May Mini-challenge

Gonna be doing a mini-challenge in May because my grind ethic has been shit lately. I will play 200nl only this month until I get more comfortable with my daily routine. I will also give time to people at Ignition/Bodog (which is where I'm playing btw) to acclimate themselves with the new 500zone tables. They recently added the tables and I'm very excited for that! Gonna be able to play my good old 100k hands/month again xD.

Grind Structure
- 2 200z tables
- 7 hours grind/day
- 1 hour study/day

That will leave me with:
- 50k hands volume goal
- 20 hours study goal

These are my results so far at the 200nl tables

And one hand to make me look cool

GL!

GL with your pursuit!

gk

I'll be reading this blog everyday!

I forgot to list one of my short-term goals:

Only 174 likes to get to Rio top 5 users list. I'm counting on you guys, lets do it <3

gl gl gl! Will be following. :)

Really nice graph and winrate. Good job.

subbed obv, gl

Gl my friend :)

Classic Rio thread rungood...

Biggest winning day ever

You guys are the best, thank you! Not many interesting hands so far this month, just had the nuts too often.

Rec overplaying 2p
Rec overplaying A high flush
Rec going crazy at me

PROGRESS - May Mini Challenge

• 5149 / 50000 hands played;
• 1 / 20 hours studied (behind pace);

For the next few days, I'm going to be sharing a lot of stuff that might help the aspiring micro stakes players of 2018. A lot of that stuff I have already shared with my students and their feedback have been really great so I think it can help more people. I'm gonna call the series of posts:

Posthumous Memoirs of a Micro Stakes Grinder

Feels like a very accurate title for what I want to share. Basically the most relevant things I learned in my journey through the micro stakes. A lot of that knowledge became transparent to me not too long ago...so its still very fresh in my brain.

GL all and I see you in the first episode!

Hi Saulo I want to chime in and thank you for one tip you gave at the community in your previous blog: start a journal. This things change my life completely. Ty a lot

the man, the myth, the legend! xD

PROGRESS - May Mini Challenge

Results

• 10 705 / 50 000 hands played (21%)
• 4 / 23 days played (17%)
• 3.5 / 20 hours studied (17.5%)

Playing really well and running decently, can't be bad. Some interesting hands:

Not sure about turn, but I think its good
Pot odds too good
Running into the 0.5 combo...gzus
Donking into an uncapped range while repping nothing
Max value -- he had AK
LOL at this reg, couldnt pull the trigger with 5 high
Thin value shove
22 is the new AA

Tomorrow first day off, well deserved. GL everyone!

Where do you play right now? I see the HHs and I guess they are converted and not from Ipoker

Posthumous Memoirs of a Micro Stakes Grinder

Episode #1 - The high volume non sense and the stubborn insistence

I've started playing poker online full time in early 2016. Since then I've played: around 70 000 hands at nl2-nl5. 300 000 at 10nl. More than 200 000 at 25nl. More than 500 000 at 50nl. Almost 400 000 at 100nl.

Thats basically 1 500 000 hands at low stakes. Assuming 700 hands per hour (3-4 tabling zoom), that is around 2142 hours or 267 working days (8h/day). 267...this is almost exaclty an entire year worth of grinding low stakes, since during that time I was taking 2 days off per week. An entire year grinding and grindind and grinding and grinding...with little improvement.

And I'm not an outlier. Most players do exactly the same or spend even more time than me at these penny stakes. A few weeks ago I logged into stars and played some 16z to test out some new concepts I was studying. I was able to recognize at least 2 regs who were playing microstakes at the time I started. Quickly scanned the 25z and 50z pools, and there was the same regs of more than a year ago, some of them were playing those stakes long before I even got there.

Now I ask myself...what the fuck are/were we doing? How can we be so clueless and stay in auto pilot for so long before doing something different, before taking any action? Where did this volume non sense come from? Who told us that we need to play 80 000, 100 000 hands per month, and why did we believe? How come we don't realize we are wasting time that could be so much more productive and just cliking buttons for hours a day during months or years?

I understand that in the beggining, all we want is to play, right? We fell in love with the game, we enjoy opening those tables to spend our day playing, thats ok. But is it though? I guess it is for someone who has no goals with poker, and is okay with just having fun at X stake for an endless amount of time. But most of us want to get better. We want to move up because we want to become professionals, or we want to make side income. If that's the case, why are we treating poker like fucking amateurs? Do we really believe we will get better at this super complex game by just clicking buttons all day, and pretending to study 1 hour a day so that we can say: no, I'm studying, I'm thinking about ranges and this and that.

We fool ourselves. We are either lying to ourselves, or we are just too blind to see the truth. The truth is: in 2018, you won't become a good player if you don't start studying effectively. You might be able to beat 25nl for 4bb/100 playing the nittiest style that has ever existed. But hey bro, you still suck. You are still clueless about what is going on, and what poker is. I was like that. And there is proof here in this forum. In october 2016 I made more than $2k at 25nl playing 6% 3bet. It took me months after that to start becoming a better player.

I tried to understand why most players follow this pattern. And I don't think I came to something conclusive. I think there might be several reasons why we just enter this auto pilot mode and spend months, years at the same shitty stakes because we are too busy to take really relevant action. But I just know it happens to most of us. So if there is something I can advise you, it is this: STOP. Seriously, stop what you are doing right now.

Let go this stubborn insistence in your current paradigm. Where has it taken you? Most likely NOWHERE. So why, why are you still doing the same things over and over? Why can't you see you need to break the cycle once and for all? It's time for you to take serious action and start improving for real. It's time for you to understand that poker is really hard, and spending your time grinding penny stakes is a total disservice to your goals. And your game. And your improvement. And your life.

But then some of you are going to think: "oh but I don't know how to study, or where to begin, or what to do at all". Well, then fucking figure it out! Take some action for god sakes. No one knew everything when they first started out. You have to be willing to try different things. Be open minded, be curious. Enjoy experimenting new processes, and new methodologys. Ask people who are better than you. Find someone you trust, and that your intuition says it is worth following. Partner up with someone motivated, someone who you know will give 110% to reach their goals. Pay for good coaching. GOOD coaching, from players that know what they are doing and are not just interested in your money, not the bullshit mediocre regs sell everywhere. Start questioning and challenging your assumptions. STOP projecting your way of thinking into your opponents. Don't you see how dumb that is? "Oh it doesnt make sense for him to shove value here so I'm gonna call". Can't you see how much you hurt your own growth with this type of thinking?

