yeah id say just forgot about the 10bb and move up, i reckon if you're beating 10nl for 8bb you're beating 25nl for about the same glgl on moving up

Thank you very much for the advice, many people already pointed that I should be moving up way faster, and yet I'm still with these mental blocks. I know I´m not the only one suffering with this kind of issues, so if anyone reading this found a way to overcome it, feel free to post. (I mean, aversion to moving up, too nitty BRM, low confidence etc).

Those very well written/reasoned posts is what I´m really looking for, having a blog here at RIO. Really cool to have those at the start of my blog already :)

Cheers

Maybe I should just make a leap of faith here? :) Btw I did it when moving up from 2nl to 5nl, stayed a whole month without looking at results and just (tryed to) play same game, and it worked. So I could do the same and hope for the best again.

I've played 5 million hands+ at 2nl before taking the leap and moving up to high stakes many years later. My advice: just try and keep trying. The sooner you realize that that is actually a win-win situation (either you stick the landing or you build up scar tissue that will help you during future shots), the better.

Yeah, meditation is something I want to incorporate into my routine since forever. I need to start, after I do it, maintaining won't be hard (was the same with lots of other things in my life, so I'm sure it will be the same with meditation). Thank you very much for the advice Demondoink

freenachos You're right, but it works the other way around too :) From 700,000 to 1,100,000 was me taking shots at 10nl and failing every single time, then going back to 5nl and repeating it. I mean, the scar tissue from this phase made me more risk averse than I should be. I have a better game, better processes, I´m way more into the studying/technical part of the game, and my mental game in all other aspects of the game improved a lot (back in the old days a failed shot would mean quitting poker for good, just to return a few months later and starting from ground zero).

I'm reading your blog, still in the beginnings (the 2019 recap post), but just loving it.

I know all of you guys are right, and I also know (rational mind) I will succeed. I just need the courage to start.

GL with your goals! I look forward to following your blog!

"If you have time to breathe, you have time to meditate". -someone wiser than me

João Guimarães
Try the app "Insight Timer". It's for free and there are different types of free guided meditations.
Usually it is recommended to start small, something like 5 minutes. I would say start with 10 and work your way up slowly. Just try different types, for example Meta (loving kindness) is very interesting. You practice loving yourself and others and I find it very challenging.
There is a good book I also recommend:

10% Happier Dan Harris

The good thing is that it doesn't claim that you are someone completely different when you meditate, but there are benefits. I would say it is better to not have too many expectations and then be pleasently surprised :)

Cheers,
Aquila

Hey ElSquancho Aquila Thank you so much, hugely appreciate it, will def look at the books and the app.

This is my graph since I started this blog until today. Just cleared my 40 USD challenge, feeling a bit drained from poker and want a week off, so great opportunity to do just that. But it will be a week off from playing, still want to do lab work. Next month will be NL25 exclusively, and I firmly believe my A-game beats it. Just have to make sure that I'll play my A-game consistently.

Cheers

Good luck! You said "I´m way more into the studying/technical part of the game" and remember, there's nothing wrong with that, in fact, that is going to be your strength. You've built a solid foundation, move up, but move up when YOU feel it's right.

Thank you GEOabc , I have a firm belief that we can´t really achieve good things in poker without studying and learning the technical stuff (whether it´s theory, exploits, or both, it´s up to the particular style of the player. btw mental is technical also imo). Though I was saying it as "I´m way more in studying than I was a few years ago", because I was really bad back then, wasn´t studying and didn´t even know what studying was, subscribing to a coaching site didn´t cross my mind bc I thought they were suitable only for small stakes++, and was a winning 2nl/5nl player only because I was lucky enough to find a strategy that wins at those limits without losing more money as I had to as a full beginner, is easy/doesn´t require advanced thinking, and is forgiving to the many rookie mistakes I was consistently making. That is, ABC poker :)

Im pretty sure those guys (JoeAdams1 Demondoink freenachos ) know what they are talking about, to move up quicker if you are beating the levels. Seems to me that you are setting this win rate goal in order to convince yourself you are good enough, but not sure it will work when you face hard times. Be sure to work on your mindset along the way.
Vamoooo!

KKillerss I know you guys are right, though I agree also that I should play the higher stakes when I feel I'm in a good state (in the zone etc). But yeah, I want to move up, my rational mind knows I should move up, and also I´m ready to do it.

