Week 1 Recap: A Rough Start and a Strong Finish
The first session was brutal — definitely not the way I wanted to kick off the challenge. I was down $400 after 4.5 hours despite being up $200 in the first few orbits. That’s poker for you. I’ll be breaking down key hands from this session in separate posts to walk through my thought process street-by-street.
The second session was a complete turnaround. I found a juicy table anchored by a super LAG playing about 90% VPIP, and eventually stacked him in a monster pot — straight flush vs. full house. That one felt good.
Wednesday’s session was nothing special — just a standard grind.
Thursday brought fireworks again: set-over-set, and we both boated up on the river. Nearly all of my weekly profit came from this hand, so I’ll be posting a detailed breakdown soon. A few other interesting spots from that session are worth discussing too.
Friday and Saturday were a wash. I couldn’t find any rhythm — won some big pots but gave it all back in others. No major takeaways besides variance doing its thing.
Weekly Summary
Despite the rocky start and some swings, I hit my weekly goal.
Week 1 Results:
💰 Profit: $25.36 per hour
🪙 Win Rate: 12 BB/hour
Most live players agree that 20–30 hands per hour is typical, so I’ll use 20 hands/hour as the baseline for future calculations.
Using 25 hands/hour, my BB/100 hands comes out to 51 bb/100 — a strong number for the long term, though it’s only one week, so we’ll see where it trends.
Volume and Goals
In total, I played six live sessions for about 22 hours this week. My long-term target is 15–20 hours of live play per week, plus another 5–10 hours online. I intentionally played a bit extra this first week to generate content and establish a rhythm.
Next Week Preview
I’ve got several interesting hands and decision points lined up to review next week — including some tricky bluff-catch spots and river value bets. Stay tuned as we dive deeper into the thought process behind them.
