Friend Of Poker

Hello! I am an ordinary friend of poker from Finland and this is my blog. I just came home from the New Years - eve party and now is good time to make some plans for the year 2023. My goal for this year is to play online poker and update my results here once a month. Game of choice is NLHE 6max and first update will be here end of this month. So happy new year and lets f`*ck!

NYE parties that last 7 weeks are the best!! Good luck

Sick setup. GL

Thanks guys! Time to wrap up February. Found myself from some **** hole in Mexico-City about half way through the month. My tooth had just been removed and dentist gave me strong antibiotics and prohibit alcohol, smoking, hot food and sunlight so I decided to start to slowly think about poker again. Had pretty rough downswing in December and after that I just decided to have a bit time off from the games and have some fun with the rest of my bankroll. Took my girl to the Las Vegas for the new year and after that she went home and I ended up in Mexico. Despite the food poisoning, ear infection, broken rib, tooth removal and getting robbed by the cops I had wonderful time in Mexico and I will probably go there again in future.
I played few sessions there, but was pretty messed up from the painkillers and antibiotics so results were pretty bad also. Now when I have returned in Finland I have slowly regained my confidence and started to build my bankroll again from nl200. My goal for March is to get little bit more volume in. Probably also bumhunting nl500.




Was able to win about 9,5k with rb in February.

Time to wrap up March. My goal was to play little bit more volume than February and also bumhunt nl500. Succeed about volume, but lost few buy ins in nl500 regbattles which was stupid because this is time to build bankroll not to compare size of dicks with other regs. When I get my bankroll better shape and can start to take nl1k games in to the mix I will drop volume and start to concentrate more. When I play higher stakes 4 normal tables are absolutely maximum for me, but now when most of my volume is in nl200 I just want to put as much volume as I can. Won about 13k$ w rb this month.

March graph:




Year so far:



Stats:

Solid results brah.

How did u get robbed by the cops and broken rib in mexico?

Thanks. Was returning from the bar in Mexico-city with beer in my hand. Cop car stopped and they told that drinking on the streets is illegal in Mexico. Then they did me whole body-search, took all my cash and cigarettes gave the beer back and told me to **** off. Glad they did not find any drugs, they were in my sock

Broke my rib while surfing in Laguna De Chacaua. I suck at surfing but I always go.

Time to wrap up April. Volume was pretty low but i am pretty happy with the results after all. Played all the stakes from nl200 to nl1k. Little bit scared money still in nl1k but it will go away when I get my bankroll to the better shape.
I play in multiple bands so in the summer volume will be lower because I have to play gigs. Last week we had to cancel our rehearsal because our bass player did not answer the phone or show up. Next day he was found dead so I guess he had a pretty good reason. Tried to play after the news, but could not concentrate so I just went in to the night for 5 days and did my mourning. This was the main reason for the low volume.


This month I played also 1 session in Finnish state owned site where I won 2087$, and 1 session in Stars where I lost 600$. I dont have any graphs for those session so you just have to take my word. These graphs are only from Party.

Profit for the month all the sites + rb : 14179$

April




Year




Stats

I have to wrap May early because I we are going to Baltic - tour tomorrow. It is a short one and we will return next Monday, but after that I will move together with my girl and then have to go straight to the other gigs from Thursday to Sunday so grind will continue after two weeks. When Covid hit I got little bit worried for my music-hobby and ended up joining a bit too many bands. Now I dont have time to put any volume because of all the concerts. But that is fine because I really do love punk-rock even if it really doesent make any sense monetary vise. If I would be smart I would just sit home and grind, but **** that.

Have been running whole year pretty well, and even though my volume sucks, I dont feel like that I should do any major changes to my game plan. I still have to be careful that I wont come overconfident and lazy what comes to studying, so I will keep marking all the difficult hands and try to sharpen my thought process.
Now I have to go to sleep because I will have to wake up 4.15 get myself in to the van. 85% of music life is just drinking beer in the van.

Played 23961 hands and won 9781$ in may.

