Hello Guys, Ivan Zarate here writing up a little bit about my life. I hope you like it and hope this thread is helpful to you as much as i hope it will to me.
My name is Ivan Zarate, i was born and raised in Mexico City and i was extremely lucky and blessed to move to the USA in early to mid 2000's as a young guy in mexico i was extremely passionate about soccer. My life revolved around it and it was CRAZY how much i loved the game. i got a scholarship to play soccer in a division 1 school and life was going amazingly. One day my roommate invited me to go out to a poker game. All i knew about poker was what my grandma told me... i get 5 cards round of betting, i discard whatever i want ... round of betting and VOILA best 5 card hand wins the pot.... well surprise surprise that this poker game was nothing like that. It obviously was Texas hold-them. i put in my $10 dollar buy in and there i was playing my 1st poker tournament... some how i took 2nd place to win 20 bucks and man was i on top of the world. That night my roommate and i created accounts on poker sites and thats how i started playing poker on a regular basis.
My life consisted on couple things.
1 SOCCER, this was always my passion and my main goal was to become a professional soccer player one day, my chances looked good so this was my main focus
2 POKER since that day i was playing poker daily at least 3 hours a day, grinding anything, from cash to tournaments to sit&go's it was an obsession
3 SCHOOL blahh.... school was there because if i didnt keep up my grades i didnt keep my soccer scholarship and my chances to become a pro would be out the window so i had to commit a bit to school..
By the start of my senior year of college (2011) poker started to turn around on an amazing way. Ive had some success playing online but nothing to crazy, making about 300 to 600 a month, maybe 1k on a good month, and this came after various deposits and accounts that i busted.. but one day all changed, i went on the heater of a life time, making 6 figures in a very very very short time. I had more money that i could imagine. My account went from 4k to almost 65k on the blink of an eye. Life was great and I thought had it all figured out, but man was i wrong... i never had any Bank Roll management. I was playing games that were completely out of my roll and my league... i was a competent player but far far far from being an elite or even a decent player... i got to play 25-50 HU vs isildur1 at 1 point ( 1 buy in) and was gone in a matter of seconds and to top it all off after loosing a huge amount of money, black Friday hit. i lost everything i had that day. My life turned 180 that moment, i lost over 4/5 of my roll online, and the rest was frozen for a long long long time.....
Fast Foward to 2013 Barely playing any poker
After moving to Wichita Kansas to follow my dream to become a professional soccer player my life turned around again. After my pro try out, and making the reserve team, a huge back injury crushed my dreams and my life once again was devastated. I had to get a job at Kay Jewelers to survive and support my wife ( also got married in 2011, ****ing crazy year ) after couple months of working there, i started going to the local casino, grinding 1/3 NL and 1/2/5 PLO AND PLO H/L after couple sessions i ran up a decent 6k bankroll, i started playing more and more and more and my roll kept growing and growing. at one point i had 20k cash sitting in front of me and i was once again living the life i always wanted to live. I quit my job and my wife and I decided to Travel all over the country to look for a place to settle down.
My wife, a travel nurse at the time, got contracts in many many places, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Colorado, Texas, Nevada, and many more. We traveled for 4 years and she did her thing and i just grinded away in home games and casinos. life was starting to take off, we finally were making enough money to travel the world, buy the cars we wanted, live in places we wanted, have luxuries that years and months before we couldnt even think about buying. Life was amazing, we both were making very decent money and my roll kept growing and growing. I started loving poker more and more and now with soccer being out of the picture, a new passion and love was born. I really got into poker, started studying 24/7 watching videos, reading hand histories, listening to pros, really getting involved in the poker world, networking on the poker scene and making friends with people i looked up to, bracelet winners and cash professionals that tough me many things, from what is like to travel tournament circuits and sell action, to cash game strategies that i would of never though about. My poker game was peaking and i was loving life. But again a little nemesis showed up..... BANKROLL MANAGEMENT !!
this time was different because i had the discipline to play in games that i was rolled for, or buy in tournaments while selling action and decreasing my variance. But like i said, we were living the life. I started giving my wife things that, sure were unnecessary but fed my ego as a provider, jewelry, trips to Colombia, Germany, Netherlands, Canada, Mexico, snowboarding trips, luxuries that we never had and we both wanted, unnecessary gadgets like newest phones out and coolest electronics out . I DO NOT REGRET any of this things we did, life is to live and enjoy and all the things we have done are forever treasured and would not change them for anything. But today life is a bit different. I dont know if i got comfortable with my poker abilities, i dont know if the game is evolving and i am getting stuck right now, i dont know if i am just on the worst downswing of my life, but now LIFE is a bit different that it was before.
