The Professor Challenge – Day 17: Smooth Session, Bigger Adjustments
Updated: Oct 16
💰 Bankroll Progress
Starting Bankroll: 1,525.18 DC
Ending Bankroll: 1,656.83 DC
Session Result: +131.65 DC
Challenge Status: A smooth, profitable session and another step forward in adapting to the Red Dragon field.
📖 Table of Contents
🎯 A Smooth Session for Once
Today’s session was pretty smooth — I wish they were all like this. After the giant pots and brutal swings of the previous days, Day 17 felt much more controlled from beginning to end.
I am also starting to feel that the concepts from the previous sessions are becoming more automatic. That includes the technical adjustments, but just as importantly the mindset side: accepting variance, staying patient and avoiding the temptation to change the plan because of one bad hand.
If you missed the previous entries, read Day 16, Day 15, and our Red Dragon Poker overview for more context on the field and the unusual structure of these games.
⚙️ A New Preflop Sizing Adjustment
The main technical change I am testing is preflop sizing. With marginal hands, I am currently opening to around 4.5 big blinds from any position. With premium hands, I am increasing the open to around 9.5 big blinds.
That is obviously a very large difference in sizing, and in a tougher environment it would immediately become a problem. But the average player in these micro-stakes games appears to focus much more on the strength of their own hand than on what my sizing is saying about my range.
The purpose is simple: keep the pot more manageable with the weaker part of my opening range, while extracting much more value when I hold hands that dominate the very loose calling ranges I am seeing.
🧠 Why It Works Here — and Why It Would Fail Higher
I would never assume that this strategy is universally good. Against attentive regulars, using one size for marginal hands and another for premium hands would make my range much easier to read and exploit.
The reason I am willing to test it here is that the player pool behaves very differently. Many opponents are calling very wide preflop regardless of size, and a large part of their decision-making seems centered on their own cards rather than on constructing my range.
That makes this an exploit rather than a theoretical default. If the population starts reacting to the sizing, the strategy has to change immediately.
📈 Confidence, Mindset and More Volume
The other positive sign from Day 17 is that I am becoming more comfortable with the entire environment. The strange stack depths, the huge preflop sizes and the extremely loose ranges no longer feel surprising.
The next objective is straightforward: keep playing this way, continue refining the adjustments and increase my volume even further. The more hands I collect, the easier it will be to separate a genuinely profitable exploit from something that only looks good over a short sample.
📺 Watch the Full Session
The complete Day 17 session is available on The Poker Broker YouTube channel below.
🎓 Technical Comment by Marchese del River
The most interesting element of Day 17 is the split preflop sizing. In a vacuum, opening marginal hands to 4.5BB and premium hands to 9.5BB is highly exploitable because the sizing itself communicates information about range strength.
However, exploitative poker is about responding to what opponents actually do, not what they should do. If this pool genuinely calls far too much and pays little attention to sizing, increasing the price with premium hands can extract extra value immediately.
The danger is turning a population read into a rigid rule. Even weak players can eventually notice patterns, and not every opponent with a high VPIP reacts the same way. Position also matters: opening marginal hands from early position simply because the smaller size feels safer can still create difficult postflop situations.
So the adjustment is reasonable as a field-specific experiment, but it should remain flexible. Track who reacts to the larger size, who calls regardless, and whether the extra value with premiums outweighs the information being revealed. The moment the pool starts adapting, the sizing strategy has to become less transparent.
📲 Follow the Challenge on Telegram
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💭 Final Thoughts
Day 17 was the kind of session every grinder wants: relatively smooth, technically useful and profitable. The bankroll moved from 1,525.18 DC to 1,656.83 DC, a gain of +131.65 DC.
More importantly, I feel that the previous lessons are beginning to connect. The mindset is improving, the Red Dragon field feels increasingly familiar, and I now have another exploitative adjustment to test over a larger sample.
The next step is volume. Keep the discipline, keep collecting hands, and see whether these adjustments continue to hold up.
The Bankroll Challenge continues.
