Charles Hawk: In which division are you in at the moment?

307th: 300s division, they have a rule you can qualify with EV results from battling against higher divisions, so I automatically qualified.

Charles Hawk: How long have you battled 1ks? What was your first impression of the field when you started your shots? How has it changed over time?

307th: I've been battling since April. My first impression was that it wasn't that much harder than 200s, since there were players with leaks similar to what I saw at 200s, but as I played more I realized that it was harder than I first thought because the players were overall quite a lot better postflop at the things that aren't obvious from looking at a HUD.

Comparing today to when I started, it's not a big difference, but people have gotten better and some of the weaker players have stopped playing. I've gotten better too, so I'm not worried about it.

Charles Hawk: Any differences with shot-taking 1ks compared with other levels? Were there any aspects that you didn't expect to face?

307th: Well, people are better. It's very rare to see major mistakes preflop or postflop, it happened somewhat more often at 200s and way more often at 60s-100s (although I'm sure 60s-100s have gotten better since I played them since that was over a year ago). The rake is a lot less at 1ks than at 200s and below, but my EV is still lower than it was at all the previous stakes. That's not to say people are unbeatable at 1ks, it's just harder.

So far the money/swings haven't been a problem, I went on a $95k downswing at one point but I kept playing through it and ended the downswing with a +$42k day which was nice. Psychologically I just don't perceive it the same as I perceive money in a day-to-day fashion so it doesn't get to me that much, although the $95k downswing wasn't fun of course.

Charles Hawk: Who is giving you the hardest time?

307th: TCfromUB. Roughly speaking there are 3 kinds of players in 1ks, players who try to play as close as possible to GTO, players who try to play exploitatively, and players who are somewhere inbetween. The players who try to play balanced/GTO are the most difficult for me to play because I feel uncomfortable playing someone when I don't feel like I have a significant edge on them. IMO TC is the best gto player in 1ks, so he is the one I least enjoy playing against.

I don't mind playing the good exploitative players as much because I still can get edges on them, which makes me feel more comfortable playing against them.

That said I don't think playing as close as possible to GTO is better than exploitative play, it means you won't lose as much when playing someone better than you, but if your aim is to be better than people and beat them then I think both styles are valid but exploitative is a bit better. Also it's definitely possible to beat GTO players, since even playing close to true GTO is completely impossible for a human. I think most people don't realize how complicated GTO is.

Charles Hawk: What are your results so far? Against which players are you winning and losing the most? Any players that gave up/would let you in if it would be up to them?

307th: I try not to pay attention to individual results, because you never get a big enough sample for them to matter. Even if you play 2k games vs someone there's still going to be a lot of variance there, and a lot of people start making judgments over as little as 500 games where the results are pretty much meaningless.

I always try to just look at my overall results at the stake. If you start reading into little things then you will end up finding patterns where there aren't any.

There are already a few people who want me in, I don't think they have "given up" though, they just want me in because they think I'm good and want good players to get in. Overall I've been getting to opensit lobbies more lately though. People leave more often when I ask them to play and when I opensit 1ks I generally opensit for longer before someone comes on and wants to play. So people might be realizing that playing me is pretty -ev.

Charles Hawk: Why are you confident about getting in?

307th: I'm partially staked and beating them for more than the rake. Even if my EV falls slightly into the negatives I'll still be profiting after rakeback. Even if I have an extreme runbad stretch I can still stay at the 1ks due to staking. I'm also very stubborn, so I'm not going to move down because of swings or because they refuse to let me in. So basically they have no way of getting rid of me.

Charles Hawk: How differerent are the various 1ks regs? Do you see lots of dyfferent styles or maybe more-or-less the same good adaptive math/gto-based game with a great dose of creativity?

307th: Well there are still tendencies like whether someone errs on the side of being loose or tight, or aggressive or passive.

Another thing is where they are on the GTO - exploitative spectrum. Some guys are comfortable going pretty far off of what GTO is because they are confident (rightly or wrongly) that they can adjust if their opponent starts exploiting them. Others try to stay as close as possible to GTO besides maybe trying to go for some herocalls postflop if they feel like you're bluffing.

And of course there will always be leaks, so people differ in what their leaks are.

Charles Hawk: Do you have any schedule how to structuring your time in 1k shoting? What is your playing-studying ratio?

307th: My playing-studying ratio is generally 100% either way. Most days I will either only play, or only study. I've taken 2-3-week breaks to study twice while battling 1ks.

My overall playing-studying ratio is hard to estimate but it's probably something like 65% playing, 35% studying overall.