Welcome to my blog. My name is Christian I am a 27 year old Austrian currently living in Cavite (Philippines, close to Manila).
Like many others in the community I use new year to start over and start a blog to take everything more serious and finally become a solid winning player.
To start the blog I will start with my background regarding poker and what lead to the idea of starting this blog, it’s perhaps boring for most of you to read, but I think that it’s sometimes also good to reflect so it might help me to note the mistakes I’ve made in the past to avoid them in the future.
I also plan to stream my poker sessions using twitch, so here is the link to my channel, as well as to my YouTube channel where all videos should be archived by default:
Live Streams & Updates:
My Twitch Channel
My Twitch Archive (Old Broadcasts)
My YouTube Channel
My Twitter Account
since I will use this channel also for my trading blog and some other things there won't only be poker videos/streams to enjoy
My (Poker) Background
2010 – In autumn 2010 I played poker for the first time. That time a friend mentioned the FREE50 from PokerStrategy so I signed up and got them on PartyPoker if I’m not mistaken (long time ago ^^).
I started playing micro stakes and tried to stick to the SSS but due to lack of motivation I ended up gambling it away, depositing and re-depositing…
In that time I also had some major issues in my private live resulting in a “depression”. To avoid dealing with those issues and my girlfriend who was constantly busting my balls about them I started to visit two cardrooms nearby on daily basis and played some MTT/SNG and cash game there. Needless to say, even though I had some tournament cashes (NLH only buyins up to 50 € with up to 50 players) and winning sessions at the cash game tables (NLH, PLO, Crazy Pineapple) I was pretty much the fish at the table. There were few players worse than me, but I didn’t mind because I didn’t know better, and didn’t bother to learn it on PS or anywhere.
Until the end of 2010 I lost a small five digit euro sum.
Spoiler
Maxim - the dog of my girlfriend back then
2011 – Since my girlfriend figured I was playing too much and not paying here enough attention anymore she decided to break-up shortly after new year, which changed something in my mind and I decided to sort the issues that lead to the situation out. I started working on regularly basis again (was freelancing in IT as a programmer) and landed a nice contract I actually didn’t want to get because I already had too much work for the coming weeks. Long story short got paid 15k € for something I usually do for far less. So I finished the outstanding contracts and felt pretty good since I had a nice sum on my bank account again. During this time I was just playing occasionally live tournaments or cash games in a new cardroom and got a quite good run. This led to the situation where I decided to play poker for a living and just didn’t accept any new contracts for the rest of the year. I used to play most of the daily tournaments in the cardroom with buyins between 15 and 50 € and cashgames NLH/PLO100 – 200 ending up with an hourly around 35 € in the cashgames and some good tournament results.
Instead of saving the money to increase my bankroll I partied a lot back then and bought stuff I didn’t need to impress people I actually didn’t like at all. I started playing online again but didn’t care about bankroll management so I just deposited some hundred euro on PokerStars and played PLO200 there. Sometimes I was able to make some winnings but at the end of the day I got totally crushed by the regulars there. Since I didn’t bother to study theoretical stuff so far, I blamed most of it on “tilt” or “bad luck” even though PokerTracker already made it pretty clear that I was mostly playing bad or just “overplaying”. Looking back today it was pretty stupid to think just because I’m a winning player in the cardroom around the corner I could just crush the PLO200 tables too. During the whole year I donated between 6 and 10k € on PokerStars.
During this year I also read my first poker related book “Advanced Pot-Limit Omaha: Small Balll and Short-Handed Play” by Jeff Hwang which kind off opened my eyes a bit since I was shocked that I didn’t know what “floating” is and so on. Even though I did it sometimes but not with the same thoughts or a bit more mindless. I also started reading some of the content on PokerStrategy and watching some of the videos, but at the end (to be honest) I didn’t really try hard.
Spoiler
Did I mention that I spent money on stuff I don't need? 
