding out 5NLz, and honestly with a HUD I believe you can comfortably make at least 6 BB/100. Right now I have an average of 7.73 BB/100, however I haven't been playing perfectly. I have thrown away, this week alone, around $10 from calls which make no sense whatsoever, which is huge...this week I put in about 16k hands, so thats about 1.25B/100 im throwing down the drain.

I plan on moving up to 10NLz when 2 conditions are met: 1. I have a BR of $350. 2. I am winning at 5NLz by 10BB/100. I think at this winrate I can allow myself to move up. That said, I am making around $3.30 an hour, which means without rakeback I will be looking at another 55 or so hours of play. If all goes well then I might be able to jump into 10NLz after just 3 weeks

So far, I've had a tough grind, but I still feel passionate about poker. It's all I want to do, so I will continue my grind Update coming next sunday, here are some graphs:
stats overall on stars cash games: https://gyazo.com/bc3d43577f0f434073d2611e461c9658
stats overall on stars 5NLz: https://gyazo.com/3600f61f3b37b4038fcc597152b8a3f9

gl dude