2026 From Online Cash Games to Live

I made a beautiful triple barrel bluff. Beautiful because I already decided at the flop I will triple barrel. The game plan was set early. My pocket pair to block the straight felt enough. The other two cards were degraded to danglers.

That's the good part.

The bad part was, even in my comfy home I felt a physical resistance to pull the trigger. Now I imagined sitting at a live table. Stakes 10x or 20x. I wouldn't have been able to finish the job.

Because of my "tell". A lot to improve. A lot to learn.

Last result reporting of the year. This time all regular four cards PLO. Roughly 30 min of play time, two stakes.

As mentioned two weeks ago, the goal for next year is to win 22 per day, which would be 10times better as this year. I came up with four ways to increase winnings.

Playing more hands: 1. longer sessions, 2. more tables.
Winninge more per hand: 3. better decisions, 4. playing higher stakes.

Increase everything by the factor 1.78 would lead to 10x.

Summary:
144 Hands
$+6.54
$2004.82

Played on four continous days. Mainly PLO and used rakeback tickets.

Feels like I done a high volume but far off what would be required to achieve the goal. As studying would be required as well. I guess that's the reason I played PLO and not NLH. PLO feels solid. Almost plays itself. NLH on the other hand I have no clue. And in my head is - that if when I make a mistake, it takes ages to crawl back. PLO has those nice swings. Nuts and simply collect a three-way pot 150bb deep.

Maintaining a playing streak would be helpful.

Winter is coming. Eight more hours till solstice. After that not quite 89 days for the first of the Equinox to arrive. Yes, I can confirm, 2026 will have two Equinox!

I had a look at my equity calculator again. Because I wanted to make simple ordering of hand strengths. The fun of it was to make it on my own. But it takes couple of days to run it. Even when reducing to the 169 hands on the left side it's more than four days. Main reason has to be because a lot of visual components have updates. And I convert strings to numbers back and forth. Doing it once no problem doing it a trillion times you notice it.

Now it's the right time to ask myself should I continue with my simulator or play instead.

Anyhow, next 89 days I try to log most in my life to have a plan for Spring!

I can relate to that 'trillion iterations' struggle! Converting strings to numbers inside a loop is a classic performance killer. It’s always a tough call between perfecting your own simulator and actually putting in the hours at the table. Since you're planning for Spring, maybe a mix of both is the key? Good luck with the 89-day log!

Tracking everything isn't working yet. The only thing sofar is that on day one it took me 29 minutes to the bridge the next two days 25minutes. I should force myself to walk faster. Not only as in the Japanease walking where it's 3 minutes brisk and 3 minutes slow but steady all the time. At least the 30 minutes is almost achieved. I recall the first two nights I was on point with my sleeping times and yesterday an hour too late. But the first two nights I woke up in the middle of the night and did light work. So I got almost the same hours of sleep.

Almost wanted to add the broad topics as well. But there is no due date when I need to now that. It all depends on how much time I have an how well I understand. And more important, how many repetition it requires. The second thing I was tempted to add, was the source.

What should I take as my starting point to track? Week1 29th of December. First day of the year or first monday, January 5th...

Last result reporting of the year.

Ok, one more.
I played 440 total hands. Which are divided into 118 STT and 322 PLO cash games. I earned $14.36 and played on four days. Which leads to a December result of +20.90.

Nothing to add. Failed completely to prepare for next week.

Summary:
440 Hands
$+14.36
$2019.28

Walked steps on January 2nd: 26 145 - in 2025... Why was last-year-me such a sick beast? I thought I could easily start the year and simply crush each daily record. Now the fight has to be against the monthly average...

But past-me sucked at poker! Didn't even post any results till the 5th. In 2024 the first entry was winning 1.70. This year I can open with 16.78. Not perfectly 10x and least of all not the daily 22 I'm targeting. But a strong enough result that the goal still is achieveable.

Update #1 2024 -$31.30 2025 +12.85

Didn't study. Didn't prepare anything. Played too passive. It's a miracle that I ended with more money than I began. It looks like I tried to throw away my hole stack from time to time. Because I was not only passive but also calling too many streets. Or more precisely, I called the big bets and folded scared against small bets. The other way around would be much better. Would have a huge impact on the winrate. Even when I didn't win more hands.

Same result tomorrow but better decisions!

Managed 20k steps.

Played a quarter of yesterday and then the table break. At the same time it rougly resulted in 20% of yesterdays winnings.

Instead of browsing on my phone on my short bus trip back home, from being 20k steps away, I began to read a novel. Don't want to rush and enjoy it but still the goal is to have read the book till March 20th. Then Hail Mary will be released in theaters.

