Behind a somewhat confusing title lies a pretty straightforward goal; indeed, this blog will be my "logbook" in the process of, hopefully, becoming a professional poker player. Since i'm an unknown and I don't pretend to have any "life-railbirds", this is mostly going to contain (hopefully) interesting content and feedback from my journey. I'll obviously post graphs and keep a track of my progression, but the end-goal of this blog isn't just ego-tripping, as I really hope it will be read by people I don't know because they find the rest of the content interesting : strategic discussions, hindsight and thoughts about psychology (tilting, stop-losses, setting goals...), balancing poker and your life, etc.
As this is the first post, I guess i'll start off with a little presentation of myself. I'm a 23 year old computing scientist, live in France and have been playing poker for about 5 years now. A little side note on that, you might find a decent amount of typos and/or errors; i'll try my best to keep the english language at a decent level throughout this blog, but it's not my native language so I hope it won't be too bad.
Just like the vast majority of people I started playing with friends. Sometimes Cash Games, sometimes SnG's, but always for less than 5€. I genuinely loved the game from the first time on, and after a bit of research, I found out this PokerStrategy offer with which you could get 50$ for free. Needless to say that I had no idea about bankroll management, so I lost those pretty quickly.
At the beginning of University I deposited 90€, which was about 133$, on PokerStars. Back then I had read the Little Green Book and another french one, and had what I thought a "solid game".
Fast forward over the years where I cashed out some money (I've never redeposited money that I hadn't previously cashed out, so I guess that's somewhat of a brag), switched sites, made some breaks, i'm sitting on about 10500€ on a french network called Winamax. I'm playing up to 400NL, even though my sample size there is pretty low by now.
I'm also playing in a home game every thursday night with some german friends (I live near the frontier and speak german natively) where we play 25NL. The stakes are pretty low given what i'm used to play online, especially when you one-table at about 15 hands an hour, and i'm definitely the best player there by far, but guess what, I've learned a lot there. I mean, just being able to focus on one table at a time and analysing, discussing hands (albeit with weaker players) really helped my game a lot. Also playing lower stakes than usual with a big edge allows you to try things, and learn a lot about how different lines and moves are perceived in general. I have no idea if one of them will read this or not, but I want to thank all of you for those three years. For letting me play with you the first time even though I didn't know any of you, for the good times and the fun we have every week, for being genuinely happy when I come to play even though you could have told me not to come anymore because i'm taking home a decent amount of money on a regulary basis.Genuinely, thank you.
I've also played in the WSOPE Event #2 recently, and min-cashed there. It was a great experience and I played with a lot of great players, met really friendly people and hope to qualify for other similar tournies in the near future.
You can find me on the 2+2 forums and on the french forum ClubPoker under the nickname beHypE.
About my general hobbies outside of poker : I like to spend time with my girlfriend and my dog, a cute Golden Retriever who's 8 months old. I like going out with friends, action movies, and I also enjoy video games (i'm currently playing DotA on Warcraft 3, but have played a lot of Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike and other games back in the days).
Since this post starts to get really long, i'll go into detail about my goal of turning pro, and the thoughts put behind that decision, in another one. The main points though are these :
[ ] grind a bankroll of 20000€
[ ] play a decent amount of hands at 200NL and 400NL, and be a proven winner at those stakes
[ ] work on my game and play less tables (8 at an absolute maximum) in order to really focus and improve
[ ] keep a track and post interesting content in this blog
Thank you for reading, take care,
Chris
As this is the first post, I guess i'll start off with a little presentation of myself. I'm a 23 year old computing scientist, live in France and have been playing poker for about 5 years now. A little side note on that, you might find a decent amount of typos and/or errors; i'll try my best to keep the english language at a decent level throughout this blog, but it's not my native language so I hope it won't be too bad.
Just like the vast majority of people I started playing with friends. Sometimes Cash Games, sometimes SnG's, but always for less than 5€. I genuinely loved the game from the first time on, and after a bit of research, I found out this PokerStrategy offer with which you could get 50$ for free. Needless to say that I had no idea about bankroll management, so I lost those pretty quickly.
At the beginning of University I deposited 90€, which was about 133$, on PokerStars. Back then I had read the Little Green Book and another french one, and had what I thought a "solid game".
Fast forward over the years where I cashed out some money (I've never redeposited money that I hadn't previously cashed out, so I guess that's somewhat of a brag), switched sites, made some breaks, i'm sitting on about 10500€ on a french network called Winamax. I'm playing up to 400NL, even though my sample size there is pretty low by now.
I'm also playing in a home game every thursday night with some german friends (I live near the frontier and speak german natively) where we play 25NL. The stakes are pretty low given what i'm used to play online, especially when you one-table at about 15 hands an hour, and i'm definitely the best player there by far, but guess what, I've learned a lot there. I mean, just being able to focus on one table at a time and analysing, discussing hands (albeit with weaker players) really helped my game a lot. Also playing lower stakes than usual with a big edge allows you to try things, and learn a lot about how different lines and moves are perceived in general. I have no idea if one of them will read this or not, but I want to thank all of you for those three years. For letting me play with you the first time even though I didn't know any of you, for the good times and the fun we have every week, for being genuinely happy when I come to play even though you could have told me not to come anymore because i'm taking home a decent amount of money on a regulary basis.Genuinely, thank you.
I've also played in the WSOPE Event #2 recently, and min-cashed there. It was a great experience and I played with a lot of great players, met really friendly people and hope to qualify for other similar tournies in the near future.
You can find me on the 2+2 forums and on the french forum ClubPoker under the nickname beHypE.
About my general hobbies outside of poker : I like to spend time with my girlfriend and my dog, a cute Golden Retriever who's 8 months old. I like going out with friends, action movies, and I also enjoy video games (i'm currently playing DotA on Warcraft 3, but have played a lot of Unreal Tournament, Counter-Strike and other games back in the days).
Since this post starts to get really long, i'll go into detail about my goal of turning pro, and the thoughts put behind that decision, in another one. The main points though are these :
[ ] grind a bankroll of 20000€
[ ] play a decent amount of hands at 200NL and 400NL, and be a proven winner at those stakes
[ ] work on my game and play less tables (8 at an absolute maximum) in order to really focus and improve
[ ] keep a track and post interesting content in this blog
Thank you for reading, take care,
Chris
