Behind this horrible and unoriginal title (a mix of destination skyline and a poker term !!!) lies an interview with 
kotkis. After reading this journal, I got curious and asked him for an interview, which he kindly accepted. To make it short, the guy made about $800.000 playing online poker... in 2007 alone. From the very early roistot days to DSky glories and online poker fame, here's kotkis interview.
Hi kotkis. First of all, could you introduce yourself to the crowd?
Hello, my name is Olli and I'm a 20-year-old ex-gamer turned into poker pro from Finland.
Tell us about your gaming history.
I first started playing online games in the form of a browser based real-time strategy game called Planetarion which also introduced me to using IRC. After that a couple of my friends introduced me to Counter-Strike which I played briefly for fun before moving on to a bunch of other HL mods such as Front Line Force where I landed in my first real clan called MeniEnemiis (which surprisingly is still intact but not active after six and a half years). I would consider the original RtCW my first real competitive gaming experience, and I quickly fell in love with its very strategy driven team game action.
After a couple of years of RtCW I grew tired of gaming altogether and had a brief period of time when I didn't play anything. Then at some point I heard that they were developing a sequel for RtCW and thought that it would be a great chance for me to get back to the activity I had started to miss during my hiatus. I played RtCW briefly before ET was released so I was not rusty when the new game got out and settled into the roster of an ex-RtCW group called SSR that later dropped the SS part and came to be known as just "roistot". While SSR was a pretty mediocore RtCW clan, we quickly rose to the top of the relatively soft ET field when the first forms of competitive leagues started, and for the most part remained there for the two years we played.
After those two years we were faced with the dilemma that many of our key members were due to leave to do their military service, and that coupled with the fact that many of us had slowly grown a bit tired of the same old game we had been playing non-stop for so long resulted us in finally quitting (well technically it was our second time quitting, but this time it was for good). Many of us still remained active in other genres of gaming such as 1on1 deathmatch games where we had some really intense competition among each other in games such as Painkiller, Doom3, Quake3, CPMA, QuakeWorld and Warsow. After a while also poker stepped into the picture, and that's what finally ended up drawing me away from gaming.
What are the main common points between gaming and poker ? Do you think gamers have an edge over other poker players ? What is the key, in your opinion, of your success ?
Well technically the games don't really share anything in common. Gaming requires the ability to think on your feet, team work, good reflexes and fine tuned motoric skills, of which none really translate to poker. However I still do think that gamers definitely have an edge over most people who start poker because of their competitive spirit and because they simply expect to win. Being a geek is certainly helpful too :)
How has your lifestyle changed since you started poker?
To be honest, not by much. I never cashed out once during my first half year of playing poker, and even after that it was a miniscule sum to buy a new ipod. In the past I was pretty obsessive about competing in ET and now that was replaced with getting good at poker, which I think is a pretty common personality trait among successfull poker players. I guess the biggest difference is that I have much more freedom to do whatever I want, but so far I haven't fully utilized this.
How did you evolve as a poker player? How did you start and what evolution did you follow ?
I wasn't comfortable depositing any of my own money at first, so my bankroll was born from a $50 free sign-up bonus I received through an affiliate. I played the smallest stakes games for a while and grew my BR a bit in Sit-and-Go's before realizing how much more exciting and rewarding cash-games were. Since then I've never really played anything other than shorthanded NLHE all the way back from 0.01/0.02 to the 25/50 and 50/100 games I'm playing now. I was never big into the gambling aspect of the game, so I often had to force myself to not be a pussy and move up when I had reached a secure BR for the next level. I was really fortunate in that I ran good at the very beginning so I didn't bust the $50 which is hardly a bankroll for any game, but beyond that I think the chances of me going broke have been close to non-existant because of how careful I've been about bankroll management.
When did you actually decide "Ok, now I'm going pro" ? Do you have any studies beside poker ?
