Welcome to The Flip Flop Grind
Welcome to the blog. I'm starting this for one reason: I want to climb from low stakes online poker all the way to high stakes, and I'd rather do it in public than in private. Receipts, screenshots, downswings, the lot.
If you're here for sanitized "I made $10k my first month" content, this isn't that. This is the actual grind — documented honestly, week by week, however long it takes.
Who I am and why Ibiza
I live in Ibiza. Most people picture this place as nothing but clubs and overpriced beach clubs, and yeah, that exists. But there's another Ibiza — quiet mornings, long swims, cheap menú del día spots inland, and the kind of headspace that's genuinely good for sitting down and grinding hands.
Poker drew me in because it rewards exactly the things I'm trying to build: patience, emotional control, and thinking clearly under pressure. The fact that I can play it from a laptop on this island is a bonus I don't take for granted.
The goal
High stakes. Not "comfortable mid stakes." Not "covering rent." I want to be sitting in the games where the money actually matters and the players are sharks, and I want to belong there.
I'm starting at NL10. That's the honest truth. Everyone who eventually plays high stakes started somewhere low — the difference is whether you have the discipline and the study habits to actually move up.
The path looks like this:
- NL10 → NL25 → NL50 → NL100 — the foundation stakes. This is where you prove you can beat the game, not just run hot.
- NL200 → NL500 — mid stakes. The skill jump here is real and a lot of grinders stall out forever at this level.
- NL1k and beyond — the actual destination.
No timeline. I'm not going to tell you I'll be at NL500 by Christmas because I don't know that, and anyone who pretends to know is lying. What I can promise is the rules I'll follow to move up: a real win rate over a real sample, proper bankroll, and zero shot-taking-and-praying.
I'll publish my results every month. Graphs, win rates, hands played, the lot. If I'm stuck at a stake for six months, you'll see that too.
The strategy
Three pillars. That's it.
1. Volume with intent. I'm targeting 20,000+ hands a month. But volume without review is just gambling faster. Every session ends with at least 15 minutes flagging hands I wasn't sure about.
2. Study more than most people do. Roughly 1 hour of study per 3 hours of play. Solver work, range drilling, watching better players think out loud. I'll share what's actually moving the needle and what's a waste of time.
3. Bankroll rules I don't break. 30 buy-ins minimum to play a stake, drop down at 20. This is the single rule most people break when they're losing — which is exactly when you can't afford to. Shot-taking has its place, but only with money I can lose without flinching.
Moving-up criteria
So I don't fool myself: I only move up a stake when I've hit 30 buy-ins for the next level AND posted a positive win rate over at least 30,000 hands at the current one. Both, not either.
What this blog will be
Weekly updates on hands played, results, what I'm studying, and what Ibiza life looks like around it. Occasional deeper posts on strategy concepts I'm working on. Honest writing about variance and the mental side, which is the part nobody talks about enough.
If any of that sounds interesting, stick around. Next post drops in a week with my starting bankroll, the sites I'm playing on, and the tracking setup I'm using.
Let's see how far this goes.