Alright so it’s been so long since I updated, sorry! I say it often but I 100% wouldn’t have been as active, interested or passionate and intrigued about poker if it wasn’t for blonde. I feel like im the luckiest guy in the world, I think everybody has stuff they’re really good at, it could be that their brain is perfect for drawing, or body built so they specialise in lifting weights or could be infinite things. I’m so fortunate that poker is “my thing” because 1) it is something that can pay a wage greater than most hobbies I could have clinched onto, 2) I’m lucky that I could discover it at such a young age, I’m sure so many people never find the thing that is best suited for them and 3) it has taught me so much about life and myself for me to be successful and more importantly happy in the future.
For a lot of my 20s I lived a very bitter and jealous and incomplete life. I would be in the top 0.1% but still jealous that “how can THIS” guy run so good??! No matter how much success I had it was never enough, if somebody was doing better than me I simply became obsessive to a unhealthy point, if I did my very best but somebody might doubt me I couldn’t take it, I cared more about the perception of me than of my perception of myself. I then had the luckiest 7 days of my life.
I see myself as a good online poker player, but a far superior live poker player. I was for year in top 10 in pocket fives but meanwhile I bricked I think 15 epts in a row. People would say (or in the back of my mind I would imagine they would say) “oh wow pads is good online but he can’t play live” it really really frustrated me and every time I got knocked out of another Ept the €5300 loss was meaningless compared to “what might X think” “will this just confirm on his mind that I’m just an online player??”
I then went to Vegas to try and eradicate these kind of thoughts. 6 weeks later I lost every all in during summer and I would become more and more depressed. It was a week before the main event, I think it was 10k 6max I lost AA vs AJ or something and I just had to get out, It was driving me insane. I didn’t care I was losing for myself, I cared what might others think?
I flew back to Vegas for the main, I played the main, building big stack, and played 3 other tournaments. I won them all for $400k, $380k and $440k. I got A lot of messages, read a lot of posts and heard from people who had previously said I could only play online, my parents who probably also thought I could only play online, friends, enemies, everything. All congratulating me on how amazing I must have been playing.. the truth was, I hadn’t played much different, I simply just ran like god vs the times I had ran poorly. Everybody was there when things were great, and when things were bad I didn’t get messages asking how I was, that they’d saw I’d bricked again and want to speak about it etc.
You would think after this week I would have been absolutely buzzing, proved everybody wrong, ready to not sail around the world conquering super high rollers, showing people how good I actually am?!?!
It couldn’t be further from the truth, I realised that if the lows were so low and the highs weren’t high at all, then putting myself through this just wasn’t worth it from a mental standpoint. I took 2018 off completely, I played 2 live events for party, cashing them both (luckily) 2018 was abit of a empty year memory wise for poker. I just played online a lot, I won scoops/wcoop/powerfests and had nice results, my best memory was studying on Friday night with my friend from Ukraine who was always super real and honest with me. The next day we ended up heads up in a wcoop, we chopped the tournament together and afterwards spent another 5 hours studying the whole tournaments. We both just love the game, enjoyed speaking poker with eachother and we’re honest with eachother. I also didn’t go to wsop at all despite last years success, I went to Russia alone to watch the World Cup, friebds came, but I spent a lot of time myself and really enjoyed it.
2019 was the year of sacrifice and really going for it. High stakes games are bigger than ever before and I decided to just go all in. I was working 15 hours every day without a day off for the first 9 months of the year, but in that I completely lost track of balance, I ate poorly, didn’t train much, didn’t see friends (outside of poker) as much. I went to I think 2 poker stops in the year, I went to Rio in Brazil which was great. I luckily final tabled the main event and then luckily again won the $5k side event. I then went to Vegas and decided to play a lot. I had a lot of runs, 9th, 5th, 11th, 11th, 11th and then a big 4th, obviously playing 30 huge field tournaments I was super lucky again to have so many runs. I didn’t feel bad that I didn’t win, didn’t spite the guys who knocked me out etc I was a lot happier than previous years.
After Vegas I grinded online super hard for 3 months again and then I started to relax once all the big stuff was finished. I went on music tour with Dave (Santan Dave) not sure if you guys know him but he’s pretty big. I went with good friend Jason who is one of the best cash players in the world but from super close to my home in Newcastle. Tour was crazy, we went to New York, Toronto, Boston, Chicago, Washington, LA, San Francisco, Vancouver. Honestly so much stuff happened it was insane, but was fantastic 2 weeks of my life I’ll remember forever.
