Tzen1 – PokerStars Team: Online

My to-do list is packed with stuff and somewhere on the list is writing a blog. There is just so much else to do but I think that it’s important that I write this blog today. I don’t only write it for you readers but also as a bit of self reflection and since I can’t say things have been going perfect I think it’s important to write this blog. Hopefully I’ll learn from it myself 😉

180 Days:
Start: 14-01-13
End: 12-07-13
Days left: 159

Poker
Goal: 500h
Pace: 58,3h
Played: 60,36h
Remaining: 439,64h

So I’m ahead by 2 hours which might look good but I’m not happy at all with how things have been going. Two weeks ago I had a proper week of poker but last weekend I already dropped the ball. I had a weekend away planned with 29 others and my idea was to go back on Sunday evening so I could play a full Monday and Tuesday. I already regretted the fact I would miss most of the TCOOP but the weekend away was planned way in advance so there was nothing to do about it. Friday after dinner I decided to play the LHE 6-max TCOOP since I didn’t want to miss that one but unfortunately the mobile reception wasn’t that great and I was timing out a lot. After the 3rd break I lost my reception completely and I was shortstacked and would receive both blinds right after the break. When I got my reception back I had only 6 blinds left and 3 hands later I busted 18 spots before the money. Playing on a mobile device is great but my advice is to only do it via WIFI or when you have a good reception to prevent frustrating moments when timing out 😉

In stead of going back on Sunday we went back Monday morning, were home Monday afternoon and when I got home my new mediaplayer (Popcorn Hour a-400) had arrived. I was a bit tired and didn’t want to play poker right away so I started playing with my new mediaplayer which resulted in no poker at all on Monday. On Tuesday basically the same happened also since I had to run a lot of errands that day. The stupid thing is that I can already predict these things to happen and I still let them happen. Somehow I’m not strong enough to do what I have to do first and I get distracted a lot by things which aren’t on my to-do list but seem more fun then playing poker or exercise.

This weekend my plan was to play poker on Saturday which didn’t happen at all due to all kind of things and yesterday I finally sat down again. I started a little later then planned but was doing fine till the moment my girlfriend came home. I was already planning to have a small break but I had the stupid idea to start watching a new TV-Series with her. We picked out House and I like the first episode so much that I wanted to watch another one. Going to bed afterwards seemed like the best plan so I only played 6 hours of poker in stead of the planned 10.

I hope by writing these things down it also becomes more clear to myself that things aren’t working out. I might be 2 hours ahead but saying this is something good would be lying to myself. The good thing is that the next coming 10 weeks I have nothing big planned during the weekends which means I could get into a rhtym for these 10 weeks and normally this is a great help. I also sort of commited myself to playing a lot since I signed up to get 300.000 VPPs by the end of the year. Now I didn’t want to make any VPP commitments this year but PokerStars runs a promotion in which you can earn money if you are on pace after the 1st and 2nd quarter. I need to get 75.000 VPPs before the 4th of April and I’m currently way behind which means I really have to grind the coming two months to get it. I doubted to change my goal to 200.000 because I’m pretty certain I’ll have 50.000 VPPs by the 4th of April but this would probably result in aiming exactly for 50.000 and nothing more. So 75.000 VPPs it is which seems very little compared to what I grinded out in previous years. However I’m playing way less tables and in stead of getting 750+ VPPs/hr nowadays I’m happy to get 350+. I’m also planning for a weekend to do nothing else then poker and I’m confident I’ll push myself to achieving my goals. Normally when doing challanges like this the start is the easiest but maybe it’s not even that bad that I started of with some hick-ups, it’s still early enough to turn things around!