Volume is overrated. Stop what you are doing, buy the poker software you need and start doing the work that is really going to get you where you want to be. Break the cycle man. It's time.

damn nice progress Saulo! GL for your further goals, stay hungry!

GL Saulo

Posthumous Memoirs of a Micro Stakes Grinder

Episode #2 - The illusion of improvement and the self sabotaging arrogance

I find it crazy how human beings can have paradoxal behaviours signifcantly often.

When I first started playing back in 2016, I joined many skype groups. I used to discuss hands in a daily basis with other micro stakes grinders. At some point I was part of a handful of groups and would interact intensely in all of them.

There were a few times where I had arguments with other guys because they said I was patronizing them with my analysis. They would often feel personally attacked by what I was saying. At the time I actually genuinely tought they were being childish and misinterpreting what I had to say. But dude, once something keeps happening to you, its time to believe its your fault and not other people's.

Today I can see that clearly. I had developed this habit of talking about hands as if my understanding of the spot was the absolute truth, and I would fight to defend my point of view. Now that I think about, it seems so ridiculously dumb that I feel embarrased and sorry for so much wasted time in those silly arguments.

Along the last couple of years, I've been through many occasions where I would think to myself: "nice, I'm at a high skill level now". It took me 4 times of that happening for me to realize that this type of thinking is useless and only leads to a false sense of improvement and entiltlement. Poker is super complex! Stop thinking that you have improved and just continue to improve every day! Isn't that much more coherent and incentivized?

How can someone that is playing microstakes make statements as if they actually knew what they are talking about? Here is a hint: if you have been playing microstakes for months or years: you are not good. Yes dude, stop pretending you got everything figured out, because you don't! And it's extremely irrational for you to act like that. You are not only hurting your own growth, but the growth of others with whom you try to discuss poker strategy with. Do a favor to yourself and the others that are bothering to listen and start an analysis under the assumption that you can't yet see the whole picture given your current ability. Be willing to be corrected, and not ready to correct others with your unlimited list of arguments. Be ready to change, to adapt, to expand your thinking process. And please, don't try to make everyone else think like you do.

Today I know that I will continue to improve endlessly until I stop playing. Next year me will laugh about today's me thought process. And that's awesome! Feeling like you are improving everyday is much more satisfying than arrogantly pretending to know everything. When you are able to fight your inner desire to feel better than others, a whole new world of possiblities opens up. And it's only up to you to keep it that way. Forever.

Hi Saulo! I will follow your progress.I want to ask you, why you choose to play zone table instead of regular tables? Im asking because on regulars tables you can identify on a few hands the recreationals player, but on zone tables you cant. You only play on Bodog?

Regards!

I've gained considerable respect for a reflective Brazilian player who put in the work and climbed the ladder. Keep sharing your thoughts, they are valuable. Thx.

Grades

Do you still use that to evaluate how you are playing ?

PROGRESS - May Mini Challenge

Took 3 days off out of nowhere this week lol wasn't feeling like playing and decided to give myself some rest. I don't usually do this, but one of the best things about being a poker player is to be able to (not) work whenever you want so I figured I should enjoy that sometimes. I'm very behind pace now, gonna start adding reg tables to make it up for that.

Results so far

Pretty sure this graph is not accurate because I dropped like 6bi over the course of one session this week and its not showing. Will update once I get all the hands. Some fun/interesting hands:

I take this line too often
This one too
Max value
Max value part2
Small bets get no respect

Episode 3 of the Posthumous Memoirs of a Micro Stakes Grinder coming out on Monday. GL everyone <3

First two hand .. out playing basketball, I didn’t go through PIO yet, do u think population over folds to river all-in with marginal hands? I’ll have to say when I’m playing I don’t attack like that 100% of the time. First hand Q is really good river, I like the shove.

Was that you trying to be mean to me :P ?

The other regs in our pool almost never do this type of shit so I wonder sometimes.

Population overfolds almost everywhere vs any sizing, so yeah.

They also underbluff everywhere. It's the bad-reg cycle.

Hey Saulo,

You mentioned in this thread learning to study relevantly and I was curious what your study habits were like as you moved up, and what they're like now? How have your studies translated to concrete strategies?

For instance, I see you posting a lot of overbet hands and that's something I tend not to do much. Is this something you do by feel against capped ranges and risk adverse player pools or did you do a lot PIO work + texture / pattern recognition to find spots that encourage large overbets?

Thanks! Keep up with the updates! :)

Posthumous Memoirs of a Micro Stakes Grinder

Episode #3 - The fear of failure and the mistake tilt

I think most of you will relate to this, even if you are already at midstakes.

My relationship with the two beasts from the title begins long before I even knew poker existed. Between age 12 and 17, I played soccer semi professionaly. All my life was built around soccer. I would go to a specialized and focused on high performance sports gym in the morning, then would go to practice in the afternoon and then school at night. If my team was competing in any important competition on saturday, I would spend friday night "concentrating" (as it is called here in Brazil) with my teammates at the club's CT (training center).

Needless to say that this doesn't sound like a healthy routine for a kid. I didn't have much time for anything else. I remember having to eat dinner in like 5 seconds so that I could spend a few minutes with the girl I liked (which is today my fiancee) before I went to school. Sometimes I would beg to my parents to skip school so that I could hang out with her.

Anyways, I had a lot of pressure on me, although I didnt realize it consciously. My father would come to all my games, and he would put even more pressure on me by screaming relentlessly from the first to last minute of the game. He thought he was supporting me, and I dont blame him. But it was just another source of pressure that I didnt need.

I loved soccer. And I was good at it. But with time, I developed this big fear of making a mistake during game. I didnt want my father to scream at me. I didnt want my coach to be mad at me and scream too. I had all this structure built around me to succeed, which made me believe I couldn't make mistakes. I couldn't afford to waste evertyhing that everyone around me was investing. So I started to become a mediocre player that never takes a risk. All the audacity and boldness I had from when I fell in love with the game, all faded away because I didn't want to face the consequence of a possible error. So I would just stick to the security of doing the basics, not taking risks and not compromising myself or the team.

What follows is beyond obvious. A destructive vicious cycle took place: with the fear of messing things up, I became a mediocre player, totally risk averse; my aversion to risk also contributed to an exacerbated mistake tilt - whenever a spark of boldness emerged and failed, I would become angrier at myself and would promise myself to never take that risk again. This downward spiral culminated with me burning out, feeling miserable, failing in all aspects of my pursuit in soccer, and disappointing myself and everyone around me. I ultimately decided I didnt want to go thru all that again, so when my team was eliminated from the competition, I told my dad I wanted to quit. For good.