We have settled down in RENO NEVADA... we truly love it here, we live 15 minutes from a ski resort that we use almost daily during the winter and we live 35 minutes from lake TAHOE ( most beautiful place ever) my wife and i are very happy with the decision we have made. but like i said, my poker game is not the same as it was, i seem to not crush like i was before, I just had the worst summer ive ever had, lost almost my entire roll, i started ubering and taking a part time dealing job is very very possible. I still love the grind, i still am as committed to the game as ive ever been. But i seem to not be able to win at the rate i was winning before, since the WSOP ive struggled to put 3 winning sessions in a row. i just dont know what has happened.
I think me starting to play more and more tournaments has to do with it alot. I am HIGHLY aware that i am not a professional tourney player, i am aware that varience in tourneys is way way higher, but since WSOP it has been torture. getting KO in the most ridiculous ways affected me alot. I will be the first one to admit that my EGO is very hurt, i am extremely competitive and my drive to win and ego are so big that made me break my ROLL MANAGEMENT, i fired and fired into tournaments to prove a point. All i wanted was to prove that i can win a tournament and that i still had the skill required to do so, my desire to become a KNOWN player in the poker world has drive me to play more tournaments, because unfortunately tournament players are the ones that get the most recognition. My cash game has suffered because i quit learning it, studying, analyzing, and most importantly PLAYING. i was/ am obsessed with tournament play. i love it, love the strategy, love everything about it. But didnt realize how important cash sessions were to support tournament grind.
I know this post is ALL over the place. I AM NOT A WRITER, and i a m doing this to decompress and let go all the stress i am feeling right now, but this is very very serious for me. i know you guys cant feel what i am feeling right now, but i feel very down, i feel defeated, a little broken, i feel like i let my family down, my friends, the people that look up to me, i feel like i let my self down and i feel like i have not prove to my self that i can make it on this business. My economic situation is rough right now, like i said earlier, i started ubering to have a source of income besides my wifes job. My roll is not big enough to play 2-5 anymore and if i want to play anything is 1-2 and with the rake is a very tough game to beat and make $20+ an hour. i am on a very tough spot right now and i cant make excuses. I have to be VERY HONEST with my self and really look back at why i am where i am. I listed the reasons why above so wont repeat them, but i will tell say this. 4 years ago i quit my job to play poker for a living, TODAY i am Broke, but i am the happiest person ever because i Pulled the trigger on my dreams. Made a PROFESSIONAL SOCCER TEAM, I PLAY A GAME FOR A LIVING, I HAVE SUPPORT BEYOND BELIEF AND MOST IMPORTANT PEOPLE BELIEVE ON ME.
So now that you guys had a brief history of my career, i want create a challenge myself. the challenge is simple. Get UNSTUCK and pump up the roll like you never pumped it before. I am realistic and i am not going to say ima make 100K IN 6-7 months or something crazy like that. But i will have a nice roll once again. MY CHALLENGE is as follows
1. Get to 200k in cashes in 2 years,
ive only been playing tourneys about 2 years and not on a very consistent manner, like i said ive been moving all over the country and its hard to grind tournaments in places like RI, AR, TX, NC.
RESULTS
2. Get my Bankroll (poker only money, after bills are paid money) to 100k In the next 3 years.
3. Do all this things from ZERO! im a work, uber, do whatever i need to do to start a roll again. and once i get to a point where i think i can make it, NEVER LOOK BACK and crush my GOAL
4. STUDY STUDY STUDY STUDY.... im going to expand my poker network and learn from better players than me, i am going to study study study and catch up to the game that left me couple blocks behind, and prove to myself and my people that i made the right decision when i chose this game
5 MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL..........BYE BYE EGO!!! Ego has bit me on the ass many times so is important to get rid of it, respect players taht are worse than me, know that this world doesnt owe me anything and i am not entitled to win a tournament or a pot just because i am better or i think i am. CHECK MY SELF every day so i dont make the same mistakes that i have on the past.
ok guys thanks for those that read this and so sorry about my grammar, English is my second language and expressing my feelings to the entire world is very difficult and nerve racking. Thanks to all that read this and i will post updates of this thru here and my twitter account @zarateivan33
Thanks again to all of you and LFG i will crush this goals and i hope i can inspire couple of you to do the same, set goals and dont stop until you achieve them
GL on all you do and thank you !
Ivan Zarate.
