Let me introduce myself. My name is Morten, I am 24 years old , I live in Holland and since Januari 2010 I am a professional Poker player. Before I played Poker I worked in an office and did administrational work. I got introduced to Poker in 2007. Right from the start I loved the game.  I played it with friends in homegames a lot and soon I joined the online Poker community. I have always been good in sports and games and I quickly figured out how to beat the homegames I was playing in. Online was a whole different story though. There were so many things to try out online, like sit and go’s, tournaments, Full ring/Sixmax/Heads up cashgames that it was difficult for me to create a playing style I was comfortable with and that was profitable. I couldn’t figure out that you needed a different style to beat tournaments, sit and go’s and cashgames. After a while cashgames got my interest and I started playing that the most part of my time.

Between 2007 and 2009 I learned a lot about the game by reading books and reading on forums and especially talk about it with friends. In 2009 I met one of my closest friends right now, his name is Mike. We were playing in our local casino and we connected somehow. We started calling eachother and talk about different spots. And I think that was one of the reasons I dramatically improved my game. In 2009 I made more money playing 20 hours of poker a week, then I made working 40 hours a week. So for a year I was working from 9 to 5, and grinding it out from 7 to 11. This is not a very healthy way to live. And it infected my health and my relationship with my girlfriend. In June 2009 is decided I wanted to play Poker for a living. My girlfriend was fearsly against this, but this is what I wanted to do. So we made a plan for me to build up to a good bankroll and if things didn’t work out the way I planned I would find a  job again. I agreed to this and the 2^nd half of 2009 I was only dreaming about playing poker for a living. This greatly affected the way I worked. I couldn’t enjoy working anymore because my goal was so close. So for 6 months I had to work 40 hours a week while I was only thinking about how I could go pro faster. In December 2009 I almost reached my goal, so I resigned at work and from januari 2010 and I could do what I’de been dreaming about for a long time. I think it was hard for my girlfriend to accept what I was doing, and I don’t think most of my family understand it either. Only my father likes that I am following my own path. I guess that he enjoys freedom and he enjoys the fact that I have a great deal of freedom now.

At the start of my poker career my girlfriend would ask for my results every day, which was a sign that she was probably worried about the finances. If I had a huge loss day I would lie about the amount I lost, so she wouldn’t worry about it. I’ve always been honest about the month results though, but I just don’t want her to worry about the finances too much. Lucky for me the first 3 months were great and in 3 months I made enough money that I would earn working for a year. So my girlfriend and family stopped worrying about me and my new ‘job’.

Yesterday I typed a long story about how I improved my game and what types of games I’ve been playing. I published the blog, but somehow because of a bug it didn’t save, and sadly I didn’t back it up on my laptop. So I have to retype my whole blog (yes, I am typing in Word now!). So my journey from the start of my career up till now, I am going to give you the short version now.

I started playing 6 6 Max tables on 100NL online and in our local casino I played 400NL deepstacked. I always have periods where I play more online or more live. It mostly depends on how I am running live. Live is great when your winning. The field of players are usually really weak! I can play with Mike and his brother who are usually playing. I get to meet new people and one huge advantage is the tax free money in the casino’s. But if I am running bad you see all the bad things about live poker. Like you only play like 25 hands and hour. The rake is 10% here with a cap of € 10 which sucks! You have to tip the dealers when you win a decent pot. So all these things really bug me when I am losing in a live game. And usually when I run bad I start leaning towards online a lot more.

What I love about this job are the trips I can take. In April Mike and I went to Namur in Belgium for a week where we played 5/10 deepstacked. The location of this casino is kind of bad, but the tables are really good! In June Mike and I went to Vegas to visit the WSOP. Both of us only played 1 event (where we both didn’t last longer then 2 blind levels!), but we played a lot of cashgames in the RIO and Bellagio. We loved the uncapped 5/10 games with the button straddle in the RIO. But we also loved the Pokerroom in Bellagio. Though we couldn’t button straddle there and they did have a cap on the 5/10 games, we spend quite a lot of time in the Bellagio. This was a great trip where we loved the games we played, we loved the environment and we met some great people.This is a trip we will surely take annually. In November this year the Master Classics of Poker in Amsterdam start. So that’s where I will be then. I might visit the EPT in Barcelona as well this year, I am not sure about that yet though.

Online I had played about 250.000 hands on the 100NL from Januari till April. I went from 6 tables to 12 tables over these months. I won a decent amount on this level and it was time for a new challenge. So I moved up to 200NL and started playing this on 4 tables and I rapidly started playing more tables.  This was going great and in June I was already taking shots on the 400NL. The end of June I started running bad online and in July I encountered my first losing month. This month was a result of running really bad. Because of I was running bad for so many hands eventually I don’t think I was playing my A game all the time. I also got into a bad sleeping rhythm where I was staying up till 5 am and sleeping in till 2 pm. Because I got up this late every day I failed to go the gym regularly, which also effected my health and my mindstate. At the end of July my vacation started and I went to Indonesia with my girlfriend for 2 weeks. Here I realized I should just be confident about my game and grind it out. This downswing has to end eventually, as long as I can play my A game all the time things should turn out fine. So when I got back on August 11^th I started grinding again. Sadly the downswing continued. I decided to move down to the 100NL to grind it out there. When the downswing stops I am moving back up. I also checked my own hand history for countless of hours and watched a lot of instruction videos in the last couple of weeks. I am working on my own game dramatically so I can kick this downswing! Moving back down was a good decision, because I was really getting in confident about my own game after so many losing sessions. I started asking fellow grinders standard spots where I was just up against the top of my opponents range. But I couldn’t think about my game straight anymore. Now after watching a lot of videos. A few sweat sessions and going trough my handhistory, I am happy with my game again and I am feeling good. The only thing missing is the profit. But I am sure it will come back soon!

I’ll will update this blog regularly and I will talk about sessions and might put some interesting hands in it. Don’t know what the next blog will look like exactly. So if you have any suggestions feel free to let me know.

Greetz, Morten