My name is Joscha (31). My poker journey started when I read my first book, "The Poker School" by Jan Meinert.
I already experienced a lot on this journey. From grinding up a bankroll with freerolls and 1c/2c games on Everest Poker in 2007
to play the main event and some 10/20$ and 20/40$ cash games in Vegas in 2014.

What happened in 2016 then shaped my life and my poker career to this day. And not in a good way. Out of sheer curiosity and wanting to experience more of life,
I went to a 10 Vipassana meditation retreat. 10 Days of Meditating, 10 hours a day, and no talking. What would happen during and after this retreat is tough to put into words. Some call it a "spiritual awakening", others psychosis and mental breakdown.
Today, I look at it more as the latter.

The years after that were mostly me trying to stabilize my mind again. I spent a lot of time in hippie communities and not playing much poker. At least I felt that these people saw me, understood me, and didn't judge me. At some point, after my finances had kind of eroded, I decided to get an education in social work and look for a real job.
I was coping and trying to get my feet back into life.

Fast-forward to today:

- My mind has mostly recovered
- Back to poker for the last two years (crushing small stakes NL for 8bb +)
- A part-time job in social work, part-time poker

Goals and Steps:

- Break into midstakes NL
- Give back to the community through creating poker content
- Give coaching to people who need it and will benefit from it

Recently, I started making some reel content on Instagram on the account https://instagram.com/iwinthisonepoker. The process is enjoyable for me even though I still don't really know what I'm doing haha.
If you want to give me a follow I would highly appreciate it.

This blog:

I want to mostly share my thoughts and feelings during the poker journey. I won't talk much about hands or strategy in this blog. I was mostly attracted to the game because of the psychological aspect and not the theory.
I would say I am reasonably good at theory but it's just not where my passion lies.

Thank you for reading and all the best!

add me on Discord # joschachristopher if you want to have a chat





Results from the last 3 years on various sites

Best of luck with your journey.
Hope it will be great!

Welcome! GL on the streets

subbed

What a week this has been.

Had a good live session on 2/5 with 1,1k + and got the opportunity to play in some app games.
I started playing them this week and they look quite nice, so I will keep going with those.

I had a coaching session with an awesome high stakes player.
He analyzed my database and we looked at some hands that I played.

Main Leaks that we found that I'm looking to fix:

Defend BB wider and xr wider (especially vs BU)
Find the Bluff Barrels UTG, MP vs BB
Squeeze more (suited Kx and suited Ax are good candidates)
Be more mindful about river bet-sizing (think about the opponent's range and how he will react!)

I was really impressed by the simplicity of his thought process.
This led me to realize that I want to do much more range analysis in my study time with tools like Flopzilla or Equilab rather than do more solver work.
It's really important for me to simplify my thought process and solver work has at times led me down the road of over-complexity.
He agreed with this approach and mentioned that below 500NL too much solver work is not necessary and can be detrimental if not integrated correctly.

Apart from this, I am working on a structure for a coaching package that I want to offer to players that play stakes NL 50 and below.
I like the idea of offering monthly packages with weekly 1,5h Coaching Sessions, some weekly homework, and continuous Discord Support, as I feel this is a really good way to make
sure the student can properly integrate what he learned in that time-frame.
Also this requires a decent amount of commitment and accountability from the coach and the student, which I think is necessary for the true and lasting improvement of the student.

I am happy with the discipline and productivity I embodied last week.
This week I am going to Bratislava for a tournament series called the Belgique Masters 200€ 250k grd. Is anybody of you there to have a chat?
I will play some cash games there live and I will also try to make something happen in the tournament. Let's see how it goes.

Even though I am in a different environment my goal is to keep my healthy routine of daily workouts, walks, and meditation.
Also, I want to put in a lot of focused grinding hours, have fun during the cash games, and connect to some fellow grinders.

I am really looking forward to this week and feel like it's going to be a great one! To everybody reading this I wish you a great week and good luck at the tables. We've got this!

I will give a bit of an update on what has been happening to me.
Bratislava was nice but nothing too special poker-wise. I busted the tournament twice and had three fun 1/3 CG sessions with around 250€ profit in the end.

I am happy to say that my app games are going really good. I will give my best to keep this trend going and make some good money in the following months.
My effort at this point is going into increasing the amount of tables and also the time that I am spending playing these games.

I have been putting content creation and my ambition to do coaching a bit on hold which is fine.
I still have my social work job which means I generally don't have too much time and energy to spread my focus too wide.
At the start of October, there will be some changes as I will be moving apartments and probably getting a new job.
Financially it would be a better idea to just focus on playing and start coaching but I still feel that having a part-time job in social work
is giving me more than some stable finances.

I don't like the feeling of disconnection from the rest of society which used to come in the past when I focused too much on playing a card game for money on the internet.
So I do like the feeling of inclusion and also putting in some meaningful work on the side.


So the focus in my life right now is like this:

Crush app games
Find a beautiful apartment
Get a new good part-time job starting October

Ιν gl

Well, I realize I took an unintentional 6 month break from writing this blog.
I am a bit embarrassed about it but what can I say? I will just get back to it and try to be more consistent in the future.

So what happened for me in the last months:

I quit my part-time social work job in October
I moved up in the app games and I am currently playing stakes around 1k NL
Moved out of my apartment
Starting to travel to South East Asia very soon

When I look back at my goals and process from July I realize that I didn't walk towards those goals but more away from them.
Which is quite interesting looking back.

I think my main rationalization for this was that I needed to spend my time making the most amount of money in the shortest period of
time playing in good games that might die tomorrow.

It is kind of working but I also feel like my life happiness dived down in the last months.
I am currently feeling quite obliged to play these games because of the "EV".
And those games are not all that fun or strategically interesting to play.
They are played in a different game format and blind structure than normal NLH games.

I think this is also why I felt like it doesn't make sense to make poker strategy content while not putting in hours in a normal game format that
a potential audience would have an interest in.
For me to make content I need to get back to playing normal cash games so that I face interesting spots regularly and can make content out of them.
Well good to know that and remember myself of it.

For the time being, I will travel, enjoy my freedom, and live a bit of a digital nomad lifestyle.
I will keep on playing the apps with the plan to quit within the next 2-4 months.
Take a bit of the cake and then get out.

It will be a hard decision but necessary. It's not worth it just follow the short-term money.

I am happy to see what the future brings and also happy to proactively find ways to do things differently.