2018: Moving up in stakes

Last blog I described my journey till the year 2018. Make sure to check it out first in case you haven't yet. It's a bit more non poker related than most of my blogs will be, however it's important for the full story. To recap, I ended 2017 with a roll slightly under 5K, but more importantly, with a lot of dedication to succeed in 2018. However, at this time finishing the last few months of my Bachelor had still the highest priority. Although some people say having no backup plan pushes you even further to reach your goals, and I definitely think there is some truth in this, I want to be able to do what I want in life. Getting a degree seems like a wise choice for this.

Around Christmas time in 2017 I decided I wanted to become a tournament player. It's an endless debate, should I play tournaments or cashgames? For me the deciding factor was the thrill of tournaments that misses in cashgames. The thrill of a big bubble, a huge final table and of course the big binks in the end. Also I started to really love satellites at this point in time. I was very bad in them to be honest though, and qualifying for Manchester in 2017 was more luck than skill. Fortunately, one of my moderators (who is a fan of NMP) and my roommate, who both are always enthousiastic about my pokergame, confirmed that I was a satellite spewer and I started working on it. Now the goal was to qualify for the Unibet Open for free with a 50eu ticket I got from knocking DaVitsche out of a tournament the year before.

The tournament and satellite grind went on in the beginning of 2018. The bankroll grew steadily and I was improving a lot. It was almost a smooth ride while moving up to the highest stakes on Unibet. I say almost, cause poker is all about standing up when you fall. I definitely fell a lot, I was namely playing a lot of players who were better than me. I fell, but I never fell hard. The real painfull swings were saved for later in the year. I had some losing sessions, but also my first decent scores came in. Therefore these losing sessions were quite easy to handle, even for a beginning player like me.

This is what bring us to to the spring of 2018. The beginning of the year had been good, but the spring is where it all escelated. Without my rungood back then, I might not have been in the position I am today. Right at the start of April I shipped my first Unibet Open package for Malta. Winning a 2K package without investing any money felt absolutely great and was a huge confidence boost, unfortunately I didn't manage to win any money in Malta, but I tried my best and had a blast.

While winning the package felt special, lots of people won one, so in a way it wasn't that big of an accomplishment. For a relatively new guy to the game it felt like it was though. Later in April something more special happened (bragalert). I managed to win the big Sputnik, Deep Impact and Gargle Blaster on a single night. The first two are the biggest daily tournaments on the site, the third is a smaller field 25eu turbo. Up until today I never managed to do this again on one night, it's still a mystery to me how someone can get this lucky in one session.

After Unibet Open Malta the Unibet Online Series took place. 2 weeks full of tournaments including all stakes. I managed to win 3 'highstake' tournaments which were all around 1K cashes. The Main Event is where it really happened though. Being up 3-4K in 2 weeks was already a lot for me, but I managed to luckbox myself into a 4^th place for 6K. By far my biggest score back then. Looking back at it I still regret a lot of plays I made on the final table. If you want to have a seminar how scared money is often dead money, you should ask Unibet for a replay of that final table. However, it was fun to go so deep in the biggest online game of the quarter with Unibet ambassadors Dara O'Kearney, David Lappin and with my roommate Psycho79.

My biggest lesson came the day after though. I couldn't stand the fact I played the FT so bad, and the money actually felt a bit undeserved. I sent Dara a message on Twitter, asking if he spotted some leaks of me, hoping that he was willing to share (he busted me and came 3^rd). Like usually, I sent a way too long message to someone who has better things to do... The more surprised I was when there came an even longer reply. I realized I wanted to become the same, helping and supporting people when possible. I by far don't have the same knowledge as Dara, but I still think I could pull some people up, especially now that I stream. I hope today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow I will try my best to do the same as Dara did back then.

As you read the first half year of 2018 has been quite good and it's tough to keep it a non braggy post. I wanna make use of this opportunity to give a shoutout to DaVitsche, who told me I could choose between staying humble and critical at myself or becoming an arrogant dick. He called it the fork, a moment in time where some of the people he knew, that started winning in poker, took the right path and some the wrong path. I guess it's fair to say I took the right path, and DaVitsche helped me in this. Thanks for this.

All in all quite a braggy post, excuses for that. The next blog however will be less postive. I'm always striving to be as honest as possible, the first half of the year was just quite good as you have read, the second half could have been better though...

Cheers,

Maestro1908