IAmNeo
503 points
Yeah, I had my own version of that when dealing with some of the nosebleed games that ran last year. There were 3 whales playing 40k-100knl at various times, and I was playing them any time day or night. Was frequently up till 6:30am and just waking up and going to sleep at random times. I don't quite regret it because it was very profitable, but it felt extremely unhealthy, and I think I'd opt for a more healthy and consistent grind instead. That definitely plays into my decision to de-stress things this year and play limits I'm more over-rolled for on a consistent schedule.
I recently took Tim Urban's idea of using a "chess clock" to help me manage my work days, and I've liked it a lot so far.
I set it to 8 hours of work, which includes study and play, and 5 hours of rest, and the clock starts after my 3 hours to myself in the morning. If I'm playing and stop to eat, go to the bathroom, watch TV, or click over to youtube etc., I press the clock. It forces me to consider the opportunity cost of everything I'm doing, and objectively track how much work I've accomplished. When the 8 hours is up, I'm done unless there's a major whale playing high stakes or something, but so far I've always stopped at 8 hours.
Here's the link of a deeper explanation for it to anyone interested. I bought the clock on Amazon for ~$20.
March 24, 2025 | 7:23 p.m.
I received a message on discord this week from a SSNL grinder friend who asked for advice on getting to high stakes. My most important and under-appreciated piece of advice for moving up in stakes and succeeding in poker: You have to actually believe you can do it.
It's so hard to genuinely believe you will succeed in the face of so much self-doubt, and poker will give you a lot of that. Not only do you face an overwhelming amount of negativity from people online, but you also haven't achieved the results you hoped you would. You think "I'd be more confident if I just had the results to back it up", but you won't have the results until you're more confident.
Even though you may not have genuine confidence in your ability yet, you can have confidence in things like "I'm not going to give up". You can believe "I'm going to commit every fiber of my being to this thing because it matters to me". You have control over those commitments, and they can actually be both easy and fun to pursue.
What if you just decided to look at things differently?
I always loved Pure Imagination from the original Willy Wonka movie, the lyrics go:
If you want to view paradise
Simply look around and view it
Anything you want to, do it
Want to change the world?
There's nothing to it.
Anytime I hear it, it makes me think about how we can choose the way we experience life. There's probably many beautiful things already going on in your life; all you have to do is view it. Anything you want to do? Pursue it. Want to change your world? There's nothing to it.
It's the last bit that always get me. You can look at making positive changes in your life as an impossible task, or you can think "there's nothing to it." It seems almost naive or childlike to approach things that way, but maybe that's not so bad. There's plenty of people reading this dealing with shit way more important than poker. Forget about ten million dollars, plenty of people out there are on a day-to-day basis struggling with addiction, depression, divorce, disease, loneliness, loss, or conflict.
My message is simple: You can do it. Whatever it is you're dealing with in life, you actually can overcome it. It starts today. If you look at your life in this moment, you can actually see you're closer than you think. Remember: If you want to change the world, there's nothing to it.
It's not possible for every single person reading this to make it to high stakes poker, but I hope anyone that reads this blog over the coming years will feel inspired to be bold and imaginative enough to take on goals that would actually matter to them should they succeed.
Whether it's poker-related or not, feel empowered to embrace life and take it on with your full heart. If you are to succeed, then letting go of that fear and self-doubt in exchange for hope is the first and most essential step. And most importantly, in whatever you take on, but ESPECIALLY poker: Believe you can actually do it.
March 22, 2025 | 7:40 p.m.
US regulated cash is the softest environment in online poker. The US has an insanely high GDP with a culture that isn't shy to gamble, and there's very few top regs. I don't know as much about MTT, but cash is great for small to midstakes.
Why are you thinking about switching? Personally, I recommend committing to something you're passionate about and finding a way to navigate that, if you can. If you switch to cash half-heartedly you'll probably get crushed no matter how soft the game is, so I think it can be a good idea to pick a lane and move up vertically through that.
March 19, 2025 | 8:15 p.m.
It has the potential to be an incredible site if they offer some kind of rewards and multi-tabling. They are taping into the US market where recreationals don't need to deposit with Bitcoin, and they have a competent marketing department that reaches people.
March 19, 2025 | 8:56 a.m.
