Hi, the name is Janez, born in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia 34 years ago.
Well, at that point it was actually still Yugoslavia, but that didn’t end that well. I’m currently living in Ljubljana, with my girlfriend, but we are moving for warmer and happier climates at the end of this month, our destination being the sunniest country in Europe, Malta.

For those of you who don’t know much or anything about Slovenia, and are wondering why someone might leave, let me give you a short introduction. Here is how, let’s say, this summer looked like if you were a Slovene. First, we had premature elections in July. The reason being that our last elected prime minister was accused of corruption, and forced to resign a winter or two ago by mass country-wide protests. So, almost two years later (yes, things move fast here!), we had the election to replace him and his bunch of buddies. Who was running the country in between, you might ask? Well, another bunch of buddies.

When the elections were all done, the winner was a guy with no program. Simple. No program, no problem. No jobs, either. Ex prime minister-turned-criminal, the reason for the premature election, got re-elected again into the parliament. He can’t really attend the sessions, since he is in PRISON, and will be there for 2-3 years. But, they let him out for the first session, I guess for the photo shoot. Smile! Ok, back to prison. If I had the option, I would play for you our national anthem at this point.

Then came the rain, and it’s still raining today, as I write this. My tomatoes on the balcony are rotting already, it’s a miracle they made it so far. So, the social situation is down the toilet, and the weather is not far behind, either. If the game is not good, find another table, right? So, I’m leaving, and I’m taking my girl with me.

Anyway, that’s just the context. But the real point of this thread are not my tomatos, but – the BPC coaching for profits program! Opaa! I saw all those BPC success threads on the forums, and thought to myself, hey, man, that’s the real deal. If I could just get in, learn from these people, and replicate their rise, wouldn’t that be great??! So, I applied, and, to make a long story short, I’m in! Now what?!


Well, here’s the deal:

Game: HU NL, cash.

Experience level: some.

Start: 50 NL HU.

Target: 60 000 EUR.

Time frame: 12 months.

Why you might care: Because, if I can do it, so can you. Maybe you already did. Awesome. What one man can do, another can do. I’m not going to be the first to make it, and not the last either. But I will make it.

I’m also opening a youtube channel, connected to the challenge: Janez BPC.

It’s empty so far, I just made it. I don’t know what will become of it yet, but I’ll try to keep it interesting and useful.



This is my introduction post, so no hands today. And no graphs. They will come.

For now, that’s me, that’s my goal – let’s play!

First! gl man, nice writing :P will follow

Thanks, man!

Man, I forgot to post my theme song for the project: ARRGGGHHHH!!!

Ok, I want to record some background information to the 60k challenge, so this way I can later compare the progress, and see what changed, and in what way.

So, here are my results prior to joining BPC program; I only included HU hands, some of them were played at 20bb CAP HU, and most on 100bb HU regular tables, played over the past 2 years. I thinks it's most of my lifetime HU hands, but there are probably some 15% missing from the DB, for one reason or another.

Obviously, 5/10 CAP is my favorite stake, and there I also have what I feel is my true winrate - because, you see, at lower stakes they just don't respect my raises, man...


So, that's my starting point and standard to compare myself to later on. The winrates I would say are ok, but the production really wasn't there. And I was susceptible to periods of non-playing, mostly for fear of losing during my downswings. So, that's one major thing I really want to change, to realy stabilize and increase my output over the long-term.

And, here's the set-up, where I was playing these hands at, in my cosy office corner, which I will be leaving behind soon:



I had actually a different chair, more cosy, like an armchair, but it slowly disintegrated, and ended up in the trash bin, cut to pieces. Now I use one of the kitchen chairs, it's not the most comfortable for hours of grinding, but hey, I'm not buying new stuff now that I'm about to move, so it will have to do for the next couple of weeks. After that, I'm leaving all this behind, I sold my desk, monitors, speakers and the board on the wall to my landlord. And the chair was his anyway. I'm just getting rid of everything before the move, I'm selling everything these days. I just want to hop on a plane, with a suitcase or two. Actually, my desktop will be flying with me, in my carry-on luggage, I hope that goes well, that's my only concern.



