About Blinds & Balances
Poker has become the game I have been looking for a long time. As a competetive person I’ve always been interested in classic games. For some time the game of Go scratched my itch for competing online anytime I want with a clear ranking system to keep me hooked. I tried Chess too, which has similar properties I find intriguing. The problem with both is, that sessions are not flexible enough for my day to day lifestyle. The games last around 30 to 45 minutes. I often had to leave games early when I only had an hour of time to play and a match lasted 5 minutes longer. Thus I ended up not playing when I wasn’t 100% sure I was able to finish the match. And so I ended up not playing at all. I tried other classic games, but their online competitive community often was too small or not well organized.
Earlier this year a friend of mine was invited to a private poker match. During a following birthday celebration he brought it up in front of our friend group and suggested we play an evening with the entire friend group of around eight people. To prepare for that day, I reactivated my old PokerStars account from 10 years ago. I played a few matches of 1ct / 2ct to get back into the groove. Two weeks later, I won €24.20 in our private poker game with a buy in of €10.00.
I now was hooked. I rounded up to €25.00 and went over to GGPoker since PokerStars had some recurring technical difficulties and GG has a simple HUD built right into the game. Since then i play daily. In total I deposited €45.00 and withdrew around €120.00. In July I started tracking my bank roll properly – and now here we are.
The Purpose
This blog is public for everyone who wants to read it, however the main purpose is to help me analyze my game. I want to invite everyone to take a look at how I play in order to provide you some insights into another players habits. If you have something to say about my plays, you are welcome to express yourself too.
Right now I have monthly recaps in mind. There I want to go over my performance for the month and talk about the good, the bad and the ugly. I want to learn from mistakes and keep track of what I learned.
My main rule is that this blog should not become work for me. It should be something that adds to my poker games. Thus this blog will be a personal blog with no schedule or whatever. I want to do what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it.
The Game and Stakes
I currently play 25NL online on GGPoker. I am not interested in PLO, so I will stick to NLHE. I chose this sizing for the following reasons:
- My stable job allows me to lose multiple buy-ins of $25 without having an impact on my daily life.
- With this buy in, wins still excite me as they are large enough to financially support my other hobbies – e.g. getting an iced coffee
I don’t care about the rule of having 30 buy-ins to be able to play a certain level. From my perspective this applies to poker pros or more invested hobbyists or people who play higher stakes. There is a great episode of the Third Man Walking podcast I recommend listening to.
TL;DR: I post recaps or whatever I want regarding my online poker journey in 25NL games on GGPoker as a means of learning for myself.