Hi guys and gals, today we will start with a special blog post series “Women in BPC”. Yes, there are women playing poker and we also have a few female members of our team. I have the honor to introduce you to the first women in that series: Ola aka “petite-lambda”, the first female in the SNG program at BPC.
Why did you start playing Poker?
I started playing poker about 3.5 years ago. I’m a software developer at Google, and every Friday a few people from the office would arrange a $5 SnG. I got curious; soon I was playing every Friday – very badly at first, but then I just started reading whatever I could find on NLHE, practicing, discussing with friends, etc.
This is just such a fascinating game! “Five minutes to learn and a lifetime to master” — so true! I began to make money regularly at casinos, rapidly moving up the stakes to current $2/$5; I also understood very soon that I much prefer cash to tournaments, so started organizing cash games in the office as well. Don’t want to brag, but I won a lot of money off my colleagues
My live win rate is awesome, but it wasn’t enough for me. I am very competitive about poker, and I wanted to see whether I could REALLY do it, as in beat the pros at their game. My job is great, but for a time I was seriously considering to switching to doing Google half-time and do poker professionally with the rest of it.
I now think that was not a good idea. I want to dedicate ~10 hours a week, and see just how well I can do with that. Unfortunately, there’s only one life — my family and my Google job come first!
How did you join our team at BPC? How did you get to know us?
So after a few months and almost $2K overall loss online, I “gave up” and started looking for a coach. Now I understand that this is not giving up at all, this was the smartest thing I ever did in poker but it very much felt like giving up. After all, Jungleman learned this on his own, why can’t I be as smart as him? Ego talking, I know 🙂 So I learned about BPC almost immediately, BPC is a very prominent option when you start looking online for poker coaching. And the CFP deal sounded too good to be true, frankly — they are going to teach me how to make 60K, and only take 30K out of that?! Wow. I didn’t need much convincing 🙂
Where do you live? How do you like it to live there?
I live in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. This is a lovely little town, and I’m super happy to be there! Low cost of living, great weather, very beautiful place! Poker-wise, I can play on Bodog, which is a total fish-pond 🙂
Did you have a special moment in poker, which you can share with our community?
A special moment in poker: winning the Waterloo poker classic a few months ago, took 4K as first prize!
Another moment I’d like to share is actually a negative one, but I think it is very important and might resonate with many other players: I was playing online, and my boyfriend came in to watch me play. I got distracted and made a stupid mistake, after which I literally screamed at him! He didn’t say anything then, but afterward, he told me: “You know, I don’t think poker is making you a better person”. This was such a wake-up call for me! My family comes first; I really need to be strong mentally, and not let mishaps and bad luck and whatever to turn me into a hissy bitch!
Ola, thank you for giving us your personal insights into poker.
