Welcome to my first ever motivation thread!
Back in 2014 I already had an idea in mind to start a thread in poker goals and challenges. But I never did it. This year I think I have quite some interesting content to share with you guys.
I'm a 27 y/o poker player from the Netherlands, I play midstakes cashgames on plenty of different sites. I play some HU and live too.
I made a recap of the past few years which I'm going to share with you
they're not 100% accurate because I had to think back of them in the past few weeks.. But it's just so you guys know a little bit more about me
2014 RECAP:
the first year of really being a pro was good for me, leaving university was a tough decision but a decision I so far have never regret. Turning pro was a dream for me for a long time; going for ultimate freedom and make a living by doing what I already loved for so many years (I know blabla cliché chliché).
I was already playing poker semi-seriously since 2007 but had my ups and downs doing it, mostly it was my immature behaviour spewing money away and buying stupid stuff from short term profit, I could never build a roll like this, so I knew I wasn’t ready to be a professional yet by that time, although I always have kept in mind I got talent for this game, even though 90% of the people around me were negative/sceptical about it. After trying multiple university studies and working and found out it didn’t work out for me. In late 2013 I finally made the definite step towards poker.
I've had the opportunity in 2014 (the first year I was completely free to do anything I wanted to) to visit a good friend and poker player in Cape Town, South Africa, traveling had already become another passion of me, which was perfectly fine to combine with poker ofcourse, so I said YES! It was such a beautiful experience, he lived in a nice mansion with a beautiful sea view where I could stay for a few weeks. Also I've traveled the eastcoast of SA all by myself for a month, I went from Port Elizabeth to Durban, a trip with so much beautiful untouched nature and wild animals I’d recommend anyone to go there.
In the summer of 2014 Budapest was a good option for me because of the nice weather/good prices and I had heard people being very enthusiastic about the pokercommunity in the city too, I've mixed living by myself and having 1 pokerfriend over at my place. Lived in the centre of Budapest in a nice appartment and played a ton of poker too. A couple of guys I knew from Capetown also came to Budapest to live there and I met a lot of new people, a lot of new inspiring people which I'd still call friends and have contact with now, just like a lot of my friends from Capetown, I’m very grateful for that.
In the summer of 2014 me and my girlfriend got together and it’s still going really well, she supports me 100% in what I do and she’s such a great person for me.
2015 RECAP:
January: I lived with my mum since the end of 2014, in a small town near Amsterdam. Being taken care of is not bad if you’re a poker player
but I was looking for a place for myself again. Pokerwise I started 2015 really good with a nice upswing @ zoom500 and decided to add NL1k in my games too.
February: I could rent a room in Amsterdam at 3 friends of mine for 2 months, I knew it wasn’t going to be good for my game, but I decided to give it a try, my volume dropped from 40k to 30k~ hands mostly due to drinking and sleeping longer on average. My evbb/100 still was around 4.5 which I was perfectly fine with
March: I still lived with my friends in A’dam, the room was small and in the basement of the building, I also played there, which made me look like a vampire, the lack of sunlight wasn’t good for me and I just played 25k hands this month, evbb/100 dropped to 3.5 this month
April: I decided to rent my mums appartment, she moved to another small town nearby so I just took her place since it was pretty nice, ofcourse I wanted to live in Amsterdam or Haarlem rather than a small town, but it was good for now. For some reason I don’t remember anymore I just played 20k hands this month. I was breakeven.
May: I try to get back into grinding like the beginning of the year, feeling better than ever with my game, too bad I’m running really bad @ zoom500, but my evbb/100 is 7 this month
June: the second best month of my career, (the very best being in 2010) put in a solid 40k hands (I know for some of you guys this is nothing) winning 9.5 evbb/100. obv having a huge upswing It’s becoming summer in the Netherlands.
July: a lack of volume this month, just 20k hands, this is mostly because I’m in Amsterdam alot. Partying. Also I was on vacation to Greece with my GF which was amazing. played breakeven.
August: this was where the luck started to turn against me, my trip to Vegas dissappointed me abit, I’m already not a fan of those crowded places, but the games were boring for me too, the timing was bad, just after the WSOP. I didn’t enjoy the food. Ofcourse I had good times with my friend partying and gambling! But this is fun for 1 week max, and I was there for 1 month, I decided to play 10-20 and didn’t do well unfortunately. Also because I was drinking too much during this trip I wasn’t able to play my A-game nearly ever.
Good thing I shipped some online tournament just because I was bored in my hotel room for 4500$ which made up for some of my losses. I didn’t play much online poker this month apart from some hands on my laptop.
September-November: this is one black period for me, for some reason I took home the mindset from Vegas, couldn’t win anymore and tilted alot, had my 2 only losing months of the year running a ton under ev on the higher stakes, volume wasn’t really good too, with 20k, 40k and 20k hands.
If I look back at it now I think I was really spoiled by how good the beginning of the year was for me and it was just silly to complain. I should just focus on my volume and my game and not complain if I can’t win for 100k hands or so, this is perfectly normal.
December: after 10 days of hardly any playing I realise that something needs to be done I’m going for supernova on stars (blush blush) Working hard again makes me feel good, just playing 200z which is very beatable, and I made the target pretty easy, christmas and NYE with my family and girlfriend in Rome was really nice. I’m feeling motivated for 2016!
This is the graph of 2015, could be better, could be worse
Total evbb/100 was 3.3. played another ~40k hands on my laptop which I won 5evbb/100
2016
No money goals (this didnt work for me last year, I got greedy) Just volumegoals, focussing on getting better, staying sharp mentally and sustaining a high as possible ev bb/100. Graphs will be in bb/100 too. Will only post graph twice a month since it does have impact on my game if I keep looking at my results!
I will be in
Playa del Carmen for the first few months with 2 pokerfriends, studying, partying, going on trips and playing a lot of poker!
picture is from google but this spot is ~200m from our appartment
I really like it here so far.
GOALS:
Volume: 500k hands in 2016, if I won’t make this because I’m playing live or HU, this is fine. But if it’s because I play videogames and watch TV then it’s not
Get into HU: start battling regs at 2-4 and bumhunt up to 5-10 potentially, not really a goal, more a note to myself to really start doing this more.
Find a good livegame in the Netherlands: and become a regular for at least 1x a week on average. A 5-10 game somewhere would be nice or a really deep midstakes game is also fine.
Learning strong fundamentals: I’m already studying now, trying to become less easy to exploit, I’m going to study a lot on it, maybe I will add a time goal for this one.
Play more in weekends: I really enjoy being with my non-poker friends, they are really important for me and I want to keep hanging out with them. Which is sometimes hard when you’re playing poker for a living, since they’re all working people we can only hangout during the weekends, which is obv the best time to play poker too.
We play football on Sundays, on Saturdays we mostly play videogames and drink beers. And on fridays we party too. I’m going to cut drinking with my friends in weekends from 2 nights to 1, so I can play poker more and have less hangovers too
.
Gonna share as much as I can with you guys. Sometimes post some pictures too. Hope it will be interesting to follow!
Last edited by LeKiii_Fish; 01-19-2016 at 12:53 PM.