Ever since being a teenager I've had a lot of trouble maintaining a normal sleeping patterns, which caused me a lot of trouble at school because I was constantly missing classes because I overslept or was just too damn tired to leave home after spending the whole night awake. To be honest I guess I wasn't one of the most diligent students to begin with despite being able to maintain my grades alright with the minimum effort, but the sleeping disorder certainly made things worse. Poker didn't really factor into any of this before what was the second to last semester for most people but not me because I had already so much catching up to do. During the summer vacation preceeding this time I had started making "meaningful" money from poker in that I was consistently raking in multiple times the amount of money of what most people make in their real jobs, and then when I made $50k and $40k the last two months before the Christmas holidays it gave me the excuse I was looking for to stop going to school altogether. Ever since then I've been playing poker for living, and I can't say I've really regretted the decision.
How is your entourage reacting to your poker career ? Do you feel some "friends" are interested in you because of your success? Or did poker cripple your social life ? Did you ever feel any jealousy in your entourage about the money you're winning ?
After school was over most of my friends left to do their military service (not again, damnit!), so that kinda killed my already pretty shallow social life. I didn't mind it too much at first because I was so obsessed about poker, but lately I've been looking to change my hermit ways by trying to travel more with some of the people I've met from the poker world. At the same time I feel like I'm alienating myself a bit from my former social circles which I guess is inevitable.
What does a normal kotkis day look like ?
The absolutely best part about quitting school was that I could finally get a good nights sleep every single day of the week. Right now I've pretty much stopped trying to conform to the standard schedule of the society, so I go to sleep whenever I get tired and wake up without an alarm when I feel rested again. There isn't much structure in my life in general; there have been days when I wake-up and immediately jump at the chance to play in a soft game and continue playing for eight hours straight without taking a break, and times when I don't touch poker for weeks while in the midst of a morale draining downswing. Besides playing or talking about poker with friends I spend a lot of my free time watching downloaded TV-shows or movies from computer, reading books and playing various flash games. I'm leaving to Thailand tomorrow so that's probably going spice things up a bit.
How do you handle the pressure of being a high stakes poker player ? Is it similar than the pressure of handling though situations in gaming, with all the spectators and stuff?
It's kinda funny but I was probably more nervous while playing an important ET match than I've been while sitting in a high-stakes poker game. Playing poker seriously tends to demolish ones sense of money out of the necessity to be able to objectively assess the game, so in that sense the real life value of the money is really meaningless for me. I remember being more excited about having an exceptionally good score at the small-stakes games while I was moving up than what I feel now after a record score in my current games. The way I view poker is a lot like any other game except you measure your score in terms of money relative to your current bankroll.
The type of pressure you experience as a poker player is a lot more vicious, and it has to do with the inherent randomness that is an essential part of the game. The human mind was not evolved to deal with this type non-causal reward enviroment which makes learning the game extremely challenging (there's a great book about this subject called "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassem Talib). You can make plenty of mistakes and still profit, or play close to perfect and end up losing for weeks, and the worst thing is that you don't really have a clear picture of what you do right and wrong because you don't receive direct feedback from your actions. I've tried to distinguish myself from this type of intuitive learning as much as I can by going through things on paper and using theory rather than experience as a guide to what works and what doesn't, and I'd say this is easily the strongest part of my skill-set.
Did you ever consider a transition to live poker, or think about giving a shot to WSOP ? Why ?
I don't enjoy playing live all that much, but I'll probably end up playing one or two big live tournaments just for the sake of experience. Perhaps I'm just a geek, but I never really got the staring-at-peoples-faces aspect of the game which a lot of casual players seem to associate as the essence of poker. I'd say it's something that can benefit you tremendously against inexperienced players, but beyond that its importance pales in comparison to pattern detection and understanding the game on a theoretical level. Besides that there just isn't much for live poker to offer for me in comparison to online: Live poker most often runs as a full-ring game which is a much less exciting and stimulating version of the game than what I'm used to playing, and when you only see ~30 hands/hour in comparison to the 200-500 I see online you can probably understand why I find it boring. Home games as a social activity are a whole another thing though :).
Did you ever coach someone ?
I've done a couple of sessions for people I know at a discount rate compared to what I could charge if I took it up seriously, but nothing more than that. People regularly pay up to $400/hour to get coached and that's not even the highest price range there is, so there's certainly a lot of money to be made from the business, but right now I've concluded that in my case it wouldn't be cost-effective for either me or my potential students. I'm good friends with an ex CS-player who has become one of the most highly regarded poker coaches, and he makes a good buck solely from teaching people how to play.