Lifestyle
Alcohol: 0
Start: 104,7kg
Goal: 95kg
Pace: 103,6kg
Current: 101,3kg
Remaining: 6,3kg

So looking at the lifestyle part of the challenge things seem to be going fine. I have to say that staying away from alcohol was pretty easy so far. When we arrived in the big house last weekend everybody was drinking but I was doing fine with some cola light and water. It was also pretty easy to stay away from all the chips and candy but that changed the next day. On Saturday I started eating way to much bad food, there was just too much of it around the house. Somewhere in the back of my mind I was thinking: “I’m already not drinking, I’m not going to force myself eating healthy all weekend as well”. It wasn’t that bad but till that weekend I was losing a small bit of weight every day but when I came back I had gained a little. However at home I have no problem with my healthy lifestyle and I’m again losing a bit of weight every day. 101.3kg really looks good already, with a bit of luck I’m already <100kg by next week but for sure before my next blog! The weirdest part is probably that I’m hardly hungry while I’m eating 1500/1750 calories max every day. I’ll probably start eating a bit more as soon as I work-out more but I think so far the “lifestyle” part of the challenge is going by far the best.

Cycling
Morning exercise: Avg 3* week
1st at my own strava segment: Not yet
Scheveningen in 2h 40m: Not yet
Finish AGR 150km: Not yet
Alp d’Huez in 1,5h: Not yet
Finish Galibier: Not yet

As with poker I also skipped the spinning lessons last week mostly because of lame excuses. While being away for the weekend I skipped my morning exercises as well but since this week I’m already back on track. Friday we had our first “France” group meeting in which we are planning our trip to the Alps. I really want to outperform myself this year in cycling but for that I need to do a lot of training. Today it’s probably the first good day to cycle outside but if it’s raining taking spinning classes in the gym should be the alternative. Sunday morning I had set my alarm at 09:00 to go spinning at 10:15 and I really hated to wake up that early on Sunday. It was however my best spinning class so far so I was pretty happy that I went to the gym. Also on Saturday and today I picked up my morning exercises again and I can see that I’m improving. The plan is still to go spinning on Tuesday and Thursday the only threat to this is work. The spinning class starts at 19:00 and it’s currently really busy at work but I should be able to make it. If it’s not work there shouldn’t be any other excuses for not going!

We also planned at least one organised ride each month:
Sunday 24 February – 75km Snel – Ontwakingstocht
Sunday 24 March – 120km Omloop van Zandvoort
Saturday 30 March – 150km TBD
Saturday 13 April – 150km Amstel Gold Race
Sunday 5 May – 110km Classico Boretti
Saturday 15 June – TBD Mountain training

So there is plenty to look forward for. If we are a bit lucky with the weather this is going to be a great year! All in all things are at least already a lot better than last year. It’s two steps forward, one step back but in the end I’ll get there!

I’m not going to write a long blog entry at the last day of the year. 2012 was a great year but I’ve already wrote about all the stuff that happened in my previous blogs. I want to talk a little bit about poker and that’s it.

I’ll start with the good stuff! My contract with PokerStars Team: Online has been renewed for another year. This will be my 3th year and I can only say that I’m really honored. A lot of sponsor contracts were ended after Black Friday, not only at PokerStars, and I’m still a member of PokerStars Team: Online. It feels great to represent PokerStars another year since it’s still the #1 Poker website in the world! 2012 wasn’t a great poker year for me so that means that I’m even more happy since I wouldn’t have been surprised if PokerStars hadn’t renewed my contract. I feel bad about not pushing myself for playing more poker in 2012 and that’s why I’ve come up with my long list of New Year resolutions (see previous blog). I’m really eager to start grinding and if everything goes to plan I’ll start the 2nd of January. I have to interrupt my online grind with the PCA which isn’t really a punishment. I’m not playing the Main Event, I might not play any tournaments at all. The reason for this is the Dutch tax laws, after my 5th place at the MCOP I was really eager to play some more live tournaments and the PCA has a lot of good side events. I was thrilled to register for some of them but it’s just not doable with our current tax laws. I tried to qualify for the Main Event but didn’t manage to do so which means I’m probably not playing a lot of poker at all, I might do just 1 tournament for fun.