2012 – like almost every year I looked back what I’ve done so far and how my life nowadays is, ending up comparing it with my life working as freelancer in IT. I also made at least 35 € per hour working in IT without the need to worry about variance or table selection. I really focused on the downsides like how poker is affecting my social life. Sleeping every day until 2 or 3pm and going to the cardroom around 6 pm to sign up for the tournament just to hope for a good cash game table. Starting the month with two or three losing sessions adding more pressure on myself that I need to “win it back” + earn my living. So in February when I was grinding a lot of hours in the cardroom to qualify for the half-yearly loyalty tournament it finally happened. After starting the week with 3 winning days being up slightly over 1k I managed to overplay 4 way pot almost 500 BB deep (PLO200) to blow up the winnings of today plus tilting then and donating the winnings of the week in a few more hands after that. I eventually got the hours necessary for the loyalty tournament anyways and managed to ship it for 1k € (remember it pretty well, had an insane chiplead on the FT so we made a deal with 5 players left giving me 1k € straight up and around 500 € for each of them…). Sitenote: also won the loyalty tournament 6 months before
After that time I decided to start working in IT again cause I just couldn’t deal with the pressure and how my “working hours” at the tables where fucking up my social life. I started a partnership with another IT freelancer which forced me to work Mon – Fri starting between 8 and 10am and ending between 4 and 8pm. I still played poker sometimes but not more than twice a week and hardly ever until the morning.
Today I’m pretty sure the main “issues” have been the missing bankroll management and the fact that I didn’t bother to learn for quite a while and thought I’m good enough anyways. Ofc the fact that I partied away most of the money I made also wasn’t that good.
So for the rest of the year nothing big happened besides a first place in a freeroll on win2day (casino site for Austrian citizen) with a field of slightly above 700 players and 250 € for the first place, as well as a first place in the monthly 100 € tournament at the cardroom I used to play paying me another 1k €.
Back in 2012 I also had a “co worker” from Germany who has been living on the Philippines for over 15 years and was planning to go there but eventually got scared of the idea to move there.
Spoiler
My home-office back then. 
2013 – the first half of the year my life was pretty straight forward, working a lot and not playing much until summer when I got hired by one of my regular clients to visit him at his company and setup some new systems. So I went to Germany in June and stayed at my dad’s place for some weeks, visited an old (girl)friend of mine in Leipzig for a week and traveled to Ettlingen to work at my clients company. After two weeks there and earning close to 7k net I started thinking about the agreement I had with the other freelancer (the one I teamed up with the year before) asking myself why the hell should I give him 50% of the profit in this case since I was the one who had to stay there for 2 weeks. Don’t get me wrong I enjoyed the time there but it just seemed a bit unfair. So I got back to my dad’s place and after some thinking I just bought a ticket to Bangkok for the 20th of August and a return ticket for 2 months later in case I wouldn’t like it there. Before I left for south east Asia I went to Vienna to stop by at another client of mine and then back home for one day to pack things before I headed back to Germany and spent the last few days before the flight there.
I arrived in BKK on August 21th around 8pm and was pretty shocked how different everything is. I guess I will post some details about my life there in the future cause this opening post is already pretty long. It took me a while to get used to Thailand so I spent a bit more money in the beginning until I figured out how things are going. I was impressed by the quality of some counterfeit stuff they got there, so I sent three packages with “stuff” to my brother in Germany (costing around 750 € per parcel) in the hope he could “distribute” the stuff there and we would split the profit. But unfortunately the first package got stopped by customs (another story for later) and regarding the other two packages my brother was just a lazy ass even though I sold some stuff online, just packing it and shipping it to the buyer proved to be too much work for him, even if he would earn 50€ per sold item. After that wasted time in Bangkok I also managed to try it on PokerStars again, ending up donating something between 2 and 3k € to the PLO200 regulars. So eventually after enjoying life in Asia for some time I had to work again. Nothing special happened until the rest of the year, besides me changing my flight until I couldn’t change it anymore and deciding to stay there.
Spoiler
Why Bangkok? I have no idea ^^ 
2014 – pokerwise nothing special happened for a long time. I was still in Thailand, had some friends for visit. Went to Lao/Cambodia now and then for visa renewal and made a trip to the south to spend some time on Koh Samui and the other islands around. Went diving there for the first time of my life and really enjoyed it. Met my new girlfriend who is currently sitting right opposite of me and worked most of the year. My visa was ending in October and since I didn’t want to bother with the process of getting and educational visa I decided to just leave Thailand for two months and go to the Philippines. I didn’t want to spent a fortune on accommodation – since it’s hard to find “cheap” places to rent for only two months – so I decided to give couchsurfing a shot. Ended up in the house I’m sitting right now, sharing the place with Jino. Most of the time someone else is also staying with us. Anyway liked it here so much more than in Thailand so I was really not sure what to do. Stay here or go back to Bangkok to see my girlfriend again. Since poker is legal here I ended up playing a 175$ deepstack WPT event busting in place ~55 of around 150 and playing some cashgame NLH200 costing me one stack the first night. I eventually played some more NLH200 ending my second session around 1.5 stacks up just to end up at a PLO300 game and losing it against a fucking whale. Holding AJJKss getting it in on a AJx board (two diamonds) against his T967ds and another guy with the Qhigh FD. So even though I blocked one K and the other guy blocked one Q, the flush didn’t show up but it went on KQ giving the guy with his vision the straight on the river and frustrating me.
