[BLOG] From Zero to Hero; Road to NL400

[VikingsAF]

Hi guys and girls,

I know, there are already a few blogs out there, but I wanted to challenge myself... and I tought this would maybe be a nice challenge to follow (or to do yourself). And apart from that... I just like writing :D

A short introduction

So I started playing poker on Unibet 3 months ago. Mainly because I just became 21, and that's the agelimit to play poker in Belgium. After a month I funded a bit to the account, but that's now already back on my personal bank account. So I'm actually playing completely for free. Then a weeks after that I won the Bucharest experience, and in Bucharest I won also a bit, and that's from what I will start the challenge. (I also got 55 euro profit from poker tickets, which I withdrew aswell). I see poker pure as a hobby/game. So the money I make is just a nice benefit.

The challenge

I start with 8 euro (my "challenge fund") on my account. This gives me 4 chances to start the challenge with. So I begin at NL4 with a buy-in of 2 euro. I can only play one table as long as this first 2 euro is below 4 euro. When I reach 4 euro I am allowed to split it up, or to keep playing with 4 at one table. When I reach 0 I have to restart with 2 euro.

From the moment I reach 8 times my buy in (20 euro in this case), I can continue with the next level. So I can go to NL10. 20 euro means I have 3 chances, and the extra 6 euro goes to a pot I won't touch for this challenges (I can play tourney's or so with it, or just withdraw). 

In NL10 I buy in with 5 euro and the same rule applies as in NL4. From the moment I reach 50 euro I can advance to NL25. If I lose 2 times my buy-in, I will fall back to NL4 with the 5 euro left and start the grind again. And so on untill I reached NL400.

So the system goes as follow; From the moment I reach 10x the bottom buy-in on a level, I can continue. I start the level with 3x the lowest buy in, and all funds above this will go to another pot or to my bank account. From the moment I lose 2x the buy-in I will fall back to the lower level and continue play with the rest of the money in the "Challenge fund" (1x buy-in of the level higher).

Shedule

I don't really perform under pressure, so I don't know if I should put a time on this, but let's say that I want to reach a new level every week at least. The first levels will maybe go smoother, but whatever :D I will post whenever I feel like I should post sometyhing. Maybe huge wins or huge losses, or just when I feel like running good or bad.

Extra notice

I really hate NL4 because there are too many players who can't find the fold button. And with this I mean that I'd lose with AA shove against 86o, just because they don't know how to fold preflop. (This really happened to me, when someone raised I 3-bet, (86 calls) the first guy 4-bets and then I shove (86 calls again) ) For this particular reason I don't even know if I will ever make it to NL10 again :p

Any comments are really appreciated, because I really would like to hear what you guys think of this challenge, or what I should change. And for the rest I hope it will be a nice read for you all :D

Current "challenge fund" = 8 euro

[psrquack]

I would like to borrow to you my origami transporters to have a smoother way if you want.:laugh: GL and HF.👍

[VikingsAF]

Here is my first small update already, just because something spectacular happened.

Last 2 days number 3 really seems to be my lucky number.

I get dealt 33 and get to the flop without having to raise that much. The flop is rainbow 735. Villain goes all-in, and I call. Villain shows 7Ts. Turn and river are some random cards.

My first double up is already in :D

[Ametrine]

Nice, it's going to be fun to read about your challenge 😃 And of course good luck! (I see you already have some luck, but a little extra will never hurt 😏 )

[YpresX]

Good luck and have fun ! :D

May the gods rain down all kinds of fortune on your lives, misfortune never harbor in your homeland!

[AndreiBN]

 Good luck with your challenges and i'm sure it will all go smooth for you.You have a lot of poker potential and it's really nice that you keep it as a hobby ( for now) .Looking forward meeting you at the next UO event :D

[MathrimC]

Good luck!

I think there's quite some risk that with such shallow bankroll management you will go up and down in stakes a lot. Even without losing to crazy players, I've had downswings of 10 buy-ins at 10NL. So be aware that you're gambling a bit, and could go broke even while you play good. But it's ok, as long as you have fun doing it, and you might just as wel be lucky and start on an upswing.

Maybe I'll see you soon at my 10 and 25NL tables 😃

[whereisrivaldo]

👍👍 There definitely aren't too many blogs here!

I had to read the challenge rules (about moving up and down the stakes) a couple of times before I understood them. :laugh: Except this part: 

"From the moment I reach 8 times my buy in (20 euro in this case), I can continue with the next level. So I can go to NL10. 20 euro means I have 3 chances, and the extra 6 euro goes to a pot I won't touch for this challenges (I can play tourney's or so with it, or just withdraw)."

You mean 10 times the buy in? And the extra 6 euros??

Everytime you reach 4 x buy in for the next stake, you move one of those buy ins to "another pot"? If this is a way to give yourself a reward for the success on the previous stake level, I get it and I like it. You'll have some poker winnings even though you hit a bad run and end up  back to the beginning stake. Otherwise it doesn't really benefit the challenge.

Yea, like MathrimC said, the bankroll management is very high volatile. I hope you'are ready for some big swings. 

