Im playing as Cashcid Linc on pokerstars, which right now is the only site im playing on. Other sitenames are Hardurrrr on stars.fr and Lincson on Full Tilt. I am a professional nlh tournament player from germany.

The last time I have made a thread like this was in 2008 i think, that was on pokerxfactor. Id like to do this again as right now im going through a rather tough time and its nice to have a place somewhere to organize your thoughts and to keep you reminded of how you want to approach this game, as its certainly not easy to play poker for a living.


Goals:

"If you always put limits on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them." - Bruce Lee


As far as specific income goals go, I dont like to put any limits on that as I am always going for everything anyways. Its also in reality unrealistic to put money goals on a yearly basis when you are a professional mtt player and ESPECIALLY when you also at least a reasonable amount of the time play the higher stakes. As the variance esp in higher stakes mtts is very high plus you are not able to get in enough volume per year to make up for it. Even though i think a money goal can still serve a purpose as simply something to aim at and keep you motivated, i personally choose to have different goals as when they are reached, the $ev will come by itself and the rest will be out of my controll either way.

so my goals for this year for poker are the following

-Increasing focus level

-keeping a healthy schedule that has a good balance of small and large fields as well as higher and lower buy ins

-fixing my leaks

-becoming less emotionally attached to results

-at the end of 2014 i want to be able remember my 2013 me and realize that I became even stronger a player than i was back then


my real life goals (which ultimately also are related to my poker game)


-keep working out alot

-becoming more present. Living more in the moment as opposed to living in past or future

-taking enough breaks from poker (very important actually)

-spending enough time with family and friends (also important)



Little Background on Me:

I dont think its necessary to go super long with this, I just basically want to mention two friends who have helped me the most throughout my career. That is Michael "Manhat10ite" Lehr who was the first poker contact i ever had and who early on started staking and coaching me, and then Amir "AmirSF" Lehavot, who helped me develope myself as a player a ton. Always been planning to thank both of you in a speech if i ever have a huge score lol, but you know what it is and i dont need to tell you always been appreciating your friendship and help. They are not the only friends im thankful for but since they have helped me the most i want to leave it at mentioning just them.

I started playing somewhere in 2007 and went professional in 2009. Dropped out of university and from then on only played poker and later on also did coaching and training videos etc.

2011 was a super rough year for me, basically broke even on stars then i think, because i went on what was a big downswing for me back then early on in the year and decided to keep variance low and grind it back with low stakes after i went to las vegas for the first WSOP in my life. It was then when i was thinking and working more on the psychological aspect of poker, got into meditation, listened to speeches from buddhist monks and university professors about coping with stress etc. This definitely helped me understand myself way better and since then i have been able to deal better with rough times. But i also know im far from dealing with them being in complete peace with myself.
In 2012 I actually had a somewhat deep run in the WSOP main, finished 146th for 52k. But the majors havent been too good to me during my career yet. Still waiting on binking one, but gotta be patient.


Where I am at right now:

In 2013 I made around $70k total over all three sites i played on, which i am totally fine with but which i also know wasnt nearly representing my full potential. I was at 100k at some point and then had a rough ending of the year after wcoop, mostly due to doing badly in a very small sample size of high buy in games.

Right now I am on my biggest downswing to date. But there have been many times now that i have been on my biggest downswing ever and the way i approach a situation like this is taking it as a challenge. Because i know when i get out of it, i will be much stronger mentaly than before. Like back in 2011 a 13k downswing was huge for me and i had problems dealing with it. Nowadays i wouldnt even bother thinking about it at all and certainly wouldnt be worried about it. But always when you get into a new situation, its tough at first. But taking it as a challenge i think is the right approach.

Still though, just recently i noticed some negative thoughts sneaking into my thinking process again which i want to get rid of as soon as possible. I think a mixture of poker results and real life things have gotten me back into some bad thinking habits. This will be dealt with though as recognizing and becoming conscious of this is already the first step of recovery.


So since im starting this off at my lowest point, I will finish the first post with a rocky balboa speech that i love and find to be very true. Then ill go from there and update here frequently.

unfortunately have no idea how to enhance a video here propperly so ill just go with the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_Vg4uyYwEk

Life isn't sunshine and rainbows or even a box of chocolates, it really is just hard work and a strong belief system in yourself. I am sure you will have that major score in the coming year you are very due. Until then just keep working and learning every day.

Looking forward following this thread!

Good luck in achieving your goals!

Viel glück Mister

Good luck!


- where are you?
- here.
- what time is it?
- now.
- what are you?
- this moment.

