Originally posted by krcky
Hello there. As soon as I joined this forum, I spotted your thread which is really interesting. I admire your will and bravery to give it a shot for living just out of playing poker. At some point, after reading some of your posts, I even saw you deep through my thoughts as idol. But oh well, let's not go further there so you won't call me an asslick, and really, I am not, I'm just being honest. You see, I recently joined this community and this would be my first post. Why have I decided to post specifically here? Well, I see that you're from Serbia, just like I am, and I'm hoping that you would be so kind to share a bit of your time with a person from your country. It is something basic about poker, and I'd rather continue on Serbian.
Zdravo, druze. Nadam se da ne zvucim otrcano, ali skoro sam poceo da igram poker, i primetio sam da zaista uzivam u tome. Nemam skoro nikakve uspehe, jer nisam ni igrao mnogo. Dakle, pravi sam pocetnik, ali bih voleo da napredujem. Interesuje me, i nadam se da ces mi odgovoriti, sta bi mogao da mi kazes kao savet? Primetio sam da mi bolje idu turniri i sit&go nego cash games. Verovatno sam vise opusten dok igram to, nego kada vidim svoj novac u toku igre, pa ne razmisljam bistro. Zanima me kako funkcionise taj couching. Da li on zauzima poziciju tvog trenera ili nesto drugo? Takodje, da li bi mogao da mi preporucis poker room za turnire i S&G? Uplatio sam $10 na 888 pokeru, ali sam ubrzo potrosio jer sam greskom uplatio re-buy, i to ne jednom, vec 3 puta. Sada vec znam osnove i nece mi se to ponoviti vise. Haha, znam da posle ovoga mislis da nemam blage veze sa pokerom, da ne znam ni pravila. Pa realno, mislim da sam u stanju da napredujem, jer smatram da ucim brzo. Ali evo, stacu ovde. Zaista bih mnogo cenio kada bi mi objasnio malo stvari, i primetio sam dosta skracenica koje nisam mogao da desifrujem, ali otom potom, da ne preterujem sa post-om. Zelim ti sve najbolje. Pozdrav od Dusana iz Valjeva.
Hello back!
Since this is English forum I will respond to your post in English but if you have trouble responding we can always continue conversation via private message or skype.
First of all, thank you for words of praises and saying you see idol in me. I never taught and considered myself to be somebody's poker idol, for guitar I had it happen but for poker this is the first time for me so thank you for that. You have a lot of things that you are wondering about so I will try to answer all of them.
Before I start with answers just read the blog again, you will see how I from July 14th 2012 had a goal to make 700 euro a month from poker, now 8 months later, my goal is to make solid 4000$ + a month knowing that I can very easily now have 5-6k $ month. My experience and story should teach you that anything is possible and poker unlike other work in our country will reward you if you work hard (learn a lot) and grind that is the best combo + mental game (believing in yourself, dealing with upswings and downswings, staying normal and accepting poker as a way to make living job). Ok onto the questions now...
1) My general advice to you about poker?
I left everything aside to try make a living from poker within one year! If I didn't succeed at it I would pack up and move back to Boston continue doing music there and never ever come back to Serbia. Thanks to poker I am still here strong well and making more then I can imagine. This "fanatic" approach I have in life works great for me as I am very dedicated, when I set my mind on something I won't allow myself to fail at it. For some other people it might not work that way because everybody has a different mental thing going on. To give you example, some people will find it very very very difficult to work every day 10+ hours on poker (learning doing assignments grinding watching videos etc) because they can't cut off time for friend family girlfriend(s) school sports etc. For those people perhaps the best way is to find a balanced schedule and be realistic about their own goals. They cant expect to reach high enough when they have many things going on in their life. Time management is a great thing to know and to use it effectively but I am firm believer that it is better when you learn something to really use "fanatic" approach (just do that over and over dedicate to it) then to do million other things beside it. The best advice I can give you is to decide what approach works for you better, "fanatic" or taking it "easy" with other things in your life? Besides this, whatever you decide make sure you have money left on the side before you start! Why do I say this? Well I gave up everything and started poker with 0 joined staking and coaching. I was so driven to improve and start earning money and I never lost track of that even today 8 months later. It took me to make some real money (1.5 or 2k euro) about 3-4 months. Trust me when I say, that is a lot of time to be without money! I was borrowing money from my brother for bills, food and even with that I had credit card debts. So it is definitely not pleasant to do it that way, but who knows if I had money saved I might have slacked off and not pushing myself as hard as I did!
