I have never done a Journey here and don't think this will be a journey per se. This kind of came about because I played about 50k hands on Stars Zoom 2NL and 5NL and wanted to share some of the results.

First some back story:

I started playing poker about 3 years ago. Relatively early on in my career, I found this site and used it to learn. I used to peruse the forums and strategy articles and watch pretty much all the videos. Over time, I got decent at the smallest of micros stakes and actually applied to be part of the PokerVIP staking team. I played on 10NL for them and did alright. Over the 4 to 6 months I was on the team, I definitely turned a profit, however, I never got good enough to move up to 20/25NL. PVIP terminated the staking team and brought on an outside group, ProStaker, to run that part of things for them. I never applied with them

I actually found a coaching for profits(CFP) group and applied and got accepted and have been with them for about a year now. I was stunned by how much stuff I didn't know that I didn't know. I have learned so much with them and still have more to go. I started with a bankroll ~$600 and i am a little over $3k now. I play 10 and 20nl sort of mixed stakes, mostly on Microgaming with Red Kings at the moment. I will probably ramble more about CFP's in the future. I think CFPs or staking deals are really good.

I should probably be further ahead but ran into some personal issues towards the middle to end of Sept which have hindered my ability to put in the volume needed at the higher stakes which kind of brought about this post and what I want to share.

The wife and I went on vacation to the USA for about 2 weeks in the middle of Sept, I live in Costa Rica even though I am American. When we returned, my wife had really bad abdominal pains and long story short she end up having a tumor attached to here female parts and all of it had to be removed. It was all benign, thank God,but for pretty much all of October and most of November my main job was taking care of her. She still is not 100%. So having the time and more importantly the focus needed to play @10/20NL was just not there.

At around the same time, I got an email from PokerStars that if I deposited $40 they would give me $15 instantly with no play requirements. So I decided to deposit there and figured I could do something like a mini bankroll challenge and just start out playing $2NL zoom. The reason I picked zoom is it is easy to just enter and leave a game, no mess no fuss, don't need to sit out next BB or make other players wait or search for tables, just open and play and if something comes up just sit out and come back when you are done and play some more, so it was super easy to just play here and there between other stuff that was going on. This worked well with me having to look after the wife as well as the hotel we manage here in Costa Rica.

So I think i started this Zoom challenge around the 7th of Sept. I only just passed the 50K hand mark, so you can see even with Zoom the volume is pretty meh. Considering I should be hitting 30K per month, at 10/20NL, for my CFP contract. Luckly the coach is awesome and I told him what was up my wife and I would need some time and we agreed we could just extend the contract as needed to account for lost months.

So I thought since I just hit ~50K hands I would share the graphs and the stats. Why am I doing this?? Well I think for a few reasons. I think everyone is going to assume it is a little bit of a brag and I suppose it is, but its not the main reason. I actually don't even think the win rates are that good. I think I could beat 2nl for more and 5nl I am not sure I only have 8k hands there so far and have been running pretty well the last few sessions.My main reason is I am hoping it will motivate some other guys here as well as help them in some way. I read a fair amount of the journeys here as well as other posts and HH and I see a lot of guys who hit rough patches and are struggling and feel like they are constantly getting crushed and are never going to get out of the micros. I was that guy too and still am that guy from time to time so I want to share this to show people that if you keep at it and work hard and put in volume and have some people you can bounce stuff off of and help you, that you can get good enough to beat your games and move up. I am super close to breaking out of the micros and into the small stakes and I felt like it would never happen, but now I know I will make it.

Now it is only 50K hands so not like we can assume that thiese are my true winrates or stats. Could just be run good. However its also important to note that I also used this Zoom Challenge thing to try new stuff out. I wanted to make sure I kept playing some form of poker while my wife was sick so I didn't lose my ability and digress. So I used it to try and improve. Due to the fact that stakes were smaller and I felt like I was free rolling a bit, I would try out different things. Bet sizes, 3bet ranges, bluffs etc.

Anyhow, I will get onto the graphs in the next post and then I will probably start posting some of the various stats from HM2 over the next couple of days. Not sure what else I will post beyond that. I guess we will see.