I decided I will treat my game even more seriously. From now on, I will record all my sessions, and will talk thru all my decisions. From past experience, and just pure logic, I know this will dramatically increase my chances of play my A-game, and also of improving faster bc there will be less autopiloting. Reviewing hands while also listening my thought process should be a good thing also imho.

One of the aha moments I had a few years ago was that poker as a sport suits me better, and having sessions recorded seems like something any serious athlete seeking elite status on any sport should be doing.

Cheers

My impressions so far on a small 25nl sample:

Plenty of real nits (think 13/5 guys at a 9-max table). I assume it should trend to less than 10nl, but still it's a lot more than I would expect.

Most regs are weak tight.

A bit less recreationals, but plenty of them, and no difference on skill levels.

I expect regs to be more adjusting prone (as a whole) than at 10nl, simply bc huds are more affordable in relation to the buy-in. A solid game plan should be enough imho to not see any real difference other than a smaller winrate ofc.

So, 25nl didn´t go so well, ran bad, played bad, spewed, and I´m back to 10nl to reevaluate things. I won't be stuck there tho, just want to get my mindset in good shape before trying again.

One thing I really love to do here is hiking. It really helps my mind, is obv good exercise, the fresh air, nature and ofc the views. We have this hill here in my neighborhood with really gorgeous views of the beach, the ocean and that small little island lol, can´t really get tired of it :)

Looks to me like Santa Catarina, but have a gut feeling it is not.

It is indeed. Campeche and Campeche Island, Florianópolis SC :)

Hah. I need to trust more on my Spider sense!

Long time no updates, so here we are again :)

Started last month at 25nl, didn´t work very well, so ended up playing it safe at 10nl. Not proud of myself, but finally made what might be the biggest decision pokerwise, maybe a turning point ( bit melodramatic I know): got a coach. Better yet, a coach who also believes in exploitative poker like I do and is also a fanboy of Nick Howard lol.

Anyway, even though he can´t convince me 6-max is the way to go (no one can, really), other than that he believes with my current knowledge + a few (important) changes in how I approach the game + a bit of self confidence and letting the bankroll nit tendencies behind, and I have a chance of reaching at least 100nl this year.

Hopefully at the end of this month I´ll be able to make a very good update. Fingers crossed.

Have you considered investing 10% of your playing/studying time into HU? I think it would give you a big boost in confidence as well as skill and elevate you out of rake samsara faster.

KKillerss Sometimes I play for some weeks and then it comes to my mind: I should play 6-max as my main game, it´s the future, full ring is dying since 2000, most training material is for that format and blahblahblah :) then I play a few hands, like 500-1k or so and just can´t stand the format. Thought it was my nittiness also but no, I just can´t stand it. I´m just a weirdo and, contrary to everyone else, I find 6-max boring and full ring pretty cool.

ElSquancho Actually yes, I considered it a lot, only reason I didn´t do it yet is bc the first level at stars is NL50 and I´m not rolled for it. I´m close though.

Hey friends, long time without updates here. I´m still playing, this month gonna be my first full 25nl for real :) Also posting, I have a blog on 2p2, FazendeiroBH there if anyone interested. Posted mid-year results there, right now not looking at the graph until the end of this month.

Impressions on 25nl and how it compares to 10nl: still a lot of fishes, esp if playing on the right times. Regs better, which is pretty obv with the 2.5x increase, swings more unconfortable but hopefully this will vanish as I get used to them, but my feel is the stake is beatable by someone at my current level (with table selection), at reasonable rates. Lots and lots of gratitude for the ppl who convinced me to take more risks.

Was considering a CFP, but since most of them have some sort of # of hands goal, not sure if I could commit due to irl stuff and so. Also, my view on poker and volume is more or less what Nick´s brother posted in his old blog: volume is overrated. I´d rather play something still reasonable like 20k-25k hands/mo, work on increasing my winrate, improving my game and thought processes which is way easier with low volume and slow/deliberate decisions, and have fun at all times as this is what should make poker a sustainable career imho. And keeping away from playing zoom :)

Cheers

So, the other day I was reading a thread here where the subject was if it would be worth for a uNL player to buy a Elite sub, as it´s obviously expensive in buy-ins, for a 2, 5, maybe even 10nl depending on if we´re already beating the level or not.

I have this firm conviction that poker relates much more to a sport than a job. Maybe a bit businesslike also, but the sport analogy always resonated more to me. Preparation is important. Training is important. Practice is important. Having a coach is important. Cross-training is important. And investing in the right tools and resources.

