From 5$ MTTs to 109$ MTTs in 1 Year and Beyond

Who am I? Hello, my name is Joe. I’m 27 years old and from the Czech Republic. It’s been 2 years since I began playing online MTTs professionally. The stable — Poker Detox — where I got my start (accepted on a friend’s recommendation without much evidence I was any good) told me: ‘Feel free to play up to 5$ tournaments,’ while new players could play up to 11$. Fair enough. All I knew up to at that point was basically how to exploit fish in casino cash games on 0.5/1$ stakes.

Why? To become an Elite player. To do that, I think it’s time to untangle my thoughts about the journey so far so I can plan the next chapter. I’ll post here regularly (2x a week) about my progress to date, my short-term goals, my long-term goals, my current game, mindset, lifestyle and habit changes that I believe will push me toward the upper echelons of the poker world.

My goals:

• Move up in stakes and dominate 200$ games in my daily schedule and 500$–1k$ events during series

• Reach 200k$ profit within one year from today

• Improve my grasp of GTO concepts (yes, up until now I’ve mostly been relying on basic theory and exploitative approaches)

My graph for the last two years since I started this journey

First year — lots of ups and downs while climbing stakes

Second year — getting consistent with lifestyle, routine, study, and also the $ results!

GL to everyone!

Still hustling. Still pushing. What's up poker people?! It's been a while. Most of the time since my last post I wasn't procrastinating. Quite the opposite, I was grinding hard, chasing dreams, losing my mind, finding peace and climbing and climbing up in stakes as I've intended from the beginning. Most of my thoughts, ideas and reflections just went to my journal, instead of to the blog. Honestly, I knew I wouldn't keep posting so frequently as I used to but I wanted to keep the blog going with less regular, but still regular posts. In all the business of life I just lost the habit completely. I'm not gonna make any promises, because blogging is far from being on the top of my priority list, but it makes me happy to be an inspiration and share passion for this game. Just starting this post I'm realising I almost forgot how enjoyable it is. Anyways, let me just recap the year that’s passed since my last post. Quite a lot happened, so I’m gonna share the highlights of it. A dream came true - playing the WSOP ME 2023 The most famous poker event on the planet, the dream of almost every low-mid stakes professional and even many recreational, definitely my big dream since the time I first learnt that flush beats straight. Last year after a very good spring series (during SCOOP I shipped 2 major Sunday tournaments on ACR) I decided it's time to take the shot and go to Vegas for the first time. The plan was to stay around 2 weeks just the time around the main and play around 7 tournaments. The mini main for 1k was the warm up for the 10k main. As a newbie I didn't have the logistics well planned and ended up waiting like 3 hours in line for buy-in and to get a seat. Insane. Sat down with 30bbs, luckily got some good spots, made a stack and enjoyed the live game. Unfortunately busted right before the bubble. Then the ME started. I jumped in Day 1C full of excitement and enthusiasm. The dream didn't even last 3 full levels. One cooler and one three outer and I was out, losing this super deep stack in the sequence of 2 hands. Man, that felt like sh*t. I didn't even care about the money as much as about the hype, the multi-day challenge and a lot of action. Well, that's poker. It was a really great experience overall. In the end I decided not to play more tournaments and just sat some days on a cash game and then came back to Mexico. WCOOP 2023 Because of a close friend from the Czech Republic, who decided he was gonna get married in one of two busiest months of the year for me, I made the executive decision and played the series from Czech. So a bunch of players travel from Europe to Latin America to play the series and I just did the opposite. The wedding was fun, the grind not so much. I am ready to convince all my good friends to get married anytime except September or May. Finding peace and harmony Very profound experience I had was my first silent meditation retreat. I travelled to the Mexican mountains to spend 3 full days of silence. No communication verbal or non-verbal, no eye contact, all the dopaminergic activities on hold - no phone, coffee, news, masturbation, even a book to read. Just three peaceful days full of meditation practice, nature, yoga, journaling and fresh vegan food. All the junk coming from the outside was cut off. And all the junk stored inside started to release little by little. A beautiful process. The practice is called Hridaya Meditation and it resonated with me a lot. So much, that I went again a couple months ago, this time for a full 7 days of silence. It is like personal self-therapy. I definitely plan to make an annual tradition out of it. Might share a bit more details about this in a future post A first title! The last milestone to share is very recent. This series, which ended a few days ago, I managed to win my first SCOOP title. It was in a 1k Highroller and so far the biggest score of my career. First 6-digit. Besides the fact I was pretty much sun running since the final two tables, I objectively believe I performed my very best in terms of both strategy and mindset. Great accomplishment, feeling and motivation to keep going. Overall, I played the highest ABI of my career so far - around 180usd during the series. And I've never had so much fun playing poker. This year Vegas is not happening. I have planned to escape the hellish temperatures in Playa and come to Czech for two months to spend time with friends and family, go to two EURO24 matches and travel a bit. So that's my summer plan, then back to the Mexican office to get ready for WCOOP. GL to all!

