Hmm, where to start?
I’m a 19 (almost) year old student from Switzerland (not the “German”-speaking part, thankfully) , and I discovered Hold’em about a year ago, when we started playing in between lessons for a few cents. I realized there was a lot of money to be made by just learning the game, and a little later, by searching a bit on internet6, I came across PokerStrategy. I started off very slowly, didn’t play too much, and I was just generating rake on micro-stakes FL. Went broke once or twice, and didn’t learn very much.

Several months later, around December I guess, I decided to play more seriously. I had about 200$ from TAF. I played a few low-stake SNG’s, and was up to about 300$. I then got lucky in a big tournament, won 2600$, and with that I had the bankroll to play NL50 SH. It took a little getting used to, but shortly after I was winning about 5.5-6ptBB/100. I’ve since moved up to NL100, and even though variance is killing me on my first 22k+ hands, I hope I’ll have enough progress to write about here

Now since you’re here, you probably have nothing much to do, so I figure you won’t be too bored to read about my goals in poker :D. Well mainly it’s all about improving my game. Being good enough to beat whatever limit I can afford, and make a decent profit, enough to live off of eventually. It isn’t particularly urgent, I still have over a year of studies in front of me, so I can play with no pressure, just to get better. At the moment I’m concentrating on SH NL, but I also play a little Pot-Limit Omaha (Hi mostly), and I think I’ll try speed SNG’s again, see if I can make a decent profit there. HU NL is also something I’d like to try, but Party doesn’t offer that, so maybe I’ll give it a shot if I move to stars…

Anyway, thanks to Puschkin for inviting me to blog here, and I hope y’all enjoy reading about my adventures

My first post in this blogsection.

Let me first tell something about myself. I’m a 22 year old dutch guy, I currently live in Nijmegen, but I’m planning on emigrating in a couple of months. I play poker for a living, since working is not an option. I’m not willing to work for less then 50% of what I make by playing poker, so there isn’t a job out there that is good enough for me. What I believe is, that if I ever want to become one of the best poker players in the world, I have to play as much as possible (which is about 40-50 hours a week), and study 5-10 hours a week too. I’m sure that v. Nistelrooy would never have played for Real Madrid if he went to school 5 days a week untill he was 24, and I believe the same thing applies for poker players. Next week I will start coaching for pokerstrategy members. In this first post I will explain something about what limits I play, what my next goal will be, and I will say something about my approach to poker in general.

For me, poker is a strategy game like all other strategy games. If I play civilization 4 (turn based strategy game for the pc), I’m trying to maximize the chances that I win, and if I don’t win, I know I did everything I could in order to win. Sometimes you need to be aggressive, build a lot of units, and launch an attack, sometimes it’s better to wait for better times, and defend in order to win. While playing poker, I block results. I’m not bothered if people suck out on me, because I know those people pay for the breakfast I’m eating, and payed for the screen I’m looking at. Therefore I try to play my best game everyday, and grind myself towards a good avg. profit.

I can certainly say that I moved up very fast. Little over 4 months ago I posted a question in the beginners forum, concerning my initial 50$, now poker is my job, and I make more money then many university graduates make. At the moment, I play 27$ turbo s&g’s, which is way below my bankroll (I have enough to play 55+5$), because I’m very strict, and because I only moved up from 16$ a week ago. I want to have a good sample of hands, so I’m sure my ROI is at least 10 at this limit (after 400 games my ROI is 20), and let people review my play in my coachings. I want to make it to the 8K mark (for which i need to make little less then 3K) in february.

I play ten tables at a time, on two monitors, and manage to have reads on my opponents. I don’t use stats yet, because it’s not really necessary at this limit, and I trust my reads over the stats anyway. I will start using stats before I move up to 35+3$ s&g’s. My bankroll doesn’t grow very fast, because I cash out 1500$ each month, for living expenses. I only pay 120$ for rent, and I don’t spend so much money anyway, so 1000EU a month is already more then enough for me. However, the goal for this year, is to make at least 10.000 euro’s a month from december on.

A couple of days ago I started playing cashgames, because I will soon have enough bankroll to play NL600, the only NL cashgame limit my local casino offers, and I’d like to play in that fishtank. However, I need to practice, therefore I started playing NL100SH, without stats, to try and learn how to play cash. It wasn’t my first cashgame ever, but I didn’t play a lot until now, and only on low limits. Thanks to Swissmoumout for teaching me the basics of NLSH. It wasn’t easy, but I’m a quick learner, and I can certainly use my tournament experience too at shorthanded cashgames.

Now for poker in general. Ps.com teaches us profitable strategies, and tells us how to play s&g’s, bss and sss. However, at some point it’s also important to get “the big picture”. What is this game really about?