My last session since then was a NLH100 session where I played with the former president of the Philippines and current Mayor of Manila at a table. After a good start I just started spewing around losing a total of 5 stacks. This combined with two online sessions on PokerStars and the latest one on PKR summed up to a total loss of slightly above 2k euro since I’m here.
Anyway at the end I was almost broke cause some of my “new” clients didn’t pay their bills. I had a bankroll management like the guy in “Rounders” and thought about staying here or moving back, eventually deciding that cost of living here is cheaper than in BKK and it will allow me to recover faster and reduce the pressure.
My girlfriend got pretty pissed about that cause I first changed flights just to cancel the flight then, eventually ending up surprising me here on the 30th of December and staying here with us for a while. Had my best new year’s eve every here and decided to start this blog.
Spoiler
It's more fun on the Philippines ^^ that's what happens when you give your car keys to someone who is drunk and doesn't have a licence... thank god I was not driving even though they tried to blame it on Ari (german guy who is staying with us since the beginning of december)
My Current Situation
So about 2.000 words later I’m sitting in our living room writing this and even though it’s not easy to admit some mistakes in public I have to be honest with myself and not bullshit around. My online bankroll in total is around 1$ now, waiting for the rakeback on PKR to be paid which should give me something between 60$ and 150$ to start my challenge with. I don’t know the exact amount because I also unlocked a FDB and don’t know if they deduct it from the rake paid or from the rakeback.
I’m still staying in Cavite near Manila, currently with my girlfriend, Jino and another German guy who showed up here about 3 weeks ago, trying to focus myself on the future and find a proper way/schedule to reach my goals here as well as getting my work done. Being almost broke at the moment doesn’t make things easier, but adds enough pressure to force me to get everything started.
Spoiler
Here my PT4 Graph for Cashgame and Tournaments so far (but it only contains data from the November/December since I lost all my old data about a year ago. To be fair, my history from PKR is also missing here so in real it's been even worse. It's mostly NLH tournaments with average buyin of less then 1$ + some bigger MTTs the biggest with 50€ buyin.
I for myself know that I have a lot to learn and improve but I'm still convinced that I'm already pretty good in theory when it comes to handreading and making decisions I just start to "gamble" or even though I know the guy hit the FD just sometimes pay to see prove. I know it's wrong and that's what this blog is for, to keep track of my improvements and get rid of all those mistakes.
My Goals
I’m going to play the 180 players MTT SNGs on PokerStars. A friend of mine, a dealer from the cardroom I used to play at, has become a solid winning player at MTTs online and live ending his year with over 100k$ profit last year (still working as dealer to make sure he doesn’t need to win in poker), has offered to coach me and stake 50% of my bankroll allowing me probably to start with the 2.50$ MTTs which would help a lot. Ofc he will get a share of the profit for coaching me and for his investment, but at the end if I takea look at the hourly rates other coaches charge it’s way cheaper for me that way and also makes sure that he also wants me to get a sick winning player cause it will increase his earnings too.
I will use PokerTracker and perhaps StarsHelper to play.
I haven’t set a target for now, because I still need to wait for rakeback and see what stakes I will be able to play, but as soon as this is done I will skype with my coach and define strict rules for the whole process.
Known Goals:
• Play an average of 5 days a week
• Read one SNG/MTT related article per day playing or during the process spent a part of the profit on poker books and read them
• Watch a SNG/MTT related video twice a week
• Post hands I’m not sure about in the related forum (once I know the planned volume I will aslo define a min. number of hands to post)
• Post at least weekly updates in this blog with PT4 graphs
That said I guess I just have to wait for the PKR rakeback and transfer it to PokerStars in order to start. It might take up to two weeks, so it gives all of you enough time to read all of this lol
VS
and that you enjoy it at PKR. Btw. even though the player pool is softer than on other sites. The software just sucks and afaik PT4 and HEM2 are not working there... and the traffic at least at PLO and SNGs is also not that good, but then I'm playing from the Philippines so my timeframe might be not the best to play there anyways.
On crushing 180-mans !
And now im just staying away from them because of the low value. Dont like to grind for hours and hours to get few cents or bucks.
) and wanted to test the HUD.