This is gonna start off slowly as my plan is to take it easy till sunday when ill drive to hamburg, visiting friend and poker fellow sebastian/kabira and grind together with him and afterwards the plan is to take a break for a week as i want to really start fresh again and definitely feel like a break will be good. I constantly keep improving my game, watching videos, doing analysis, reviewing hhs etc and to me it feels like sometimes the brain actually needs a break to organize all the newly gathered data. When you just keep playing and playing and never give yourself a break, i think you will learn in a much slower pace plus will be more and more likely to tilt as well as you get more and more exhausted. This is how it is for me at least, judging from my experience with poker. So over the years i have learned that breaks are a very powerful thing.

Played only 3 games today, had good start in 55r but busted before the money nevertheless. But yea kind of already taking it easy and sunday will be the last workday before the time off.

Tomorrow I will play chinese poker with my cousin, who, no matter how much he always drinks and/or smokes has been destryoing me in this game for months now. But this is just a chill activity for little money i like to do from time to time. Not looking to go out much for now as im still a bit scared of that. Last time i did i got super drunk and ended up with a girl who must have learned kissing somewhere in the desert by the hyenas. Been looking to compensate for some other girl but def started the night off way too motivated for that. Never try to force things. Should have learned that from poker.

Will potentially update one more time after sunday before i start the break. Plan is to win sunday million and sunday warm up, this will be newsworthy.

had a nice break with no poker for a week now, which feels very refreshing. Last sunday only went semi deep in warm up and busted on standard flip for 200k, also only played couple tables.

tomorrow will be the first day that i play again. I kind of believe in magic so i created a voodoo dance for the rungood.

Turn the tables around, then good luck can be found

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEaRP...ature=youtu.be


in combination with the break i should be physically, mentally and spiritually set now for a fresh start. Same plan as last week tomorrow. Winning Warm up and Million.

here are some updates:

Voodoo magic isnt what it used to be. Unfortunately i am not happy about how i handled myself lately at all. But also have to say pokergods def dont make it easy on me. But really i have to radically change things for a while, meaning i will change my schedule.

I played only up to 6 tables this week, which i like to do from time to time to focus more on things and i did like it, however it did not keep me from getting frustrated later on in the day when things were not going my way anymore. And i noticed that is mainly because right now i am having way too many attachements in forms of hopes, expactions, emotions etc.

A friend of mine who i used to stake and coach today shipped a tournament after having gone through a rough time himself, he did already well recently and this topped things off. He told me that he let everything go, no hope anymore, he wasnt expecting anything and that worked for him. I actually gave him that advice in the past as i knew it can be powerful. It is funny because just this morning, I thought about this myself and thought i need to not have hope anymore whatsover when playing, as that will drag your thoughts into the future and attach you to something that isnt even manifested yet. You will lose focus for the moment. And this then reminded me of the play "Divine Comedy" written by Dante and it's first part "Inferno", which is about Dante's journey through hell. There he writes: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here". When i heard that line when i was younger, i found it very depressing and negative, obv since its about going through hell. But maybe Dante was writing about actual struggles in real life. About our own mind. That when we are going through a really tough time, we should not focus on hope and rather let everything go, all attachements. Thinking about it in that light makes it a very empowering writing to me. Of course also very much keeping in mind what another big man said about encounters with the dark side of life: "If you're going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill


So now, the plan is as pointed out above to radically change my schedule. I want to take out all the tournaments where im investing too many hopes and time into. All tournaments where first place is paid more than 10k. That means im dropping all bigX mtts, like big 109, big 55, even big 22 and big 11. I will also drop tournaments that take too long, like 22 1r1a even though i love deep structures. I will however add now tournamaents i havent played before as i found them too small, like these $27 knockouts and freezeouts that pay like 1k for first, will keep in the 22r action hour and 33r that i have been playing already. Will play a ton of small field mtts. I will probably also play 180s. Also, i will increase my volume again most likely, not sure yet if ill go back to 12 tables or even more, with that schedule more tournaments at once are probably ok, but i like to think when playing and not autopilot so not sure if i want to go much higher. Also too many tables would increase stress level again and i want to keep the stress level as low as possible as i really have had some unprofessional thought patterns recently (frustration, anger, god hates me etc). It sucks as i was proud that i came such a long way from having been dealing badly with things in the past like a couple years ago to handling variance super well and supposedly understanding variance rationally and emotionally much better. But unfortunately my current downswing was forcefully showing me that i still have work to do in that area.