Hi guys,

 

For a very long time I felt like this every time I played poker. Constantly getting bad beats, never winning coinflips and always finishing on the bubble when I was in a tournament. I know for a fact it wasn't always so. I just kept remembering all the bad beats and forgetting quickly about my winning hands. I decided not to focus on all the negatives anymore... I want to become a happy pokerplayer who deals with bad beats like the guy in this youtube clip.



"Motivation is what gets you started, habit is what keeps you going" - Jim Rohn


When I started playing poker I started because I saw the WPT on TV one night, my girlfriend just split and I was sitting there on a Friday night feeling somewhat sorry for myself and bored out of my mind. Poker looked like a whole lot of fun and like something I could pass the time with. Making the right decision was also pretty easy when I could see the holecards right there on the screen, so in my mind I was already a champion.

When the HU was over, I got off the couch and went to my computer and created a poker account and deposited $40. I sat down at a Fixed Limit 200 game, and started playing pretty much every hand. Within an hour or so I had worked my stack up to more than $300, and looking back today I wish I had saved some of those hand histories, because I must have gotten really, really lucky. Something which I today never seem to think I have... luck, that is.

The next day and the next day I kept logging on to my poker account and steadily lost all my money and then some. I made new deposits, lost those and began to think the games were rigged and that those people I was playing against probably weren't even human. So I gave up on cash games and started playing tournaments instead. Pretty much just freerolls and using the winnings from those for $1 SNG's and stuff like that. Playing hours and hours of freeroll-poker and the occasional Sit n go made me a better player and gave me a good idea about which hands to play in which positions and over time made me into a winning player.

Finally I started making profits from poker and like most other young guys, who think they just struck gold, I considered going pro pretty quickly. It never came to that though. Always kept my job and poker as a hobby or a side-profession, you can say.

The last year or so have been dreadful. Even though going through my transactions I could see that I actually made a slight profit from poker the last year, I didn't come anywhere close to the amounts of winnings I used to make when I felt invincible... when I felt I was wearing a bulletproof vest and not even AA could shoot me down. I guess a positive mindset helps a whole lot when playing poker. I think that if YOU think you can't lose, and always look for the positives in each hand like thinking about all the "good cards" in the deck instead of going: "Please no A, please no A", you will win more often than losing. Atleast that's how I feel.

 

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way." - Napoleon Hill

This, my first blog on Coinflip, has turned into a messed up description about my past as a poker player and how I feel my mindset has held me back as a poker player. I never really took shots at higher stakes because I always feared losing my entire bankroll, because my mindset led me to think: "You can never win big pots. You get unlucky when playing higher stakes. Just stick to low stakes and you will win consistently, and not go broke". This might have been an advantage for me, since I never really did go broke. I would just cash out when my bankroll grew too big for the stakes I was playing allowing me to continue playing there in the future aswell. Well... no more! I have now banked sufficient amounts of cash in my bank which allows me to live my life as I want in my sparetime, and now build a bankroll online and move up through the stakes as I go along. Right now I'm playing NL50 which I always have done. I have played a little NL100 from time to time, but never higher than that. My intention with this blog was to introduce myself to the forum and update the blog from time to time to remind myself to keep a positive mindset when playing poker, also during downswings, and to force myself to move up through stakes when my bankroll actually tells me to. Some people have problems with NOT moving up through stakes even though their bankroll tells them not to. With me its actually quite the opposite. Weird huh?

Let me finish this blog with yet another quote which will be my last words for now. I wish you all the best of luck at the poker tables, and I hope you return the favour. Smile

 

"The most expensive piece of real estate is the six inches between your right and left ear. It’s what you create in that area that determines your wealth. We are only really limited by our mind." - Dolf de Roos