Here, by the way, are my tomatoes – »before picture«, how they started a few months ago, and the »after picture« from today, after weeks of rain, you can see most pots are standing in water, which is not really good for the plants, but after weeks of everyday rain, you just don't bother taking out the excess water anymore. I still managed to get a somewhat decent harvest, but mostly due to volume, I have about 7-8 more plants off the picture.
So, if the winrate is not too good, good volume can still save you to some extent!

And, that's it, that's my starting point. I don't know how I want to document progress, with weekly graphs, or what. The problem with that is some sites don't support Holdem manager, so it won't be complete results, and I don't know if it makes then sense to just post a portion of results. I might just record actual winnings, as I'm doing anyway in my accounting, that would mean I don't put EV winnings, but the challenge is real 60K anyway, not 60K in EV, so that might be the simple and best solution. We'll see.
That's it for now, I will post mys first results at the end of the week, I don't feel day to day means much, but weekly might be a good standard to follow progress.

Ok, the first week of my challenge/coaching program is coming to an end. Looking back, it was a very intensive week. There was a lot of changes in the way I approach playing poker, from technical and organizational stuff, playing hours, monitoring productivity, etc.

A lot of energy, time and focus went into things like posting and commenting on hands on the forum daily, even writing blogs, recording videos with camtasia, dealing with new poker rooms with different software, setting up cash flows to the rooms and so on. Many little new things, which add up and take a lot of time in the end.

At the same time, I put in exactly 35 hours this week at the tables themselves, which is the minimum requirement; I will increase the playing hours slowly, step by step in the future, untill I find my sweet spot. Right now, I've no idea what that might be, but I don't want to burn myself out in the very beginning; I feel that slow and steady wins the race. And, I also have to prepare for my move to Malta at the end of the month, which is going to take some time.

So, September will be like a training ground time for me, I will do all the necessary work, and try to play around with my daily routine, untill I find the one that suits me best for this project. By the time I have everything set up in Malta in October, I will be a reasonably well-oiled machine.

Really, you can't underestimate the effect of the »secondary« things, not the poker strategy itself, but things you do away from the tables, and even on the tables, but are not exactly poker strategy per se.

It's one thing to sit at your desk, open your favorite tables at your favorite room, and off you go. You know where all the buttons are, you have your betsizing set up, you know your villains, who the regs are, how the population plays, and so on. It's a completely different story to start playing a new system on several new rooms, at the same time, while starting posting on forums, blogs, and making videos. You're sitting there, new tables are randomly popping up, from different sites with different buttons, all new to you, sometimes they overwhelm you, sometimes not. The game is the same, in theory, but the context makes the situation different.

So, looking back, I feel most of my energy went into logistics this week, rather than game strategy itself. This will come, however, and I'm reasonably happy with the way things are shaping up.

I also made a video to relax and have some fun at the end of my first week, you can check it out on my Janez BPC channel:

The Trials and Tribulations of a Poker Player

Love your attitude, love your style, absolutely loved the video.

Good luck and subbed.

PM me if you want to talk on Skype.

HAHAHA GOOD VID

Nice goal, I'm in..

glgl

love the video

It’s raining again for days here in Ljubljana, I can’t wait to get to sunny Malta, man. This has to be the worst summer in my memory, as far as the weather goes. But, at least I can focus completely on poker, which in the early stages is pretty much what I’m doing.

I had my first two coaching sessions already now, and tomorrow I have my third one. It’s still early days, but so far I’m very happy with my coach. There’s not a spot which he doesn’t have a quick answer for, it seems. There’s very little of »it depends« talk, but mostly straight to the point, and with a concrete answer. It’s really helping me with some of the confusion, which follows the shift of my strategy to a fairly different, new style.



The thing is, you can’t just add a few new plays and think, ok, that’s it, I got a few new tricks, let’s go. When you start doing that, you get into a lot of unknown situations, and can do some really weird stuff, which later you wonder about what the hell was going on. When you start changing things, the whole construction of your game, so to speak, shifts, and adapts. If you’re not expecting that, you’re in for a ride, and even if you are expecting it, it will still surprise you.

What starts as a simple guideline, can lead to a completely new situation two streets down the road, and now you’re on the river with a hand you’re not sure about, and villain’s ranges you’ve never seen before, and have no idea what he can have after this line you and he just made during the hand.

And I had struggles with that, in fact I still do, this is one of my main focus points at the moment, the other being the organizational stuff, which I talked about already, and is now falling more and more in it’s place.



