Feb 042013
 

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.

house_wallpaper2

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!

two-steps-forward-one-step-back

 Posted by at 3:15 pm
Jan 212013
 

After coming back from the PCA it was time to change a lot of things in my day to day life. A couple of weeks ago I already wrote about my 180 days no alcohol propbet, but it’s much more then that! It’s not about the alcohol, it’s more about playing more poker and getting back into shape. So yes one of the goals is to not drink any alcohol, but my main goal is to play 500 hours of poker in those 180 days, lose a lot of weight and get fit so I’m able to cycle up Alp d’Huez in a new personal record.

180 Days:
Start: 14-01-13
End: 12-07-13
Days left: 173

Poker
Goal: 500h
Pace: 19,4h
Played: 42,81h
Remaining: 457,19h

My goal is pretty simple, play 500 hours of poker, live or online in 180 days. I’m cheating a bit since I started counting the hours from the 1st of January but I’ve only played 11 hours before the 14th of January so that’s not a huge advantage. I’m ahead of schedule but next week I’m away the whole weekend and I have more weekends away planned already so being ahead of pace doesn’t say much. This challenge comes down to roughly 20 hours a week or 2,8 hours a day. Doable for sure but it’s not about doing it for 1 week, I have to do it for 180 days. I didn’t set any VPP or monetary goals and so far this has paid off. Last week I’ve played LHE cashgames, MTTs, Sats and Hyper Turbo SNG’s. I’ve 1 tabled and 16 tabled and enjoyed playing pretty much all the time.

I’ve played LHE cashgames most of the time and things haven’t worked out that well. I’m playing $2/$4 6-max and any full-ring table up to $5/$10. The sample is still small but I would have hoped to do a bit better since I’m playing less tables.

LHE Stats - 2013-01-21For sure I’m running hot on the $2/$4 Full-Ring tables since that winrate isn’t sustainable but I’m hoping as well that I’m running bad at all other stakes. My overall BB/100 is 1.44 which would be very good so I’m just holding on to that. Yesterday was a really good day at the cashgames, winning $950 so let the hotrun continue 🙂 I did have to host 5 TCOOP final tables yesterday as well so I had to mix playing and hosting which wasn’t optimal for my focus and multitable skills. I also played all the NL TCOOP events and all the deadline satellites but I bricked all of them. In the two Hyperturbo sats I bubbled twice, stone cold with a mandatory all-in from the SB (AT < 77, QQ < KK) where both I would have made it if I would have won the hand. I was really card dead in all MTTs/Sats I played, the opposite of what was happening at my cashgames. Means I’m down for the year in MTTs/SNGs/Sats but I’ve only been playing for one week.

My PC died on me Friday when I was playing some MTTs and that didn’t happen for over a year. I did a Windows Update (patches) just before my session so that was probably the reason. My laptop battery was dead as well and you can only play 4 tables max on your mobile so it was pretty frustrating, especially if 2 of those tourneys are hyper MTTs. After 15 minutes or so I got my laptop to work again but busted every tournament in the 30 minutes after, except the $5 freezout! So I was 1 tabling on my laptop and busted in 41st place, 2.5 hours after busting all the other tournaments, FML! While 1 tabling I was fixing my PC which seemed to work out. On Saturday I had the brilliant idea to test my PC by playing $3 Hyper-Turbo Sats. Playing 8-12 tables, putting some pressure on my PC seemed like a great idea. After the 1st 100 I was down and well, nobody likes to finish down so I kept on playing. I was definitely to loose at the 1st blind level and had to adjust to the bubble play, paying more attention to the stack sizes but in the end I did manage to end with some profit. I did have to play 432 Hypers but it was fun and I might try another session in the coming days/weeks.
Profit-Hypers

Lifestyle
Alcohol: 0
Start: 104,7kg
Goal: 95kg
Pace: 104,3kg
Current: 102,6kg
Remaining: 7,6kg

The day I got back from the PCA I was actually 105.9kg. This was without any sleep which normally is roughly 1kg difference. The next morning I was 104,7kg so that’s the weight I will start this challenge with. I’m currently already 102,6kg which is 2.1kg less in just one week. That’s pretty standard for the first week and I shouldn’t expect to keep this up, 0,7kg a week would be fine and doable until I reach the 95kg. 93kg is my ultimate goal but I didn’t want to push it too much so I’ll leave my goal at 95kg. Of course I didn’t drink any alcohol so far this week. I did have a b-day party of one of my best friends who turned 30 but since this is still the first week it was pretty easy to stay away from alcohol. My friends were pretty happy with it as well since I could drive them 😉 Next week going away for the whole weekend will be a bit more difficult but I still just started so doubt it will get super difficult. In total I’ve bet for $350 which should keep me away from making any exceptions in these 180 days. I’m eating pretty healthy and I’m surprised that I’m not hungry at all so far. I’m eating way less than before but I guess my body has plenty of fat in reserve 😉 So far so good but it’s about the long stretch, not just the results of one week.