Hey! Thanks for the update — I was always curious what became of you. Just wanted to say thanks for all the excellent content. I made a folder on my computer last year to keep valuable posts as a screenshot. They were really helpful. Regarding your summer plans: PokerStars will exit the Czech market soon. Don’t know what else will change in July, 1st. Keep crushing 😀

You're right — my home country has gradually turned into one of the worst places for online poker... Really unfortunate. I can't wait to return to Mexico.

Reflecting by looking back at 2024 and keep on rolling to 2025

Another year filled with poker passed by. Let me take a moment to pause and reflect a bit on what has happened. It was a year full of ups and downs, new realisations, maturing, growing, working hard and as well having a bunch of fun. First of all I'd like to express a deep gratitude for being able to continue on this challenging path of a professional poker player. All the people around helping me, sharing the emotions of this journey and supporting me. Variance - the inherent part of professional poker - is so difficult for the rational mind to understand and making peace with it is the most challenging task to be constantly fulfilling. Every move up in stakes is making this even more difficult as the higher you play, the harder it is to achieve enough volume. The feedback loop of the game is extremely slow and can easily affect objective decision making. From the truth, from the rational acceptance of the reality, from surrender - from those I want to take off to the new year and keep on with the regular practice of being in the present moment in any possible kind of way at any time. Let me look back at the highs of the last year to celebrate the achievements and success as well as at the lows to learn from them and stay humble. The biggest score of my career and winning a SCOOP title in 1k, runner-up in 215 WCOOP, climbing up in stakes and playing almost 200$ ABI for the whole year (240$ ABI in December), searching the truth and peace inside by attending meditation retreat, getting engaged, making new friends and deepening current relationships, those would be some of the highlights of the year. Speaking of the poker related highs, by which I do not mean the dopamine hits by bluffing big pots, being on a hot run or shipping tournaments, but rather the alignment of my core values with my long term vision and those manifesting in successful moments. A great example of this is the SCOOP title, which the ego is just blown off by, but truthfully from the deep sense of my values and vision I do not care how many trophies I will collect in my career. What do I care about is the growth - the little improvements every day that keep making me a better version of myself. This manifested during the SCOOP series by just sitting down to play a session and having the most fun of my life by solving poker puzzles, battling tough opponents and feeling the balanced mindset during the swings of my stacks during that session. Similarly I would feel during the first week of WCOOP, where I have felt like never before, when I sat down to play - I combined all the knowledge learnt in past years with all the tools disponible and optimised my performance. By sticking to my routine including yoga, meditation, ice bath, healthy eating, etc. I was feeling an incredible mental clarity and totally got into a beast mode. Both physical and cognitive performance that I couldn't even think would be possible in the past. Sitting down to play, facing mental challenges and accessing a flow state when the time just flies by is a similar feeling of accessing a deep meditative state. This is also comparable to long deep study sessions, where it is not about memorising anything but just sharpening the intuition. This as well is a form of being in the present moment, this is the way to combine high performance and peace of mind. But as good as poker can offer to flow in a present moment, as easily it can take one into very dark places. By climbing up in stakes and beating the games there I am fulfilling my long term vision, then it brings the challenge of going through much larger swings than before - during the month of WCOOP I went through almost a 100k swing, when I was up 60k at one point and ended up down more than 30k at the end of the month. I didn't track my results but it was obvious I was swinging down, when bricking all the high stuff. The lesson from this period is not to overestimate my abilities and to be more humble. What happened was I caught a virus in the middle of the series and even though I took three days off instead of one, I still did not adjust enough on playing days by playing lower table count and/or much lower ABI. I simply wasn't able to perform cognitively on the same level, barely played my B game and became much more vulnerable to tilt and mental distortions. After profitable October and November I started adjusting my weekly routine in order to compensate for low playing volume expected in the second half of December. Independently of having very good $ results I started feeling more and more anxious during my sessions. There was a lot of tension and resentment on days, where I couldn't win many pots and the positive feedback loop just seemed invisible. Sometimes I played on study days. I became an enemy of the high variance games on GG, I felt anxious every time I went all-in and I slowly slipped into despair. Switching to autopilot mode, barely playing my C game, identifying with the victimization voice of my mind and beating myself up for mistakes and non-perfection. Everytime winning a pot during this time felt like a huge relief and every time losing it again felt like the end of the world. I started searching for any way to escape the uncomfortable feelings and pain. For the first time in my poker career I got to the point when I wished the session was over in the middle of it. The lesson from those times is to stick with my weekly schedule, acknowledge the urgency to win and let go of it and balance my dopamine levels to avoid seeking the rush and creating expectations. And from a practical perspective to improve the quality of my B-game and C-game, because it is inevitable I will play those from time to time. The variance in poker is going to keep showing up. In single sessions, weeks, months and possibly even years. There are gonna be highs and lows and the bounce back from the lows is the way to progress. This is a reminder for myself - to keep in mind how important it is to stay grounded and not to become egoisticly overconfident when being on upswing, not to miss mindset sessions and the inner work when everything seems to go just well, and understand that rest is as important as hard work to be able to keep improving consistently. High performance and striving to become the best can easily absorb one's identity. That's why I believe it is important to align the poker goals with life values and long term vision. This way one can detach from the short term results. In the end even one year is a very short time for having a sample of MTTs untouched by variance and reflecting on 2024 is just an artificial mind's construct of time. I believe it can fit together - that one can be successful and rich while fulfilled, happy and at peace. This can be achieved by stepping out from the false paradigm and trying to prove myself to someone else by becoming successful and rather finding the motivation and passion from deep inside. Also by comparing myself only to the older version of myself, never to anyone else, because everyone's path is strictly unique. This is my definition of success. This is how I understand the secret to happiness. What is success for when the thought of losing it causes fear and this way robs one of his freedom? What is wealth for when there is no one to share it with? I will end this post with a couple of quotes that I came along the last year and that strongly resonated with me (mostly stoic quotes): ‘Courage. Patience. Fairness. Wisdom. Ego is the enemy. Stillness is the key.’

