fredrikgudmund

I'm a 40 year old swedish man, this will be my poker story...

I have been player poker for a couple of years. Last 2 years I have really tried my best to learn as much as possible. Done a lot of study on my own. Got pokercoaching from good coaches but I still didn't have any good results. I was playing 5NL zoom, taking shots at 10NL. When moving up I always ended up losing and had to move down again.
I decided this year that it was about time to start winning at poker or time to quit. I did set up some rules like, I wasn't allowed to get coaching if it couldn't be paid out of poker income and no new deposits should be done.
So I started with 200$ on Stars and decided that I will grind 5NL until I have BR for 10NL and also until I KNOW that I'm good enough to really beat 5NL.

I started my grind in beginning of February and have played a little bit over 30k hands at 5NL so far.
BR now allows taking shots at 10NL. But I'm not sure 30k hands is a big enough sample to say that I actually beat 5NL zoom?
So for the moment I'm thinking about staying at 5NL until 50k hands and if I still have a good winrate I can move up and hopefully never move down again.

Will post some graph of my play at 5NL so far.

Last Post 7 years ago by

fredrikgudmund

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I will also share a graph of last year. I thought I played some pretty solid poker. Good thing is that I know now that I did have some major leaks. I still have a lot of leaks but they are a lot smaller than they have been in the past.
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I like your approach to bankroll management, it shouldn't be only about a number of buy-ins that you have but also or even mainly about your approximate skill level. It's kinda hard to estimate one's win rate even with a relatively large sample size so I'd encourage you to post as many hands as you can in the Line checks/HH Reviews/Stat Analysis part of our forum. That's one of the best ways of figuring out where your game is at currently and if you have some obvious leaks that are in need of fixing.

MattVIP: I like your approach to bankroll management, it shouldn't be only about a number of buy-ins that you have but also or even mainly about your approximate skill level. It's kinda hard to estimate one's win rate even with a relatively large sample size so I'd encourage you to post as many hands as you can in the Line checks/HH Reviews/Stat Analysis part of our forum. That's one of the best ways of figuring out where your game is at currently and if you have some obvious leaks that are in need of fixing.

Thank you for your input. Yes it really is hard to say anything too specific about winrates as sample size will always matter. But what's more important is to get better all the time. And if I look back to last year I would destroy that player at the tables. I can also use the leaks I had one year ago to exploit other players who have the same leaks as I had. So I guess in some way it can be a good thing to learn the hard way and go from losing to (hopefully) winning. Some players just seem to be able to start winning directly but that wasn't me.

And agree that getting input on HH and lines taken is really important. I will try to get more active on this forum. Also have a Skype group where we post hands which is really good for improving.

Hey mate, welcome to the site.

How big is your BR now? I suggest taking shots as soon as your BR allows you to. This is will be the fastest way to improve your game, win more money and move up the steaks. Just give yourself a 3-4 bi in shot to keep within your BR.

I would not play any more hands at 5nl than you need to. You'll only be holding yourself back.

Harvie: Hey mate, welcome to the site.

How big is your BR now? I suggest taking shots as soon as your BR allows you to. This is will be the fastest way to improve your game, win more money and move up the steaks. Just give yourself a 3-4 bi in shot to keep within your BR.

I would not play any more hands at 5nl than you need to. You'll only be holding yourself back.

BR allows taking shots. Actually I have something like 65BI for 10NL so I have more than enough. Maybe I'm scared of taking a hit again and have to move down. In the past I moved up a few times but had some really bad run and that also made me play a lot worse. Was playing my B or C game more than my A-game.
But I feel I'm a lot better AND more solid in my mental game now.
So maybe I should stop grinding out hands on 5NL and just move up?
Any of you guys who have an idea of the difference between 5NL and 10NL zoom?

Ok, had a really good week and as you can se I was on a fantastic heater. Volume is a bit on the low side to be a good week but will try to grind out maybe 1k more hands tonight.