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

I was planning to start last Tuesday with spinning in the gym but the weather was really bad so I didn’t get out of the house. I made up some more lame excuses on Thursday and during the weekend so I’ve not started cycling yet. Tomorrow I hope to start but the weather is again pretty bad, guess I have to do it anyway. I hope the cold weather / snow goes away asap since I would prefer to cycle outside at least during the weekend, we’ll see. I did start doing morning exercises and I still hate them but I did do them every day I planned to do them. The idea is to do them each day I don’t have to work, which means I’ll do them Sat-Tue. It’s a combination of stretches, ab exercises and push-ups. I prefer to wake up and jump behind my computer to check Facebook, Twitter and forums but nowadays I start with getting my heart rate up to 150+. I already see some improvement and I hope that these exercises will keep me fit during these 180 days, old people have to stretch 😉

Other stuff

I also wanted to mention some other stuff which hasn’t got anything to do with my 180 day countdown. First of all Andre Coimbra’s short film has been released, check it out below!

He also started his $100 -> $100k MTT challenge in which he will donate any money won to charity. You can follow the challenge on his blog and check out the video below for some extra info:

As you can see his girlfriend is featuring in his videos and she also plays poker. Andre learned her to play hyper sats and in December she won $20k and made it to Supernova! She keeps a blog as well and I think it’s a great read.

I added two other blogs to my blogroll as well. Both AWice and MouldyOnions are trying to set a new yearly VPP record. Actually they want to go way beyond that and reach 8M VPPs within 1 year. I think this is pretty nuts and currently they are racing to be the first SNE of 2013 (Check out PokerStarsblog to see what’s it all about) after AWice won the race to being the first SN of 2013. MouldyOnions is currently ahead with 629.455 VPPs and AWice is having a huge downswing and currently 2nd at 464.928 VPPs. Seems like Mouldy will be reaching SNE within 1 month which would be pretty insane, especially since up till now he has profit playing hypers as well! Check out their blogs.

Last thing I wanted to add is that since last week you can also subscribe to my blog. In case you want to receive an e-mail as soon as I publish a new blog you can leave your e-mail address at the top right of my website and I will promise to only e-mail you once after I finished another blog post.

I guess that’s it for this week. I should be blogging once every two weeks and I hope I’m still on pace by then! Cya

 Posted by at 3:12 pm
Dec 312012
 

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!

 Posted by at 2:20 pm
Dec 172012
 

I’m one of those guys who like to make new year’s resolutions. Sometimes I stick to them (2007,2009 & 2010) but a lot of times I fail big time (2011 & 2012). You can read all about my 2013 new year’s resolutions in this blog.

I remember last year at the PCA I told everybody I would lose weight, I went from 105kg to 98k but today I’m back at 105kg. I remember making a bet with a friend about the amount of VPPs I would grind out this year, I didn’t even come close. I wanted to crush my personal record on Alp d’Huez but only beat it by 1 minute. Last week I already wrote about my 6 months no alcohol propbet which I think is a great start to achieve all the other goals I have for 2013. I noticed that a lot of people who responded on this didn’t read my blog at all but just responded on the title. I’m not doing it because I’m alcoholic or I think drinking has a negative impact on me as a person. i.e. I don’t get into fights and I don’t drink to try and forget normal life. Most people who do top-class sport don’t drink because it has a negative impact on your overall performance. Now I don’t want to compare myself with somebody who does top-class sport but I do want to push myself to the max for 6 months and by quitting alcohol I will improve my performance in all the goals I want to achieve.

