Hello, everyone. I've decided to start this blog to document my progress, and hopefully exchange some thoughts with the other members of the community. I've dabbled in poker some years ago already, but it was purely recreational and so I'm starting from the very bottom. I've read a couple of books (literally two; I found Alton Hardin's Master Micro Stakes Poker to be very informative), gotten RIO's very own FTGU course, I bought Holdem Manager and since November I've been grinding out NL2. I'm breakeven on regular tables and hemorrhaging on zoom. On the other hand, I've been somewhat lucky in a couple of MTT's I've played (thank you pokerstars for the Blowout series and the free tickets, that's a huge deal for a lowest stakes player; that's where I'm playing if you'd like to bumhunt me;) ), so I'm comfortably rolled for NL5 (NL10), the only thing I'm lacking is the actual skill. I would probably like to post some hands and get feedback on them; on the one hand, I find it vital to analyse one's own game, on the other, it's incredibly difficult for me not to fall into the trap of being results oriented - if, say, I tried a bluff and got called on it, there is this nagging feeling this was an awful idea, even though it might've been actually good. My life story is that I'm finishing obtaining a rather useless degree, and so my goal is to be able to potentially support myself from poker. That's not to say I plan to become a professional poker player and grind as the full time job, but I would like to have the skill required to provide for myself. I estimate that'd be about 5$/h, living in Central Europe (meaning already in the European Union, but not rich yet), which is about 5bb winrate on NL25 4-tabling - I hope that's an attainable goal.

My plan for the following months is as follows. I have found plenty of great material on youtube, so that's the learning I'll be focusing on. Furthermore, I intend to read Peter Clarke's The Grinder's Manual, which seems to be the Bible for a microstakes poker player. I'll try my best to analyse my own play besides mindless grinding. While playing sounds like the most important part, I don't think it has the most educational value. Once I'm done with the resources mentioned above, I plan to invest into Upswing Lab, but that's still a while from now. And it would be nice to do all that while not neglecting working on my Master's degree, basically.

What I'm going to be struggling against the most is to keep myself motivated & disciplined, qualities which definitely are not my strengths. I'm hoping that by the means of this blog I'll be able to keep myself somewhat accountable. Let's see how it goes.