Most of PokerStars: Team Online are coming and we have a meeting with the whole bunch so that’s the main reason for going. Last year I had a blast with a lot of people from Team Online and most of them had their contract renewed as well so will be going to the PCA as well. I’m sure we are going to have some fun again and I’m planning to play a bunch of tennis if possible since I want to start working out as soon as possible in the new year. I’m bringing my buddy again and he will be playing some tourneys and I will be buying some % so I still hope to earn some money as well 🙂 I should also not forget the bet with DaWarsaw, he will have to be my personal assistant for a full day, I can’t wait 😉

This month I played a bunch of LHE cashgames and didn’t do that bad but in the end it wasn’t great either. I was playing anything up to $15/$30 focusing on 4-6 tables which was great to test out some new things. At the PCA I hope to study some more and when I’m back I should be putting everything to practice and I’ll start again at the $2/$4 level and see where it gets me. I want at least 20.000 hands before moving up but especially in LHE this is still a small sample size. 8 tables should be my max which means 20.000 hands should take roughly 50/60 hours. By the end of January I’ll know if I can start moving up again. January is already packed with stuff, as mentioned PCA, TCOOP starts right after and I’m also away the last weekend of the month. I want to exercise at least 3 times a week as well but since I’m not drinking I should get full use out of my weekend.

I can’t wait to get started. I hope everybody will have a blast at NYE and wish everybody the best in 2013!

See you next year @PokerStars!

I wish I could buy time. I don’t even work full-time and I’m still complaining but 24 hours in a day just isn’t enough. I have so many plans in my head but I just lack the time to execute them. For some of these things it’s not only time that’s lacking, I need to improve my own skills and for that I again need time.

My motivation for poker is at a peak, I’ll explain later why. It’s probably as high as it was before my SNE run in 2010 with the big difference that I have less time to spent on playing poker because my private situation has changed in these 3 years. I’m now living together with my girlfriend and back in 2009 our relationship had only just started and she went away for the first 5 months of 2010. Also my part-time job has changed from a job I could do with my eyes closed to a job in which it hard to do it proper in just the 24 hours I should be working. This is not really a complaint, it’s just merely stating the facts. When I look at my current situation and my overall happiness I’m at a peak as well, one which started many years ago but I’m sure that being able to work part-time and play poker have a lot to do with it. Sure I have my ups and downs as well but my I’m blessed feeling the way I feel.

In 2010 I’ve worked really hard to achieve SNE and I continued to put in the same effort during the first months of 2011 but since black Friday this shifted to less poker and more work. Basically in 2012 this continued, with the addition of taking a lot of time off to relax. I didn’t work a single day in January (Bahamas, Aruba, Curacao), went to Vegas for 2 weeks, a week to Barcelona and I did a couple of short trips as well. I’ve doubted a lot if I should stop playing poker, mainly because it became harder and harder to balance my job and poker but also because I had lost some motivation since black Friday, it just wasn’t the same. There are multiple reasons to not quit poker, money is one thing, having more freedom is something else and the odd chance to still win something big one day is still lingering in my head as well. The biggest reason not to quit poker however should be the fact that the quality of life has so much improved since 2009, something I sometimes forget because you start to take things for granted. I still love the game, it doesn’t bore me like most computer games do after a couple of weeks/months, pretty strange when you think of it.

I’m 30 now and I’m at a stage where a lot of things around me start to change. People around me start settling, get married and make babies. I see some examples of people who play poker and have small kids, I think this is doable but I think it’s really going to be though if you have a part-time job as well. It’s already hard to balance things now, adding another factor for sure isn’t going to make it any easier. My girlfriend is almost 25 and we are not at the stage yet that we are thinking about kids, however that time will probably come one day. When that day comes I’ll probably also have to make a choice between my job and poker but till that day as long as I enjoy both I want to continue doing both. So knowing that at least for next year (but hopefully longer) I’m still playing poker I think I should get as much out of it as possible and that’s one of the reasons why my motivation is at its peak.