Didn't cheat eating, drank more water than ususal but I didn't study. Skipped a few tasks in the morning. Forgot them would be a better description. And again I haven't prepared anything for tomorrow. But most other things were done earlier than the day before.

Sometimes I ask myself what exactly should my goal be when I code. Only things I want or need. Things that other might need or people should expect. Full features just for the sake of it.

If I only have my needs in mind it improves my quality of life later. I exactly when the task suceeded. A strong motivation to look for solutions how to solve an issue.
Coding things because other might expect something from a software is more like solving a riddle. Pushing myself a little out of a comfort zone because now I try to solve a puzzle that doesn't effect me.

Anyhow, today I came the furthest in coding a gui in pure C++.

Now I'm wondering if I get that running on my tablet as well. Being able to create a gui on the tablet without any studio installed would be so huge!

Very very short session of poker today. Mainly to build a habit. And you don't plan cheat days they happen naturally.

Originally posted by Rhodriguez
Anyhow, today I came the furthest in coding a gui in pure C++.

Now I'm wondering if I get that running on my tablet as well. Being able to create a gui on the tablet without any studio installed would be so huge!

What OS is your tablet?
Are you using a compiler that can compile software for that platform?
I have the community version of visual studio installed on windows 10, and it appears to be able to compile for android, but I've never tried it.

It's an android tablet. The app above is compile in a Ubuntu WSL and runs as a linux app in WSL. I have installed termux on my tablet and I think thee needed libraries are available. Termux itself can't show gui apps but I could install either a VNCviewer on my phone or use the other two options to show it. Besides some sort of bragging rights is it actually worthy or should I start with android studio. Or keep simple command line tools.
Unfortunately I failed to "improve" the app. Troubles to align added labels and textfield correctly. Should read the book instead of hopping around and praying autocomplete is correct...

Well week #1 is done. Now I don't know how I should post results in the future. Weekly, every other week as is was or mothly how the bare minimum for the challemge requires? Maybe weekly and then monthly summary.

Played on four days. According to my schedule from 25th December the topic was NLH cash games. I played 301 hands of PLO. Did win $29.75.
Which is 33.6% of winning daily 22 buck. And 2.3x compared to last years beginning.

Unfortunately, I didn't study any poker.

Summary (Jan 1 of 5 cum.):
301 Hands
$+29.75
$2048.75

Week #2 didn't magically flip a switch and made me a model student. Still no study. But at least I was able to read coding documents longer. Also played again a very small session. This is a big improvement to last year.

Yesterday it looked like I had broken everything but today I learned enough things to improve all. Goal for this Sunday: it actually will show my results!

I have no experience with WSL or compiling Android apps.
When I'm away from home, I use Teamviewer to remotely control my desktop.

Teamviewer seems to be able to work with a headless system as well. The VNC would be needed on the same system. Because termux doesn't have a graphical render I would need to connect from android to the sanbox installation of linux on the same device.

Could I please stop making these insane blunders? Played more than 550 hands. The hole got deeper and deeper. And then somehow magic happend and I turned all around. 6th day continous with a small profit. Why can't I just play always aggressive? What exactly is it that wants me to play passive? And I should bluff much more. Maybe 1/3 less calls. What do we get wenn we bluff more and call less? Aggression! I even know how to play more aggressive.

12k steps avg, healthy diet without cheating (could drink more water though), sleeping schedule. So far a good 2026.

Poker, didn't study. Didn't play NLH cash games. But a small PLO winning streak. On the trajectory of 3K yearly. After one week I still believe 8K is achieveable for me.

Originally posted by Rhodriguez
12k steps avg, healthy diet without cheating (could drink more water though), sleeping schedule. So far a good 2026.

I'm Impressed.
If I get 6000 steps, it is a good day. Same about the water. I get massive amounts of sleep — over 9 hours last night. Usually around 8 hrs though.

Yesterday, the the streak broke and I had the first losing day. 9 winnings 1 losing day isn't too bad.

Noticed that actually showing the results is too hard right now. I don't know enough to just hop between chapters. What I need is in chapter 10. Slowly work through the online book.

I need to add more math in my poker play.

Last week I played 1294 hands with a profit of 50.18. Which is one percent point less than last week towards my goal.

Watched one video. It was great. But I also had the realization that there actually aren't new things to learn. The material is just more polished, the speaker much more sophisticated and the overall presentation looks more professional. I don't need new or better material I just need repetion and actually understand what I have seen and read.

Not looking for new - repeat old stuff and what I have skipped. It seems working what I did.

I will try again being able to show my results in a window only using C++ next Sunday. As said it's in chapter 10. Luckily chapter 1 to 5 are installing, abouts, new functions and deprecations. I can start with chapter 6 and be at 10 on Friday.

Summary Jan (2 of 5 cum.):
1595 Hands
$+79.75
$2098.18