I could probably not study, play 10/20, and make a quite good living, but I don't want to do that. Relying on winning without studying would "prove" I had talent at poker, but that's not the way I want to play the game.
March 16, 2025 | 5:53 p.m.
1) ClubWPT Gold, Apps, ACR, Ignition, Coin
2) Yes. I think sites that have high rake / high bumhunt models will progress to be more of the norm. I don't think it's the end of the world if you have the discipline to grind and game select, but it does degrade a bit from the integrity of the game.
3) Depends who you ask. Statistically, the games have gotten closer to GTO with the help of stuff like GTO Wizard and the like. It's just easier to get closer to correct frequencies.
It's pretty rough to get a sample of top 10 players and see them win for >2bb/100 in 6-max reg battles, partially because they just battle each other a lot. I think the main reason to reg battle is that it keeps you at the top of your game for when softer games go off, and you have to love the competition.
Also, the biggest reg battlers basically don't have a choice. They love doing it and have the capacity to win. Any rationalization they give for why it makes sense is basically bullshit / delusion. They do it because they love it and are obsessed with the game, and trust the rest will work itself out.
Personally, I'm a bit in the middle. Right now, the games for upper-midstakes to lower-high stakes are INSANELY good. Across every site and format I'm literally winning at 20bb/100 in over 50k hands on the year. If things dry up I'll probably find myself back in the ACR battle streets, or will clean up for (potentially) this years Online Poker Championship. But overall the life EV of just crushing limits I'm overrolled for and significantly outclass the competition is very tempting, but my competitive side has a hard time with that. Still working out the balance tbh.
March 15, 2025 | 7:59 a.m.
RunItTw1ce Poker Youtube is fine for entertainment, but not study. The best thing you or anyone else could do is never watch another "OMG look at this Linus hand!" video unless it's just for fun.
I don't think I have any special advice for how to focus or manage your life haha. I'm sure everyone knows what they SHOULD do, it's just a matter of actually doing it.
2+2 is too much of a zoo. I'd rather have a site like RIO basically "host" the blog, but I'm saving all my key posts in case I want to repost / x-post it somewhere else at some point. It might be good to also put something in Mobius discord for people if they wanted to interact. It's 2025, so blogs are kinda 30 years old lol, but it's nice to have something sort've permanent up that people can reference.
March 13, 2025 | 7:44 p.m.
cant5t0p Haven't tried it. I'm sure there's different types of software like this because there's a whole market for collaborative workspace products, but the real win was getting away from Evernote because that was just buggy garbage for me.
March 13, 2025 | 7:29 p.m.
One of the biggest helps to organizing my study process over the past year+ has been switching to notion.com to keep track of what I do.
It's a waste of time to study new strategies or processes and not write them down, so writing and categorizing everything I work on makes recalling it and memorizing it much easier.
You can organize everything into your own personal dashboard.
From there, you can break things down into individual pages and projects. I've already covered everything high impact in 6-max, so recently I started working on a "bonus" page to go deeper into more specific lines and sequences. As I study, I change the icon to a red arrow to indicate it's done, and blank pages still need to be completed.
This makes review of key concepts easier when I have my afternoon study time, and reduces decision fatigue and starting friction when it comes to exploring new topics. I've already outlined what I think is relevant and what I should do next, so it's one less excuse not to do it.
The nice thing is it's free for personal use, its only paid if you share & work collaboratively. It's worth giving a try if you want to find a way to make your studies more concrete.
March 13, 2025 | 10:06 a.m.
Yeah, I discussed it on the Mobius podcast in depth if you're curious. But at that time Linus and I had no dynamic / he had no real reason to think I'd call light. If anything it's ultra high stakes and I'm not known for these stakes, so he'd prob be more likely to overbluff than underbluff in this vacuum scenario.
If the same hand happened again though I'd just fold. I think he saw what he needed to see and I won't be able to get away with such a huge exploit again.
In case anyone is interested. That's the latest podcast I've been on.
March 12, 2025 | 8:51 p.m.
Context switching would occur if you have other things open and are constantly checking it. Ideally, you'd just have your music on in the background and not need to look at it.
First 3 hours is usually focused on relaxing. I go for a lot of walks and listen to podcasts or audiobooks. I leave near the beach so I regularly go for ~90 minute walks along the ocean, or Pat Howard and I have been recently been doing long walk-and-talks and just chat about some combo of poker, business, and our lives.