In poker, the money in your BR is what you use to make more money. In starcraft, or any other strategy game, you use your units to occupy parts of the map, in order to make more units. I look at the money in my BR as soldiers, who can occupy territory were we can draft more soldiers. If we have a large army, it’s not smart to go to a land that doesn’t have many resources, since we could easily occupy lands that are rich of resources with a large army. On the other hand, we don’t want to go to a land that is too rich of resources, since it will attract larger armies, and larger armies have better army generals. Some people make general because they are born to be a general. They have a lot of money, and can start a war with as many soldiers as they want. Some started out as a small state, and occupied so much land that they can now draft large armies. Which do you want to be, the first one, or the second one? I know I want to be the first one, and that’s why I stick to a very strict brm. I’m satisfied if I conquer a relatively small land every month, and I won’t risk my empire to occupy any land. I started out as a gladiator, and I made it to centurion already. My goal is to rule the world, and I will keep training myself to be a better army commander, and will try to fight my way to the first place in the world championship.

It’s easy to see why poker attract so many people. In many games, you have to fight your way up the ladder to reach the top. You can’t buy yourself into the starting line-up of Manchester United. You have to prove yourself as a player, and it’s up to the coach whether you play or not. In poker, you can buy yourself to the top. Many people buy into the world championship while they don’t belong to the top players. Of course this is a great thing for the professional players, since they are better, and their chances to win improve if there are more players who don’t know how to play. That’s why professional poker is certainly an easier goal to reach then, f.e., professional football. In a league with professional teams and amateur teams, the professional teams have better odds to win then in a professional league. We always play in a mixed league, where, if we draw against the other big professional teams, and win against the amateurs, we are winners.

I hope you learned something, and I hope I inspired you.

Ill keep you updated about how I’m doing in my career.

Nick

Hey ,

been a month or so since my last update. During that month i faced my biggest downswing ever ( Bad luck at first which resulted in tilt and bad plays) but i overcame it very fast thanks to some marathon sessions , my BR kept growing and i started taking shots on NL1K to the point where now it has become the limit i play mostly. I d say the step from NL600 to NL1K is the hardest in my career so far , since there seems to be a big gap in skill. And the fact that i have gotten stacked 5x with AA doesnt help either .

My style has become a bit looser , playing and stealing with more hands. I seem to also have developped some leaks where i stick it in too light preflop sometimes , i guess i m still learning the aggresiveness of the limit. Anyway , i havent accomplished much bankroll wise in february so far , and i also had to cash out half my roll which means i have to avoid huge swings.

Concerning non poker stuff , i spend a lot of time playing halo 3 online , being with my gf , watching movies , driving and sleeping. I do not have any incentive atm to study for my exams which is a bit worrisome but whatever. I have always been a pretty lazy person anyway. I think i am gonna start travelling a bit using my poker income.

Anyway , gl hf etc.

Well, the downswing continued, and for bankrollmanagement and confidence purposes I moved down to NL100 again, at least temporary. But all in all, this horrible period has made me a better player. I recognized that I still had a lot to learn despite the stakes I played, and also, that you can never take your poker winnings for granted, because you have to work on your game each and every day. That realization was worth more to me than a 1000$ profit session. Don’t think that, because you were crushing the lower stakes, you’ll have an easy break on the midstakes too and poker is easy money. It’s not.

I wrote myself a message on a piece of paper and attached it to my computer screen. So far it’s been working, because I’m gradually recovering from the losses I had in the last weeks. It says: “You don’t need proof when you have instinct”, and is aimed at those times when I suspected that I was beat, but didn’t listen because “surely, I couldn’t have gotten outdrawn again”. It comes from Reservoir Dogs, one of my favourite movies. I think that message is going to stay there for a while, because since it’s hanging there, I’ve been gradually climbing out of the well. Superstition maybe, but I’m not taking my lucky paper away anymore! :p

Now that I know how brutal those shorthanded downswings, spiced up with a little bit of tilt, can become, I’m going to move up to NL200 again only when I have at least 30-35 buyins. Chances are likely that I’ll receive my college tuition shortly. Then, I can reinvest in my bankroll what I had cashed out before, which is good enough to make me overrolled for NL200. I hope then to be launched permanently as a winning midstakes player, and who knows where we go from there. My ambition is to become financially indepent by playing poker by September of this year, and I hope I can make it.

My exams went so-so, I flunked my first one pretty bad, which has never happened to me before. But seriously, it was just ridiculously difficult (especially if you never went to class during the semester :p). Other than that, I think the rest went decent, so with a little luck, I just have one re-examination. It’d be the first time in my life that I have to retake a course, but as long it’s only one, I don’t really care.

I think I studied more for poker than for my courses in the last few weeks, because my learning:playing ratio has never been this high. I usually watch 5 or 6 video’s a week now, which is far more than in my NL400 period, and in December, I joined coaching sessions on PS for the first time. I have to admit that I had never did that before, but I wish I had because they’re really helpful. I therefore recommend everyone whose ambition is to play NL200 and above to be as prepared as possible, because there you’ll find the first real tough players.