What is most interesting to me is that I didn't realize all of this until it happened again. This time with poker. The only difference was that, with poker, I couldn't blame others for putting pressure over my shoulders. There weren't any outside factors. This time, I built this whole structure for myself in which failing was not an option. I had to succeed. And now, I was trying to succeed in a game where taking risks is a constant phenomenon; an essential part, located in the core of the game. And with an agravant: every time you fail, you don't get screamed at. You lose money. And then you scream at yourself lol

So, during all 2016 and half of 2017, I became the nittiest nit of the Nits Kingdom. Looking back now, it seems like bluffing or bluffcatching wasnt even a part of my game. I would totally restrain myself from the possible pain of bluffing off a stack. Or the pain of calling and losing a big pot. And if I ocasionally decided to deviate from my original nitty gameplan and failed (my bluff getting caught or my call being bad) I would feel miserable. "Why did I do this? That was so stupid! Now I'm gonna have to grind X thousand more hands to make it up for it". I sabotaged my own growth. Again.

I became a prisioner to my own fears and illusions. And I would continue that way if it wans't for Mr. Variance. Oh, so much grattitude for this guy! I had to go through a 200k hands breakeven stretch while playing for a living with ZERO money saved to realize I needed to break this cycle. And than God I did.

I didn't have the option to continue doing things the way I was. "It's not fucking working!". "Shit, I need to change things here. No fucking way Im gonna ask my parents for money. They have provided everything they could possibly have for me to do this, and the first chance I get I fail. This ain't right". That was it for me. In a moment of total desperation I saw no other option than to throw my current paradigms out of the window. What opened up was a whole new world of opportunities and possibilities.

I don't care about the outcame anymore. I dont care about the pain of losing a stack by bluffing the river. I'm gonna try everything. I'm going to try and do things I've never done, because it can't get worse than this. I have to do things differently If I want different results.

A whole new player emerged from the chaos. And thats probably an understatement. My entire approach to poker, not only techinically but mentally, completely changed. I look at my stats, my posts from over a year ago, and I can't recognize myself. I literally can't understand how I was stuck for so long into that mindset. This feels so much better!

I think I learned more about life these last 2 years of playing poker full time (and specially the last 9 months as a pro) than I learned in all the other 22. Not everything I learned came from poker, but definitely a lot of it did.

The biggest thing I learned, although I had already read, or listened or heard similar stuff, is that you can't experience greatness without experiencing pain. You can't experience improvement without experiencing failure. There is no way to avoid it. Its inevitable. Its necessary. One can't come to existence without the other.

Once I realized this, fear of failure and mistake tilt became so futile to me. Pointless. I WANT TO FAIL. I WANT TO MAKE MISTAKES. Fuck it. I want to spew stacks on the river. I want to make crazy hero calls for all my money. Am I a freakin degenerate? NO. I just now realize that those are precisely the things that will get me to a higher level. How am I going to get better otherwise? I want to make those mistakes because I can learn from them. I want to fail over and over because eventually I will truly succeed. Because everytime I get out of my comfort zone; eveyrtime I try something new, everytime I challenge myself to take real risk - I learn. I grow. I improve. Who fucking cares if I lose a stack at 50nl? Am I going to play this stake forever? Is this the apocalipse and thats the last hand of poker Im going to play? Who cares if made a mistake? Can't I learn from it? Won't it make me better if I understand why I made it?

I became curious. I became open minded. I became a lover of the trial and error. A lover of experimentation. And it feels great. Shoving the river as bluff and getting caught doesnt feel bad. Hero calling and getting shown the nuts doesnt feel bad. Downsings don't feel bad. Is this the poker paradise or what?

I set myself free from the prision I learned to stay in. And its one of the most valuable lessons Ive learned in life so far. I'm going to take this mindset to any project or attempt I find myself in in the future. I will love the process of failing repeteadly until I succeed. I will love the adventures of trying multiple answers until I find the right one. I will embrace the pain as a part of me. A part of my growth. An essential part of my success. Why does it have to hurt?

It doesn't.

I've had a similar experience in my love life. In the beginning of our relationship, me and my fiancee would struggle to commit because loving makes you vulnerable to the loved one. And that felt uncomfortable. We didn't want to feel that vulnerable to another human being. And that blocked us from truly commiting to each other. Until we finally realized: you can't experience true love without surrendering and embracing vulnerability. They need to coexist. One runs away in the abscence of the other. But once you surrender, it doesn't feel bad. It feels fucking great.

If you can relate to what I just wrote, do a favor to yourself: surrender right now. Stop fighting. Let go your need for control, your need for doing everything right, your need of making others proud of yourself, your need to feel capable and competent and on top of everything.

Let go this self sabotaging and paradoxal behaviour of keeping yourself away from exactly the things that will get you where you want to be. Embrace the pain. Surrender to the unknown. Love your vulnerable self. Learn to see the valleys for what they really are: the path to the mountain top.

thank you Saulo for your great words!

pq vc n ta jogando na stars mais? gl, man
vaaaaaaamooooooooo

Progress Update - May Mini Challenge

So I'm gonna fail my volume goals this month by a lot lol but I decided not to force it and I feel happy about that decision. I had a few unplanned circumstances I had to deal with, like in-laws coming to visit, took too many days off (which I don't regret) and in general wasn't feeling too motivated to grind. I was actually feeling pretty bored for the most part and was often playing very distracted which is not good so many times I decided to quit sessions early because I wasn't in the right mindset.

Results

Tracker missed hands and HHs download links have been corrupted for a week now so graph isnt accurate. My BR says I'm up 6.5k from the tables this month, which is still pretty good for such low volume. I also made around 1.5k so far from coaching this month, which puts me precisely at the 8k for net profit, which I'm pretty happy about. However, I still have to work on my study routine and find some sport to practice cuz sedentarism is real at this point for me.

I'm gonna be making the full transition to 500nl, as I think I will be more motivated and then more focused during the grind. However, volume will most likely be even lower and I don't feel good about that. I may move some of my BR back to stars in the near future so I can grind 4 500nl reg tables + 2 200z tables, I think that would be cool.

Now some fun hands (had to go a few days back to get them):

Team no fold
Seriously bro?
Max value
Team no fold #2

GL everyone and lets close May strong!

Great writing skills bro! May i could ask you how it your general approach to play this anonymous tables? My guess is that 3bet and 4bet bluff range should be zero. Do you try to balance your bluffing range or you try to play more ABC style? Can you share some general tips?!

Quick update

Sup guys. I hope everyone is doing fine.

