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“If you want to be good, you have to learn and practice”

This time we want to introduce you to “Mr. Greed” aka Nikita, who is in our HU-Soldier team.

When he learned about the possibility to earn money with playing a poker online, he was shocked and grabbed the opportunity.

But this did not discourage him from opening a shisha bar in Kharkov. Learn more about him here:

 
How did you get in touch with poker and what made you decide to start playing?
 
I got in touch with poker about 8 years ago when I was at the university. At that moment I loved to play online computer games like Lineage2, Dota and WoW.  
 
I was spending huge amounts of time without any profits.
 
Everything changed when I saw that my friend was playing freeroll with a prize pool of 100$.
 
Because I was already spending a lot of time with computer games anyways, I thought that it would be good to get some $$$ from time to time.
 
 
How did BPC help you to improve your game? 
 
BPC helped me to get back into poker after my 1.5-year pause when I was an owner of a hookah bar.
 
1.5 year is a very long term in poker, so when I got back I was a semi-reg in terms of new poker tendencies.
 
Everything is changing very fast and if you want to be good at something you have to learn and practice every day.
 
Here is Nikita’s graph, but it’s new database, so some winnings are not shown there:
You live in Kharkov, right? How is it to live there? What do you like most about it?
 
Kharkov is a great city, but because of revolution in Ukraine, everything is bad here.
 
Huge taxes, low salaries and always a threat that civil war can come to your city. 
What gives you the motivation to get back to the tables every day?
 
My biggest motivation is my family.
 
I want to build a big house with a garden, give a good education for my daughter and travel from time to time around the world with my family.
 
But my second motivation is that I want to be the best in poker, to motivate other people and to show them that everything is possible if you work hard and go for your dreams.
 
 
Can you recall a special moment or hand in poker, which was interesting or memorable for you?
 
There were so many hands in poker over 8 years, so I can’t really remember only one.
 
The most meaningful moment was in 2008-2009 when I saw that my friend was opening 100% from the Button at 6-max.
 
In those days standard was to open about 50-60% and anyone who was opening more was looking like a monkey in the eyes of regs of that day.
 
I asked him “Dude! You are crazy! Why you are opening so much?” and he told me “Because those “super regs” are folding too much and I am making a lot of profit”.
 
At that moment my poker mind crushed and my vision of poker changed a lot. I started to think more about poker math and it gave me a lot of money.
 
 
Any tips for motivation for your fellow grinders?
 
Work hard and party hard.
 
Grinding is not your main goal, so you have to take a little vacation from time to time or you will burn out.
 
If you won’t relax from poker, poker will kill you. You will fell depressed because you’re grinding 24/7.
 
So take a little rest from time to time and you will see, that you WANT to play more and more on the next day.
 
 
If you could suggest only 1 thing for poker players to improve their game, what would it be?
 
Discipline! I had two students and one of them was not very good at math, had not very good poker feeling, but was a professional football player, so he was very disciplined. And another student was a real brilliant poker player, he was good at poker thinking, at poker math, but was always messed up in things that I told him to do.
 
And you know what? My first student became a pretty solid regular at micro-limits and having additional profit from poker and the second one lost his bankroll in a month because “he was too good to take my advice about bankroll building”.

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