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Brandon's picture
Micro rec to pro asap
 
I am an occasional micro rec player who is going to try to get to pro level ( $30s/$60s in the hypers ?). Here are my Pokerstars stats over the last few years.

SNG    2,623   $0.1   $1.49   18.5%   $266   66

I am fifty-nine years old and have no work ethic to date but I am now out of employment so I will probably have to start making an effort. I believe in working smart not hard but I am trying to break the habit of a lifetime hence this thread.

I will spend the next week or so watching the good free vids on here (ph33rox ones seem good) and eradicating the massive leaks I have in my game . My target game is HU hyper turbo although I appear to have little talent for this game. That's because that's where the easy money with little variance seems to be. 

I aim to update this thread with my progress every week.

  

cdon3822's picture
"Hard way to make an easy living"

Hey I think you're starting your journey with a few misconceptions about heads up hyper turbos. 
Best to go into these endeavours with a clear understanding about what you're signing up for:
 
If you get good you can expect to make about 3% ROI with LARGE variance in these games. 
=> 10-20 buyin swings will happen quite often
=> 20-50 buyin swings are not uncommon
This variance can be ironed out by putting in high volume. 
Play around with the variance calculator to get a feel for the types of swings you can experience in HUSNGs.
 
You can play about 15 games per hour per table.
Which means you can expect to make about 15 * 0.03 = 0.45 buyins / hour / table
 
@ $30 level => 0.45 * 30 = $13.5 / h / t
@ $60 level => 0.45 * 60 = $27 / h / t
 
Most people can't achieve the same ROI, multitabling as single tabling because so much of your edge comes from exploiting individual opponent's specific tendencies. Multitabling, you won't be paying as much attention to each opponent and will likely miss a lot of spots to exploit them. The macro-poker decision as to how many tables you can play really comes down to balancing marginal return of extra tables vs marginal loss of ROI with respect to your hourly rate. 
When learning the game, most established players advocate single tabling because the extra hourly you make at the micros does not make up for the extent to which your game stagnates by not pushing yourself to think through each decision and find spots to build edges against your opponents. As you move up, the average population make less mistakes and your profitable autopilot multitabling strategy which beats the weak players at the micros may not even be profitable against the midstakes population. No amount of volume can iron out the downswing you think you're experiencing when you're simply playing with a negative ROI. 
 
How quickly you can get your game to a level where you can beat these games is a function of your natural ability (at poker and learning new skills in general) and hard work. This site has the best resources for learning the technical skills to beat the HUSNG games. I'd imagine if you were a fast learner, dedicated to improving and had a lot of time; you could get to the $30-60 in 6-12 months. I'd imagine this would be the low end (as fast as possible) of the scale => if you read the bios of a lot of the coaches on this site, many spent years bumbling around before they got decent enough to beat the games. And they learned the game in an era of much softer games. 
 
I don't mean this in a disrespectful way, but if I was ~ 60 years old, online poker would be the last way I'd look to replace an income. It's going to take a significant time investment to get to where you want to be and being focused on needing to make money from the game is a mindset which will almost certainly prevent your development as a player. Why? Because to play good poker you need to adopt a risk-neutral mindset => you need to be able to make clear rational decisons under risk without letting the outcome affect you emotionally. You need to completely separate the emotional affect winning or losing money has from your decision making framework. This is something many players (even technically strong players) cannot master. 
 
If you're committed to having a serious crack at making money from poker I'd recommend you invest in a video pack which can form the foundation of your technical decision making framework. The Mersenneary videos in the premium pack are probably the best bang for buck deal I've seen. Hearing how good players think about spots really allows you to focus on what the important variables are that you should be incorporating into a decision. Chances are you can work these things out for yourself heuristically over time, but in my opinion hearing it distilled concisely from a player who has already gone through that process really fast tracks your development and is worth the upfront investment. 
 
I'm sure Ryan would be happy to give you some advice with respect to the other products on the site that could help you fast track your technical game ...
 
With respect to your mental game and its compatibility with your poker goals => it's critical you develop an objective, rational mindset as fast as possible. The book, The Poker Mindset really helped me personally and I would highly recommend it. Mental game mistakes can be more crippling than technical mistakes, particularly if you're not objectively self-aware of them. 
 
Best of luck to you :)

RyPac13's picture
Thanks cdon. I'd also

Thanks cdon. I'd also recommend Mersenneary's videos (in the Premium Pack, Coffeeyay, Sa1251, Chadders and Cog Dissonance are just some of the hyper guys to watch in that pack), as well as the Chadders or the zZzTILT/phl500 Crushing Hyper Turbos video packs. Coffeeyay's Math Pack is great for software useage and forming good study/analysis habits as well.
Welcome Brandon. I think you've chosen a good game to potentially make profit on, but I really would stress putting in some hard work to start. That doesn't mean you need to change your lifetime habits around overnight, but I would start by making some weekly goals, putting in a certain amount of volume and study time (maybe go 75% poker, 25% study) and after accomplishing this goal each week, increasing the goal for the next week by a little bit. Even if it's 15 hours to 16 hours to 17 hours to 18 hours... within a few months you could be into a really good habit of putting in full time hours.
Also make sure your play is focused and tilt is minimized. Don't be afraid to do more frequently, shorter sessions, rather than trying to jam your play in one long window each day.
Keep us updated on how you do on your journey.

Brandon's picture
I haven't played a lot

I haven't played a lot because I now realise how much there is to learn and I have spent a lot of time swatting the game. These are not like the 6/9/18/45s where you could learn opimal strategy and more or less play autopilot and just occasionally adjust on hud stats. There is so much gameflow that it is possible to be successful playing quite a wide range of hands and adopting differing levels of aggression postflop. This is good and bad. It means they are difficult to learn well but that there are definitely edges to be exploited even against the regs. I will persist with what looks like being a few hundred hours of study because once I understand the game properly the profits are there. If I don't succeed plan B is to play mttsngs and low buy-in tournaments and satellites which I am pretty certain I will be able to beat. Just on results so far (which are not very relevant as my game is a work in progress at the moment) I have been very lucky and boast an roi of 16.6% but with a break-even ev on hem2.
I will post my results after a couple of thousands of games.