Just wanted to give a quick update since I havent posted in more than two weeks. During the time I was shot taking at 500nl I had to play a lot short handed and HU because the tables wouldnt fill up most of the time. And it was actually a great experience for me, HU play is a lot of fun. I enjoyed so much that I started to watch some HU videos and eventually decided to play some HU in the stars zoom pools. I am sunrunning at the moment, but despite of results I really enjoy playing HU. I think its something I will continue to study and improve on along with my 6-max game.

I'm currently also spreading my BR into other sites, including stars again, so that I can grind HU whenever I feel like. And then occasionally I will add 200z to my grind as well. So looking forward to establishing a new grind routine where I can play higher volume while mixing different formats to make the grind more enjoyable.

As far as results go, I'm up around 4k this month with only ~10k hands. Not gonna post a graph cuz I eventually gave up trying to track hands on bodog. Sofware was crashing every time I tried to download hands. It might be different now that they switched the .eu accounts to .com domain. But anyways, not happy with my volume, but very happy with results. I think I need some challenge at this point, as I feel like I can crush Bodog with my eyes closed (overall sample at 200 sits at around ~140k hands with >10bb/100) winrate. Also I had to withdraw half of my roll to deposit on other sites so cant grind 500nl anymore on bodog, at least not for now. So I might focus on grinding stars again in the near future, maybe with the intention of getting to 500z for the sake of challenging myself. But again, no rush at this point. Im making more money than I spend while not working crazy hours so I want to keep it that way.

On another note, recently bought a new PC that will probably improve drastically my overall working experience. Working with large databases on my current laptop hasnt been great, as it often takes days (literally) to calculate some statistics. Also it has been heating up too much to a point where it just shuts down in the middle of the grind. So I decided to spend some money and got myself whats supposed to be a top PC. Looking forward to get my hands on it.

Some fun hands for you guys

Nice try bro
Nice try 2
I cant fold, sorry
I seriously cant fold, stop trying
That max value

Thats it for now. GL everyone <3

Hey Ddog! Thanks for the words.

I do have the card catcher, but it doesnt catch zone hands and even at the reg tables it misses a lot of hands most of the time. If client/download links worked there would be no problem, but nowadays everytime I try there is some Java error going on, its really annoying.

Weekly Update

Another week concluded. Volume was pretty low, as it has been lately. I'm watching most world cup games tho, so its time well spent xD Managed to get most of the hands from this month, so here we have our results.

My new PC arrived yesterday, and I've been setting everything up so that I can start grinding normally again. Now I can solve BvB spots in like 2 minutes, which is big improvement compared to my previous machine. Gonna be able to do stuff that I used to rent a server for, so thats nice.

Also finished my 12 classes package with my 3 main students this week. I feel very happy about how much they developed in the last 3 months; not only technically but also mentally. Here are their results:
Before Coaching
After Coaching
Obviously they still have lots of things to improve at, as so do I. But I'm positive that they evolved in 3 months as much as I did in more than a year by myself. I also learned quite a lot from them, which was something I wasnt expecting, at least not at such magnitude. It was so eye opening to me to see how much of a player's growth is related to their mental game and mindset during play. I was able to clearly detect fear of failure tilt, mistake tilt, contradictory thought processes, self sabotaging habits of projecting a way of thinking into the opponents, the use of random hand reading and non objective reasonings for plays, and so on. I tried my best to fix those problems in them, and I think that had a great effect in my own mental game. Now I can spot that kind of behaviour for myself more easily. All things considered, it was a great experience for me, and I feel good about accomplishing something that I wanted. I dont plan on offering private coaching for the near future, but me and my students will continue to work together over skype. We developed a relationship that went beyond the coach-coached professional level, and I really want to follow their continued improvement.

Some fun hands:

The dream
Max value
I had to check the board 5 times to believe this showdown
Max value 2
LOL this one was sick
Value of blockers

Thats it for today. GL everyone

Let's gooo! Let's continue to grow together man! Sky is the limit.

Vey interesting/funny hands lol, I'm interested in the LOL this one was sick. The BBB line is underbluffed right? I don't see many missed draws also, why you decided to call? If we go from a theory perspective I believe this is the strongest AX in your range so its a GTO call, but do you have any exploitative reason also?
GL!

I made one of those 2nd nut A-high calls vs 1st A-high the other day in nearly exact same spot. Feels fucking bad man.

Probably had the most amazing experience of my poker career so far this week.

I volunteered for a session with Nick Howard for his new product and we had a HH review session this wednesday, me, Nick and my study partner Mateus, who recently showed up in another video from Nick, telling his story of how he managed to climb the stakes by using Nick's methodology, that he got from the free content alone. Check that out if you havent yet.

Nick marked 10 hands of a 5k hands 500nl sample I sent him, and we went over hand by hand doing data point analysis. It was fucking amazing. Nick's thought process and experience is just invaluable. I seriously think this video is worth tens of thousands of dollars. And by the end he congratulated us for our approach, and said that our session had been the most advanced he has ever produced. It was incredibly satisfying to hear that from the one person that inspired me to get where I am. If that wasn't enough, he said he was honored to be in a call with people that actually had more vision over an environment than himself. LOL how can someone be so humble...if it wasnt for him we wouldn't even be where we are right now. WE are fucking honored Nick...WE!!

If you are a micro player that can't afford good coaching right now, and you havent checked what Nick Howard has already offered for free to the poker community, stop what you are doing right now and just go look for it. Seriously, there is nothing more valuable in the poker industry than that. And I can say that with 100% confidence.

Thank you Nick, you are just...I don't know man, I don't even have words.

I think that the lack of efficiency and consistency are two of the main reasons why you see regs stagnate, and stay at the same stakes for years and years. This is what I just shared with my students. I hope it helps other people out there.

I'm a long time NL25 winner, that I still lack of clear direction. Now I cannot afford your coaching ofc, but is possible to be added to your group? I'm looking for driven players. I know this is a pretty big ask.

What stakes do your students play?

My friend zinhao asked me what had been my biggest downswing since we went all in with the MDA work. This is the sample missing around 10k hands or so from other sites. Sample is small of course, but it was very surprising for me to look at it and spot a 40k hands break even stretch, despite running at almost 10bb/100. Not only because intuitively I wouldn't expect that to happen for that winrate on a 160k hands sample (40k hands is 25% of the sample); but also because I didn't even realize I went more than a month without making money (my average volume in the past 5 months has been like 30-35k hands).

