Diamond Interview Series: Yoghi

This interview was conducted by vhallee

Yoghi: Hey, I'm a 20 year old person from the Netherlands. About 2 months ago I decided to go pro with poker after having a really good year and enough confidence to go pro. The game that I play most of the time is fixed limit heads up!

PokerStrategy: How did you actually get into poker in the first place? And how did you come across PokerStrategy.com?

PokerStrategy: And you now play games at stakes where the big bet is a third-world country salary for a month. Why did you go for Fixed Limit? And why heads-up?

Yoghi: I started playing SSS like most of our members, however I almost went broke and saved my $8 roll by playing blackjack till I reached $21. I then cleared the PP bonus and had $150 again.
I thought PartyPoker hated me (never thought it was rigged), went to PokerStars and ran it up to $350 on NL10 BSS. I then lost $200 again so I had $150 left. I was really really sick with the game after that.
The Dutch community was just created back then and I wanted to get good at something, so I started with FL because I didn't try that before. Then they got Makomar as a hand judge/coach and I found out that he was sick good so I decided to keep on playing that since I could learn so much from him.
I got up to 2/4 really really quick, then even to 3/6 but I couldn't beat that, throughout 2008 I just kept on playing FLSH but couldn't get better or beat higher limits. After taking a few weeks break in the end of 2008 I decided that I was gonna play FL HU in 2009 and get really good at it.

PokerStrategy: Your nickname reminds me of an embarrassing cartoon and your PokerStars avatar is a Pokemon. Is there a story behind the nickname or you just like crappy cartoons? Also, why the hell do you have a Pokemon for avatar?

Yoghi: My nickname is not from a cartoon, and Yogi Bear isn't embarrassing ok? My cat was called Yoghi, and like 10 years ago when I started playing RuneScape I needed an account name and I saw my cat, so that was an easy choice. Lots of people think I stole it from Yogi Bear, but as you can read it's Yogi and not Yoghi. I hate crappy cartoons, I only watch good cartoons like Futurama.
The story behind my avatar is a different 1. When I moved to PokerStars I was talking to a few friends of mine and we had the great idea that I should look as retarded as possible.

Because my nickname reminds people of stupid things I already had 1 thing done. Later that evening I was watching TV and I saw P

PokerStrategy: Wow, Jigglypuff... I don't think I will eat anything today. Did you have any special moment where this nickname+avatar combo got you some weird reactions at the table?

Yoghi: Oh come on, Jigglypuff is cool. Well, actually I don't remember anything special from it. I had this avatar on Partypoker aswell in January and February, and some people had some comments about it. But that's all, I think most people were just scared, and as you can see now they had a reason to be scared.

PokerStrategy: I think it adds to the embarrassment - losing heads-up to a guy with a cartoon-bear nickname which also has a Pokemon avatar. The shame is quite unbearable. Another shameful thing is your graph. How do you explain it? What the hell happened with your graph?

Yoghi: Ye, actually I am quite ashamed of losing in the first few hands. My graph just does what it wants, and I try to follow it... Actually I started playing 3/6 and 5/10 HU this year, and it didn't start too well, hence the losing. I lucked like 100BB vs a regular, and then I realised that this is not the way the game should be played.
I then started to focus more on my game when playing and I was just playing the opponents that I knew I could beat. From then on I didn't really do a lot of session reviews, I just reviewed my game while I was playing and I kept improving. And as I kept improving my wins kept getting bigger and bigger as well.
After like 1.5 month I got rid of my scared money feelings and just kept on taking shots and using aggressive BRM. This all went well, only suffered a loss on 100/200 and I had to (wanted to) move down, but for the rest it was just up up up, and as the stakes got bigger the wins got bigger as well.

PokerStrategy: So let me guess: the graph wins went crazy when you started FL HU, right?

Yoghi: Ye good guess, before that I played about 160k hands of FLSH and like 4k NLHU where I just won 2k in total. It was really annoying, every time I moved up from 2/4 to 3/6 I got destroyed.
Once PartyPoker had 100% RB as a promotion and at that time I had a bit over 4k and I tried 5/10, and also there I got completely owned. I just couldn't believe that every time I played 3/6+ I got owned by my opponents, so I decided to play some HU when 2009 started to see how that went. It went pretty well and I didn't look back afterwards.

PokerStrategy: Which is why so many of our members (hi, swissmoumout!) hate you. Also, you made about $200,000 so far in 2009. Oh I forgot: you also made $100,000 more in two MTTs just a few days ago. You're a Fixed Limit player man, what the hell happened there?

