Last month I've been really busy with all kinds of stuff except for poker

Cliffnotes:
- I got a job! am corporate management trainee at a large international bank now.
- I am very close to finishing my thesis. ETA to MSc, 4 weeks.
- I have spent a very nice couple of days with friends in Gdansk and Sopot, which was way above expectation.
- I had the plan to sat myself into WSOP as an excuse to travel to Vegas (never been there).
- I abandonned this MTT/SNG plan after 1 day .

But on to the important stuff:

I will take up on the coaching request posted by Matt. My aim is to help 2 or 3 students during the July / August period. I will probably use HH + Skype method as I have good experience with that. But if people like I am also OK with video + sweat format.
I am also open-minded to staking + coaching deals once I get to know you better have staked low limit cash and SNG players before which I find to be very entertaining.

If you're interested in my coaching:

• Write me a 500ish word pm telling me who you are, what you want to achieve with the coaching and what (poker) topics fascinate you/ give you trouble / would you like to spend some more time on.

Rather than showing you how to play winning poker or tell you which hands you can play in which spots I prefer to show you how to think about hands, spots and situations. I expect this mentality from my students as well, you should not want to be told what to do but what to think .

My coaching philosophy is to let you think about your own game. I guide you in structuring your thought process, challenge you to think out of the box and improve the way you consider poker spots.


FWIW:
I am a winning midstake 6max player, I am not your high-volume guy. But I beat the 400NL/600NL games at about 5 BB/100 on FTP and iPoker
My plan is to charge 100$/hr per session. Which in my prefered format is: read and review 15-20HH + 1 hr discussion on Skype.

Most important reason I am feeling good this week is because I am crushing the midstakes this week again .
Played 5 sessions, total of 6 hours. My first session was big time down, -$2.4k, fortunately I am up again for march, +$3.8k. So I basically made $1000/ hr 6 tabling 2/4 & 3/6. Mix of crushing and upswing.

Also I renewed my Leggosubscription (expired in Jan.) for another year. I am just too curious to some great vids (nutsinho) to nót subscribe again. I'll have less time to watch vids, but even 2 great vids / month would easily be worth the $300 Go Leggo!

Weather in the Netherlands is improving as well, spring is comming, I bought new running shoes all perfect reasons to feel completely happy

Hope I can surf on this good mood during the rest of March, I'll have some important job applications running starting next week. Certainly do hope to still have some happy shine by then.

-$2.4k, -6BI in one hour.

Argh.. it is really amazing how 'well' during a month's first week. The funny thing is that it is almost always like this, I usually drop 5-10 BI in the first few sessions. I can't say it's all my fault, yes I played a bit loose and rusty, but the big pots are all standard (coolers) and lost flips (1 flip begin 75/25 in my adv.) Last year I didn't bother too much about swings However, I have way and way less time to spend on poker and watching poker vids and poker is feeling less like play-money and more like an investment I want to see returns on.

Ah well, nothing we can do but put in some more volume and keep the head straight

Last month went well poker-wise. My websites are not a great success so far, they do generate traffic but I still have to make my first $
Unfortunately I didn't do as much for my thesis in February as I hoped, things went slower than expected and I had motivation issues.. argh.

March will be exciting, I am going to apply for a couple of traineeships, will have some serious deadlines for my thesis and obviously there is a new month of poker!

Target is again 2000€, I will aim for 2500-3000€ if time / pressure / swings allow for it. The extra 500-1000€ make a big difference in net benefits from poker. Taxes, rent and all other fixed expenditures consume most of the 2000€ / month, earnings above 2k are thus a real plus, until 2k it's just covering losses

GL to the readers of my Blog, crush the tables and enjoy March!

My strategy to balance poker, website building and finishing my thesis is to allocate time to each carefully.
In the beginning of the month I play poker in the weekends and some in the evenings. I try to make 2-3k€ (approx 3-4.5k$) to pay the rent and then I stop playing, unless I have some sparetime / great urge to play more.

I reached my poker goal for February this weekend. I, therefore can now focus completely on my thesis (6 am - 7 pm) and after dinner I can work on my iDeal poker (it's in dutch O_o) website or grind TV series and go to bed early (10pm).

one interesting mess up in this hand at 2/4€, should have pot flop & jam turn; as played I think I have to call, would I have bet less on the flop & turn I think it's an easy c/f river.

After my good start of the month Karma hit me hard, obviously.
I ran pretty ugly, which influenced my game at some point.
The big disadvantage of balancing poker and RL is that there are no more 'pokerdays'.
If I run bad I just need to watch a vid, go for a ride on my bicycle and then do short pokersessions (1hr/ each) to recover. I need that time to regain confidence, recover loses etc.
Problem is.. I don't have the luxury of time anymore. I dropped 3k€ ~ 5k$ in 2nd and 3rd of Feb. Which is fine at 2/4€ and 3/6$ but it is a burden when I don't know when I can play my next sessions. There is also the presure of Tax payments in the Netherlands, we pay 29% tax over our profits each month, however if you have a loss over a certain month, that isn't deductable. So you lose at 100% rate while you win at only 71%.

Ah well.. luckily I was able to take the day off and grind it back, which is exactly what I did. Back in Black for Feb now!

Oh yeah!
Had a deliverable last night for my thesis, I worked the weekend so I decided to give myself a break and play some poker today.

First session of the new month, normally I drop 3-4k in the first 5000 hands of the month.
Gladly February has a better start, +950$ in 700 hands. And best of all, I had fun.
I enjoyed being creative, making folds and chosing my spots. So I hope to keep up with this line for the rest of the month.

Three core priorities;
- Full throttle for my thesis
- Earn the rent
- Work on my websites.

Good Luck at the tables!

I've been hoovering around Leggo for nearly 1.5 years now.

Faced with a new challenge, finishing my studies and paying the rent
Long I've been able to postpone the writing of my master thesis but as more and more doors close for my future carreer, I decided to make the only true +EV life decision:

Focus on studies and balance the pokers.

I'll update you guys with my weekly balancing issues