To make sure I wouldn’t change my mind before the end of the year I was willing to put a max of $2k on quitting alcohol for 6 months. Most people on the forums said this was to easy, most of my friends laughed at me in my face and said I would never be able to pull it off. So far I only have 1 person who was willing to bet with me for $250, I’m really happy with this and not because I think it will be easy. After agreeing to the bet I started thinking about what I had already planned to do during these 6 months. At the end of January I’m going away with 36 people for a weekend of fun in a huge/farm house, normally this involves a lot of drinking. In April I’m going away for a weekend to the Amstel Gold Race with 11 guys, normally this involves a lot of drinking. In May I’m going to Greece with my girlfriend for 10/12 days, normally this involves at least some wine during dinner. I was planning to go to Las Vegas as well in June, I doubt this is still an option if I’m not drinking any alcohol. These are just holidays, I probably have somebody’s birthday every other week and let’s just hope nobody is getting married. Yes I can do all these things without drinking but it will be very hard. If I didn’t put any money on it I’m sure I would have allowed myself to drink on all these “special” occasions, which often leads to giving up on it somewhere down the line. I really hope I will be able to finish the bet, $250 might not be enough money to keep my away from drinking alcohol but my own will to accomplish the goals I have for 2013 should!

I’ve been thinking a lot of what I want to do within these 6 months and I think it’s a good idea to list some big goals and some smaller goals. In case for whatever reason I’m not able to make any of the big goals I should still be happy with making some of the smaller goals I’ll set for myself. I want to divide my goals into 3 categories: Poker, Lifestyle, Cycling. I want to finalise the list early next year since I’m going to start with this when I return from the Bahamas but this is what I’ve been thinking off so far.

Poker
I agree with most other people that setting a monetary goal is not a good idea. You can’t really predict how much money you are going to make since this heavily depends on the games that are running and how lucky you are in terms of variance. I’ve always put my goals in terms of VPPs which made sense because it said something about how much I grinded. This year however I’m going to do it slightly different, I’m putting my goals in # of hours. This is because I want to play less tables and putting a goal in terms of VPPs will often result in playing to many tables. Therefore I set a goal of playing 500 hours of poker in 6 months which means roughly 20hours a week. This is next to my part-time job of 24hours of course. This is going to be pretty hard since I will miss some week(s)ends due to holidays but I’ll just have to deal with that by grinding a bit more the other weeks. I will actually start counting the hours from January 1st and I have until Friday the 12th of July to make it is a little bit more than 6 months but since I’m away to the Bahamas as well this means only 4 days extra and I doubt I’ll be grinding on the 1st of January. It doesn’t matter if I’m playing cashgames or tourneys, live or online as long as I’m playing poker. I can’t really think about any other poker goals for 2013 but I think this will be a pretty good challenge already!

Lifestyle
The obvious one in this category is 6 months without alcohol starting the 13th of January until the 12th of July(so I can have a beer again in France on the 13th). The other one is of course losing some weight again, let’s start with < 100kg then < 95kg and my ultimate goals is 93kg. I’m 105kg at the moment, with Christmas still to come and a week in the Bahamas so there is probably about 10-15kg to lose. Losing weight is actually not the goal, losing fat is but I doubt I’ll gain a lot of muscle by only cycling. 93kg is doable but I would already be extremely happy with < 95kg, I need to drop weight to climb those mountains faster!

Cycling
I can think off a lot of cycling goals. I want some goals which I can achieve while training and some ultimate goals. The first goal is to get my segment record back on my own strava segment. When doing the sports bet back in September I lost it to Diede and my first goal is to get it back which means I have to cycle 13,4km in 24:30 (32,8km/h). It might not sound fast but it goes up and down a lot so it’s not that simple. My own PR is 26:12 so I do have to improve more than 1:30 minute. Another training goals is a ride I often do to Scheveningen. It’s 72,5km and I would like to ride it solo in 2hours and 40 minutes which means an average of 27,2km/h. I never really ride it solo but the last time I did it it took me 3hours and 7 minutes and with a friend of mine I did it in 02 hours 56 which means I have to gain a lot of speed. The big goal this year is to finish the 150km Amstel Gold Race in April and on the 13th of July after not drinking for 6 months it’s time for another try at Alp d’Huez and this time I do want to crush my personal record! Currently it’s 1 hours and 47 minutes and I want to do it in 1,5 hours, a huge difference but I feel I can do this. It’s probably the most challenging goal I will set myself this year. The last one is to ride up the Galibier for the 1st time, this is going to be the masterpiece of my trip to France!

So these are all the goals I have. I’ll keep track of my weight and poker hours in a spreadsheet and Strava.com will keep track of my cycling goals. If you have any ideas about other goals I could add just let me know. I can think about them for another month or so. I’m also still willing to take on some more “6 months no alcohol” bets.

If I don’t blog before the end of the year, merry x-mass and a happy new year!

 Posted by at 4:25 pm

Buying Time with a 6 Months Alcohol Propbet

 Poker  Comments Off on Buying Time with a 6 Months Alcohol Propbet
Dec 072012
 

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!

 Posted by at 12:22 pm