In the end it comes down to what do you want to do with poker? Do you want to make a living or you want to play it as hobby? If you want to make a living you better be ready for some real tough studying (even more then when you are in our schools) be ready for upswings downswings mental game tilting be ready to loose from worse opponents over and over be ready for all the bad possible scenarios in your head and then and only then ask yourself "Is poker really for me?" It is definitely not for everybody and I can tell you that since we had about 25 people enter our coaching/staking program and we now have 10 students! Most of the others didn't have what it takes to make a living playing sngs (some didn't study enough or at all, others didn't grind enough, others taught that just playing will improve their game, some were winners but were huge mental fishes that could not last to play one day and loose couple buy ins on downswing etc). I am trying to tell you that this ain't easy and it ain't for everybody. I am not trying to bullshit you, I am just being real because you asked me for my advice and I never bullshit anybody. If you are fighter and ready to go through everything I mentioned I have no doubt that you will succeed in poker, make money to live easy life in Serbia, even make money to travel around the world, buy a car, save up money for some investment (house apartment etc) and enjoy your work.
I hope all this long writing meant something to you in terms of general advice!
2) You asked about how coaching works?
There is different types of coaching that you can find. Some offer straight up coaching where you pay specific sum of money to that coach (its called hourly) and you get one hour session with that coach. Some coaches offer different packages where if you buy more hours you get discount or even free lesson. Another type of coaching is coaching for profit. This means that coach will teach you but in return he will take from you % of your winnings. This works if you are proven winner and have what to offer to coach to interest him to even consider this way. Many coaches will stick to hourly type of coaching (or per session) and perhaps the most popular one through coaching and staking. I entered coaching and staking and am now coach , coaching 10 players. The way this works is usually it is 1 year deal, where coach teaches you once a week minimum and you also get staking which is basically coach invests money into you 100% of the bankroll and your only obligations is to respect the contract with your coaching and staking. You would get minimum requirement how many games a month you are expected to play. You will get passwords to different websites to watch videos take notes and learn from them. A lot of homework on daily and weekly basis, I will not go here into what kind because that itself can take whole day to write but believe me when I say there is a lot of things to study in poker! So this coaching staking I am part of is 50/50 everything split between coach and player, coaching session once a week, minimum required games a month vary on players skill, experience, other things in life he/she has going on etc. Hope that answers that question.
3) You asked about poker room for tournaments and SNGs?
It really doesn't matter that much when you are playing micro stakes , that is lowest possible limits because there is traffic on any poker site as those limits are played by recreational players everywhere. The best site to start with is Poker Stars, no doubt, simply because it is very easy to use navigate and you can find game there any time of the day. As you go up the limits, you will want to change the room, go somewhere where you can also make money from rakeback, various races and promotion as well as faster vip system then poker stars has. Eventually when you reach point (which I am hopping to reach in 2014) when you want to make 10k$ a month, you will most likely go back to Poker Stars chase sne, play some sick opponents at the highest stakes out there and make a name out of yourself along the way in the poker world.
4) Regarding other things you mentioned in your post
Don't worry about what I think or anyone else right now. I strongly suggest that you yourself are aware of your current ability. I always use to tell myself that I am fish fish fish. Why did I do this? This constantly made me work on my game, look for edge in various areas and improve. If you start saying hey I am great, chances are your work and approach will diminish and very soon other opponents will outrun you. So keep that fish mentality all the time because it definitely helps to work. If you are guy who gets demoralized and goes to depression (oh shit I am fish I hate it I will never make it in poker etc) then you better find another way to motivate yourself. I can just tell you that even today when somebody owns me in the game, I tell myself that guy outplayed me like hell or I played that like a total fish! You must be very strict to yourself, remember that working with coach or on your own, bottom line is you will be your own judge at the end of the day. If you are okay not playing enough games, slacking off with studying and being mental fish, if you can wake up every morning and look yourself in the mirror thinking thats cool then hats off to you. For me its different mentality, even when I reach goal that I set in order to keep improving I constantly strive to do more to be better to reach the top! That is what keeps me motivated and focused to make it.
Final thing I can tell you is, poker is definitely great way to make a living, it is great way to have your own flexible hours, it has huge advantages (more money than any job in our or most countries for that reason, flexible hours, being your own boss, spending more time with family and friends, traveling around the world playing live turneys or just enjoying those places, controlling your own destiny etc) but it also has negative sides (you have to sit in front of computer every day for hours and hours, you have to be mentally immune to tons of bad beats and accept variance as natural way of making money in poker, you have to eventually accept that FUN and WORK poker require different mental approach and if you decide to live you need to approach it with a schedule and do it as frequent as possible/every day, no social/health/pension benefits).
That is all for now, if you have some more questions feel free to write here or send my private message.
See you around and welcome to pokerstrategy ! ♦