Yoghi: Since I have quite a lot of money now I decided that I wanted to play some live tournaments, especially EPTs. Because I'm a fish in MTTs I thought it was a good idea to practice them a bit. Up until 2 weeks ago I never had time, but now I'm living on my own and I can do whatever I want.
I never played Sunday majors and last weekend I really felt like playing some MTTs. I joined quite a lot, Sunday warm-up, million, Sunday brawl, 750k GTD on FTP and of course the 163r. Most went pretty bad due to mistakes from my side (I don't like folding postflop), but the 163r and 750k went pretty well.
I actually like the FTP structure, high antes and pretty slow levels. Only in the 750k I lost with KK vs 44 after he hit a set, so only the 163r was left. In that I just kept on owning my opponents by finding good spots and running good, so that went pretty well until I won the thing.
I really liked those MTTs, so last Tuesday I was bored after drinking beer with friends and I couldn't sleep so I decided to play a few MTTs including the Super Tuesday. Again with some terribad play I went out of the other ones, but I won all my flips in the Super Tuesday and went really deep there aswell

PokerStrategy: Yeah, so you had some beers and decided to make about a hundred grand. Trust me, we've all been through this. So let me get this straight: are you going to participate in the upcoming EPT? Also, do you have any other plans regarding other big live events?

Yoghi: I know you've all had this, but I guess I'm just more normal than the other guys right? I am planning on playing a few EPTs next season, actually I want to play as many as possible, but I can't really find a lot of cool people to go with, only 2 people showed interest to play more than 1 event with me. So if any of you players out there want to play some, just contact me and I'll see what we can do!
I haven't really thought about other live tournaments yet, biggest problem at the moment is that I"m not 21 yet, so I couldn't play WSOP. But this will change in november so I might play some WPTs, but not sure yet.
Also my biggest hater from Switzerland reminded me of the WSOPE, and I think I will play it if I keep on winning a lot (running good), but I can't really say yet. EPTs just look a lot cooler to me now.

PokerStrategy: I guess many people have asked you this (and many more will, including swissmoumout): what's the secret to winning such huge amounts of money? I mean you win $100,000 in two god damn MTTs and you're a FL player.

Yoghi: There is no secret, but there's a few things which made me win a lot. It started with realising that FLHU is the game that I like, and that my strongest point is exploiting fish and not being good at a game. Then it is just about dedication and concentration, if you can't keep on focussing on 1 thing and try to get better at it you will not win a lot unless you luck it or when you are some kind of sick player like Patrik Antonius or Phil Ivey.
The ability not to tilt is really important aswell, and that's where tons of people fail. I honestly do not tilt anymore, not even when I lose 100BB to a superfish in FLHU. I actually didn't even tilt after getting 2nd, I just realised I got lucky by winning coinflips and then getting it in good when I'm heads-up that there was not much more I could do. I won 46.25k net, and not lost 17k. Also during that HU I just couldn't hit and I folded lots of times when I had quite a lot invested, but it didn't change the way I played, I could still make folds when I got raised for the 1,000th time and I waited till I got it in with 97%. If I tilted I would have gotten 7th after being carddead on the final table.
Last important thing for me is not caring about money. When I lose or win 10k it doesn't matter, as long as I get the feeling that I own my opponents it's fine. When you get rid of thinking about money you will win a lot more because you will play just for winning and not for winning money. It's kinda like a football game vs friends, you want to win to show you're better, not to get a bigger ego and become rich of it.

PokerStrategy: We already covered the winning part - ok, you win a lot, we get it. But how much time do you spend on average a day to play poker? Do you split this time into sessions or you just play until you win the equivalent of a few sports cars and then go out drinking?

Yoghi: It's pretty hard to give you some absolute numbers. But most of the time I don't play a lot. I guess my average is like 60 hours per month of playing FLHU. Then a few more hours playing MTTs, but not a lot either. I still find it really important to not focus on poker too much, even though I do have to put in some hours since I went pro.
I am planning to play a lot more, but still only when I have time and don't have other things to do. I realise that I'm a pro now, but I don't want other things to suffer from it. So especially now that it's summer I will go out drinking  a lot.

PokerStrategy: Ah yes, you mentioned you went pro. What are your plans for the next, let's say 5 years?

Yoghi: I think it is really hard to make plans for the longterm, and I try not to make them too concrete since it's impossible. Nobody knows what will happen with online poker, and especially with FLHU since bots can beat humans. But I do have some kind of view on what I will try to do in my life.
I really do want to start my medical studies again in a few years, perhaps even 1 year. At the moment I don't think I want to be a professional poker player for the rest of my life, I do want to do something which makes me feel good, and poker just won't do that for me. But until that time I will just play some online poker and try to travel around the world a lot, be it for poker tournaments or just for fun with friends.
I do have some money goals though, since I don't want to go pro and not make a lot of money. That would feel like a waste of life for me. For 2009 I was aiming at $500k, which got a lot closer after winning those tournaments. And for the longer term I want to make like €1M before I start studying again. The number just sounds really cool and it means that I wouldn't have to worry about money for a big part of my life, which is basically why I play poker.