I resigned from my weekend-job too, just because I didn’t feel like doing it anymore. Getting up every Saturday at 5AM for the last 5 years to pile up some cases of beer, wine, etc: No thank you, I was fed up with it: it hampered my social life on Friday night, I was tired at Saturdays, and stapling beer cases isn’t exactly the most exciting activity. Though the collegues were great and the pay was good, I can make more a month by playing poker, which I like to do more than some boring storehouse job. I’m doing some PS-work now, and I like it: I became a hand judge for the new Dutch community, which is fun. So if you’re Dutch and reading this: stop by on the Dutch forum in the NL BSS Strategy section and confront me with some difficult spots

To conclude this blog, I was never a huge fan of the saying “Good luck at the tables” (some certain headadmin would disagree with me ;)), because luck is irrelevant in the long run. After this bad period I’m even more positive that luck is irrelevant (though you would expect the contrary). Don’t wish a poker player good luck, tell him to play well.

So: Play well at the tables, and till next time.

Jeroen

Hello everyone and happy new year!

I have not updated this in a while since i didnt have anything to write about really. I took a christmas break from poker for about 10 days , i was probably worn out by the mass 3k hand sessions i played at the mid of december to reach deuce status. My christmas was rather boring since i didn’t go anywhere and just hanged out with girlfriend and friends. I am at a pretty bored phase atm in general , i think i have to find some activities asap. I am pretty close to finishing my uni studies but i don’t really like it and don’t intend to follow it as a profession anyway , especially when you have to work your ass off for 600 euros a month. But i guess it has to be done eventually , and maybe get a job as a hobby for socializing purposes.

Anyway i am now  officially a NL600 player (only after 35k hands on NL400 but i still delayed it a lot bankroll wise) and my first session was great , 18.5PTBB over 1.5k hands. Even my AF was decent .I find myself a bit too passive sometimes and i realize that it has to change as i rise on limits. Still not very comfortable with making many moves though. Have some trouble spotting major fishes , almost every table is full of regulars and the bad players are in high demand since the waiting lists on their tables are full ^^.

I have a couple of interesting hands. The first one is the biggest bluff i ve ever pulled. I invested 2 NL400 stacks. Opponent was a maniac and we were playing on the table for like 3 hours and he gave me way too much action whenever i raised , he frequently donk overbet flop of low cards and i was playing rather conservatively against him. His small bet on the river screamed blockbet and i decided to push. (His WTSD was rather low).

Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd, hands go to http://www.pokerstrategy.com/en/articles/182/?referer=grabem_hand)
MP3 (806.71)
CO (0)
SB (897.40)
BU (822)
BB (563)

2/4 No-Limit Hold’em (5 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with 8c, 9c
Hero raises to $14.00, 2 folds, SB calls $12.00, BB folds.

Flop: ($32.00) 8d, Kh, 3h (2 players)
SB checks, Hero bets $22, SB raises to $44.00, Hero calls $22.00.

Turn: ($120.00) Jd (2 players)
SB bets $60, Hero raises to $180.00, SB calls $120.00.

River: ($480.00) 5h (2 players)
SB bets $84, Hero raises to $568.71 (All-In), SB folds.

Final Pot: $1132.71

I took the rest of his chips on the very next hand , with my QQ vs his TT . He left the table and then so did the rest of his hunters. I love it when that happens ~~.

The 2nd hand i played today and was the biggest pot ive won so far. We were both a bit deep so i decided to play my FD + gutshot passively on the flop since i got the odds , and after a long consideration i decided to call him on the turn as well because he showed a lot of strength on the first 2 streets and i was easily getting the odds if he fired a 3rd barrel. I am not really sure though if he would fire again if the club came , and i also am not sure in any case whether i had to play check/raise on the river or lead myself. In any case it ended up good for me but i guess it troubles me a bit ^^.
Known players: (for a description of vp$ip, pfr, ats, folded bb, af, wts, wsd, hands go to http://www.pokerstrategy.com/en/articles/182/?referer=grabem_hand)
SB (949.55)
BB (591.40)
MP2 (0)
CO (521.77)
BU (875.79)
MP3 (902.35)

3/6 No-Limit Hold’em (6 handed)
Hand recorder used for this poker hand: Texas Grabem 1.9 by www.pokerstrategy.com.

Preflop: Hero is MP3 with Jc, 7c
MP2 folds, Hero raises to $21.00, CO folds, BU calls $21.00, 2 folds.

Flop: ($51.00) As, 9c, Tc (2 players)
Hero bets $35, BU raises to $130.00, Hero calls $95.00.

Turn: ($311.00) 4s (2 players)
Hero checks, BU bets $200, Hero calls $200.00.

River: ($711.00) 8d (2 players)
Hero checks, BU bets $524.79 (All-In), Hero calls $524.79.

Final Pot: $1760.58
Anyway , that’s it for now. Good luck and have fun at the tables