As I headed into 2020, I started watching more poker on YouTube and discovered the likes of Doug Polk's and Jonathan Little's training sites and streamers like, Lex Veldhuis, Jaime and Matt Staples, Ben "Spraggy" Sprag and many others.
I found Polk and Little's hand breakdowns particularly enlightening and I began to develop an understanding of the concept of ranges. Of course, I'd heard the term ranges before and knew I should be putting opponents on a range, but the thought process of, how much of my opponents range do I need to beat in order for this call to be profitable had previously passed me by and I realised that I had a massive leak in my game, where I was folding far too snugly on the river with marginal made hands.
After a while, I settled on Jonathan Little's PokerCoaching.com for two main reasons; one because his content was easily accessible and a good amount of it was free and two, because I felt like Little has a huge amount of integrity compared to Polk. Having watched a lot of Polk's YouTube content, I got a little tired of Polk's constant berating, mocking and general bad mouthing of various poker players; it just felt like he wanted to generate likes a views from drama rather than from genuinely good poker content. Not that his content is bad, but I was looking for an education, not the next episode of his feud with Charlie Carrel.
As you all know, the UK, like the rest of the world was gripped by the Coronavirus pandemic, which brought with it a huge wave of people being stuck at home with little to do.
I was fortunate enough to be in a position to work from home, but with my girlfriend, Verity, at home as well, I found I actually had less time to play poker than I did before. However, I was able to take advantage of a promotion that PC was running that allowed 7 days access to their premium content for free. I set to work getting through as much of their cash-game masterclass as I could. Although it is called a cash-game masterclass, the vast majority of the content is directly translatable to tournaments as well. At first a lot of what was covered was stuff that I knew, although in some cases, it added some flesh to the bones, but as we got deeper into it, the more I learnt. 3-bet bluffs, range advantage, nut advantage, range analysis, board texture, blockers, implied odds, making marginal calls, making large river bluffs and folds were all explained in exceptional detail. I made pages and pages of notes. I have to admit that there are still some concepts that I don't fully understand, but with the notes I made I will be able to keep referring back to them in the future.
In March, I had a conversion with Verity, who as someone who has never really played poker, she was concerned that I would lose too much money playing poker online and might cause us financial problems if I developed a gambling addiction. Although I did not share her concerns, I decided I would prove to her that there was nothing to worry about by doing a bankroll challenge. I withdrew all funds from my Pokerstars, 888 and Sky Poker accounts and created a new account with Grosvenor Poker. The challenge was to start with zero and build 100 Euros from nothing. In the first month, I made 6.28 Eur from 30 games, with a mix of freerolls and heads-up Sit and Go's. In April, I was not able to play too much due to other commitments and made a small profit of 2 Euros. In May Grosvenor made some major changes to their client, meaning the heads up SnG's were no longer available and they were only offering turbo 9 seat SnG's. The month did not go well, but with just one day to go, I managed to string a few wins together to show a profit of 0.15 Euros. In June, I had a bit of a downswing, but due to the small bankroll I was working with this represented 1/4 of my entire roll, however a strong finish thanks to 5 cashes out of 6 SnG's including 4 first places saw me log another small profit for the month. In July, I decided to call it a day on the challenge; high rake, and only turbos available meant that the variance of Grosvenor Poker did not lend itself to poker players that are really trying to build and manage a bankroll.
I switched back to Pokerstars, but in order to honour my agreement with Verity, I did not deposit any funds and had to build a bankroll from zero again. Although I was not going to call this a bankroll challenge, essentially, that is what it was; build something from nothing and then just keep going. July was a great start, running hotter than I can ever remember, playing 11 freerolls, cashing 7, including 5 final tables, running up more than $60, which was more than enough to start playing micro-stakes MTT's. August was much less successful, mainly due to not cashing in the three $1.10 tournaments I played. I managed to eek out a tiny profit thanks to a couple of cashes in $0.55 tournaments and a few freerolls. Certainly without the freerolls, I would have finished slightly down.
On 1st September I had my first cash in a $1.10 tournament, finishing 15th out of 2556 entrants and was unfortunate enough to bust out with AQ to AJ. If I had won that hand, I would have been top 3 in the tournament and in line for a really nice payday, instead cashing for $9.86. In the same night cashed a $0.55 tournament for $2.94 and final tabled another Cardschat freeroll for $1.90 and also bust another $1.10 tournament as well. The current plan is to build my bankroll $100 and then withdraw $10. Then work up to $200 and withdraw $20 and so on. The hope is that I can begin to generate a small, steady income while also building my bankroll so that I can play higher stakes any hopefully increase my income more quickly. Don't get me wrong, I'm not expecting to be able to quit my day job before Christmas and support my family playing $1 tournaments, but being able to go out for dinner and say that my poker winnings paid for it, or being able to afford a nice surprise gift for Verity thanks to poker would be pretty sweet.
That brings us up to the present day. I hope you have enjoyed reading my poker journey up to now. As we go forward I will keep you updated my progress, share my thoughts on what's happening in the poker world and also the wider world. If you have enjoyed my blogs so far, please do take a few seconds to leave a comment, or just a like. I would really appreciate it.
Matt Burns