This is actually a great surprise for me because it shows that I haven't been caring about short term results at all. And I do feel like I have a much better relationship with variance today than I ever did before. Most of it I think comes from the confidence that I have in my game right now. And the rest of it comes from my past experiences teaching me that these times are actually the greatest times for improvement.

Poker feels good. It feels good to be able to look back and see how much I have grown. It feels good to help my students. I actually learn a lot from working with them. I like to be able to learn more and more about this game. The continuous improvement is real and I feel like it will never end.

I'm grateful for poker and everything it has taught me in the past 2.5 years.

This has gotten emotional for whatever reason, I don't know how nor why lol

Im privilleged as fuck. Thanks god

Thank you for reading <3

Update

Hey guys, quick update. Only knews is that I'm playing volume on stars again. I tried other sites for the last few months but really struggled to get enough volume in (while getting stressed a lot in the meantime for a variety of reasons). So now I'm playing a mix of Bodog and Stars at 200nl and it feels really good. I can play good volume while feeling very comfortable in terms of software, not having to wait for tables and whatever difficulties can be found on other smaller sites. These are my results this month. I know, pretty laughable volume...but my hope is that I can compensate these last few months of low volume in the remainder of the year. Plan is to play around 80k hands a month until the year ends, which is more than doable playing 2zone + 2zoom.

I've also been improving my study routine, and I bought a 1 year license of Simple GTO Trainer. Really awesome tool. Gonna be using it a ton for the next few months. I'm studying a minimum of 2 hours per day, sometimes more. I think I could trade one more hour of grinding for studying but my winrate is so high atm that I don't think its necessary.

Last but not least, I've updated my goals to match my current grind situation. So, for the rest of the year, my goal is to:
- Establish myself at 1knl on Bodog;
- Establish myself at 500z on Stars;

Fun/Interesting Hands:
1 - Regs getting creative LOL
2 - vs Reg

That's it. Let's keep crushing all <3

You said you bought a license of Simple GTO trainer. How would you suggest to combine this with Nicks material? I have pio unlocked and night vision expansion and was considering to buy it to train defense vs bets but not sure if both is overkill. My results so far are terrible and I know it is because I play too weak so that is why I was considering it.

July Results

Here. Good results despite of low volume. Could've been more if I was capable of running okay at 500zone lol but whatever, shouldnt be complaining. But will prob wait a little more to take shots again. Feeling great about my game overall, specially after seeing the level of play on stars...very very awful. Which motivates me to grind harder to reach my goals.

Goals for August:
- 80k hands at 200nl
- 50 hours of study
- $10k profit

Hands:
Regs dont believe me
And I don't believe in recs

August will be epic. Lets go, gl everyone <3

Hey man, totally understandable the low volume when you are killing the games that hard... xD really congratz! Very inspiring seeing a brazilian crushing like this, even though with all the dificulties we usually face. Keep going! Hopefully i will someday learn from you!

hey nice blog :) is the gto trainer you are using from simple poker?

Update

Sup everyone, hope you're all crushing. Making a quick update cuz its been some time.

Month so far. Gonna get nowhere near 80k hands lol That was way optimistic. To be fair tho, I havent been forcing myself to play, and I have studied A LOT this month, much more than I was before, and I'm happy about that. Ive been running like shit too so that helps with the studying part xD

This game is fascinating, the more I learn, the more there is to learn. But im happy that I'm gaining more vision over the environment and the profiles on a daily basis, and I feel very comfortable in most spots in NLHE. I wasnt feeling very well about my BB play in SRPs (both IP and OOP) and devoted some hours to studying that and I can already see the improvement. There is still a lot of work to do tho. Im gonna try and keep improving a little bit everyday.

Some fun hands for you:

Give them rope
Regs getting mad over the limp strat lol
Advanced bluffcatching
Give them rope, part 2
And one bluff to make me look agro

Enough for now, gl all <3

A few people have contacted me about coaching, and 2 of my students shared their graphs with me yesterday so I thought I should post. They both started classes at the bottom of the graph. They also both start the coaching playing 25nl and are now shot taking 100nl.

graph 1
graph 2

This makes me really happy. To be honest, I'm happier about this than my own results. I knew I could be a good coach, and beeing able to see their development and improvement makes me think I was right. Coaching has been an amazing experience for me, and Im sure my students feel the same way.

Right now I'm focusing a lot on my game so I don't plan on taking more than 1 student. If you are interested, send PM and we can talk over skype.

gl <3

August Recap

Results. Pretty happy about how the last week of the month went. I was running pretty bad and finally catched some heat. I am still struggling with volume and this is something I will try hard to change from now on. I am however improving techinically everyday, and grinding/studying has been a lot of fun.

Selected a few hands of my opponents failed attempts to bluff me:

Nope
Naaaah
Creative
MDA FOR LIFE

Goals for September

• 140k hands
• 40 study hours
• 10 days off

gl everyone!

Nice results again (obv)!

Goals for September
140k hands
40 study hours
10 days off

How are you going to manage this kind of volume? With 1k hands / hour thats 9hours of poker every day. Any tips / tricks to manage this? (:

Personally i wouldnt be able to manage that kind of volume, so that it wouldnt have a great affect on quality of my play. Or is your B- and C-game so solid that you are able to beat games with great margin even while playing your B- or C-game?

A few thoughts

Decided to make this post because there is a lot in my head and hopefully I can organize everything by writing.

I've been doing a lot of MDA lately. The study has widen my vision over the poker industry tremendously, not only in terms of strategy but it allows me to better predict stuff like the longevity of the games. It's amazing to me how:

1) I still have SO MUCH to learn, even after spending hundreds of hours in research;
2) People are extremely exploitable everywhere
3) People are NOT aware that they are extremely exploitable (regs included)
4) And things will stay that way for a long time because no one is doing what it takes to acknowledge the previous 3 points

There is this GTO paranoia in the industry for like what, 3 years now? And yet, if I had to make an analogy, 99% of poker players in 2018 are as far away from optimal poker as a fat 70 year old is from perfoming at Cristiano Ronaldo level in football. Or a turtle from running at Usain Bolt's speed. It's like really really really far.

And on top of this, you have an industry that still doesn't understand how to approach poker in a meaningful way. I'm gonna give an example that will illustrate what I mean.

A lot of thinking poker revolves around the concept of 'Hand Reading'. So based on my opponents actions, I will estimate a range of hands that he could likely hold, and then, based on my guess, I will take whatever I think is an appropriate counter strategy. But what 99% of the people that play poker don't realize is that this is an extremely poor and inefficient decision making process. There are so many ways for this to go wrong:

1) Your guess is totally off because your opponent doesn't perceive the game the way you do, and this is a problem because people do hand reading (most of the time) by projecting how they would play the hand and they expect their opponent to behave the same way.

