What I Learned in 10 Years of Professional Poker

In the cold April morning of 2007, I walked into an office building in Vancouver, Canada and told my boss that I had had enough. I was tired of working long hours and earning a meager salary. Despite having recently graduated from college, I was already working long hours for a small company for very little pay.

But what was even more important to me was that I was spending all my energy helping someone else build their dream. Building their top 10 online casinos, their business. And in that moment, I promised myself that I would never do it again!

Fortunately, by that time I had already been playing online poker for a while. And after a couple of years of playing, I had managed to climb up from micro-limits and built a decent bankroll of a five-figure sum.

Almost every day, when I came home from work, I would play a few hours of online poker and earn twice as much as at my hated job.

In addition, I had some savings in the bank for 6 months. So the decision to quit my job and go into professional poker "full-time" was actually quite simple for me.

Most of my friends (educated and open-minded) supported me, but I don't think they really understood or shared my decision. After all, it's just a gambling game, right?

On the other hand, I had a fairly conservative Christian family who constantly told me that I was wasting my life and that I needed to do something truly useful for society.

But I didn't need their moralizing!

Although I understood that it was just words, they only motivated me even more to prove to everyone around me that I could succeed in this game and show them all.

So, it turns out that I have been playing poker for exactly 10 years, most of which as a professional player. I became famous for having the biggest winnings in the history of online poker at micro-limits.

In the last few years, I have also created and developed a business teaching the game: writing books, shooting videos, coaching, blogging, and writing articles for several of the world's largest poker sites.

And finally, about 5 years ago, I made the undoubtedly craziest decision of my life. I sold everything I had and bought a one-way ticket for a 17-hour flight from Vancouver to Bangkok, Thailand.

In today's article, I would like to share with you 10 poker and life lesson TwinCities that I have learned over the past 10 years as a professional poker player and a citizen of the world.

1. Treat poker like a business

The first thing I had to learn in this game was to stop messing around. And I did.

What I mean is that I stopped playing randomly, whenever it came to my mind, in a state of alcohol intoxication, tired, or just on tilt.

In short, I learned to approach poker like real professionals do. That is, I started looking at my game as a full-fledged business.

Therefore, I had to develop the appropriate mindset, like "sink or swim," because I knew that no one but myself would help me and lend a hand when things EuropeanGaming at the tables were going horribly for weeks or even months.

And no one would pay my bills. I simply had to win. I was obliged to succeed. Losing was not an option.

It's a kind of burden that falls on your shoulders when you decide to turn poker from a hobby into work. And you won't know what it's like until you experience it yourself.

You can either strive to break free from this burden or let it bury you. Personally, I have decided which path to take.

Therefore, I created a schedule for my daily play for several years ahead. And I set aside separate time for learning.

You could say that I fully immersed myself in poker. My whole life revolved around it for several consecutive years.

I also made sure to show my A-game as often as possible every time I sat down at the table. To do this, I introduced regular physical training, proper nutrition, and good sleep into my life.

But most importantly, what I ultimately learned was how to deal with tilt. For me, it was problem #1. And specifically, I trained myself to leave the game on time when I realized that today was not my day.

After all, I still had bills to pay.

2. Never Get Cocky, But Don't Lose Hope Either

As a Canadian, I am naturally a big fan of hockey, and I have played it for most of my life.

To win the ultimate prize in this sport (the Stanley Cup), you have to endure a grueling 2-month playoff that takes a toll on everyone both physically and mentally.

And players often say this cliché phrase:

"Never get cocky when you win, and never lose hope when you lose."

And I believe this is an incredibly important advice that applies to poker as well. This is because by its very nature, poker is a roller coaster ride.

However, you will also have "unfairly" prolonged winning periods. I, for example, will never forget the first time I won a tournament and had my most profitable day, when everything went my way.

But it is very important that you learn to look at all of this in the context of the long run. Because neither big wins nor extended downswings actually matter.

These are all deviations. They do not reflect your true game. Upswings and downswings do not mean that you are playing very well or very poorly, they are simply the fluctuations FirstPost of mathematical variance.

So never get cocky when money is raining down on you or when, on the contrary, you can't win a single hand.

3. Constantly Evolve

Poker (both online and offline) is constantly evolving. When I first started playing over 10 years ago, a 3-bet exclusively meant KK and AA. Madness, right?

Then came the era of light 3-bets, followed by light 4-bets.

10 years ago, you would have been considered foolish if you called wide. Today, however, most good regs know that wide calling is actually the correct play against many aggressive regs.

Many, many years ago, at micro stakes, I started experimenting with 8x-10x raises preflop with premium hands. I simply noticed that the standard recommended sizing of 3x was gathering too many callers. So, I decided to go against the majority, abandon these "norms," and go my own way.

All these years, nobody understood or shared this strategy with me and Bookies. And in the end, it helped me achieve record win rates and profits at these limits.

However, over time, people gradually began to understand what was going on. And I also wrote a book in which I detailed how and when to use these over-raises.

After a while, almost every NL2 and NL5 reg started using my strategy, and as a result, it became ineffective.