‘The obstacle to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.’

‘The peace I am looking for is on the other side of the pain I don't want to feel.’ GL in 2025 to all

Meditating my way to the high stakes What’s up poker enthusiasts? Long time now see! A year went by and a lot has happened. I will sum it up in this post as a reflection on this year. Episode 1 - Sht can go down, Sht can go up, either way be ready for that Let’s start with my biggest downswing that lasted from December 2024 for about 3-4 months. I was dialed in, trying to perform my best, climbing slowly the stakes and increasing my ABI and at the same time getting rolled over by variance. I wasn’t really paying attention to the number but still knowing I’m bricking a lot, my cashier balances are getting drained and playing a lot of 500s and 1ks will add up to a decent amount. It ended up being around 120k down. It was indeed a challenging period but what kept me going was the fact EV looked really good and every day I played there was a lot up top - meaning that all I needed was just a couple of binks and I’m out of the downswing. And guess what, that’s exactly what’s happened. I made 2 FTs in 1k tournaments - shipped a Saturday 1k Mystery bounty and came 4th in Sunday 1k GG masters and these 2 scores got me break even at the beginning of April. At this time I was getting ready for SCOOP and GG series coming up in May and planned to attend my third silent meditation retreat. Episode 2 - Life bootcamp aka 10 days of silence The first couple of days were pure struggle - the change of altitude and diet and long hours of sitting and observing my blubbering mind were very exhausting. I kept on meditating and attempting to be present. My head was getting clearer and clearer of thoughts during but I couldn't get as deep in meditation as last year. Quite far from those beautiful blissful states of pure awareness, even further from the very near-to-ego-death experience. Soon I realized there were so many expectations and grasping for those states. Quite the opposite of what meditation is about. I practiced letting go. Till the end of the retreat I liberated myself from the grasping for anything and deep meditations were filled with emptiness and nothingness. As my teacher told me: the spiritual path is not just about bliss and joy. Besides the huge dopamine reset and body cleansing I stripped down of many masks, broke a lot of ego structures, questioned many beliefs as well as gained so much inspiration, shaped my understanding of the world and the meaning of life and opened my heart. Here is a bit of a practical thought that I came up with there about approaching my career. You guessed it - from the present moment. I thought about the approach of Jirka Prochazka in UFC - he drills, trains hard, keeps his mind sharp, meditates, spends time in nature and then he gets to the octagon and just feels the moment, trust his intuition and muscle memory, not thinking about what punch or kick he should do now. Just goes with the flow. Episode 3 - Poker, poker and poker After a summer dedicated to traveling, friends and family, including a Czech-Mex wedding in my country - a time of my life - I got back to the office for WCOOP and GG series and jumped on the highest schedule of my career so far. Played a lot of 2Ks and 3Ks and the best 5Ks and at the end the 10K Main Event as well. Lots of fun runs, one WCOOP trophy in a 200 field 1k BI and also quite a lot of pressure and stress jumping on all this high stuff for the first time. Actually ended up the month break even but gained a lot of valuable experience which paid off later. After the series ended but a lot of HS action on GG still kept on I managed to ship a 2-Day 5k event and make a FT in 10k GG millions, which I busted in last place - but again a valuable experience. I also had a bunch of fun in the live poker streets. Decided to go to Panama for the WSOP-C series with some friends and made it to the final table of the Main Event. Unfortunately the ring went to someone else but for me it was a very first experience in live poker and reminded me of my humble beginnings of live cash game 0.5/1$ back in the days of my first shots at professional poker. I really enjoy the different aspects of edges in the live environment despite the challenge of the slow action compared to multi-tabling online. Best of luck to the new year, grind hard & stay present! My graph for last 365 days