And are you more comfortable with 50bb starting stack? It does make the big mistakes less expensive, but I think it puts you more often in awkward spots. 

What's the plan when you reach NL400? You'll have 800€ to take the shot with. That's not really a comfortable bankroll to start playing NL400 more regularly. 

I hope you think about these things so we can have a good blog to follow for a long time!

👍

Btw, that 68o calling your shove is why you should love NL4. :Angel:

[VikingsAF]

Here I am with my first update.

Small intro

This week everything went bad from wednesday on. I really had a bad time in my personal life, and from this I learned, that it is nothing which goes well with poker. I think I'm really vulnerable by those mood changes. So actually I already lost my challenge to be honest. But I think I would be weak to give up here :) I got 50 euro for free from Unibet already, so I decided to top my account back up with 10 euro. Now that's already back up to 20 (so almost ready for the next level :D) 

Review on the past few days

Or I would need to change some of the rules. (limits) Maybe I should keep playing on a level untill I have 20 times the amount I start a level with (10 times the upper buy-in limit). But regarding the comments of @psrquack and @MathrimC. I said I really do it as a hobby, and I don't mind losing the money I got 100% for free (but I will not top up again after I fail now). I know it's a really bad bankroll managment, but I just wanted to try it out ;) push my limits.

The interesting part: about hands and tipping points (thanks google translate for that word)

First big loss:

At this moment I'm 2nd biggest stack at the table with 10 euro and a bit. I get dealt 35s in the big blind. A guy raises the big stack calls and I call, because it's a min raise. It wouldn't hurt to see the flop.

Rainbow A24 on the flop. So I flopped the nuts. I raise the pot. The first guy who raised folds and the bigstac min-raised. I think that's pretty nice, I put him on a strong A or so. Turn is an image (don't remember which one), so I'm still safe. I raise half pot, and the villain re-raises me, so I shove... He calls. And show 24o. So I'm like, that's pretty good for me. As long as the turn isn't a 2 or 4. 
Guess what!!! River is a 4 :( So there goes 10 euro I made.

A big win (actually to the above hand, but a bit different, because the river was good this time)

Got A6s (spades) I min-raise, one guy calls. On the flop there are 3 spades (78 and 3 or so). I check, and vllain raises half pot. I just call. On the turn there comes a 10 (not of spades), I check once again, and villain raises pot. I re-raise him, he goes all-in and I call. He shows 78 (so 2 pair) luckily the river didn't turn out to be a 7 or a 8 and I got a the big fish.

These are 2 of the big hands I remember. Next time I will try to take screenshots of the hand :) Because it seems my memory isn't that good as I expected :)

 

[MathrimC]

To remember hands, you could also just have notepad open (minimized) and whenever something happens that I want to review later, note the current time and your holecards (and maybe your position). That way you can easily find it back in the hand history afterwards.

[VikingsAF]

The weeks that I was gone

Maybe it wasn't smart from me to start a blog right before hollidays and exams, because I should have know that I won't have enough time to play or at least not enough time to play my A-game.

2 weeks ago I almost failed (again), but I was able to recover from 5 euro and get up to 30 euro. I used the trick from @MathrimC to remember my hands, but it seems that I can only check hands from the last 3 days right now. So no hands guys sorry.

One last Time

I stopped playing for a few days and on the 31th I wanted to play a bit more to end the year and maybe even get one of the "around the world" tickets. I opened 3 tables at NL10 for 5 euro buy in, and after 30 minutes I felt good and had 5 euro profit (lost 2 buy-ins, but was able to quadruple on a table). This isn't much, but I was playing really passive.

Didn't get any raffle tickets, but decided it was enough for 2016 and pressed "Leave table at next BB" so I could play one more orbit. And at that moment bad things always happen. It is like Unibet gets mad at you for wanting to stop playing poker. (This isn't the first time the following happened)

The Downfall

 

1 hand before I automatically leave the table I get AA. I was like "Oh nice hand to stop playing with in 2017, maybe I can make some last profit"

I am SB, villain is BB (villain has 27 euro and I 22 or so)

Everybody folds, and I decide to make a small raise to 25 cents, because I also would want to make a little bit of profit. The rest of the hand unfolds like this.

-> Villain reraises to 1.2 euro which made ma pretty happy
-> I decide to slowplay and I just call, maybe I can make a bit more profit later in the hand.
-> Rainbow 8A4 flops. I was like. Okay now I'm safe, no spectacular draws on the board.
-> I wanne be sneaky and I just call
-> Villain raises the pot 2.5 euro. At that moment I put him on a strong Ace (suited probably) and maybe 88
-> I min-reraise
-> Villain goes all-in and I snapcall.
-> He shows 23s 
-> Turn is a 2 and I let you guess the river :(

 

Where I am right now

Life has ups and downs, and after what happened I think I finished in a down. I tilted completely and lost all the rest I had. Tried to recover by playing the last euro in heads up sit and go (which I think I'm okay good at), and won that one. Then I played the 2 euro one and won that one aswell... Then I played the 4 euro one which went really good, but got 2 really bad hands one after another (set of eights vs set of tens and King-high flush vs Ace-high flush). So now I'm at 0 and that's bad.

