Hi Verneer,
I have to admit I was pretty excited to read your blog on taking on new students. I was going to send you a pm on Card Runners to ask if you’d be interested in coaching me, but that apparently is no longer needed since you’re indeed looking for new students. I’ve seen both your videos and I found them very helpful to my game. Also, I read the low limit forums a lot and I’m always amazed about the clarity and the quantity of your replies to people’s questions.
I’m a 20 year-old International Business Administration student and currently live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where I’ve lived all my life. I started playing poker about two-and-a-half years ago when I went over to some family in Los Angeles. I watched a lot of TV there and I was soon very intrigued by the game of poker that seemed to be on TV there just about 24/7. When I got back from the trip I started playing freerolls and depositing small amounts online. About 1.5 years later I had built my roll up to about 3-3.5k by just playing SNGs and tournaments with buy-ins of about $10 max and the occasional bigger tournament when I sattelited in (happened very infrequently). Around November last year I decided I wanted to play 6-max cash games from then on, because they seemed a lot more profitable and more like ‘real’ poker. At that time I had only very rarely stepped into cash games and I was a huge fish when I did (I know this for a fact now). I soon started at 100NL because for some weird reason I thought I had an edge over my opponents and I had a sufficient bankroll to do so. I got slaughtered at 100NL and slowly dropped levels after I lost about 4 buy-ins at each level (varying from 100NL to 10NL) and I had a 2k-ish bankroll when I decided I was going to cash out my initial deposits (about $500) and become a real student of the game starting at 25NL.
We are now about a year later. I’ve practiced what I preached and I have the feeling that I’m a theoretically well-rounded player now. I think I’ve spent an average of about an hour a day reading forums and watching CR videos. As far as my results go, it was a little less positive. I had to put a lot more effort into my university education the past year, so I was kind of short on time. I think I’ve played about 50k hands (even though I’m not sure of that) this past year. However, within these 50k hands I have just about broke even and I’m currently at a bankroll of ~$1700. About $250 of this amount is due to rakeback and staking a friend for tourney play, but on the other hand I’ve also paid about $300 on things like CR membership. Overall I’ve made something like $100-$150 on cash games over ~50k hands which is not a whole lot to say the least.
To sum up some reasons for my lack of play and lack of profit how I see it:
1. Lack of time to play over the last year (more time now)
2. Overall lack of confidence in my game (partly due to the fact that I don’t really know any people personally that can help me with my game)
3. A lot of smaller leaks in my game, that add up to a large part of my winrate
4. Playing too many tables (5-6) at certain times severely hurt me
5. Unprofessional attitude towards the game
Ok, so now on with what I would like to have happen to my game. My overall goal in poker is to be the best player that I can be, given some limitations (e.g. I still want to have a personal life, etc.), but I would like to at least be a winning player at a level like 200NL so that I can earn enough money not to have to get a part-time job. Timeframe to be at 200NL for me is about a year. Anything sooner would be nice, but I do not know if that is a realistic expectation. I understand that in order to achieve this I need to put in more time and have a better attitude towards the game. For the near future my goal is to put in at least 8 hours a week, playing 3-4 tables at a time, which would add up to about 15k hands per month at least.
So, what I expect out of you as my coach is to:
1. Give me an overall confidence boost for my play at 25NL and 50NL
2. Fix the larger leaks in my game
3. Fix the smaller leaks in my game
I think you can provide me with all of these points and I would love to be one of your students. I think your expectations of your students are very realistic and frankly I think they’re exactly what I really need at this moment.
If I do not become one of your new students, I still want to thank you for your insightful posts on the forum.