May


Year


Stats




TourPoster

Clean graph!

Thanks! Nice to run over ev once in a while.

Time to wrap up June. First week of the month I was struggling to focus. There was no good games in nl500 or nl1k and nl200 felt boring so I went for regbattles and lost couple stacks. Got my **** together eventually and finished month strong. I am again in this crossroad when my bankroll is a bit too big to nl200 but my main volume is still there because there is just not enough bigger games in Party. I have been here before and I know from my experience that if I start to play multiple sites my brain always treat these other sites some form of "side hustle" where I dont have to be so focused. This usually leads big downer and I eventually I am back in 1 site strategy. I dont know what is the reason behind this but I know it will happen so I will stay in Party and play all games from nl200-nl1k.

This month we broke 50k$ profit milestone before rb since I started this blog. For celebrations I will post one hand history:

This was my thought process against this fish:
"I know you are bluffing, so I will snap this river shove. Ship it! Not so fast...."







Won almost 13k$ in June.

Month:




Year:



Stats:

I thought that now would be good time to write something about my backround.

Early days:

I consider my "poker career" started 2007 when I bought myself computer. Made randomly 20€ deposits and played 5$ sit n gos and mtts in Ongame and Everest poker. I also read a poker book and learnt what things like c-bet and pot odds means. One day I decided to register in to the 20$ mtt and after beating whole field I was 1,7k$ richer. That felt awesome. Went straight in to the bar and bought beer to everybody. Next week I started to play 20$ sngs and soon after that also 30$ and 50$. After few months I had won almost 10k. I bought immediately flight to Bangkok and when I was sipping some drinks on the beach in Thailand while everybody else were working in dark and cold Finland I felt that I had beat the whole system.
Continued one year or so in the sng tables, but for some reason it was not very cool to play sngs in those days so I switched to cash. I soon noticed that I could beat nl100 easily but every time I tried to climb nl200 I got my ass kicked. So I just stayed in nl100 almost a decade. I was not professional but I made approximately 10k profit per year which I used travelling, also did some odd jobs like telemarketing on side + played gigs with my bands.
2017 I noticed that I am already pretty old and I did not have any profession so I decided to be a poker pro. There was announcement in Finnish poker forum that they are seeking players who are stuck in nl100 to get staked and coached. I made a application and they gave me an opportunity. This was first time I was able to talk about poker with someone who did this for living. I had some poker friends but no professionals. Almost all people in my life were from the music-scene and I was only one who loved the card games.

Learning to be a pro:

After getting selected to the cfp I got my first decent bankroll and weekly coaching sessions. After a month of struggling I started to "get it" and quickly moved to nl200 and after that nl500. After 6 months I had reach my goal of 50k of profit. Because I had to give 50% to my staker and after my own spending I was left with 10k bankroll. This was June of 2017 and I was offered to either start to build it with my own money or continue to play staked in China-games in PokerMaster. I could keep my 10k and just grind those soft games and get 40% of the winnings. I chose China. Had some issues in my life at that time. Too much sex, drugs and rock n roll so I think I got some sort of nervous breakdown. Decided to leave everything including my girlfriend, told my band mates that now we are going to stop this **** and moved to Las Palmas with one of my friend.
Life in northern sub urb in Las Palmas did not start well. Could not concentrate to the games and everything was pretty chaotic. We did not have flat there and we lived in air bnb with some Finnish surfer dudes which were friend of our friend. I had developed bad habit to eat downers every day in Finland before we left and now when I did not have them I slept horribly and saw only nightmares. I was also missing my girl and regretting the whole thing. All this combined was reason to almost 40k hole in pokermaster. Before I left I was 20k up, now I was 20k down and owned this to my staker. Thoughts started to be pretty self destructive, but then after one wild night in local bar I found note from my pocket where was written in Spanish: "flat 5 rooms, to rent, 370€/month" and phone number. One of our friend made a phone call because we hardly spoke any Spanish at that point and we got the flat.
In the flat I got my own office and could finally concentrate to poker and started to fill the hole. It was already October and I withdraw my last 100€ from the atm. I had not got any money from china games which I had started at august because that horrible downer. It was 14th of October and our monthly pay day from china was every 15. I knew I was going to get something, but had not looked my results. My first salary was 14k€. It was huge relief. After that day I started to get pretty nice monthly salaries. 10k, 23k, 7k, etc... After all stakes were pretty high there (nl000, nl2000), but it was in Chinese money so I did not felt real at all. After 7 months of surfing, partying and grinding we decided that now we can return home without losing our faces. My friend had to go to the mental hospital after we returned and he havent been himself since.