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Played my first session of the day. Was a struggle to try to come back from a bad start. Managed to turn it around. Didn't play my A-game. Feels like I can't play as good when I add one extra table of zoom. (3 tables). Did drop down to 2tables again and started play better.
Guess it will take some time to get used to play more tables.

Good to see you on here buddy! Subbed!

fergrberger: Good to see you on here buddy! Subbed!

Good to have you here Fergal.
Started this to motivate myself a little bit extra.

Is there any reason you decided to go for zoom rather than regular tables, or going for a different site with rakeback?

Discomfort: Is there any reason you decided to go for zoom rather than regular tables, or going for a different site with rakeback?

I decided to play Zoom just because I often have limited time for playing (2 kids, full time job and another hobby).
I like to just be able to jump in and out of the game as I'm sometimes playing 15minutes, checking what my children are doing, jump in for 15 more minutes.
Waiting for a table is not the way I want to use my free time. I want to play.
And if I can play instead of waiting that should be better for learning quickly?

I have played some regular tables earlier and normally competition is softer. But for the moment I'm focusing more on learning than earning so it doesn't matter that much if I could have a bit of a higher win rate on reg tables.

Pokersites. Tried some other but haven't really found any other that have both good traffic and good rakeback.

Yeah, for any given stake, Zoom on stars is probably the highest standard out there so as long as you're OK with that go for it - it obviously fits in with your lifestyle pretty well! As for learning quickly, there's obviously a lot you'll learn playing zoom but you'll also miss out on some stuff, mainly learning how to pick up reads on villains and learning how to use them. Also while practice is obviously good, if you want to learn quickly you need to put in time away from the tables if you have the time. It'll also be worth posting your stats from HM2 on here once you've built up a few hands to help weedle out some leaks.

Hope it goes well and you're up at 10NL/25NL soon!

Discomfort: Yeah, for any given stake, Zoom on stars is probably the highest standard out there so as long as you're OK with that go for it - it obviously fits in with your lifestyle pretty well! As for learning quickly, there's obviously a lot you'll learn playing zoom but you'll also miss out on some stuff, mainly learning how to pick up reads on villains and learning how to use them. Also while practice is obviously good, if you want to learn quickly you need to put in time away from the tables if you have the time. It'll also be worth posting your stats from HM2 on here once you've built up a few hands to help weedle out some leaks.

Hope it goes well and you're up at 10NL/25NL soon!

Thanks for the input. Appreciate it.
Yes you do miss out on some things tin zoom. Reads and table dynamics.

Yeah I do quite a lot of off-table work.
Reviewing hands, learning theory, digging in my own database and all this kind of stuff.
Also had some coaching sessions that were helpful.

Have more or less made the transition from 5NL to 10NL zoom now.
Also had a really good leakfinder session with Weasel.
Have got a fantastic start at 10NL.

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Congratz. Looks very nice!

good luck with crushing nl10 you'll be at nl25 in no time if you also have 1on1 coachings/leakfinders.

How was the coaching with Weasel? One of the things I regret not doing when I was playing poker full time was getting coaching. For sure you'll be at 25nl and even 50nl within a month or two him as your coach.

mattusko: Congratz. Looks very nice!

good luck with crushing nl10 you'll be at nl25 in no time if you also have 1on1 coachings/leakfinders.

Thank you for your kind words.
I hope that I will be a ble to beat 10NL this time. Have tried before but bounced back to 5NL again.
But this time it feels like I have a much better chance of success.
I know about several leaks I had before that I have fixed.
I also know about leaks I have in my game for the moment and try to fix them.

Harvie: How was the coaching with Weasel? One of the things I regret not doing when I was playing poker full time was getting coaching. For sure you'll be at 25nl and even 50nl within a month or two him as your coach.

I had an initial DB review. It was really good.
He is very professional and found a lot of things I can improve in my game so it was really valuable to me.

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