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Amazing progression man, so inspiring to see someone stick to his goals and vision over multiple years, slowly getting there year by year. Sicko graph ofc, gl for 2026.

Ups & Downs on ABI500+ - two different experiences during spring and winter series

Still battling in the high stakes fields and this year I tasted both sides of the variance. Let’s start retrospectively and on the positive notes. This is my graph of the SCOOP Pokerstars series and GG World Festival.

() For around 6 weeks I was having a complete blast. Enjoying every small battle, feeling energized throughout every session, making huge stacks, a bunch of final tables on those small HS fields (and a few of the big ones as well!). I prepared in a detail and followed my routines, aimed for optimizing sleep, diet, exercise and supplementation, owning every morning and didn’t experience almost any FOMO (which I used to a lot and it was almost always detrimental for me during past series), the hot runs and high schedule helped for that and keeping the sessions quite short as a natural result of that, therefore kept my energy levels up to the final weekend of the main events. I remember thinking how ridiculous it is, that after a couple of weeks I barely had a losing session! Variance was treating me well. One of my days off I was so excited about the game but didn’t consider to play a whole session a max EV decision for the long run, so I just max late registered two high stakes tourneys (1k and 1.5k) from my sofa and ended up moving to my office for the FT of the 1.5k and taking it down. Well that’s just enough of open bragging. The reality slap came during the WCOOP Pokerstars and GG Online WSOP, which I started off by winning 100k the first Sunday and 50k the following Tuesday. See the final result yourself.

() After the first two scores the variance hit hard. After a few weeks of swinging down, I remembered the upswing during the last spring and how I was telling myself to stay grounded, that this is not the reality of poker and the variance will come back to get sooner or later. Just as I had barely a losing session in spring, I had barely a winning one in autumn. My overall performance was solid - definitely in the beginning - and started dropping towards the end of the series. I tried to keep the same routine as before, yet I experienced very different sensations - a lot of tiredness and low energy levels. The mind can be powerful. A lot of frustration and negative self-talk just slowly drained me out. One practical detail that I shouldn’t have done was switching to 5 playing days / week already from the first week of the GG series , so stretching the series to 6 weeks. Normally I would do that with Pokerstars starting the action. That probably impacted me later. A bit of variance there too, since I made it semi deep in several flights of Days 1 and didn’t qualify, which made me play longer sessions every day. Anyway it was a very painful experience swinging 250k in 6 weeks. Towards the end I didn’t enjoy playing and felt like I wanted to be over with the session. This is a huge red flag for me. The joy of solving spots and having fun at the tables is one of the biggest drivers for me. It’s important to be grateful about those undesired outcomes as well, first of all for just being able to battle the streets and then for the reality slap. Being treated too kindly by variance can easily make a poker player to be overconfident and go soft. So now the plan is to take some time off and then bounce back and keep working on my game. Stay tuned for the 2026 sum up and my whole year graph at the end of the year (or at the beginning of the next one). GL!

Hey, I can't make out the average entrants on that SharkScope screenshot, but isn't 1.2-1.4k MTTs a fairly noisy sample where almost anything can happen, particularly in games with very small ROIs? The more tournaments I play, the more I feel variance is hugely underestimated when people draw conclusions or evaluate their own play. Also, do you sell or swap action, or do you just absorb all the variance with your own bankroll? Thanks for sharing your journey here — not many are open about their careers anymore on public forums like 2+2 sadly. Best of luck!