I had a break from playing today, as said 35 hours of playing per week is the target, so there’s some room for breaks from the tables. But of course these hours then go into other poker-related stuff, and why shouldn’t they, nobody said it was going to be easy to hit the 60k goal.

That’s it for now, I will make another video on the weekend, people really seemed to like the first one, which is great, yet on the other hand now you kind of don’t want to disappoint with a lame video next week, so that’s another thing it brings with it. But yeah, the videos are really meant to be enjoying and fun to make, and so that’s what I’ll remain focused on. If not, then it just becomes something »you have to do«, and you really don’t want to go through life with many of »have to do’s«, if you can. Take ownership, and do it your way, right!

I had a break from playing yesterday, for some reason I couldn’t fall asleep last night until very late, or better early in the morning, so I was feeling a bit beaten up during the day then. But ok, I had the break planned anyway for today. I had a nice day at the tables yesterday, results were good, but I just played normal, nothing special. I do feel I’m making less mistakes now, however, so that’s something to be excited about, that’s the thing to focus on.



I have a few more days of playing, before I take a break and make my move to Malta. So I’m facing a break from the tables, which I’m not really too happy about. I was just getting in my rhythm. But, there is a lot that I need to do regarding the move, so there’s just no way around it. I will take this opportunity to gather my impressions of the first 3 weeks of the program, the new regime, and so on, and come up with improvements for my routines, and learning.



I think I will make a round-up of the three weeks on the weekend for my Youtube video of the week, after I finish up this week, so we’ll see how things are shaping up. It’s still early days in the challenge, of course, but if nothing else, I can compare my experience and approach to poker to my pre-BPC poker life, which should make for an interesting video.

I finished my first three weeks of the challenge, and I took some time to look over the results, and gather my impressions.

Ok, I finally have the chance to write a few impressions from my move to Malta. I’m now in a temporary apartment, and yesterday I got a cable to connect my desktop to the LCD TV in here. The guy in the repair shop sold me a VGA cable for 7 EUR, like I’m some ignorant foreigner, which, yeah, I guess I am at this point. I think he just made up the price on the spot, the cable was not packaged or anything, probably a used one. Hey, but what can I do, I couldn't find any electronics shop around, so I just took it. I got a working set up now, it’s not perfect, but at least I can do some productive stuff, like writing this, for example.



The last week of Ljubljana was crazy hectic, selling stuff, dealing with my landlord, who was cool about everything, but still when many little things need to get sorted out, it takes time, always. I sold most of my possessions, and the rest I gave away in the last day or two. It is amazing how much stuff you collect and gather, mostly not paying too much attention to it, until you move or have a clear-out. I got rid of everything, many clothes, books, kitchen appliances, my car, electronics, everything was out the door. I did get some cash for it, but mostly I was giving it very cheaply, just to get rid of it. I was happy somebody is taking it that will use it, instead of me dumping it, or shelving it in someone’s basement. At the end of it, I went on a plane with a suitcase full of clothes, and a duffel bag with my desktop in it; and that’s everything I own now. Once I decided not to go by car, that was the plan – to strip down my possessions to the bare minimum, to have less hassle with the move. And, I guess, also keeping an eye on the future; I don’t know what my final destination will be as years go by, once you’re out the door, you've got momentum, and it’s a big world out there.



The first two days here I spent just getting my bearings around the place, looking out for shops, and so on. As of now, we’re still living on supermarket food, and some fast food and restaurant food, which is not ideal, in fact it’s pretty far from it. I’m not used to this food anymore, I do take care of what I eat, and more than 2-3 days of junk food… Well, let’s not get into the details . In Ljubljana, I was buying 90% of my stuff on my local market, fresh local vegetables from the farmer a few kilometers out of the city, and local meat from the butcher. I went to the supermarket for cleaning products and stuff like that, and very little food. I mean, there’s very little food to be found in a supermarket anyway, unless you call that processed garbage food. I wouldn't feed it to my dog, man. Here’s how proper fridge content should look like, this is my old Ljubljana fridge:



I had a good laugh in the supermarket yesterday, I mean, all the supermarket vegetables here seem to be imported. Tomatoes from Holland in Malta, that’s the world we live in, it’s insane! Maybe Malta can export some ice to Canada, make some good bussiness… Anyway, that’s my little food rant, untill I find sources of good vegetables and meat, fish here, which is not as simple as it sounds. They do have these vegetable trucks here, and I’ve been told fish trucks as well, I just have to figure out the locations and times, there’s also a local farm I found, so slowly we’re getting there.

