This week, the PocketFives.com Podcast sponsored by the USA-friendly online poker room Carbon Poker welcomes two mid-stakes grinders to the show, shanetrain22 and funnygut. Both discuss moving up in the online poker world and provide suggestions for improving the mid-stakes experience across the industry’s largest sites. Listeners are in store for a treat, as shanetrain22 and funnygut field PocketFives.com member questions in tandem. Let’s recap this very unique show.

A Columbus, Ohio native, shanetrain22 (pictured at left) reveals how he started up the online poker ladder: “I started with $1 45-mans on PokerStars and grinded 12 tables of those for a while. I started going into the $4.40 180-mans and they were just so super soft and so profitable that I stuck with those for a while.” He took down the Full Tilt Poker $35,000 Guaranteed one month ago for $8,400 and, back in September, emerged victorious in the site’s $25,000 Super Turbo KO for $12,000.
Meanwhile, funnygut explained to the listening audience of the PocketFives.com Podcast what makes him tick: “I’m a grinder. I’m willing to put the time and energy into playing a lot of tournaments. I want to play what’s profitable and what I can do well at. As experience comes and as scores come, I can move up.” In November, he won the PokerStars $80,000 Guaranteed for $19,000 and also has victories in the Stars $3.30 rebuy and $30,000 Guaranteed to his name.

Despite his success on PokerStars, funnygut has placated Full Tilt Poker plenty as well. On suggestions for improving the world’s second largest online poker site, funnygut explained, “Most mid-stakes grinders that I talk to feel like tournaments on Full Tilt get really shallow stacked late. We’d like to see a slower structure to get more play out of your stack so there’s not as high variance. In terms of adding tournaments, I feel like PokerStars is lacking at the mid-range buy-ins.” Appropriately, in his profile on PocketFives.com, funnygut lists his favorite tournament game as “telling shanetrain22 how badly i run all day and then binking.”

How do these two grinders of the game deal with variance, which affects players at all levels? shanetrain22 told the PocketFives.com Podcast, “I try to look at it from the right perspective and understand that MTTs have a ton of variance. It takes a lot of experience to let that settle in. All you have to do is be realistic about it, keep putting in volume, and keep getting better.” He realistically added, “Everyone’s always reading about people getting their big start by getting a big score in the Sunday Million or $750K. It just depends on how things work out for you.”

To put this duo’s grinding prowess in perspective, shanetrain22 racked up $33,000 in tournaments that are tracked for the Online Poker Rankings in 111 qualifying cashes in January. Meanwhile, funnygut amassed $43,000 in earnings last month from a whopping 145 in the money finishes. Together, they piled up $76,000 in 256 January cashes, or an average of $300 each. Check out the rest of this week’s PocketFives.com Podcast.

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