2019 came to a close and in December I wanted to start trying to be healthier and have more balance. We’re around 2-3 weeks into this year now and I’m a lot fitter than I was 1 month ago, I run 5k pretty often at the gym (run at around 22 minutes atm) poker is still a very big part of my life, I’ve played sessions every day this year so far, including a deep run in Nottingham. I’m actually a little bit embarrassed about how well I’ve ran since those 3 tournaments I won in Vegas. I think I’ve cashed 8 main events in a row, every trip I’ve been on has been a profitable one and I’d love to say it’s down to all the work in the lab, but it’s not at all, I’ve just ran way above expectation.
I am so grateful for everybody around me, my support system is very strong, I speak poker with the best players in the world every day, my friends are all hugely into positive energy, fitness, motivating eachother, nutrition and self development. I have and continue to run above expectation in poker. At the end of 2019 I decided I wanted to give back a little bit. I was going to mentor one amateur this year. I put a post out and had 600+ messages. The messages touched me so much, there’s so many people in poker who don’t have what I have. The people around them, the support strategically, the support psychologically, it really made my already risen gratitude levels go higher and higher. I decided fuck it, I was going to make sure every single one of them had a support group around them, I’d dedicate 2+ hours to them every day this year, no charge of course, I made “pads poker squad” where essentially people can either just be in the community and follow along things to help them in their life, lots of self development, some poker, I blog there every day etc and then they are also able to be in a squad. Squads speak privately/away from everybody and I go through every single email . So far we have 1850 people (wtf???) and it’s very gratifying thing for me to do. Helping others and giving back is very important to me at this stage of my career, I realised a lot about this through staking. I’ve been running bitB for the last 7? years and I could write 3 full books on that whole story, but I realised that I’m not driven financially at all. When I win at poker the money is never what makes me happy, when my guys win I never think oh I get x/y/z.i really enjoy success. Success can be a million different things, but to me success is having a goal, making processes to achieve that goal, sticking to those processes for long sustained period of time and then achieving that goal. Seeing people close to you either as friends or that you mentor get there is just a feeling that doesn’t compare with anything else for me. Again, it just feels ridiculously lucky to me that I’m able to profit from something that makes me so happy doing (coaching/staking) like I would very happily do it for free (I guess I do too with poker squad) like the thing that could make me happy could be playing call of duty or monopoly or whatever, how am I so blessed that my “thing” is poker. It really just feels like one big sim that I’ve created for myself in some futuristic life, it feels so surreal. Idk
So much else going on, but this is already too long, party poker, football teams, nightclubs, restaurants, mafia pressure, Latinas, all sorts.
I’ll finish posting my goals for the year/month
**Goals for 2020**
I’ve realised after speaking with professional people and others that I have very heavy OCD. I find it really difficult to go to the gym 2x a week for example but relatively easy to go 7 days a week. I find it difficult to study Tuesday and Thursday but studying every day comes easier. I find it difficult to “eat better” but find it pretty easy to eat good all week. I can’t motivate myself to “read more” but want to do a 52 book challenge etc. I contemplated trying to break these kind of things but instead will just embrace them and hope I don’t end up mental.
So my goals are going to be year long ones that hopefully just become natural in my life going forward, adding some more structure and becoming the norm
**LIFE**
- Run 5k or walk 10k every day
- 101 sit ups every day (I read 100 was bad number to go for 🤷♂️)
- 52 personal training sessions
- Read 52 books (1x a week)
- Do another music tour
Long term thing to strive towards, fittest at 7a side on Tuesday (I play every week and would say I’m currently 10th fittest out of 14 and 3 of them are over 50 😂)
**Poker**
- Play 160 sessions (I will include 1 live tournament to equal 2 sessions)
- 400 study hours and track them
Long term thing to strive for: Don’t let ego come in way of registering for any tournament. I am a “business” and will treat myself and my approach to game selection as such. Don’t chase glory just processes and trust them. If I ever feel like not treating myself as a business and trying to chase losses, glory or acceptance then consider seriously to take time off and get head back on, during series too.
Anyway, glad to see so many of you in Nottingham, I had this pretty cool hand from the main event
https://twitter.com/pokergo/status/1216038955818205184?s=21 Hopefully there is another event where more people are at, would be great to see some old faces.
Be happy, be grateful.
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