What content are you keeping up with? Do you mean like random Youtube videos / twitch streams / discords? If so, that's your problem right there haha.
I've had some times over the past 18 months where I completely rework major strategies, in which case I play Beethoven's Nightmare by Dragonland on repeat as I spend hours carefully re-crafting everything I'm doing. But for the most part it's gradual, incremental improvement and I don't need a stopwatch or anything.
March 12, 2025 | 8:45 p.m.
1) The best times to play poker for me are around 6pm-1am, so I formulate my schedule around that. I spend around 60 minutes mid-day doing studies or drills, play for the night, and spend around 30 minutes reviewing my hands.
It's important for me to leave time in the morning to myself, otherwise I will get burnt out, so I don't do anything of significance with poker for the first 3 hours of the day. A big mistake I've made in the past is burning the candle at both ends, either with checking lobbies during the day, or playing poker at night and scheduling coaching calls when I wake up, and so I needed to give myself more room to breathe at the sake of short term "efficiency".
2) I think it can be very frustrating to manage multiple lobbies at once, and I like 2 at most. When I have 3+ lobbies open, I tend to experience more decision fatigue and deal with context switching.
Context switching is sort've like a micro-fatigue from things like moving from an ACR table to a Coin Poker table, or moving your eyes to check the lobby etc. It's a lot easier if every table is the same site and format because your brain doesn't have to "reset" as much as you fluidly move from table to table.
At HSNL, it becomes unreasonable to single site, so you deal with it basically, but I tend to prioritize simplifying the experience of playing OVER having money on every single site I could, checking every lobby etc. I do my best when I can set my tables into place and basically just grind.
March 12, 2025 | 12:49 a.m.
Avg hands goes down a lot once you get to HSNL. I'd say around 250k hands / year.
March 12, 2025 | 12:38 a.m.
My name is Matt Marinelli. I've made over $3 million playing online cash games, and my goal is to hit $10 million in profit. I joined a CFP in 2018, started at 100NL, and never looked back.
I previously wrote a blog here called Making a Million and followed through on that goal. When it was done, I asked the mods to remove it—but to my surprise, people actually cared. I kept getting DMs asking where it went, if they could get a copy, why I deleted it, etc.
So, fuck it.
I'm back.
This blog will revolve around a consistent motif: technē. Technē is a Greek word meaning an art, craft, or skill learned and mastered through practice rather than just theoretical understanding. It’s the combination of knowledge and skill forged from years of disciplined study and experience in the pursuit of mastery.
Within this framework, I approach poker like a dedicated craftsman. The outcome relies on the execution of my play, but that play is honed by thousands of hours of blood, sweat, and tears. I don't rely on talent. Honestly, I don’t even know if I’m talented at poker—because I refuse to find out.
In contrast, many people treat poker like a game. They sign on, play, review the most tilting hands, and try again tomorrow. While that has an appeal because poker is a game and it can be fun, it’s also my career and I intend to treat myself with more respect than that. Ultimately, if some 50nl reg with a dream reads this blog and decides to adopt this mindset, taking my approach as a source of inspiration, then sharing these things will be worthwhile to me.
Lifetime Results:
I didn’t get to keep all of it because I was staked to start my career / sold some action at times, but I can’t complain. This is how I will account for the challenge #’s. (”Other” is from hand histories that were lost in a PC crash. I know how much $ was missing though, so I include it here to keep full account)
Challenge Start: $3,002,280 / $10,000,000
Follow me: https://x.com/MatthewMarinel5
March 11, 2025 | 7:57 a.m.
I'm glad to see things are going well. I think you've made the right decision; I basically never see a coach able to balance playing and coaching seriously, so I believe this is for the best. Honestly, even if 25/50 comes back on GG, I'd suggest avoiding it. It just sounds stressful, and I think it's much better in life EV to stick to your lane and move vertically up through that.
March 6, 2025 | 10:51 p.m.
Wow, it's really impressive you've been able to keep up with this blog so consistently. Well done! I really enjoy Ryan Holiday's work too. His books are really accessible and give me a deep appreciation for stoicism. I always feel more grounded whenever I read anything from his series, and I think it makes sense to focus on them as a practice.