I mean, I believe everyone here is playing mid-high stakes, or is playing lower with the goal of reaching there. Let´s think football, in a competitive league. Can any team really expect to be a champion, or be in the top, without investing in good players, having a good support team, good coaches, etc? It´s expensive to be at the top, but we can´t really be cheap and save our way to the top. That´s how I think at least.

This is a bit of a reminder to myself, as I used to think that way, and it probably explains partially my slow progress at first, and why last year things seemed to accelerate. No coincidence it was around the time I invested in tools like h2n edge, pio, elite subs etc.

I want to still be conscious with what I spend my money in, and have a plan on how to utilize the resources I´m acquiring to not waste anything, bc the old saying that money doesn´t grow in trees is still very relevant. Yet, there is another also very relevant saying, we need money to make more money :)

Cheers

"if you suffer from self doubts about your game then you need to start doing things like meditation, to let go of these negative thoughts. either that or get a coach who can help you with the step up. though in reality, i doubt there is much of a difference between 10-25-50nl and almost all of it is just in your head."

Having played a fair bit of 25nl already, after discarding the goal I did put in the blog title, I can say that, at least for 10nl and 25nl, you´re 110% right. Still see no difference, regs play the same, recs in abundance and a big army of nits playing absurd stats like 9/7, 8/5 etc.

Maybe zoom is different, but nitring, not at all.

Confident I´ll end up this year playing at least 50nl.

emsterdad I´m not Demondoink and still have no experience in 50nl, but 10 to 25nl I already have a relatively big experience. At the softer times the difference is nonexistent imo. If you´re playing on reg-heavy times, then yes, but that should be expected. Important points to notice:

At my games a lot of the regs are constantly moving up or down, so I face a lot of the same faces at 25 that I used to at 10nl. I like to look at some of the more familiar ones and see they are still doing the same.

Too many nits at both stakes (pfr less than 8, vpip less than 12). A bit less at 25, but not uncommon for a 9-max table to have 3 of them, some days I find 4 playing the same table.

3bet picks up quite a bit at 25 compared to 10, so need some mental adjustments if you´re not used to it. I played a lot before the cap and lots of the regs I see were 24 tabling 5 and 10nl back in the day doing just that (3betting a lot as their gameplan lol), so it´s not something new. But someone who started to play after 2019/2 might find it a bit odd. Pretty sure they are still not 3betting close to optimal, just that nowadays 10nl and below they almost don´t 3bet as a bluff at all, and 25nl the regs do it :D

Since discussing the seeing vs not seeing $ results with Demondoink in his thread, I´ve been thinking a lot about some persistent mental game issues I have. I´m a competitive guy, I must admit. Very competitive. I feel bad when I lose any game, to the point of resentment (a very good friend pointed how I change after losing a board game we were playing). Don´t get me wrong, I don´t do anything bad, don´t even talk about it, and it pass after a few minutes, but my reaction is pretty obvious to anyone, it affects how I play and I know I´m wrong (this tilt doesn´t affect the "behavior self awareness" part of my brain).

At the same time, I get very excited when I win, to the point of bragging and being annoying. Feelings of invincibility. All of this obviously play a big part in my poker sessions, and is probably one of the most detrimental issues to progress. Interestingly, I only get competitive when I know I´m playing a game vs other human players, and maybe the whole reason I do this in poker is because I always thought of our game as a sport. And it has its advantages of course. We study more. We focus way more on the improving part. On leak finding away from the tables. But still, poker is a random game, where we may win after losing money because we played really well but got unlucky, and we may lose after winning money because we played pretty bad but kept luckboxing the whole session.

To me, the best way to think about the game of poker that I came with after meditating, is to think of it as investing. Ok, it´s a more hands on investing activity as we have to keep clicking buttons and constantly thinking/analyzing spots. But still, we have to study/analyze/improve off the tables, especially as we move up to more efficient markets (higher stakes). But the same short/mid term vagaries and fluctuations apply both to the markets and to poker, and we´re better off just ignoring it and focusing on what matters (develop a strategy that gives us a decent edge, executing it well, and grinding our asses off til the long run).

I´m quite young, and decided to start investing a portion of my net worth in index funds, planning for my retirement in a few decades. I keep adding money regularly, and all goes well, not much volatility or any other "surprise". The indexes over the long run seemed to do reasonably well, close to 10%, and I´m aware the return comes with lots of volatility and bad market conditions, which don´t matter as I´m in for the long haul.