Anyway, that’s the recap of my last few days, I’m walking around trying to find stuff, and dealing with the basic needs first. My girlfriend started working the day after we arrived, so she’s at a new job, getting training/introduction to the company, very busy days for her, so basically I’m stepping up here and trying to organize the living conditions (hence the nicely organized room and tidy kitchen, see below). Days are flying by since my last blog, there’s a million things to do, the next step is securing a long-term flat here, I’m working on that already, should be sorted out by the end of the week, so I’ll let you know how that goes.

For now, here’s our baller place we have until Monday, with my super PC setup as well:

Now I've got everything set up, and I'm returning to the tables today. It took me two weeks to complete the move to Malta, all together, I think that's pretty fast and I'm satisfied with it.

I have my new apartment now, it's for the next 12 months, my internet is fast, basically I have what I need. We arrived on Sunday evening, found the flat on Monday evening, liked it immediately, contacted the agency right away, and basically 1 hour later it was ours already. Then it took some time to sort out the papers, get it emptied and cleaned, and so on, and we got the keys on Friday. So, again, when you think it's all done, but there are many little things to be done, it takes time.
But, anyway, I'm very happy with the flat, it's smaller than the previous one in Ljubljana, but it has everything we wanted, and to find it on the first day, basically, is running good, I would say.
The flat had to be small, with a working desk for me, and an LCD TV because then I don't need to buy monitors. We didn't want a big living room with many couches and chairs, and so on, as we don't watch TV, and it's just a waste of space to me. A small couch is fine, to read a book or chill out, or take a nap or whatever, once in a while. Then, yeah, we didn't want old furniture in it, since mostly it looks pretty ugly, at least to us. Basically, we were looking for functionality, and some trace of style, and we got this one:





The flat is 3 minutes walk away from the coast, so technically not quite on the beach, but I'll take it anyway . It's also 10-15 minutes walk to my girlfriend's job, which was another major factor in making the decision, as it's a completely different story if you can walk for 15 minutes to work, or you have to take a bus for 30 minutes, let's say. Because, then you have to get to the station, wait for the bus, get from the station to work, etc. 30 bus ride is actually closer to 1 hour trip, all together. And doing it twice per day, yeah, that's 2 hours instead of 30 minutes walking; not to mention she is walking along the bay, which is pretty cool as well, and a nice walk.

Basically, we hit the nuts, we acted quickly to get it, and we got it, end of story. We moved things over the weekend, and set up the place, and tomorrow, like I said, I can continue with playing, and the rest.

I can't wait to hit the tables, to be honest, I do feel a bit rusty, so I don't expect much in the first few days, just focusing on getting back into the rhythm, and not making any major mistakes, that's my first goal. I played for 3 weeks before, and now had a 2-week break, so I can't expect to just jump into it like it was yesterday. I shouldn't have many distractions lingering on from the move, I took care of everything, and now also have a pretty good idea of where to find stuff I need, I'm already cooking in this flat so I'm eating what I like, and feel better because of it as well. I will need to get back to exercise, I did zero in the last weeks; well, basically I did almost nothing for the whole summer, I sprained my ankle pretty badly playing basketball in June, and it was swollen for weeks and weeks, so I was almost immobile, and certainly useless as far as sport activities go. Anyway, I'm looking into options here to start in the next 2 weeks or so. I will be slowly increasing my work rate more and more, and I need to be in a good shape to be able to perform better and better.

Other than that, I'm ready to dig deep, and push hard in the coming months, and the results will no doubt follow, sooner or later.

Very cool thread man. I really like that you're a bit of a goof ball and that you're goal is tough but achievable.

Keep up all the hard work. Its been a great thread so far.

Thanks, man, you can count on the hard work being done, that's for sure

Btw, your avatar was my first ever CD, bought it 21 years ago, at 13 years of age. Good times, man. I just sold it before moving to Malta, in a pack with my other CDs.

I also appreciate the image of somebody fishing for the baby with a dollar bill now from a different perspective, seems like I'm doing it at the tables all these years later, waiting for the fish to bite on the promise of dollars

I dont think I could ever part with my Nevermind CD. I still listen to it all the time.