I'm glad to see all is going well with poker and Nacho CFP. Best of luck finishing this challenge. :)
Feb. 25, 2024 | 4:44 a.m.
I think you can find a reasonable balance between battling and grinding. For every solid nosebleed reg like Munez, there's also 500 shitty 25nl regs that never got their career off the ground because they're shook. The base rate of conservative / scared players is very high in poker, so it's natural that they're well represented in high stakes.
Treating poker like a sport and battling / taking shots can be an important form of self-expression that's harder to quantify in a spreadsheet, and often resonates with a part of you that fell in love with poker in the first place. Doubtful you got into poker to tick [x] Sit Out Next BB the moment the rec leaves.
I also usually caution young players I talk with to be careful because sometimes they can be overcome with hubris or not internalize the real-life impact of the money they just lost. Sounds like you're committed to pursuing poker in a smart way, but I wouldn't ignore aspects of this career that are a bit harder to measure either.
Feb. 25, 2024 | 4:34 a.m.
Personally, I think the best way to go forward is to play the highest stakes you can and de-prioritize pumping volume at something like 5/10 if you can help it. Not sure if you read this, but Pat Howard wrote a blog post explaining that: Stakes > Winrate > Volume for making money in poker. He says "Increasing volume or win rate increases your income linearly. Increasing stakes increases your income exponentially."
It is stressful because it means you'll go through long stretches where you get punished by negative variance, but the upside to crushing high stakes is so massive that I think it's best to focus on that. In particular, nosebleed games generally only run with a rec, so your winrate will be higher. Most 20knl games I've played are softer than the average 2knl ACR game as well because a substantial % of 20knl regs are semi-retired bumhunters that have been in poker for like 10+ years and don't stay sharp.
WPN Rake for HU:
2knl - 1.46 bb/100
3knl - 0.96 bb/100
5knl - 0.59 bb/100
Heads up is probably best to think about as playing for sport / competition / staying sharp, but it'd be hard to make a ton of money from it. Particularly, if you're a good player and establish yourself as being decent at HU, then the only action you'll get is from other top players. My winrate has been very good so I see a lot of potential there, but it's incredibly challenging and subject to extreme variance. I'd suggest only attempting it if you enjoy the pursuit of learning HU and battling strong players.
Aug. 18, 2023 | 7:49 p.m.
I like the blog so far. Thanks for sharing and best of luck!
Aug. 5, 2023 | 7:34 a.m.
You're the real nacho in my heart, though.
Feb. 1, 2023 | 10:48 p.m.
Buying in for 20k is pretty baller tho o.o
Also, when I see your sn on RIO I tend to think of you as either: "The Nacho" or "Nacho Libre". What do you think?
Finally, when is there gonna be a Nacho public discord? I need to chat with my fellow Nachonians.
Jan. 21, 2023 | 8:14 p.m.
Sorry to hear about all this, Cyd. I hope it'll all be for the best. Keep moving forward.
Aug. 6, 2022 | 12:09 p.m.
Nice blog. Best of luck!
Aug. 6, 2022 | 12:03 p.m.
Nice to hear you've been feeling good. :) I live near the beach and tend to go for 60-90 minutes walks there to relax & exercise. I can tell I'm much happier in life when I can just listen to music and enjoy the fresh air / sights / sounds instead of being in my head and thinking about shit I have to do.
It's definitely really satisfying to play a shorthanded match against regs you think are good, even if it isn't +EV at the moment. A lot of SSNL/MSNL regs get stuck in the mindset that everyone 1-2 limits up is so much tougher and smarter, but I think a healthy dose of contempt / disrespect for the competition is good for your career. Everyone has leaks, even 5knl gods, so I believe it's important to never put anyone on a pedestal.
March 10, 2022 | 3 a.m.
Wow. Looks like things are coming along really nicely. Shame it didn't work out with Nacho Poker, but at least you were able to part ways amicably. Best of luck and keep going! :D
March 10, 2022 | 2:36 a.m.
Best of luck, sir. :)
Jan. 5, 2022 | 6 p.m.
Seems like it's been a good year for you, Pat. I hope you can be a light for other players looking to make their way in poker and accomplish the dream. Good luck next year!
Orca206
Oback2
TRUEPOWER
Thanks! Much appreciated.
March 24, 2025 | 7:25 p.m.