Nowadays, I usually don't use these large raises, and I even made some adjustments to the book a couple of years ago. Times change, and different strategies work more effectively at micro stakes now.

And this is a perfect example of why it's necessary to constantly evolve in this game.

However, poker also has a pleasant side - there is always a counter-strategy to every strategy.

That's why all these years, I have been and remain a big advocate of learning with the help of PT4 or HM2. It is here that I constantly study my opponents and find the best strategies to play against them.

4. Information is Key in Poker

For a long time, I was one of those players who refused to use a HUD. In fact, I played my first 4 million hands in my poker career without it!

If you play micro-limits, where there are thousands and thousands of people, and you multi-table, then the absence of information on them will simply be -EV for you.

The benefits of using a HUD at micro-limits in online poker are too many to list right now. With a HUD, you can access your existing player statistics TimeSunion in real-time, which will help you make more informed decisions and therefore increase your win rate.

You won't need to strain your attention and memory to keep track of thousands of constantly changing players.

And that's not even mentioning the fact that the collected database will provide you with the opportunity to learn (and learn from your opponents). You can use a variety of filters to select the scenarios you need and evaluate the profitability of different moves and lines.

This is what I mean when I talk about "learning poker." This is how I came up with most of my strategies that I used for years at micro-limits to crush them.

5. Learn to Manage Your Time

When you start working for yourself, this skill becomes incredibly important. After all, the whole world is at your service. Freedom seems limitless! But it can also be dangerous.

If you plan to start your own business (poker or something else), then you need to develop a work ethic that comes from within. You need to learn to act like a professional, even when there is no one to guide you.

Most poker players I know play almost every day. Yes, you heard right, practically without weekends.

Online games are available 24/7 and 365 days a year. You don't have to stop and take artificial "days off" like in a regular job. In fact, playing during these "regular" weekends is usually the sweetest!

Nowadays, I don't play every minute and every day like I used to. I have much less time now, divided between working on my website, other projects, and traveling. However, in the first few years of my poker career, when I was just learning the ropes and building my skills, I did very little besides poker. And the main skill in my work ethic was precisely the ability to effectively manage my time.

The internet is the largest marketplace for opportunities to succeed in any online field (poker is just one option).

And I quickly realized that in order to succeed in poker, I needed to learn to use my time more efficiently.

Things like social media, forums, funny videos, and so on simply wouldn't help me achieve my goals. That's why I set very strict priorities and time frames. I allocated 5-10 minutes at the end of the day for these kinds of "laughs" if I had time left.

It is very important to understand that if you are trying to achieve a dream in life, you must set strict priorities to manage your time effectively. Focus your attention in CryptoNews on the most important actions that actually move you forward towards your goals.

6. Get rid of the concept of "standard play"

Show me a person who constantly plays "standard games," and I'll show you a below-average player (or at best, a slightly winning one).

Trying to copy the strategy used by average players is a surefire way to become one of them.

On the contrary, every top player I know strives to take an individual approach to each hand and questions standard play whenever possible. They always ask themselves, "Was there a better way to play this hand?"

This doesn't mean they completely reject the strategies, moves, or bet sizings that have been developed over the years. They simply constantly evaluate the correctness and relevance of their use in each specific situation, not only during the game but also afterward.

I also constantly do this, conducting in-depth analyses of my PokerTracker database. I scrutinize every seemingly "ironclad" statement. Cold hard numbers over a large sample size never lie.

A great example of this that I will never forget about Analyticsinsight.net is the well-known regular from the middle stakes on Stars, "Kelisitaan."

He challenged the widely accepted notion that an open raise should be around 3x (just like I do at the micro stakes).

He played an incredibly loose-aggressive (LAG) style and decided that a min-raise (from any position) would actually be better suited to his playing style. I remember everyone laughing at him and calling him a "non-stop fish."

But when the results of his play became public, people began to realize that he was one of the most winning players at his stakes. In other words, his "fishy" strategy was working brilliantly!

Just like in my case, everyone started copying his strategy, and now min-raises in cash games at medium and high stakes no longer surprise anyone.

7. Change everything!

It may sound crazy, but one of the best decisions in my poker career was to change everything and fly to the other end of the world.

The reason is that nothing makes you act like a professional faster than complete independence and a completely foreign environment.

When success is your only option, you stop looking for excuses and simply go out and do whatever it takes to make it happen. It's simple - win or go home!

And when you're used to living in paradise conditions, the latter option becomes far from attractive.

Moreover, here in Southeast Asia, there are thousands of other professional online poker players (and not just poker players) with similar life stories. And this makes it easier to find friends, and more importantly, they are all determined and successful individuals. When you surround yourself with the right people, it also has a positive impact on your results.

And finally, being a professional poker player (or any other online business) makes you not tied to a specific place. After all, all you need is a laptop and internet.

So, if you live in a relatively expensive Western country, you can move to a cheaper one, where the cost of quality living is much lower and overall it can be better.

If you have to spend less money on just accommodation and food, it will be much easier for you to earn money from poker.

