It was a big month for Best Poker Coaching in April with great additions to the coaching program and plenty of player success. The BPC blog takes a quick look at what’s going on on the site and how players took advantage in April.
Coaching Program Improvements
BPC offered even more reasons to jump on board with improvements to the coaching program. Along with numerous positive reasons to take a chance with BPC, the site added daily Q-and-A sessions, study groups with a dedicated coach, on-demand hand reviews on video by a coach, and great rakeback deals for students.
Along with these additions, there are other reasons to consider BPC:
- Risk-free coaching – only pay if you win.
- One-on-one coaching sessions – a dedicated coach available for individual attention.
- Strategies for success – amp up your game with proven techniques to win more pots.
Top Winners
It was another big month for Dragomir, who topped the leader-boards with another month of more than €10,000 in profits – €14,082 to be exact. The 22-year-old Bulgarian regularly posts 12-13 hour days in the NL HU SOLDIER program. He logged an amazing 272 hours of play on his way to poker success.
Rounding out the top five finishers:
- xxnick12xx, 2nd – Nico cashed €8956 profits in MTT BRONZE program.
- Mirrage, 3rd – This player in the NL 6-MAX ZOOM ROOKIE program scored a big month for €4,570 in profits. Look for more big finishes soon.
- ShawnWallace, 4th – A big month with €4,567 in profits in NO LIMIT 6-MAX IRONMAN.
- 6MaxBottezon, 5th – €4,546 n profits in the PLO HEADS UP ELITE program.
The success came from several different games, so profits can be made from any BPC program – just find one that works for you.
Big Blogger
The Czech Republic’s Marek “VaCinhoX” earned Blogger of the Month for April after finishing runner-up in March. He takes home €100 in CFP points and T-shirt with his BPC program logo on the front.
Now living Lisbon, Portugal, Marek plays in the NL10 cash games stakes on PokerStars. It’s now been a year since he started his blog and that his stands out because of the longevity.
“A lot of people start their blogs and stop after some time,” he sys. “So I would probably say that consistency is what sets my blog apart.”
Along with making his blog personal and honest, Marek focuses on daily results, daily struggles, and goals. BPC members have reacted well to his updates and his work is popular with members.
Those updates included some struggles for the month of April. The first half of the month went great, he says, and was on the road to beat his record month. He then decided to take a shot at NL25 stakes.
“It didn’t go well,” he says. “I lost five buy-ins there. I moved back to NL10 and the bad run continued. It was difficult for me. I had no motivation to play the last couple of days of April, but at the end I still finished with a profit thanks to a great last session of the month, otherwise I would finished break-even.”
It is reality like that players can relate to and the reason so many enjoy his blog.
Away from poker, Marek enjoys sports, working out, and running. He also loves travelling and meeting new people.
“But it’s hard to balance everything and I kind of struggle with it recently,” he says. “I have a full time job and with poker it takes most of my time, and there is not much room for anything else.”
>> Check out his blog by clicking here
Tournament Takedown
April brought a massive win for 22-year-old Nico Prokic. A native of Vienna, Austria, he capped a good month on April 30 with a huge win in the $5.50 PokerStars’ Sunday Marathon with a $40,000 prize pool guarantee. The event featured 9,717 entries, and this advanced MTT student took home $6,174 for his efforts.
“The tournament was pretty insane,” he says. “On Sundays most tournaments are just huge in terms of players. To be honest, I didn’t pay much more attention to it than to any other tournament until we reached the last 200 players. I was obviously running well. My steals were successful, I made pairs when I needed to, I was winning my flips, and hitting ‘Barry Greenstein’ on the river when I needed to.”
Nico says variance just seemed to be on his side, which is needed in such big fields. Some less-than-stellar play at the final table, allowed him to find some advantages over opponents.
“At the final table, people were just absolutely terrible and made such big mistakes, it was crazy,” he says. “The most gruesome part was heads-up, which is where I actually feel the most confident.”
After possessing 80 percent of the chips, Nico refused a deal and then moved to a 9-to-1 advantage. The heads-up play lasted about an hour and a half before he took down the win. Overall, the tournament took 16 hours.
Before becoming a poker force, Nico traveled around Europe playing a card game called “Yu-Gi-Oh!” competitively. After seeing more and more pros transitioning to poker, a friend introduced him to the game.
“I was always into money, card games, competitiveness and travel, so poker was just the perfect fit,” he says.
He now plays online tournaments with buy-ins up to $33 and live tournaments up to €1,100. Beyond the Marathon win, the rest of his month also went pretty well – running well in 180-player sit and gos. At the beginning of April, he decreased his volume for big-field tournaments to reduce variance but moved back to playing more toward the end of the month – and the work paid off.
Nico has some lofty goals. He wants to become one of the Top 10 tournament players in the world. In the midterm, Nico hopes to have $1 million in winnings by the end of 2020 and win a major tournament.
Eight months ago, Nico changed his nutrition and started working out. Another hobby is attending a silent disco (dancers listen to the music on wireless headphones) every week with friends.
When it comes to advice for other players, Nico points to two things that changed how he approached poker:
The 80-20 principle – ”Basically 80 percent of your results come from 20 percent of your actions. So figure out from which games you make the most profit and which 20 percent of the things you study that net you 80 percent of your skill increase and ignore the rest.”
Go all out on your strengths and ignore your weaknesses – ”Don’t confuse weaknesses with leaks however. I struggled for years to effectively use a detailed HUD so I don’t. Decide if you are a GTO-ish player or an exploitative player. How do you learn best and how do you feel the most comfortable? Stick to one approach and cherry pick from the other one. Play a GTO (game theory optimal) style, but learn from the exploitative player how to player versus weaker players. In a nutshell, do what works for you.”
This year, Nico is hoping to play some EPT events and keep working on his game. He gives plenty of credit to his BPC coaches Ben and Julian, “who have invested way more time into me than anybody actually knows – even when I didn’t deliver any results in the beginning. Also a special shoutout to Thomas, who I have been working really close with recently and is teaching me a lot on how and when to deviate from my GTO-ish approach.”
Sean Chaffin is a freelance writer in Texas. His work appears in numerous websites and publications such as PokerNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @PokerTraditions.