2) Your guess is totally off because you are using some basic logic to assing a range to villain (like medium hands get checked, strong hands get bet), when in reality he might not be operating under any logic whatsoever, and might be doing the exact opposite (betting medium hands, checking strong hands)

3) Your emotions during the hand might make your 'hand reading skills' even worse by introducing confusion, anxiety, fear that ultimately cause you to rationalize towards the option that satisfies themselves - you will rationalize towards folding if you have fear of failure; you will rationalize towards being over aggressive or calling station when anxious.

4) You have believed a high number of biases that the industry has been propagating over the years, wihch MDA shows are totally incorrect. So during your 'hand reading' process, you assume things such as 'recreationals are passive', or 'people don't turn pairs into bluffs'.

Poker is extremely complex, and yet people approach it like complete amateurs. Its like they try to be a mathematician by daily memorizing whats 2 + 2. Obviously thats fine if you are playing the game just for fun and have no intentions of getting better or learning. But this is professionals I'm taking about. Players that have been doing this for years. People that are making large investments in uncertain spots on the river based on arguments like "Im at the top of my range", or "he NEVER checks XYZ hand on the flop so he has to be bluffing here".

Which gets to my final point: no one cares. There might be like 10 regs around the whole world that are treating poker the way it should be treated. The rest simply doesn't care, and will continue not to care no matter what happens. Either because they are lazy, or not capable of accepting that they have been doing it all wrong all this time.

The future of poker is still really good imo. Today we have the tools that didnt exist before, and we can use them to maximally exploit 99% of our opponents, and they wont even realize or care. Eventually the closed markets will reopen again. The prejudice towards the game will lower over the years, allowing more people to get introduced to it. We have honest and hard working people trying to provide better and fair platforms for the game, like Mr Phil Galfond and his team are doing, and this is 2018. The list is big...

If you have been playing this beautiful game and have been concerned about the negativity towards the profitability of the games, I assure you: if you dedicate yourself, there is no way you can't make a comfortable living out of poker.

update plz

Update and farewell

Long time since last update so its time for a new one. And I think I will make this the last one in poker forums. I don't really see the point of posting anymore.

So, September was a month where I definitively learned that QUALITY > QUANTITY. I was upset about my low volume for the year and impulsively decided to start playing 6 tables of zoom to make up for it. That was a terrible decision. After 2 weeks I was feeling super tired and I was playing super bad. Here are the results for these first 2 weeks. After that I decided I wouldn't ever focus on quantity again, and dropped to 2/3 tables while studying a lot as well. Changed a few things in my game and things got back to normal.

This has been a very good year poker wise, not only in terms of results but overall improvement in my techinical and mental game. I learned and keep learning a lot from my friend Mateus, which I'm grateful for. I have had many students that were able to improve a lot and move up in stakes, which I'm very proud of.

However, I failed at finding the balance that I said I wanted to pursue when I created this blog. I have neglected major areas of my life and have developed very bad habits. So, with that in mind, I will cut down some of the time I currently devote to poker, and force myself to take care of the rest of my life. I got used to working 8-9 hours a day, and I will cut that to 6-7. And since I will be spending less time working, I want to be more productive as well, which means spending less time on forums, skype and other possible distractions. These extra hours will be spent taking care of my health and social life, mainly.

I will leave you guys with my YTD graph. I have also made around 8k with coaching this year, which puts me at around 53k profit. Happy overall, but there is certainly a lot of room for improvement. And that's a pursuit that never ends.

I wish you all good luck with your poker endeavours. But don't forget: you need more than poker in your life. Don't let it be your everything.

GL! <3

I'm a big fan of yours, plz PM me your contact because I'd like to be coached, in the future.
Best of luck mate

Sup everyone, hope you are all well.

Dropping by quickly to invite all of you that have followed my progress in this blog (and in my previous ones too) to join me in my twitch streams!

Yes, I have decided to start streaming for a variety of reasons. The main one being that lately I've been struggling a lot with my work ethic both in terms of grinding hours and focus during the grind.

During all my poker career I always had the habit of forcing myself to explain my thought process out loud to help me concentrate, and that works fine. However, its not the same as explaining myself to real people that are in fact watching me. Its also hard to keep doing this trick for too long, eventually you just get tired and go silent.

The past few days I streamed for about 5-6h and I felt a pretty significant impact in game quality. So I will be spending my grinding hours on stream, and hopefull this will help me with my current struggle.

There are other several benefits to stream that are very appealing to me atm, like social interaction, advertising myself as a poker coach, making the grind less tedious, and so on. I also want to start donating part of my earnings to charitable projects around the world, so I've decided to create a little challenge for myself, which will be to match all the donations made from you during the streams and send them to GiveDirectly. Click here if you want to find out more about this project. So, if you donate $10, GiveDirectly will get $20. If you all combined donate $300, they will get $600. I will match all donations up to 10% of my monthly earnings. So if I finish the month at $3k profit, I will donate up to $300. I think 10% is a good place to start and eventually I will increase this number.

Last but not least, I definitely want to see Rio Poker grow so I will be doing my part in promoting the site when it launches.

I will be waiting for you on stream later today here around 3 hours from now.

GL to all as always <3

Sup everyone.

I will be playing the BSOP Millions this next week, its the biggest tournament series in the world besides the WSOP, and I'm selling 60% of my action, of which I already sold 21%.

Here you can check the all the info about the tournaments I want to play, their respective buy-ins, etc. The series starts in a few days.

Send me PM if you are interested in making an investment.

Update

Sup Rio! Thought it was time for an update. Even tho I'm not posting anymore, I think its good to update now and then so that there arent huge gaps in the blog because I like reading all of this again eventually.

That said, the main reason I'm writing is to advertise myself as a coach. If this is not okay or not the right place, MODs please delete this post or move it. I currently have 3 students with ongoing classes (but 2 of them have only 1 left). I would like to work with 2 more students. Can't do more than that given the amount of hours I'm using to grind and study.

Here are my results for the past 3 months. That's 60% bodog 40% stars. I'm using the last 3 months as time frame because its since the last time I changed my game significantly, so true winrate estimations for this period will be more accurate. Still a small sample ofc but its unlikely my true winrate is lower than 5bb at this point, which would already be decent. So we are looking at something between 6-8 which I'm very proud of. However there is still a lot of room for improvement.

