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