I think its still one of the best cd covers of all time. Theres a lot of meaning behind a pretty basic image. Now you got me thinking about the cover and looking for different meanings behind it, hah.

Good luck with your goal.

The first week of my return to the challenge is over. After two weeks of break it was quite hard to get back into the rhythm. It’s not just that I simply had 2 weeks of break, but in this period I made a major change in my life by relocating to Malta, getting rid of all my stuff, and so on. So my mind way distracted by this during the break, and coming back to poker took some getting used to.



On top of that, I installed an SSD disk to my computer to persist with using HM2, which caused me to re install windows, and then complete poker software package, and also all of the poker rooms themselves. This process didn’t take that much time, but the devil lies in the details, and the main issue turned out to be all the little settings in all of these programs that I have customized over weeks, months, and years of usage. You don’t really think about it, until you’re back using the programs, and all the time there’s a little thing missing which you were using here, and the postflop bet sizing is not set there, and so on. So, it adds up and creates an unwelcome distraction.



So it was a similar process than at the beginning of the September, when I started the challenge, and again it made me think about this unspoken part of poker – or anything you do in life. Efficient table positioning, knowing how to quickly access the software settings that you’re looking for, having other things in life taken care of – is a part of poker professional’s skill set. If you don’t have the right monitor for your games, if your HUD is crashing, if you don’t know how to filter out hands in HM, well, then you don’t even need to think about which hands to 3B preflop, or how to design calling ranges. You won’t need them, you’re out of the game already. So, is it a part of the game, or not? To me, it is.



Anyway, the week is over, I adapted back into a poker player’s mindset, and I feel I’m back on track where I left off. My introductory period is over, things are now familiar to me, and it’s becoming more and more fun to improve them, rather than being overwhelmed at the tasks at hand, which in the beginning I definitely was a little bit. I have been playing for 4 weeks now, and they say 3 weeks is enough to create a habit for anything. Indeed, my outlook on poker as a whole is changing, I’ve noticed that, and that’s quite interesting to observe. I will write more in the future about this, as I think for me this is the most important aspect of being a poker pro. The point is to become a poker player, don’t just be a guy who also plays poker, if that makes any sense.

Another week comes to an end, that means 5 weeks of playing behind me so far. The results are ok, you can see in the above video(s), but I'm still making many mistakes. Usually I'm careful, so I don't make many big pot mistakes, but more medium ones. Playing many different opponents, and sometimes changing them fast as they leave, makes it hard to deal with unusual lines from them, as you don't really know what to expect, so that can throw you off.

I think one of my main areas for improvement is more aggressive value betting in certain situations; sometimes I come to the river with a strong hand which is not the nuts, and don't bet it or raise it, probably for fear of getting raised or that if I bet and lose, I will lose a bigger pot, or something like that, I don't quite know. It's irrational, perhaps on some level I remember the lost pots when I made a big river bet or raise more than I remember the pots won when I was called by worse hands. There is a bit of »feeling stupid« when you make a big bet and are called by a better hand. It's as if I don't understand in the moment that I only need to get called by worse hands 50% or more, to make it a good value bet. As if part of me wants to have it 100%.

But anyway, there is much room for improvement, which I can see already on my own; which means that in reality, there is even more room for improvement, which I can't even see yet. The »unknown unknowns«, as they say. But that will come in time, the mission for now is to cut down the number of bad moves every day, little by little, and improve consistency, focus, patience. Auto-pilot is the worst, insta clicking buttons takes all the fun out of poker, yet there come many moments what you just do it, aha dry board, CB, boom! Aha, missed turn, give up. Click, click. And ten minutes later you are into insta-clicking everything, until you find yourself in a tough spot for many BBs, then you wake up. It's sort of like driving a car, and realizing after a few minutes, that you were completely caught up in your thoughts, or something, and couldn't even remember what color car was driving in front of you, if somebody asked you...

I got some fish from the fish shop today, they are really cheap here, and fresh from the sea. 3 euros for two decent sized lampuki fish, unbelievable.


I was thinking about getting some fishing gear in the near future, but if they are so cheap, it's almost too easy to just go and buy them! A but I might start fishing anyway, just for the fun of it.

So, week 6 of my project is over. Here is a quick report:

funniest vids ever

Yeah, I like to have some fun with them