Hey everyone, I've decided that i'm going to start crossposting my blog from my discord server i have to here on RIO and a few other places. However before i do that i think i will start off with a little bit of background about me for those of you that don't know me.

Background

I started playing poker as a lot of people do - with friends, whilst drinking, before a night out, however as my friends enjoyment of the game slowly died i got more and more engrossed in it. Playing with friends soon become playing at the local snooker hall, which then become playing SnGs on stars whenever i had a spare bit of time, to dedicating Sunday afternoons to playing a full MTT schedule.
After a bit of change in my life and having ramped up my time spent playing poker, i decided that i was going to quit my job and become a professional poker player. I'd like to say that i had set aside a bunch of money, had a proper bankroll and winning results behind me to fuel my confidence into playing full time but i didn't. With no results, but determined to make it in poker, I quit my job (halfway through my shift) and the next day i took out a £10k bank loan to use as a roll. As with every great gambling story, we started off fantastically, about a month after quitting my job i got 3rd place for $10k in a SCOOP event and things were looking great, until they weren't...

I wasn't a professional poker player, i was playing poker and trying to improve, but nothing about it was professional. Fast forward about 6 months and with a depleted roll it was clear this wasn't going to work out but the last thing i wanted was to go back into the aerospace industry. I decided to get a part time bar job and still work at poker on the side, Luckily after about 2 months working in a bar covid hit and i was furloughed. Whilst Covid wasn't a good experience for most people it came at a perfect time for me, I was able to get paid to work on my poker game. During this time i transitioned from playing tournaments to playing cash games (i saw the light). After furlough ended, i had to get back to the bar a few nights a week but thankfully the time off during covid had done its job, i was now making enough money playing cash games where i was making less money by going to work than i was staying home playing and so for the second time i quit a job to become a professional poker player.

That was December 2021 and thankfully having learned the first time what isn't a professional, i was determined this time to take this seriously and really become a professional. That hasn't always been the case though as i have often seen poker as a great way to make enough money to be able to travel and enjoy life which whilst that's a positive thing, its a big negative when it comes to putting in the hours and keeping enough money in your roll to move up stakes. So from January 2022 until January 2024 i had somewhat stagnated at 200nl. I had a good winrate and really good routines but I've never wanted to play this game to be a grinder at 200nl. So at the start of this year i have been trying to spend less money travelling and instead use that money to grow my roll and play more 500-1knl. Thankfully the first obstacle has gone well and I've been winning pretty comfortably over a decent sample at 500nl. I have also now started to play a lot more 1knl and started a small CFP with Alexandra a fellow RIO coach, so if anyone here is playing 10nl+ and really wants to move up the stakes then feel free to reach out or join our discord here: https://discord.gg/ZTWQUQC43R for more information.
We've had some really nice success stories with this, most notably getting one of our first students who was breaking even at 25nl for the
last couple of years to now taking his first shots at 400nl.

Going forward i want to be able to get a decent sample at 1knl and In the meantime I'm going to use this blog as a place to occasionally update on how my progress is going both in life inside and outside of poker, maybe post some fun/interesting hands too, especially as these are now occurring more often and against more known people in the poker world.

2024 results

given its January, and that I've never really posted my results anywhere before i guess now would be a good time. So here are my tracked results for 2024:

In addition to this, I also have another $19,000 winnings on untracked sites.

Hoping to update this blog monthly, but not going to be strict on that. Good luck to everyone grinding in 2025.