Mulhollanddrive's turning semi-pro experiment blog

12 JULY 2006

Just starting a thread about my adventure. I hope to continue this for a while, which will include updating with posts, hand histories, stats etc... to gain feedback from you guys.

Overall Aim: To earn enough income to significantly contribute to living expenses and being able to play full time.

Background
After months of gaining experience at freerolls and studying intensely, I've decided to give this a go. So I've deposited the $50 BR and have used the poker office bonus which includes 20% bonus.

I know how often $50 BR's go bust so I'm going to start at the bottom $5NL at Party. It took me a while to get comfortable with the Pacific interface and i think it'll be best to play it cautiously at Party to get into the groove.
This plus getting use to incorporating Poker Office (used the 300 hands, and am semi-comfortable) is the first mini-aim.

Method
After this settling in period of a month or so of playing 5NL FR with PO 2, I hope to step it up and be able to get up to this stage:

Party Poker
Playing 30 hours a week
Playing 1800 hands/week or 7500 hands/month
10NL FR
Single Table
6BB/100

This would lead to ACCOMPLISHMENT 1 OF MANY =
$21US or $26AUS per week

Playing a strictly Tagg game, nutcamping. Also aiming to improve inventory, especially the not rated stuff.

Discussion
I guess at this stage I'm looking for any advice about how long i should play until stepping up from each micro limit. The 20x buyins theory might be a bit conservative?

Also, when using PT/PO stats, what stats do you look at while playing? From my short experience I'm using PO and having the
Nr hands/VP$IP/PFR%/ Ag fact/SDwon%, I figure that covers all streets, if a simple Tagg/Lagg/Rock type label doesn't do it.


Inventory
Also, I've taken an inventory of my game at this stage to keep an eye on:

A grade - Confident and consistantly applied in game.
Starting hand selection, EV, Pot odds, Pre-Flop play, Lack of Tilting, Implied pot odds, playing drawing hands, table image.

B grade - Confident in theory, not fully consistantly applied.
Position, C-bet, Value bet, sb play, bb play, stealing blinds, spotting online tells, playing suited connectors/gappers, playing nuts PF, intuition/gut reliability.

C grade - Reasonable understanding, needs improving
Reading opponent betting patterns, playing pocket pairs, getting away from big hands, mixing up play

D grade - Unsure, requires more discussion/research and practice
Spotting big hands, spotting traps.

NR/TBWO - Not Rated/ToBeWorkedOn
Table selection
Multi-tabling (priority)
Poker office stats
Fish spotting
BR management

Conclusion
Bankroll = $50

Thanks for reading!

i would start with more money

Originally Posted by Muxy

i would start with more money

gl I would reccomend starting with at least 200

dont quit your day job.


and good luck

Can't you start at $25 or $50NL? Seems just bloody-minded for you to start from effectively zero.

Good luck though!

Thanks for the responses, I understand the issue of BR and probably being smarter to increase it to play bigger levels with at least 15x buy-ins. And will take that on board!

also if you plan on doing this seriously, you need to be playing more than 1800 hands/week. if you are uncomfortable multi-tabling, just try to add 1 table at a time and you will get used to it.

one word: multitable.

if you really want to swell that bankroll and move up in stakes, then you have to drastically increase that volume of hands. especially if your aim is to play full time to support yourself - which is basically impossible under 200NL, imo.

oh yeah, and 20x buyins is by no means conservative - and if poker is your livelihood, it's nowhere near enough. I'd go with 40+.

Originally Posted by mb2447

one word: multitable.

if you really want to swell that bankroll and move up in stakes, then you have to drastically increase that volume of hands. especially if your aim is to play full time to support yourself - which is basically impossible under 200NL, imo.

oh yeah, and 20x buyins is by no means conservative - and if poker is your livelihood, it's nowhere near enough. I'd go with 40+.

supporting yourself under 200NL is far far from impossible. With heavy multitabling and bonuses $50/h is very reasonable at $100NL.

The movie Mulholland Drive ownz my soul.
David Lynch is God.

Hey... Have you considered starting with sngs instead?

do u live in Australia? if so where? add me to msn - [email protected]

i actually havent given SnG's much thought, as my experience comes from micro-tournies and cash...what i wrote in the post was basically my A plan, if things either go downwards or winrate isnt making as fast an impact as i would have hoped, i'll definately look for more advice.

Originally Posted by mulhollanddrive

i actually havent given SnG's much thought, as my experience comes from micro-tournies and cash...what i wrote in the post was basically my A plan, if things either go downwards or winrate isnt making as fast an impact as i would have hoped, i'll definately look for more advice.

Its just that ring can be quite a grind(boring) at times. If you start at 6s sng with 120$(20 x buyin) and play 100 6s sngs, with a 13% ROI you'd be moving up to 10$... It can take more time moving from 10 NL to 25 NL...Just something to consider...

Just a quick update:

-cleared bonus at Party Poker, got $10 bonus plus Poker Office.
-moved bankroll to Pacific where its now at $160 having started from $50.

Change of plan I'm now playing .5/.10NL at pacific after doing some research and their pot ave and %flops are quite a lot bigger than Party which was very surprising. It's a good first step to hopefully grinding this out to $500 where I can play 25NL.

BR = $160

Originally Posted by mulhollanddrive

Just a quick update:

-cleared bonus at Party Poker, got $10 bonus plus Poker Office.
-moved bankroll to Pacific where its now at $160 having started from $50.

Change of plan I'm now playing .5/.10NL at pacific after doing some research and their pot ave and %flops are quite a lot bigger than Party which was very surprising. It's a good first step to hopefully grinding this out to $500 where I can play 25NL.

BR = $160

Keep grinding...