A new challenge – an old story

Anyone who ever read this blog before knows that in autumn 2009 I suffered a painful defeat, one of my biggest failures. I launched a prop bet and tried to reach SNE in an absurd amount of time and I failed. Now I allow myself to revise my mistake.

I wasn’t in a good mental shape when I started the SNE challenge. I wasn’t prepared to sustain the mental pressure. The plan wasn’t well-thought-out. Probably the most important thing is that I did not do it because I wanted it, I did it to prove myself. I wanted to show everybody how awesome I am and I failed pathetically. I still have problems to understand my behavior in the period from summer 2009 till December 2009. I swung from feeling awesome to feeling terrible, from strong to pitiful and I had no idea what I really wanted.

Now my sight is crystal clear and I know what I want. I want to reach SNE, I want to grind a lot, I want to play the APPT Macau and go to Vegas to grind the WSOP. The past two month have shown that I’m again who I used to be, a winning poker player, a student (of the game) interested in improving and a thankful, a happy and satisfied person who believes in his strengths and his ability to change. The past two months I drank alcohol one single time, probably went out 3 times and the only time I drank was last week with a friend and then not even a lot and just beer. I know it sounds retarded bragging about this, but given the circumstances I was in and the fact that after losing the prop bet and break up with my ex I got drunk at least 3 times a week this is a pretty good result. In hindsight I’m glad I had the worst New Year’s Eve ever, in which I almost killed myself. I don’t know how it happened but my head bashed pretty damn hard against cobblestones and I had serious brain headache the next couple of weeks. I also managed to sleep outside and that’s not really something you want to do with minus degrees. Till the 4^th I was lying ill in bed till I decided to change… and I changed.

I found out the key is the “I-want-to” and the “I-have-to” is the key-enemy. Things are boring and disgusting if you have to do something, but if you want to do something than things become way more interesting and cool. I’ve played a lot of poker in 2010 and mainly (w/ exception of last week on GD) because I wanted to. The amazing thing is that I had fun playing poker. It’s a long time ago I had fun playing poker and I’m so happy I have that feeling back. In the recent past I was torn whether to play cash or grind SNGs and finally I made a decision. While it’s true that I have more fun playing cashgame, from a money-perspective it’s better to grind SNGs at the moment. I found out that the APPT Macau takes place in May this year and I really want to go there. Maybe even a good friend comes with me. Immediately after Macau/Hongkong I’ll be flying to Vegas to play the WSOP. Basically I plan to play the APPT Macau Main Event and the days before and after will be holiday for the stressful 1.5 months of work in Vegas. I want to reach SNE before the Main Event starts and if that means that I have to grind 14 hours in a hotel room than I’ll do that.

The question was whether to start another prop bet or not. I decided not to, for a simple reason that I’m not rolled as big as I was once and for another and even more important reason that nobody has any idea when cashgame and higher buyins will be introduced. Combining these two factors make a prop bet not really profitable and very unsafe.

Pokerstars.it announced big promotions for next week and I think/hope it’s the 2x VPP promotion. If that’s the case be prepared for a couple of new records (personal for sure). If there is no 2x than I’ll be still grinding lots of volume. For the other remaining 8 weeks I got some rough plans/ideas in my head, playing something like 8-9 hours a day, 30 tabling from €30s to €100s. If cashgame will be introduced before April I’ll abort the SNE grind, otherwise I’ll keep grinding even though there might be fewer traffic. In general I’m very excited for the next 9 weeks, but also a little bit sad as I wanted to straighten up some things before start grinding but unfortunately I had no chance to do so. Whatever, the second April weekend is in best case the only Saturday where I’m going out drinking because my best friend turns 24.

Stay tuned for more,

-tobi