PokerStrategy: Ok... 1 million...You just attracted the hatred of even more PokerStrategists because of this statement. Too bad I know you're a great guy in real - they won't care. And speaking of that, we've met at the Black Member Party. How was it? The Black Member Party, not meeting me.

Yoghi: It was great (both). I already went to the Black Member Party in Dusseldorf aswell, so I kinda knew what to expect already. Still this party was better than last time since we were there for 2 days. The bus trip there was pretty long, but still fun because all of the Dutch/Belgian are really cool people and I know quite a lot of them now. Friday night was just weird, I really was shocked by all the new things I saw, couldn't imagine the Reeperbahn was that big.
Saturday we all had a hangover and we were just eating sandwiches for a few hours, then we did some lame trip in a boat where the most interesting things we saw were a traffic junction 22 meters below us and 2 ducks which couldn't fly.
Saturday evening/night made up for that though, it was just a huge party and I really loved it. The only thing that I hate about it was the bet365 guy who was just lying straight to my face by saying I could play there as a dutch person, but I couldn't. But that didn't make my evening worse, especially not when I had enough drinks.

PokerStrategy: I hope you'll join us at the next Black Member Party in Berlin. And since many of our members would like to get there, they must first become better players. What are your advices to members who want to be like you? (except for the cat nickname and that weird avatar)

Yoghi: I will try to be there for sure, now that I really know what it is I don't want to miss another one.
I find it pretty hard to give advices because everybody is different and has to learn in a different way. I do think that most people who play poker focus too much on winning money and just winning in general. My game is getting better and better which I can see in my results, but it doesn't matter to me whether I win or lose when I play it well. The 2.7% in the Super Tuesday didn't do anything to me, I was still really happy with my performance.
I also find it important that you do the things you feel like doing. If you're playing SSS but hate it, do something else, it's a hobby not something you have to do. Same thing goes for BRM (I will be hated for this), Pokerstrategy keeps on talking about BRM this BRM that, which is good for beginners but not for more advanced players.
With BRM I just do whatever I want, and I take responsibility for my choices. If I want to play 1k/2k with this BR, I will do it no problem, and if I lose I know it's my own fault and I know the risks. I think BRM holds a lot of people back, because they want to play higher but because of BRM they "can't". Note that this is just for really stable people who don't have a risk of tilting, because the risk is pretty big that you will lose a big part of your BR.
So basically just do whatever you want, but always realise what can happen to you and realise that it's you who makes the choice and that you can't blame running good or bad.

PokerStrategy: Alright beginners, you heard the man. What about your daily life, Yoghi, how does a normal day look like? Do you have any hobbies or something?

Yoghi: There is no normal day for me, it's always different and depends on a lot of things like weather, whether friends have free etc.. But most of the time I wake up at 10 or 11, I try to wake up earlier but it never works. Then I just make some breakfast, browse the interwebz to see what happened in the world. Then I will go to the supermarket on most of the days, I really love food and I always want good food, not some deep-frozen or microwave shit every day.
Mostly I will start playing poker after that, but if it's good weather like now I will just go to the beach with friends or just sit in my backyard enjoying the sun. Around 7 I always make some dinner, and even though it takes a lot of time I still enjoy cooking for myself and I try to do it as much as possible.
The evening is basically the same as the afternoon, just see what you can do and if there's nothing to do I will play poker.
I actually do have hobbies, and poker is 1 of them. I have also been doing gymnastics since I was 6, which is for more than 14 years already, and I still love to do it, especially because my best friends do it as well. The gymnastics that we do is mostly just minitrampolin and airtumbling though, so you won't see me on TV for it. I also have a pair of speedskates, but I'm kinda lazy and haven't really started doing that, but I will try to do it more this summer so finally my stamina will get a little bit better. In the summer the thing I love the most is swimming in the sea though, I live like 10km from the sea and when I can I will always go there with friends to just chill and drink some beer mostly. It's great!

PokerStrategy: Wow... gymnastics... That's just something I did not want to know. I guess it kind of explains the pink/purple avatar on PokerStars. I will just not comment on the obvious link between them. Let's try to end this right here, so if you would like to add anything, now is the time.

Yoghi: Actually it's pretty cool, and you should have seen my sick moves! Actually there's not much to say, I just want to thank Kenny aka fitz1 for all the time he has been watching me. So thanks for the interview and I hope you got some good answers, I did my best at least.

PokerStrategy: Yeah your answers were great. Not as good as my questions, though. Oh well, nobody's perfect (but I'm so close). Thanks for your time, Yoghi, and good luck with that €1,000,000 goal for yours!