How to mentally prepare for Diamond Club Elite

Jared Tendler coached a number of players to SuperNova Elite and he shares his advice for getting to the new VIP status from partypoker.

Last week partypoker announced a new VIP level - Diamond Club Elite. It's a 12 month commitment worth more than 60% rakeback if you are able to rake $200,000 in a year. 

If that sounds familiar, it is very similar to SuperNova Elite from PokerStars, which controversially discontinued in 2015. 

I coached more than 15 players to the level of Supernova Elite on PokerStars. It's been a while since I have been able to share this advice but it remains the same for Diamond Club Elite. 

The following advice is how to mentally prepare yourself for a 12 month grind, because most people who try will fail to get there. I have made an assumption that you have done your research on whether your own particular game type has enough liquidity on partypoker to make this a viable option. 

Curb your enthusiasm

The biggest mistake players will make is trying too hard in the first months and this causes burnout. Most players aren't going to make Diamond Club Elite in the first quarter or even half of the 12 month period, but how they pace themselves can cause them to fail by this time. A majority of the players going for it will need most of the year to get there. This means on average they will have to rake just under $17,000 per month. 

Commonly players who averaged around $8,000 or $10,000 in rake per month, think it'll be easy to jump up to $17,000 (or more) in the first month. If you think about it logically, that might be more than a 100% increase. Meaning you're going to have to massively increase your hours, your tables, your stakes or all three. It's a huge increase in capacity. An increase that can be made, but the only way you can make this increase hold up throughout the year is to build it steadily, rather than all at once.

Mental endurance works in much the same way as physical endurance. You wouldn't expect to be able to double your maximum bench press or the distance of your longest run overnight, so you shouldn't expect to do the same thing with your online volume either. Instead, you gradually increase the weight, build in periods of rest, so you can build up to the point where you can lift double your maximum bench press easily. This strategy is exactly what you should do trying to get to Diamond Club Elite.

Treat the mind like the body

What I got my clients to do for Supernova Elite was to steadily increase their capacity, so they eventually can start averaging more than the required VPPs per a month. You should do the same for Diamond Club Elite. Don't worry, that doesn't mean you're going to be playing like crazy all the way through to the final month. You can pace yourself while working with the reality of your capacity and still have time to spare at the end. The main difference with my method is that you won't burn out. An example of a 12 month schedule might look like this:

• Month 1: $10,000 rake
• Month 2: $12,000 rake
• Month 3: $14,000 rake
• Month 4: $16,000 rake
• Month 5: $18,000 rake
• Month 6: $20,000 rake
• Month 7: $20,000 rake 
• Month 8: $20,000 rake
• Month 9: $20,000 rake
• Month 10: $20,000 rake
• Month 11: $20,000 rake
• Month 12: $10,000 rake

Even though you're behind schedule in the early months you're really building the mental muscle that's required to grind this kind of volume throughout the year. Even though you have to put in a lot of volume in the second half of the year, grinding is exponentially easier. Not to mention, there's still a safety buffer for the final month. 

Rest is critical

One of the most important things to being able to increase your mental endurance is rest. One of the other reasons so many players burnt out early on the quest for SuperNova Elite was not factoring in proper breaks. Rest is critical because it's during that time when the brain neurons grow to support the increase in grinding ability. This is much like how muscles actually grow when you're resting, not when you're working out. Only with proper rest, can you increase your endurance to be able to play longer, at a higher level, and across more tables, consistently throughout the year.

To get proper rest, I recommend taking at least one day off per week, five to six days off per month, and also have a couple times throughout the year where you take off four to seven days in a row. I'd also limit your use of technology away from the tables to help clear your mind. 

Most people won't get to Diamond Club Elite not because they can't do it but because they don't treat their mind with the same respect that they would their body for an equivalently demanding task. Diamond Club Elite is a marathon effort, it requires a marathon style approach to getting there. If you are really interested in improving your ability to grind a lot of poker, we have a dedicated chapter about it in the Mental Game of Poker 2. 

Are you going to try for Diamond Club Elite? Let us know in the comments: