Hello Coinflip,

I'm 22-year-old professional poker player from Finland. I've been playing onlinepoker ever since I turned 18. Back then I started playing with two 10€ deposits and happened to be lucky to never go broke. I've always wanted to be good in what I do, so losing wasn't really an option. I don't remember exactly how fast I started to make good money but because poker was my only income I had to withdraw money numerous times from my poker accounts.

Anyway, i managed to climb up to NL1k in about 2 years. I used money like there was no tomorrow, played some live tournaments without big cashes and basically forget to study the game. After my first major downswing I started to realize what its really like to be professional poker player. Its not taking shots to too big games, its not spending money as much as possible. It's more about grinding, keeping your game updated and playing your best in the limits where you can be confident with your game and your bankroll. Even thought I realized these things I can't say I've been too good with my bankroll management after that either.

Since I hate winter in Finland I spent last winter in Thailand. I was there most of my time from the beginning of November to late April. I came back to Finland for Christmas but in the new years eve, heavy drunk, I bought plain tickets back. So basically I had 2 week holiday in Finland. Anyway, In the first 4 months there, I was mostly drinking and partying. Sometimes I decided to stop drinking and start grinding, but usually that didn't work out too good.

Last year I anyway ended up winning more than 100k online. I was definetly not satisfied with that because I could have done much more. I decided that 2010 will be better. First 2 months wasn't too good, I didn't play too much because I was drinking too much and when I played, I took too long sessions and played my c-game with poor internet connection which caused me tilt. So I pretty much broke even first two months.

In the beginning of March everything changed. I got upgrade to my internet, stopped drinking, started to wake up early to play and tried to live more healthy overall. My grinding started from NL600 but I changed my main game into NL1k pretty quickly and now Im playing NL1k & Nl2k.  I also came back from Thailand and im spending my summer in Finland and I try to blog about my summer games. I try to play at least 40k hands every month from June to September. Anyway, I will not force myself to do it, but thats my goal. I also set a monetary goal here http://www.coinflip.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=177&p=951#p951 So I still have a lot to do this year.

 

I have also other projects and live tournaments in this summer, but I will talk about them later. Here is my graph for this year and I try keep it updated here every once in a while.