The other reason is the talks I’ve had with many poker players the last couple of weeks. This started at the Master Classics of Poker and continued at the “Open Poker Dag” in Utrecht two weeks ago and the PokerStars VIPClub party last Saturday. The best way to get motivation to play poker is to talk about it with other people who have the same drive. I’ve talked to a lot of people at these events, amateurs but also other professional players and this gave me back the motivation I had missed since black Friday. The “Open Poker Dag” was a big freeroll with 240 players with free drinks and food so you can already figured out what happened 🙂

The next day I felt pretty tired but managed to make a pretty deep run in the Sunday Warm-up, finishing 56th with QQ < TT. I played with some friends in Amsterdam and it was a lot of fun to support each other while we were all playing the MicroMillions Main Event and other tourneys. Going deep in a MTT is for sure another way to get motivated 😉

At the PokerStars VIPClub party we didn’t play any poker but again the drinks were free so I ended up drinking a lot of alcohol again. Having evenings like that is great fun, however playing poker the next day is really hard and most of the time it means that you start playing pretty late since you are still hung over. As said I’m lacking time and I think I know where to gain to most from, stop drinking alcohol. Now this has been a subject many times before in my blog and sometimes I kept my promises for a couple of weeks but most of the time it didn’t last too long before I got back into my old habits. I don’t need alcohol to have fun but especially the last 1,5 years I prioritised fun above anything else and this resulted in suboptimal poker conditions during most weekends. I’m definitely not planning to quit alcohol forever but if I complain about time and want to be serious at playing poker I think it’s a no brainer that I can gain the most from quitting alcohol for a period of time. Drinking less often or just less would be a better way I do know that but after all these years I still can’t find a good mode, the switch is either on or off. Quitting alcohol will help my other goals for next year as well. As you might know my weight has been another topic which has been discussed more than once in this blog and the other big plan I have for next year is my cycling week in France and guess what would really help? Indeed quitting alcohol for some time.

So the plan is that I won’t drink alcohol for 6 months, starting the day I return from the Bahamas, January 13 till the day I leave for France, July 13. I’m also so sure about this that I’m willing to propbet it at even odds for a max of $2.000. If people are serious about making this bet the only rule I have is that I need to have seen you in real life at least once. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog, twitter or facebook if you are interested. The reason for wanting to make a propbet out of this is because most of the time I don’t find it difficult to quit for a couple of weeks, then the moment comes that you drink just this one time at a party and from there on you are back to your old habits. If I propbet it I know that the step to drink at only that one party will be a lot higher so I hope that this will prevent me from doing it at all.

The last few weeks after the many talks about poker I have a good idea on how I can improve myself as a poker player. I’m back in love with LHE cashgames but if that doesn’t work out I think SNG’s will be my back-up plan. I will also definitely continue to play MTTs, my results have been pretty good the last months and I really hope to get lucky and make a big(ger) score. I don’t expect to win a Sunday Million out of the blue but with my many deep runs lately I’m hoping that I can get just that little bit deeper and this time make it to the top 3. If I’m really lucky it’s in one of the big ones, the feeling that this could happen is one of the reasons I started playing and I’m still looking for that sort of excitement when I’m playing, something that’s less around when playing cashgames. My main effort will however go into improving my LHE cashgames by studying, I’m planning to do this in a real mathematical approach. When people who are not into poker ask me why I’m good at poker I often answered that it was because I’m good at math but that’s probably only half true. I think it has more to do with the fact that I’m very analytic, a useful skill for both math and poker but I never really went far with using math at the poker tables, something that a lot of people have been doing for a long time in poker already.

This month you might see me play less tables, maybe not even playing at all because I’m studying 🙂 After I return from the Bahamas I should have a lot more time in the weekends since I’m not hung over and I hope to use that time to play a lot of poker again, lose some weight and be faster on my bike then ever!