Losing it all:

After returning to Finland I soon went back to my old life playing in bands and rent myself a flat from nice neighborhood. I had money in my btc wallet and games in china felt easy. We had heard rumors about the law change which would forbid Chinese people to download the app in their phones and this would probably have some sort of effect to the games. Well it surely had because all that was left there were collusion - rings. Everybody from our stable started to lose immediately at summer of 2018. I was biggest loser and lost my whole bankroll. I think my hole was something like 50k. That felt pretty bad and at one moment I thought that "thats it, I am quitting and going too school or kill myself or something"
When I was completely broke and tried to think what I will do with my life I got message from my old staker who told that he heard that I am broke and was willing to stake me back to the euro-games. Unfortunately the year I grinded China solvers came and the game had changed and I felt that I had to learn the whole **** again and change the way I thought about the game. Tried hard but was not satisfy for my results and at the end of the year I was pretty desperate because I was still playing as a staked horse. Made some money but could not get out of the situation.

Finding Mda:

January 2020 I bought 1 h coaching session from one Finnish dude who had amazing results from 2019. He told me what is mass data analyze and showed me what are population mistakes. This was just what I needed. I created myself a strategy which I could execute pretty easily and started to put in some volume. After first month I paid myself out from the stake. Covid hit same time and games were good. Grinded Partypoker rake races and Stars zoom200 and end of the year I had made little bit over 100k€. Now I was a point that my bankroll was way too big to nl200 and I was a living inside bubble of confidence. I thought 2021 is time to conquer zoom500. After month of grinding there it obvious that my stupid strategy would not work there and people soon adjusted my hyper-exploiting. In nl200 people just did not give a **** but in nl500 they sure did. My game had no foundation. I had learned few hot-spots where population were leaking but did not understand anything about game theory or how to notice when people are exploiting you. I was just fool. 2021 ended up brake even year. Made some rake back so it was not too bad but after glorious 2020 I felt like something needs to be done and in December I made Cfp - application to Guerilla Poker.

Studying theory:

I got 1 year contract and started slowly grinding through all the material what the stable was offering to me. Volume did suffer but surely this was one of the best things that happened me what comes to studying the game. I was full of energy and excited to test all the new stuff I was learning. Every time I found some new concept to experiment I went full on and did everything too much and full force but surely this all helped me to understand poker more deep than ever before. Unfortunately I did not end my contract strong and lost 20k$ in last month of contract in nl1000, before that I was 60k up. Had a break, went to the Mexico and then started this blog. Maybe next year I am going to make a new application and finish my profit target if they let me do that. But now I need to get my bankroll a better shape.

Here is all hands I found from my computer. This graph is since 2020 and after I found Mda. The long break-even period is mostly nl500 zoom.




At this time I have also played in untracked sites where I have results like this:

That was a great journey to read. I look forward to more because it seems like your journey is far from over and many more interesting stories to share with us. GLGL poker friend.

Thanks! Grinding continues...

"Minà olen juhlapokerin viivoitin", is Finnish and means: "I am the ruler of PartyPoker".

July was the best month since I started this blog, and I crushed games with 20bb/100h winrate. I was really amazed when I looked at my results today, because it felt like that I have been punting pretty hard this week. I am really happy with my results and now when I have almost 200k hands sample it cannot be only positive variance. No need to change anything in my general strategy. Even if I dont have most deep understanding what it comes to theory, I think I understand the "shape of strategy" in most spots which helps me to navigate through sessions. Just keeping it simple against regs and using all left over energy to exploit the fish. Going for the festivals tomorrow and returning to the grind in Monday. Cheerio!