Also have a few graphs that I asked from my students. The first 3 finished with my course a few months ago, but they are still part of the skype group and they continue to contribute to the discussions and improvement of others. The 4th one almost finished the classes, however hasn't been playing too much due to personal reasons, so small sample. I thought it was still meaningful to post given the crazy disparity between the graphs.

Student 1 - Before
Student 1 - After
Student 2 - Before and After
Student 3 - Before
Student 3 - After
Student 4 - Before
Student 4 - After

If you play 50nl or higher, are dedicated and willing to put in the work to beat cash games in 2019, I will be happy to work with you. For any more details, please add me on skype and send me a message. I will schedule a skype call with you so that I can show you a bit more of my coaching methodology.

As for this year, I have some agressive volume and winrate goals, but I will keep those to myself. Feeling confident and motivated to have a great year. I've been playing a decent amount of 500nl lately, mostly on stars because it runs more often than on bodog. Hopefully I can make that stake a bigger portion of my daily grind in the upcoming months. It's more swingy for sure, but its more fun and obviously the money is much better. I'm pretty sure I can have a very good winrate by doing pool selection, but the problem is that for most of the day, the pool has an awful reg:rec ratio, sometimes as a bad as 4:1 which is disgusting. 200z for comparison is very frequently running with a ratio better than 2:1, so insanely softer. Eventually will have to embrace the challenge and the swings, because playing a stake that is 2.5x higher might still give a better hourly even if it means having a significantly lower winrate. For now I'll just keep plugging hands when the ratio looks good.

Now, I'm gonna end this with a few hands to make the post more entertaining xD GL everyone, see you in a few months <3

1) Reg saw me bluffing one hand then adjusted lol
2) Inducing the level + blockers argument :D
3) Outplaying one of endbosses in the game
4) Sick spot
5) Outplaying Rio legend
6) Max value
7) Its hard to make a pair
8) Exploiting the rec
9) Really sick spot - folding this vs 99% of people
10) Nothing here, just a fold vs Otb to make it 10 hands

Vamoooo. Best coach ever! (Student 3 here)

The word on the streets is Saulo makes little money on Pokerstars.

RIO Elite membership is all the coaching you could ever need.

Update

Ok time for an update because holy shit lol I just had the sickest run of my life. Honestly I don't think I'll ever run this good again until I die.

You saw correctly...57 buy-ins in less than 20k hands. This is insane. Here is a variance simulation based on my current winrate...I mean, this is insane. What most likely happened here was that I ran incredibly good in: card distribution, board distribution, player pool and my own performance. Truly amazing to be able to make this amount of money in the timespan of a week. Its also good to catch some heat after running 7k usd below all-in EV in january.

Also wanted to include two graphs from another student that recently sent me his results.
Before
After

I'm currently looking for 1 more student. If you are interested, send PM.

I'm streaming occasionally on twitch, and for most of this week's winnings I was live at my channel. I won't have a schedule or anything, will just stream when I feel like it, which is usually when I need to improve my focus and concentration. It seems like my level of play gets quite high during streams which is good. I don't do it too often cause its tiring, but its fun.

Alright, some cool hands now:

Live on stream. Team no fold ftw
Max value
Max value - 2
Not this time
GTO
Balancing my range
Spew

GL to all and thanks for reading <3

Fake graph.

vamooo! nice results, bro!

Graph is a total fabrication.

Great point, everyone knows that people who have some money don't want more money, that's just human nature.

Lol, he edited his post so that mine doesn't make sense.

I have 100% of Zoom hands on PokerStars for the last 3 years. Saulo is a break-even fraud.

zinhao I KNOW IT!!!! GO HOME SAULO WE DONT WANT SUCH A FRAUD LIKE YOU! Thanks Copernicus for open our eyes about this brazillian scam!

zinhao by the way i have to admit. Saulo Ribeiro put some serious hours
of grinding. 1 billion hands! WOOOW

FOOD FOR THOUGHT

These days my wife asked me how intelligent one needs to be in order to be a succesful poker player. I don't even remember what I answered, but talking today with one of my students I came to what I think is the best conclusion:

If you want to succeed in poker - and in life - there are 2 things that matter more than intelligence: humility and commitment.

Most people that fail in poker are not stupid. They are just too arrogant and lazy.

Stay humble. Stay committed.

WOULD YOU RATHER...

Play in a pool that consistenly overfolds, or in one that cosistently overcalls? Why?

If you can't even begin to answer that, then it's time for you to understand GTO better.

Hope to still hear some updates even now that you are a RIO Pro. You could also tell us how has your routine changed those days with your team and with RIO.

Hello everyone! it's been a long time since I wrote here, thought it was time for an update.

A lot of things have changed for me this year. I started it with the intention of playing very high volume but instead I spent a lot of time in stuff away from the tables.

I started studying weekly with Nick Howard and a few other guys, and also produced many strategy videos for pokerdetox. It was great to be in touch with high level players who understand the industry better than 99% of people. I'm using the past tense because we havent had a call in a few months but I guess nothing is stopping us from studying together again in the future.

I did have to tell Nick I wouldnt be able to continue to produce videos for him because I had too much on my plate to deal with. I have been giving a lot of private coaching (less so in recent months but still a good number of hours), started producing videos for Rio and for a brazilian training site, still needed to grind and study, and then since late may I've been devoting a lot of time to my CFP team, which I run along with zinhao. We currently have 8 players and we are looking to sign 2 more contracts in the upcoming weeks.

So as far as my routine goes, I have way less time to grind nowadays which has caused my volume to decrease significantly. I'm playing an average of 50k hands per month which is a lot less than what I consider good for a professional player. However, considering everything I'm doing and all the income that comes from all of these other sources, I don't feel bad at all.

In terms of news outside poker, I recently moved to a new place, which was really really nice in terms of quality of life. A lot more space - almost 3 times bigger than the previous place - and a much better location - i'm near everything you can think of: supermarkets, shopping centers, parks, gyms, hospitals and whatnot.

But the biggest news in my life right now is that my wife is pregnant! In around 8 months I will be a father. I'm really happy but at the same time very concerned about all the things I have to learn.

Thats it for now, see you guys soon.

Good luck with the baby :)

But the biggest news in my life right now is that my wife is pregnant! Congratulations!

I think you have a lot of traits that make you an excellent coach. You have very analytical and structural way of studying and thinking about the game. Also it seems like you have passion for coaching. Cool thing about poker as a profession is that you can be flexible and decide what you do and how much time you want to devote to it.

Also 200z/500z pool is happy if you spend more time coaching (: And I'm playing an average of 50k hands per month which is a lot less than what I consider good for a professional player. fuck me, thats very solid volume for me :D

Which nick howard’s Course did you make video for? Nice 3D!

