Hi everyone :)

my name is Philipp, 30 years old professional poker player from Northeast Germany living in Berlin.

Career as player in short:

• start playing poker ~10 years ago as fish (mostly cashgame NL)
• after reading some articles and books ---> wannabe Reg on microstakes, big tilt issues etc. the next 2-3 years
• some aha effects and good poker friends ---> get better ---> move up a bit, but after a big tilt session losing all my money ---> last try
• $100 > 1,5k in two weeks, playing this Rush on demand SnGs on Full tilt, I was one of the first regs there, few knowledge about tournaments and ICM, but it was easy, just played tight early, steal a lot at the bubble = profit, it was 2011 I guess, easy game xD
• 1,5k was a good roll to play NL25, I played on Full Tilt, NL25 deep and Pot Limit Holdem (was before blackfriday, a lot of deep ante and PL Action, the games were more soft than regular NL25 games, yes poker was already dead before BF^^)
• get better and better, moved up up to NL200 in three month (but get backed for a while)
• became professional around 2012 playing lots of NL200 on 888 (luckyacepoker) worked hard and crushed hard ~10bb/100 + 40%+ RB over hundreds of thousands hands, good old times :)
• after losing this rakeback deal, I started to play NL200 zoom a lot to chase Super Nova. Had my worst year in career, 2013 on Pokerstars, losing around 10k on NL200, and another 7k or so on NL100z. (reasons: lack of improvement, laziness, arrogance, more party than quality grind etc. young, too much money and stupid)
• Choice: go back to university or get a job or get professional like 2012 again and develop a serious pokerbuiss as player and later as coach (decision was easy, obv I went the hard way, build my roll back, take some RL-Jobs etc.)
• played mostly on MPN around NL200 focus on ano tables + some other sites like party, chico, WPN etc.
• do a shitload of work on ranges, GTO-stuff etc. and had a nice winrate of ~5bb/100 in this games two years ago + >60% RB

Okay, this is my poker story in short until 2015. I did not play much in 2016 and 2017. I was Pokercoach and producer of videos for Pokerstrategy.com since 2013, later for PokerVIP.com (some german vids) and one of the topseller on pokermarket.com. Furthermore I had a lot of students in my career as coach and I am well known in this communities. ~2 years ago I start to build a CFP-stable with help of german poker and coach legend Paul Otto aka lnternet. I supervised 15 students (different leves, Microstakes up to Smallstakes, even two former Highstakes-Regs) and had a subcoach (5 students) in this stable. I had to work a lot on this, building ranges, working out study plans, produce more than 30 hours of vids for automation of 1-1 coaching. It took a lot of time for no immideate money.

Okay, I treat poker like business. I think it is good to make money in more than one area if you have your own business this is especially true in pokerbuiss, except you are a really sicko at the tables with a healthy finacial buffer. I started to give coachings, produce vids, give some RB-Deals. With this sideincomes I managed it to pay monthly costs without hurting my bankroll.

The Problem:

This areas started to hurt my game, especially the stable (my english is to bad to describe all of the reasons, mabye I'll do this later, and more on this later^^). I had a new choice in my career: Full Time Coach with some small other areas of income, or Full Time Player with some small other areas of income. Well, the second time, I took the harder way, because I think it has more value, more swings, more frustration maybe, but more value. I closed the Stable ~ two month ago, have a nice life roll and start to rebuild a professional poker bankroll (started with 10k pokerbankroll, I think more on this in another post).

For me it's more fun to develop as a player and grind a lot of hands, learn new games, than take focus on other things. At the moment I play a lot of NL100FF on party poker and want to transist to MTTs (Plan later).

Why a journal Run it Once?

1) Improve my English

As you can read, my English is bad/medicore. It's hard for me to write this text and it takes a long time, think about words and grammar, using google translate etc. But besides poker I always have a small project to get better in life. Atm it's nutrition and improve my English is the next project on the list. I learned English in school but this was 13 years ago and I never used it again, just read poker books (I'm good in reading and understand written English, but bad in writing and speaking and okayish in understand spoken English, like in vids). In my opinion a good way to learn, is to practice a lot and I think writing in English is good to see actual status and development when I start to improve more, read this text in one or two years and compare it with future long posts (I'm well known for walls of text about poker in german comms :) ) I think I start learning more English next year, with help of courses and maybe look for some study partners, try to speak more English, maybe look for an English student and coach for free to get help in English, anyway, I'll see. But I think one way or one part to improve English and maybe get some feedback, is to just leave my comfort zone and write in English in a new environment.

2) Looking for a POKER Community

My first blog was on pokerstrategy.com. It had a high frequency of readers and guys post a lot. After the blackmember-scandal (maybe some guys knowing this site and remember this s$%&), I quit working with them and start working with pokermarket and pokervip. On Pokermarket I started a new blog in the middle of 2015, it has ~150k clicks now, which is very nice for a pokerblog nowadays I think. But I dont write about poker for fame, for clicks or to promote myself. Well okay, when I was a coach and producer it was important to promote myself on this affiliate communities, because it was money, but this factor is now gone.

I write about poker because I really enjoy it. I even enjoy it to write in English even if it's exhausting and even if I know that this text maybe is hard to read for the readers xD. Please forgive me, I really want to learn :p

I think there is a problem nowadays in this big communties especially the german comms. The german comms reflect very good the dog eat dog society of the last two decades in Germany. Consumption > Sustainabilitly, Egoism and Ignorance > Helpfulness, Entertainment > Information Exchange/Information Gattering, haters and trolls all around, this is not a good environment to write about poker, try to give some insights and get some feedback to get better and help other players to get better. The opposite is true, you give and give, and a random hater post your -20k PTR-graph on Pokerstars to "bash" you, even if you make 100k on other sites, helped hundred of players to get better and form a handful pros. Okay, there are some good guys/nice guys, a lot of silent readers who like reading my blog, I believe, but this is not win-win, except I want to celebrate myself lol. And every week the same bla bla in other journals "Now I am motivated, I start again, new motivation because of random youtube-guru, yeah" just to make the same mistakes again, and fail again and again, it's annoying and boring. I mean, I have to pay my bills, rent, health insurance and tax by playing the game I love or do other pokerstuff, there is no room for bla bla bla mimimimi and an environment of "bla bla bla mimimimi" is not good for my development as a player. It is a pity because I think there are a lot silent readers who have the potential to form a better and more professional community, even if the forum is owned by an affiliate.

After thinking about quit blogging and do my own thing with help of skypebuddies, my solver and CREV, I reactivate my subscription here to watch some Sulsky-Vids, I start to watch the forums and WOW, virtually no haters and trolls, a straightforeward forum structure, a lot of content, I mean the content : Smalltalk-Stuff Ratio is way more weighted to content. While other sites try to pay for postings, here I find ~10k threads of hands and strategy only for NL Cash! I really like this and want to be part of this. My goal is to become better in poker every day and I think I can give help here and get help here :) Win-Win I like it :) This looks like a community where poker and content comes first, thats what I was looking for.

The Title

"Confessions of a Poker Player" seems not creative, it is just the title of one of my favorite poker books. If you dont know the book, no problem, the book was first published in 1941, writen by the pseudonym "Jack King", it is about a career of a poker player between the 20th and 30th century. The book boosted my mindset a lot because they had nearly the same problems in the past like today, bad reg:fish ratios, rake problems, prohibitions etc. Not a must read I think, but a good read :)

Okay, the rest about plans, goals and recent results in the next post, but tomorrow, I'm done now.