Then, all of a sudden I have a very good month, 20% or so. I feel extremely excited, almost feel like a rich guy. Decide to even spend some extra money, going out to an expensive restaurant to celebrate my success. I forget the 10% yearly long term expectation, after all, I´m getting rich right now.

Then, after some time, comes a big crisis and I lose about 50%. I feel a lot of pain, and consider even moving out of the market, as it´s going to 0 and the world will end very soon.

It´s human nature, and might be one big reason why most people won´t ever succeed as investors over the long run. But, just as with real life investments, I need to approach things differently if I want to succeed in poker.

Cheers

A major goal/dream coming true today: first 50nl shot. Wish me luck :)

Senta a pua!

Not much happening. The "main event" of these last few months was I deciding to withdraw close to my full roll because I freaked out. There are risks in keeping more money than necessary on poker sites, sure, and using a local bank account for this purpose is not always the best idea (foreign exchange volatility due to living in an emerging market country).

Anyway, I redeposited (less), meditated a bit about future plans, then went back to 10nl and will hopefully move up again to 25nl in the end of this month or beginning of november. I plan on keeping online only the # of BIs necessary for less than 5% risk of ruin, then withdraw the excess and keep it in a low cost dollar investment fund in my bank (the equivalent of buying and storing dollar myself without the safety risks of physical currency), which by all means will still be considered my bankroll and completely segregated from my IRL. Only moving funds back online if roll gets short, let's say, 10 bis or less due to big downer.

I toyed around using crypto, or dollar denominated bond ETFs like SHV etc, but all these options add either a market volatility that the bankroll can't really have (crypto haha), or brokerage and slippage costs, less liquidity here, slightly higher cost etc etc.

Lifetime results so far (noticed I´m not posting any progress ITT since the beginning lol):
///

I always knew there is a marked difference in how the games play during the off-peak hours (here in my country, anything from midnight up to 4 PM), and peak, or what I like to call, the happy hour :) But never cared to quantify it, and even considering I sucked (I´m still bad nowadays, but way better than at the beginning), the winrate doubles. At 10nl for example, this year, it goes from slightly less than 5 bb/100 to slightly less than 10 bb/100, and I'm quite lazy with my selection rules in any case.

Why do I play earlier then? Convenience. To adapt to my IRL routine. Still, since I'll usually play the evenings, I could just drop all other sessions, slightly increase the evening volume and get the same result with less physical/mental drainage. Or be more professional and play where my EV is the highest, and stop wasting precious time? Maybe if I want to dedicate it to poker, study in the mornings instead of playing?

Even not being a pro, my approach should be way more professional, so the logistical part of the game is my #1 priority for fixing.

Jesus bro, why are you still playing 10NL?

Up until this year I was really nitting it up without much of a real plan. I struggled a lot moving up from 5 to 10nl and I think this more or less affected my mindset, and brought an almost irrational fear of moving up.

Might seem a bit false, or cheesy maybe, but what people said to me in this exact thread, at the beginning, was the reason I took the risk and moved up, finally, to 25nl. And guess what, I did beat the limit straight away :)

But I was still playing pretty much with 100-120 BIs. At the end of the last month I decided to withdraw most of my roll, which was the reason I grinded 10nl again for a few days. Having 40 BIs now, I´m confident I can play 25 as my main limit and not really worry about busting it.

Not really a plan (maybe that is my problem, lack of structure), but I´m thinking about, from now on, always accumulating 50 BIs for the new limit, keeping 40 online and 10 offline in my account. And moving back down if losing 10 buy-ins at the new limit.

Cheers :)

Hey Joao,
Nice blog just read the whole thing. Not going to pile on about the bank roll advice. One thing that stuck to me is you talking about investing. Investing is so impprtant and makes poker so much more enjoyable. I suspect I am allot older then you but when you know you have passive income coming in it makes it so much easier to not be results orientated.

I also agree wth investing in your game. That is one area I was always I nit trying to save every penny. I wish i would have spent the money on top quality coaching back in 2010. I feel I would be so much further ahead.

Cheers

Hey guys, long time no update, sorry for that.

I was talking with a friend about a few mental game themes relevant to me, and she recommended this particular book on Stoicism, which by the way is a philosophy I have had an interest for a very long time, but never went any further than superficial blog posts here and there.