What's up guys!
I'm sure you've seen a blog title like this hundred times before and I'm also sure that you've enough fingers on your right hand to count the ones that ended up as a successful story.
I’m aware of the fact that not many people visit this forum regularly anymore, but I decided to write the blog mainly due to my belief that it may have a positive impact on my mindset and work ethic. Anyway, if you’re interested and don’t mind sacrificing five minutes of your life, you can click on the spoiler where I’m gonna try to introduce to you myself, my experience, my goals and basically tell you my whole poker story. It might change your mind about this blog or even make you come back. If you don't try, you'll never know…
Spoiler
Who am I?
I’m your 25 years old average Joe who likes to hang out with friends and watch MMA fights. I’m currently living in the city of beer - Pilsen, Czech Republic. Two key aspects of living there are:
1) Beer is cheaper than water (I mean literally, a bottle of beer is less expensive than a bottle of water)
2) The cost of living here is significantly lower than it is in western countries. That’s probably the most important factor for poker players.
What more should I pray for? Heh 
Me and poker
I was 14 years old. It seemed just like another evening, I was laying on the couch watching TV, switching channels to find some interesting program before I go to sleep…and then I saw it. A group of guys playing a card game for money, rattling with chips while a commentator was sounding like it was the last hole of the PGA Tour Masters. Everything about it seemed so “cool” for me. I got fascinated and decided to find out more about the game the next day.
I told about it to my friends in school, taught them the rules, bought the chip set and we started playing during brakes. But it wasn’t enough for me. The more I learned about the “secrets” of poker, the more possessed I was. One day, a couple of months later, I made a radical decision. I took my mom’s passport, scanned it and created an account on Betfair and by the evening of that day, I took a part in a freeroll where I managed to get to the final table and win $22,50. I can’t even describe how I felt. That day just completely changed my life. I told to myself: “One day, I'll become a professional poker player”
Long story short, by the age of 18, I had already played hundreds of thousands of real money hands (cash games up to NL50). At this time, I was already planning to play poker full time after I finish my high school studies and one year later, the time has come. I didn’t want to underestimate anything so I did all the necessary calculations, saved up enough money to be able to survive any downswing and rented a cheap condo together with my friend to cut my expenses as much as possible. 100k hands a month while maintaining a winrate of 4bb/100 at NL25 would mean an average monthly wage in my country at that time. This shouldn’t have been any problem for me as I was already taking shots at NL50. I thought that nothing could go wrong, I was prepared for everything…but there was one thing I did underestimated.
Playing long sessions on Sundays is one thing, playing long sessions everyday is another. My brain just couldn’t handle that. My winrate dropped drastically and there was nothing I could do about it. I realized how much important the mental side of the game is, but it was too late. My mindset was gone, I wasn’t able to make enough money and the more I was trying, the more I was losing. I felt lost, I felt betrayed, I felt empty. I didn’t know if I was gonna be able to recover from it. After all those years, I didn’t want to just simply give up and let my dream go, but in the end, I didn’t even need to make any decision…it was our government who did. Online poker got officially banned in our country and it was the definitive end of my poker road. I found a regular job and went to university next year.
In 2017, Pokerstars got a license to operate in our country. Even though I created an account there immediately, I haven’t played much. I just didn’t feel the joy anymore. Maybe I simply got used to live without poker.
Comeback
In November of last year, I realized I miss something in my life. Something I love, something I’m passionate about, something that makes me a better man. And this something was poker. Ahem, okay, maybe it wasn’t that romantic. Anyway, I upgraded my software arsenal and started 4 tabling ZOOM like I used to do during the good old times. But after some time, I realized that I’m not crushing NL25 at all so I went down to NL 16 but I still wasn’t crushing it. The game was not only tougher than it used to, but different. Even at NL5 I was barely break even, which was absolutely shocking for me. Everything escalated in January when I went 1500bb below EV during only two sessions. That was enough for my mindset. I decided to withdraw all the money from Pokerstars to prevent myself from playing again. I knew I had to completely change my approach to poker in order to make any improvement.
February was the month. I started to study hard so I can catch up with today’s players but I also knew that my biggest issue wasn’t the lack of “theory” or “strategy” (or whatever you wanna call it), but adaptation. I just couldn’t adapt to this new environment and properly exploit it. Being able to put your opponent on a range is a crucial element of poker and I just wasn’t able to that. That’s why I decided to restart my journey and if I say restart, I mean NL2. Take my time, climb the ladder from the lowest limit possible to get “the feel” again and crush the microstakes once for all. After all, it’s been long 10 years since that young boy cashed in his first tournament and decided to become a poker pro. Why should I hurry now? I prepared myself as much as could and started the grind on March 1st.
How is it going? That’s what this blog is all about…
Here is my graph since March 1st
I managed to move up from NL2 to NL10.
I don’t have any specific milestones (in terms of bankroll) for moving up in limits as I don’t consider it the right strategy and I don’t mind redepositing if necessary. If I'm only just beating a certain limit (let's say 2bb/100), I don't see any point in moving up no matter how many hands I've played or how much money I’ve won.
My rough formula for moving up is
winrate bb/100 > rake bb/100 after 25k+ hands at each limit
= when you move up and your “before the rake” winrate drops by a half, you are still at least break even.
I have to admit that I’ve played less than 25k hands at NL2 as my winrate was 19bb/100 (all in adjusted) so I considered staying there a waste of time. Hope I will be forgiven!
If you have any question, opinion or advice, feel free to express yourself. I will be glad to respond 
VS
So good luck with the continuation of your journey. 
I dont know why they do this. Why they do everything to drive regulars away. I guess their brand is so strong that people will stay anyway though. What about switching to regular tables? You can open 4 of them (at least yesterday I could :f_eek:) and add one zoom table. That should give you good volume. Not as much as on 4 zoom tables of course but better than nothing.
and what's even more important, I don't feel any "additional" pressure. My mindset is at the right place and I managed to stay composed even after losing my first big pots there. I've set my stop-loss limit at $100 -> if I lose more, I will decide what to do next.