Hello RIO,

I recently finished reading A Game Poker by Elliot Roe and, if you've ever read it yourself, one of the exercises suggested for would-be "A Game Players" is to engage in a thorough post session review. As a person who tends to be asocial enough that it often acts as a bottleneck to my goals, I figured why not kill two birds with one stone by keeping a journal here so that I can: a) log, review, and measure my progress towards beating 5NL on ACR and b) hopefully get to interact with other like-minded poker players.

I suppose I should start with a little background on my Poker story... In late October of 2023, I was an aspiring pro bodybuilder. One little problem: I tore my pectoral tendon off the bone doing some heavy bench pressing. A second small problem: this was my second injury requiring major surgery in a nine month span. Despite spending fifteen years pursuing some kind of weightlifting or physique related goal, for the first time in my entire life, I began to question whether or not it was time to try something else.

Poker entered the picture completely by accident. When you have one usable arm, and you're used to the schedule of a would-be athlete, you have to find a way to kill a rather sudden surplus of time. I don't play video games because I get addicted too easily (Diablo II took most of my teenaged years, lol). Well, what happens next is probably rather predictable: I started playing Poker on my phone, quickly got addicted and never looked back.

In what seems like the blink of an eye, I went from not knowing whether or not a flush beats a straight to logging hundreds of thousands of hands against the ACR microstakes pool. From November '23 to March '24, I did nothing but consume content on training sites and play against the GTO Wizard Trainer. I played more than 100k hands against the solver before ever playing a real human for real money. In mid-March, I felt confident enough to start playing for real at the lowest stakes there are... 2NL.

I "beat" 2NL quickly by winning over 50 buy-ins across 90k hands in my first 3 weeks playing:

5 NL has been another story entirely...

My bankroll is not the limiting factor in the stakes I play -- my skill is. I want to prove to myself that I can beat every level before moving up. I could easily bankroll much higher stakes, but I've simply chosen not to do that. I figure that If I'm going to pay my tuition dues to the pool, I might as well do so at the lowest levels where I can actually learn and improve. As such, I will only consider a stake "beat" if I can win 20-25+ Buy-Ins across a reasonable sample size of at least ~50,000 hands. From there, I'll move up and try to accomplish the same thing at 10NL. Basically, I'm just going to take this one step at a time.

In April, I lost ~13 Buy-Ins across ~100k Hands at 5NL:

In May, I lost ~21 Buy-Ins across ~85k Hands at 5NL:

In June, I somehow lost ~38 Buy-Ins across ~69k Hands at 5NL:

Completely undeterred by getting repeatedly owned, I nevertheless had to acknowledge my results were actually somehow getting progressively worse... much worse. I took a short break to re-evaluate my process. I eventually had to confront my biggest leaks:

1) I had increased the amount of tables I was playing from 6 to 12 and I was making many, many careless mistakes as a result.
2) I was not playing set hours. If I was winning, I'd usually stop a session after 2-3k hands. If I was losing, I might play until sun came up the next day. I even logged several 5000+ hand sessions.
3) I was tilting, badly, during losing sessions. Sure, I wasn't slamming the key board or throwing my mouse, but I was subtly altering my frequencies and ranges to try and "win it back". I was playing every single suited connector or low pocket pair that came my way and I was preflop jamming every single time with hands that should be mixed actions.

That is what drove me to pick up a copy of Elliot's A Game Poker (along with Galfond's endorsement of it!). Since the end of June, I've taken a much more professional and methodical approach to my play and study. I have set, specific times to study and play. I play ~2,000 hands per session, six-tabling across almost exactly four hours. I've also begun to meditate in an effort to help reduce the impact of losing tilt on my play.

I resumed 5NL play on July 9th where I am up ~4 Buy-Ins Across ~20k Hands:

Obviously, I'm still quite a ways off of my definition of "beating 5NL", +20-25 buyins across ~50k+ hands, but this is quite an improvement. Tilt has been reduced. My average level of play has been far higher playing only six tables and, of course, I completely quit pulling all-nighters.

I think that is more than enough to start off with! I'll be back later today with the results of tonight's session. Please feel free to ask any questions you have whatsoever. I am a very open person and don't mind answering anything at all.

Best,
Orca206