The last hope for now

So because it all went so bad I got the following this morning:

If I don't end in the money here, then I will stop playing poker untill everything gets calmer here (exams are over and other unimportant stuff for you guys). I also should get a 4 euro ticket I won in Davitsches raffle. With this I will be playing a 400GTD bounty I think.

Conclusions I can make

- I should leave a table when I feel like leaving a table, and don't end the oribit

- I should make a limit on how long I play at one time. I feel like the first 30-60 minutes are okay, but after that everything always goes bad.

- I know that I could do well in poker itself, but I'm way to sensitive at some times. And those moments are really a desease towards my play.

- I should keep the structure I had in mind to play, and don't skip to higher tables whenever I want too.

- ... I probably should make way more conclusions, but that's it for now.

What I wanna hear from you

How should I have played the AA hand? Is it my own fault that I lost it all there?

 

Hope you guys got a nice read and will get a nice 2017 aswell :D

Joshua

 

[GotWhatItTakes]

Of course you didn´t make any mistake in the hand with AA vs 23s. You got it in with the perfect nuts, absolute coconuts, monkeynuts however you want to call them 🤣

Your opponent had 4 outs, so around 14% to win the hand. 86 times you win, 14 times he will win, when it goes all in on the flop. Actually that is the worst hand for him to have here, from your perspective. WIth 88 he´d have 1 out, 44 as well 1 out. In most cases he is just drawing dead and you win the hand. You disguised your hand by just calling preflop, so he tried to get you off your hand (he obviously made the assumption you didn´t have an ace. I guess he was right about that, since you had even 2 of them :D). That is always the problem with with slowplaying Aces or Kings. These two hands aren´t a guarantee to win a huge pot, it´s just the opposite: often you can´t let go of them and lose a huge pot, even if you knew you was behind. 

My advice: Change your bankroll management. There will always be bad beats, with your BRM you can´t handle a single ONE bad beat without moving down a limit or even go broke.

Good luck with your Challenge though! It´s nice to read such a risky strategy 😃

[VikingsAF]

I could indeed change the bankroll managment but keep in mind I still play for free actually (okay I topped my account up, but after I withdrew more to my bank account)

Pros:

- I make money with what I like doing
- I can player poker much longer, because I won't lose everything so quick

Cons:

- I don't want to get too serious about poker. And it maybe sounds a bit stupid, but I'm actually scared of making too much money out of it :) I think that, if I get the feeling that I win enough, I will start playing too much poker. (This is something I say because I know myself :) ) and then one day I will maybe lose more than I ever won. 

But I will reconsider my BRM :) I will aswell try making a shedule for myself after exams :) So that I only can play at moments that I don't have to think about other stuff.

We will see what 2017 gives :D hehe

[Magicadil]

Winning a lot of money is never a con because you could just self exclude yourself for a period of time and enjoy life 🆒

[VikingsAF]

@Magicadil, but the point is that I wouldn't ;)

That's exactly why I know myself :p

[MathrimC]

I agree that the AA hand was played well and that you should change the bankroll management a bit.

Something like this would be more stable: start with €1 SNGs to grind to €25 before playing 4NL. Then play 4NL to about €50 before giving 10NL a try, and immediatly go back to 4NL if you drop under €40, play 25NL to about €275 then take a shot at 50NL until you drop below €225, etc. So as a general rule: you can use the money above the 10th buy-in to take shots at a higher stake. Even this has risk of ruin, but chances are already way lower. On the other hand the way up will go much more slowly, so it might be a bit more boring.

[VikingsAF]

Finally got myself the time to play to Double Trouble

PLayed really carefull and tight, and when I was in 60/180 left this happened.

Should I have played else? Maybe I had a healthy stack, so just wait and see untill the bubble?

It feels really bad getting a (near) bust like this.

Guess there will be no poker untill after exams (except for if I win a David or Sjlott freeroll :p )

[MathrimC]

There's nothing wrong with how you played it, just unlucky. With 12bb, you don't have enough to blind down until 60 more people are gone, given the quick blind raises. And with that stack, the money just has to go in.

[VikingsAF]

Okay small update. Yesterday I tought, why not try for the 25 Daily tourneys, so I bought in for 1 euro. I won the 4 daily ticket pretty fast.

Now I just finished playing for the 25 euro daily ticket. And guess what? I shipped it :D

So? Any suggestions? Should I sit on the ticket for a bit? Which of the 25 daily's are the best to play? I was actually thinking of playing it already tonight :D haha

[psrquack]

Get another 25 ticket forge them to one and play the Daily50. :laugh: Or play it tonight.👍

[VikingsAF]

@psrquack Should I play the 2k GTD or the 1.3K GTD? Maybe 1.3k is better for me :) I'm not so good in long lasting play

[psrquack]

If the ticket fits maybe the 500 GTD Daliy hexagon. It started already but only 6 player registered and late reg is open for an hour. Fast game with cool PP.

[VikingsAF]

Okay gonna do that :) First eat a bit tough :p

[psrquack]

Vamos!:laugh: Oh, got you! I will support you as I can!:popeye:

[VikingsAF]

Lol. Played a bad first hand :D Don't know if you saw it :p