Mojca certainly knows her way around a poker table – and how to rake in the chips. She recently finished the 10k Coaching for Profits in the MTT program and is moving up the rankings. And if March is an indicator, she’s will be bringing in plenty more profits in the coming months.
“The last month, when I finished my 10k contract, was the best so far in my BPC poker carrier”, says Mojca, who goes by the screen name “phdmishka” when she’s battling it out online.
In March, she soared to almost €3,000 in profit, which becomes her biggest finish since joining BPC. To reach that level, she had two nice finishes – posting two deep runs in the same €5 MTT only a few days apart. In those, she took home a fifth-place finish and followed that up with a second-place finish. Of those nice scores, she notes: “I don’t recall any hands specifically that stood out, just that a lot of my bluffs went through.”
A native of Ljubljana, Slovenia, Mojca plays hyper turbo SNGs at the €15 level and also €5-10 MTTs on sites like 888, iPoker, Partypoker, and Winamax. Right now she works a full-time job as a researcher at a science facility, but grinds it out at least five days a week after work.
Mojca, became interested in poker a few years ago after watching some live play. That included watching Gus Hansen playing “any two cards” on major stops on the World Poker Tour. It was a time when poker was booming with the WPT and World Series of Poker exploding in popularity – and it hooked this young Slovenian.
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Nowadays, she still enjoys watching replays of of high stakes tournaments especially of top players like girafganger7, CDarwin2, Bencb and Healtheworld, who also served as coaches when she began.
Since those early days watching poker on TV, she’s been getting in on the action herself. That includes approaching the game discipline, focus, working with coaches, and using the skills that she’s been taught.
“It was then that I decided that in the future I am going to study the game and make a living from it,” she says of that initial experience with the game. “Two years ago, after finishing my education, I decided the time was right. I was looking for coaching and I found BPC and I enrolled and I learned everything I know now.”
Like many, Mojca loves poker because it is a great game that can never be perfectly mastered. From raising to bluffing to check-raising, there are so many options and variables, not even considering the stakes involved, that make it such a challenging and fun game.
“You can always learn new things and improve your game and with it also profits,” she says. “There is also excitement before every session. ‘Maybe this is the day I am going to win a big tournament?’ This excitement helps me to try and play every session as well as I can.”
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Growing up, Mojca says she was a stubborn child. She was the type of child who if she couldn’t get ahead of everybody else, she usually quit before being second best. That stubbornness eventually grew into persistence, a trait that helps her at the tables.
“This behavior drove my parents and my friends crazy a lot of times,” she says. “When I decided I was going to do something or achieve something, I didn’t stop until I got there. I am also a very competitive person and I always try to be ahead of competition in everything I do or did. Growing older I have improved a bit and other than that, I am a very likeable person.”
When she’s not bluffing opponents or dominating tournaments, Mojca enjoys a little more activity and competition. She gets her heart racing competing in aikido and relaxes her mind and body by taking yoga classes. She also enjoys traveling and photography.”
Mojca began her poker training with Bencb and Healtheworld a few years ago, and the studying and practice certainly worked out well. Those early days helped her advance to where she is now.
“I think it was a privilege to work with these two coaches,” she says. “They have different styles of coaching and I was lucky to work with them both. I also worked a lot with a fellow SNG student, Tomy. Without the coaching I would definitely not finish my contract in such a short time.”
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After such a successful run recently, Mojca has a few poker goals she’d like to achieve over the next few years. That includes building up a bankroll where she can easily play MTTs with buy-ins up to €100 and occasionally moving up into the €200 range.
No doubt it will take more hard work and discipline – two traits she’s mastered after doing so well – while also holding down a full-time job. She credits the site with helping her overcome some initial setbacks. “I had a few setbacks after I joined the program two years back”. She began her studies with the hyper turbo SNG program.
However, the poker sites where she played in Slovenia stopped allowing hyper turbo tournaments, and she was forced to switch to cash games and had to start from the beginning. Then she decided cash games were not really her favourite type of game, so she switched to MTTs in August 2017 after playing CG for eight months.
The transition turned out to be for the best and her determination and hard work now have her succeeding, and putting those challenges behind. Since then, she’s made 75 percent of her profits in MTTs.
And looking back, Mojca believes playing so many different formats has helped her game and given her the ability to adjust.
“By playing all these different formats I learned a lot about poker in general and I can successfully implement it in MTT,” she says.
Through the ups and downs, Mojca is still grinding it out and making profits. If she can stick with and continue to implement her coaching, more Euros may be rolling and she may just leave her research position behind. Her advice for others?
“You just need to set your mind to achieve something and then work really hard to get there,” she says.
“Success is never a question of if, only when!”
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.