Hello people of Run It Once. I'm here for an announcement: my cash team BRPC is open for new applicants!

For those who don't know, I currently run a cash CFP program with my partner Zinhao. We currently have 10 active contracts and we are looking to add 5 more players at this time.

To achieve that, we are running a selection process that will consist of 3 phases.

Phase 1 - Answer the questions from our survey;
Phase 2 - Engage in a 1 week technical test, in which you will be asked to perform at your usual stakes using some of our team content.
Phase 3 - Interview with me and Zinhao

Our team is very different from most of the staking and CFP programs on the market. We have a defined methodology to help you improve your game, instead of giving random coaching sessions and videos that don't have the capacity to get you beating low stakes games very fast.

If you have doubts or questions about the program, please go ahead and ask! Either here or thru PM is fine. However I should already say that specifics about the deal/contract will only be discussed at the appropriate time.

I will finish with both the headcoaches results and the team results so far. As I said, the team has only 10 active contracts and has only been running for around 6 months.

Saulo + Zinhao: stakes graph. These are from the last 12 months or so. Not all hands from us cuz I didn't include my bodog sample for example, only stars. But this should be enough. We both play exclusively 500nl+ nowadays.

BRPC: stakes graph

Thats it. If you are interested, answer the survey then message me here or on skype/discord

Skype: sauloribeirojoga10@hotmail.com
Discord: sauloCosta10#9095

Hey Saulo, I read all three topics you made. Congratulations for all your efforts in achieving your dreams. I have some questions for you. What programs would you recommend for beginners, besides trackers like HM / PT, do you think we already need to buy software like Piosolver? And others like Flopzilla, cardrunnersev? What would you indicate? And about skype and discord study groups, I saw that you indicate and agree 100% in being part of, but is difficult to find people really interested and committed to evolve in the game, mainly being Brazilian. Hugs

How many of the guys in your CFP do speak english or what is the percentage of non-brazilian in the CFP? I assume you have discord/skype groups for students where they can discuss HH´s,chat with the coaches, etc. What is the "official language" in these groups?

You said that you have a different approach than other CFP programs. Can you please eloborate in which way?

Thanks!

Hey guys. Stopping by to let you know that we will close for applications tomorrow. Should have said that in the other post, but anyways better late than never.

Also wanted to make a quick reflexion. I reached 100k hands at 500z this year recently. Nothing crazy but certainly a milestone for me when I put my whole career into perspective.

3 years ago I had just moved up to 50nl after having a great october at nl25, which was documented in my Pursuit of Legendary Performance journal here at rio. At that time, my long term goal in poker was to be a 3bb winner at nl100. It's so funny to think about that because it doesn't make any sense now, but somehow at that time it did. Everything I read was so pessimistic about the state of the games, I had only 1 brazilian reference in terms of cash games (who was a 100nl reg), people would comment on how games were getting increasingly tougher, solvers and bots and all that stuff. So I truly was envisioning that having a 3bb winrate at nl100 would actually be a decent accomplishment.

3 years later I'm one of the best regs of the "toughest game in the internet". I actually read that sentence multiple times in the past in forums and blog posts. Albeit not a lie per see, it paints a picture of an almost unbeatable game that low stakes players can only dream of achieving. Playing these games nowdays I can see how that was not true, and how anyone commited enough can climb from low stakes and make a pretty good living out of online midstakes games in 2019.

In fact, being completely honest its not a very difficult pool at all. It is true that there are few recreational players a lot of the time, which causes winrates to shrink compared to other lower stakes games. But imo it makes no sense to play on reg only lineups with the rake being what it is and with no rakeback on pokerstars, therefore you should play only when there are recs in the field, which means you should have a positive winrate every time you sit to play. The fact that a lot of regs are quite bad also helps with the winrate a bit. The edge vs the average reg definitely exists and its not negligible as one might think. I have no doubt most regs (as in more than 50%) are losing money in that pool with no rakeback, specially the ones who don't seem to pool select.

This quote from Steve Jobs has a lot to do with what I'm trying to say. When you start out in poker, there is a picture - that someone else painted - of what a standard career path would look like. Its very limited most of the time. But once you discover that the people that are on the top of the market are not really smarter than you, you gain confidence to challenge that old picture and paint one for yourself.

At this point I have absolutely 0 doubt I will be a consistent high stakes winner for the years to come, as long as there are games running. Thats another thing that you change your view about as you move up in stakes. For the beginners, going from say 500nl to 2knl may seem like a huge jump, but its in fact not. High stakes games in general feel almost like fiction. But going from midstakes to high stakes (provided that you are a solid winner) is basically just a matter of bankroll and actually finding good games. If you are a low stakes player reading this, there is absolutely no reason you can't have High stakes a realistic long term goal for yourself. Don't let other people dictate what is achievable or not. Do the work and see it by yourself.

That said, I don't want to be a hyprocrite that says "anyone can do it, all it takes is effort". The truth is that poker is not for everyone. Succeeding does require a significant amount of intelligence, discipline and patience, which are qualities that obviously some people have more than others. Hard work can compensate a lack of these qualities, but only up to a point - in my humble opinion. This has become clear to me after coaching people for hundreds of hours. I consider myself a pretty good coach, and I can do that because basically everyone that has worked with me has told me that. All my students get better results after working with me. However, before starting coaching people I expected to be able to turn them into very good winners, like top of their stake just like I am in the games I play. But I realized thats impossible, no matter how good of a coach I am. People have their own limitations and thats ultimately what will have the most impact when it comes to how far they can go.

So, to finish up. If you are a low stakes player that dreams of becoming a poker pro, there is no need to be pessimistic. However, you do need to be honest with yourself. If you don't have above average intelligence (at least the logical mathematical one - there are many types of intelligence), discipline and patience, you will most likely struggle a lot and perhaps spending time trying to master something else is preferrable. I should say though that those qualities are trainable...so if you are impatient and undisciplined today, its possible to overcome that with a lot of hard work (a whole lot indeed).

My plans for the near future now is to continue to grow my CFP team and start playing some 1k tables alongisde the 500z grind as soon as my bankroll allows it. Thats it for now, thanks for reading everyone <3

Hey Saulo. I tried to find more info about your CFP program? Is the survey closed, link didn't work.

Hello everyone. Posting here to let you know of a post I just made in the low stakes forum. My Cash game team is looking for applications. All the information is there on this post. If you have been waiting for an opportunity to really make it in poker, you will likely not find anything better than this. Cheers and GL!