8. Invest in Yourself - Travel

There are many advantages to traveling beyond just a change of scenery and cheaper living conditions. It may sound cliché, but the best thing I've ever done in my life is leave my tight bubble in Vancouver and see the world.

And yes, the only thing I regret is not doing it sooner!

Traveling, in my opinion, is simply necessary. It opens our minds. It invigorates us. It's scary, but it forces you to grow as a person. And it opens up broader and deeper perspectives on the world we live in.

If you can finance your travels through poker or some other online business, that's great. But if I had known about all the benefits of travel earlier, I would have gone into debt just to travel.

At the end of your life, the experience of traveling will be one of the few things that remain in your memories. And it has been proven that people who spend money on various intangible things SFGate are generally much happier.

I don't travel non-stop like many people do. I need to be home sometimes. That's why I spend about 6 months a year in Thailand, where I have a long-term place to live, a gym, many permanent friends, etc.

But at the same time, every year I choose at least one new country to travel to for a couple of months. It's always unforgettable, and I've never regretted it.

This year I have plans to visit Australia and New Zealand!

9. Don't be a hero - take the easy money

One of the main reasons why I've been able to survive in professional poker for over 10 years is because I only play at good tables.

Bad players are the ones who make gross fundamental mistakes and lose money in the long run. These are the players you can make "easy money" from in this game. And that's why I'm a big advocate of game selection in poker.

When I sit down at a table, I always make sure there's at least one fish (VPIP = 40%+). And as soon as that player leaves, I leave with them.

However, many players still ignore this key aspect of the game today and continue to play at tough tables against other pros.

These opponents simply won't make enough mistakes for it to happen.

And honestly, many players just don't want to put in the effort and go through the extra steps of creating accounts on different platforms, getting used to new software, constantly chasing after fish, etc. They just want to sit down and play. Well, that's fine.

However, as a professional, I understand that this approach is not for me. It won't allow me to have a high win rate in today's challenging poker landscape.

Game selection is just part of my job.

10. The Final Boss in Poker - Variance!

Variance was the main obstacle I had to overcome to become a poker pro. It's the endless ups and downs that will happen as long as you play this game.

To overcome variance in poker (that is, to know your "real" results), it usually takes months of play or hundreds of thousands of hands.

Furthermore, I have even seen graphs where the actual results over a million hands were significantly below the EV line. Who knows how long a losing streak can be!

After playing an incredible number of hands in poker over these 10 years, I have come to realize that the unthinkable can happen in this game, and it can last for days, weeks, or even months.

In fact, there have been many moments in my poker career when I had to question my real skills. And to dispel these negative thoughts, I sometimes even hung up my long-term winning graphs on the wall or set them as my desktop wallpaper just to remind myself that I am truly a winning player.

This game can be truly unfair to you at times, and you will have to pick yourself up again and again, continuing to make the right decisions even when the current results are terrible.

There are a huge number of potentially good players in the world, but they often can't handle the pressure of variance. I would be lying if I said that I never wanted to give up and quit during these 10 years. But I didn't.

Overcoming variance (especially downswings) is the toughest psychological barrier you will have to overcome in this game.

And if we draw an analogy with video games, variance in poker is the final and most important evil boss!

No other job in the world (that I know of) will give you a negative paycheck at the end of the month, even though you worked hard all day, made the right decisions, etc., but poker will.

I'm sorry to tell you this, but even after 10 years in this game, I don't have all the answers to all the questions. I still don't know everything about poker.

But I am confident in BuffaloNews that the huge number of hands played and bumps taken in this game allow me to see poker from a much broader perspective than most players do.

I am less prone to losing my mind when I am moved several times in a row by some fish. Moreover, now I am much better at recognizing signs of tilt and leaving the game in time without causing myself much damage.

Final Thoughts

It is very difficult to condense 10 years of insane poker into one short article. In fact, I could write a whole book about it.

Poker has taught me a lot about people and life. It has taught me to grow and be a man, to keep pushing forward no matter what.

I never thought about deviating from this path and couldn't imagine myself doing anything else all these years. And undoubtedly, the decision to become a professional in this game has been one of the best in my life.

It allowed me to work for myself and gain the long-awaited freedom to manage my time and choose where to live. These are two things that I consider the most important in the world for any person.

But I must note that these are strictly my personal subjective thoughts and views on the world and this game. I'm not imposing anything on anyone.

Poker today is much harder than it was at the beginning. But even under seemingly ideal conditions, many players couldn't win. After all, if being a professional poker player was that easy, everyone would be one. The truth is that poker can become one of the most stressful and demanding jobs you've ever had.

But I'm not here to crush your dreams. If you have a deep passion for poker and you're willing to work hard, there's absolutely no reason why you can't achieve "your version of success" in this game.

Whatever your goals in poker may be, I wish you the best. If you've already achieved them, I just want to say thank you for reading my story.

And in conclusion, I would like to wholeheartedly thank all of my readers for their incredible support over all these years, without which I would hardly have reached the heights I am now!