Steve’s 2021 Progress Log
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Steve’s 2021 Progress Log
Hello Mastermind members and poker community!
I had a progress log on discourse before, but for some reason never started a new one here. I won’t go into a long intro – but I’m 31 years old from Calgary, Canada and looking to one day make poker my primary source of income. I’ve been taking the game seriously now for about 18 months or so, and feel like I’ve just turned a corner (so to speak) in the past couple of months before. I played NL with friends at home games for beer money for a couple years, learned there was strategy and watched some YouTube videos – I was good enough that I could consistently make a few bucks playing with a rotating group of buddies and that was as far as it went.
At the end of 2018/early 2019, I stumbled upon some content from Fernando on YouTube about PLO – I had played a little PLO in the past. I’d make a deposit of $100/$200 or so on Full Tilt or 888, and see how high I could run it up. I had lots of nights where I’d punt my stack pretty quickly, but several times had run up $200 to $2000 and jumped into some PLO1k (which at the time, I never knew that was actually high stakes). Never cashed out, but really loved playing PLO. I decided to spend a few days absorbing some of the content, and watched a video called “How much money can you make playing poker?” on the channel – I’ll clarify that I’m not drawn to poker (and never was) because it’s some rich and extravagant lifestyle or something crazy, but I appreciated finding this video that showed it was possible to either supplement my income or someday make poker my primary source of income.
I am a web developer for a very large Canadian retailer, although I’ve hit my salary “cap” a few years ago and there’s no growth potential for me internally, and I have absolutely no desire to be a developer anymore or work the 9-5 grind. Since about April or so, I’ve been working from 9-5 Monday to Friday, and then spending about 15 hours a week studying (reviewing hands, working with PLO Trainer, watching theory videos, etc.) and playing for another 15 hours or so. Yes, It’s been a crazy busy year but I wouldn’t trade it for anything. The pandemic was and continues to be horrible – but it gave me the gift of working from home and saving money on gas/insurance/takeout, along with no morning/evening commute and I haven’t taken that for granted. I’ve been busting my ass (maybe a little too hard at times) because I love the game so much. My 2020 didn’t go so well overall, as I’m going to end the year a little over 100 BI below EV, but hey what can you do.
Hard to know from small samples – but I was a losing player for the start of the year (about 100k hands), relatively break-even for a while (about 50k hands), and since November 1st, I’ve played almost 40k hands with a solid win-rate and huge EV win-rate on GG at PLO25 playing regular tables (with a little bit of party and ignition sprinkled in there as well). I also started working with the fantastic Jan in November as well – there’s absolutely no coincidence I starting having the results I’ve been looking for and working towards since I’ve been doing 1:1 sessions every couple of weeks or so. Again, small sample sizes for my play but I am seeing a difference in my life away from the tables that is translating to results on the tables (and during hockey for me as well). Finding ways to increase my focus, self-love, forgiveness, and energy levels have been incredible this past year, with the most focus in the last couple months or so.
So, what now, and where am I going from here? I’m going to continue doing things the right way, the way they are working for me at the moment with a balanced approach of 15/15. I just upgraded the RAM in my computer to 64gb and my first big purchase of 2021 will be Monker so that I can start to look into some spots myself. I realize that turns/rivers are coming to PLO Trainer as well and that is fantastic, but I would enjoy playing around with some different boards/bet sizings and learn some things that way as well. I’m going to continue playing PLO25 on GG until I can comfortable set aside 10-15 BI for PLO50. I have shot taken twice this year – both times went horrible, and I think a large part was because I cared about the money too much. I’ve been having much better results not caring about how many BI I won or lost during a session/week/month.
I think I’d like to update this twice a week or so, maybe once mid-week and once at the end of the week – for those who want to follow along, but primarily for myself. I am feeling more confident than even that I am working towards my vision, and it would be cool to look back one day and read about my journey and how far I’ve come. All the best for 2021, and thanks for reading🙂
Steve
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