Played 27193 hands, and won 18277$ w rb in July.



Year: (77 737$ w rb)



Stats:



Notice that most of the action in Party ff200 is short handed. That is why my vpip is so high.

Insane!

Absolutely insane bb/100 and insane redline. I wouldn't have thought such winrate possible for those stakes before this thread. Inspiring.

Here comes August update.

Had pretty hectic month. Played a lot of gigs with different bands, but still managed to grind decent volume. I broke up with my girlfriend which also had some impact of my mental health. I still love and respect her, but getting married, having kids, owning house/having a mortgage, owning a car, having respectful career, or having some sort of solid future plans. Unfortunately I just don"t care any of those things. This has been story of my life. Girls comes and goes but haven"t still been able to find a person who lives or thinks like this so eventually I have to let them go so they can fulfill their middle - class dreams. Maybe this whole hyper-fixation which comes to poker has always been an unconscious desire to avoid everything. Now when I can only play guitar, play poker and swim, I feel like I have reached my life goals and I don"t want to change anything. If that makes me depressed or mentally ill, so be it. Now I am going to live in this 3 room apartment just by myself the whole winter. I have to buy a vacuum cleaner.

What comes to poker month was pretty normal. Felt like that I am losing all the flips and was prepared of having a slightly less crushing graph, but luckily I was wrong. Crushed games solid 13bb/100h winrate. Also tried to play little bit in one app poker site, but don"t know if am I going to continue there. Laying on the couch without trousers on a hangover and casually pushing buttons in nl2k table is something that can really mess you mentally if you start run bad. Won some hundreds + rb there but I am not going to include those hands in my graph or this blog.

Won 17891$ (including rb) in August.




Year (profit 95 628$):




Positional stats since I started this blog:

thinking your "uunoturhapro"?

sorry if cant out nick?

have you thought the drinking might be driving you to life-style that isnt rlly that nice , having car / wife a kid or two might just stabilize and protect you from yourself

maybe you need distance to finland and could do those in other place / culture (?)

just my own 2cents obviously

Thank you for your comment.

I don`t want to reveal my screen-name, because I have posted some stats here and the pool is quite small.

What comes to my lifestyle I have had times when I have tried to force some big changes but that haven`t really done anything good to me. Instead having small changes like starting to swim regularly about 10 years ago and slowly increasing the weekly amount have had huge impact of my life and now I cannot live without it. Or stop checking results in the middle of the session, and now days checking them only once a month have had huge impact of my mental game.

I don`t want to make kids just to stabilize my life. That would make me just bitter dickhead - dad, and I don`t really see any reason I should protect myself. Maybe partying little less or stopping a band hobby would give me some more years to live, but I don`t really even want to live too old. Don`t get me wrong, I don`t want to die, but I don`t really see any reason why should I live to 80 years old. If I live, it will be fine, If I will die tomorrow that is totally fine too. When I told this to my girlfriend she said that I am depressed and need some help, but I don`t really feel depressed at all. Actually quite opposite.

This song will explain everything:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GyMwp4duws

"If I live, it will be fine, If I will die tomorrow that is totally fine too. When I told this to my girlfriend she said that I am depressed and need some help, but I don`t really feel depressed at all."

What your describing is a fatalistic view , which helps many people to cope with the inevitably huge amount of uncertainty we have in our lives . The more relaxed part of the world lives accordingly to this kind of philosophy when most west countries are sharing the philosophy of egoism which leads to large amount of neuroticism that then promotes the huge medical industry inclusive of endless therapy etc . that I call bull **** . There is not a whole ton we can control and the harder people try the more miserable they will be .

life is a mystery a gift and a miracle , that's enough of reason to not be depressed

What comes to poker, music, and life itself, the best advice I know comes from Bukowski himself.