What's the sickest hand you've ever been a part of ?
My style tends to end me up in a ton of pots where the money goes in with some pretty questionable holdings, but probably the most memorable hand for me was from a year ago where I successfully 4-bet shoved a bare gutshot on the turn while over 300xBB's deep at 5/10. I'll try find the handhistory somewhere.
5/10 Texas Hold'em Game Table (NL) - Sun Dec 17 13:01:55 EST 2006
Table Table 126581 (Real Money) -- Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 3
Seat 1: kotkis ( $3100.75)
Seat 3: someguy ( $177.75)
Seat 6: Villain ( $4150.19)
someguy posts small blind ($5)
Villain posts big blind ($10)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to kotkis [ 5c, Ad ]
kotkis raises to $33
someguy folds.
Villain calls $23
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 9c, Ts, 2d ]
Villain checks.
kotkis bets $55
Villain calls $55
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 3d ]
Villain bets $150
kotkis raises to $450
Villain raises to $1250
kotkis raises to $3012.75
kotkis is all-In.
Villain: wowo
Villain: t9
Villain folds.
I'd say the chances this guy folded T9 are extremely small and it's much more likely he was just trying to make a play at the pot and was saving face when I picked on his plan.
What have been your best and your worst poker month ?
September was my first losing month at -$14k and then I had my record month in October for +$252k right afterwards.
Do you still play games online ? Can we expect to see kotkis back again in the Wolfenstein serie ?
I got back to Warsow for a very brief period and recently spent a lot of time playing the new TF2 during the beta stage, and even considered getting into the competitive games again, but now that I'm going to Thailand for several months I gave up on that idea. If a new Wolfenstein game were to come out I would seriously consider it but it's hard to say anything beyond that.
Best memories from gaming ?
I always enjoyed entering a new game and seeing how the strategies and level of play developed as the game matured. The thing that appealed to me the most in RtCW/ET was how diverse tools the game offered in creating these strategies, and how every now and then a new team would have an innovative tactic that would later become the new standard. I guess you could say my best moments were related to exactly this, experimenting with new strategies and then putting them to use in a match.
What was your dreamteam of the time?
Hmm, I dunno. I thought ET really rewarded teams that stuck together and knew each others tendencies well, so I doubt I'd take any team of individuals over a well established top clan.
What would he liked to have seen done in the game to keep you interested?
I don't think there was much to do really. I thought ET was a great game and I really liked the direction it was going, but I just had had enough for the time being.
What's the craziest expense you've ever done with the money you won ?
I'm not much of a spender. Let's see... I have bought two laptops and I'm about to make my second trip to Thailand and that's pretty much it. I'm trying to be wise and invest most of the spare money although I'm pretty damn lazy at even that.
On what sites do you play and why ?
I used to play on Party for a long while but have recently migrated to iPoker which I've grown to like very much, and I think the style of play there suits mine very well. I'm also trying to get some money to Prima to get something going there too.
How do you picture yourself in, say... 10 years ?
One of the downsides of playing poker for living is that there lie so many uncertainities about the future. Obviously the thing I fear the most is if there were to be a sudden change in the legislation of EU that would ban or complicate the availability of online poker, not so much because it would prevent me from playing, but because it would end the hobby of many casual players who maintain the poker economy with their deposits. A little over year ago the Bible thumping legislators in the US managed to sneak in an act to ban the credit card transactions to certain genres of online gambling sites which had a noticeable effect on the quality of the games because many of the casual players were forced to quit while the professionals and semi-pros found ways to get past the ban and now sharing a smaller piece of the pie with each other. It's very hard to try predict what will happen in the future. If things remain the same I would predict that the quality and amount of games is going to slowly decline, but at a slow enough pace that I would not have anything to worry about as I'm located pretty high up on the pyramid and a lot of people are going to lose their piece of the pie before I have to give up on mine :). I'm not too worried about my future at this point as it would seem EU has a pretty firm pro-gambling stance because of certain free trade agreements. Then there's also the brighter prospect of the potential Asian gambling market opening up, and there's also a decent chance that the US will revert the previous legislation for the sake of being able to tax and regulate the market.
If the games remain decent for the next five years I think I'm set for life, and ten years would already be luxury. I'll try to use my time wisely and make the most out of my fortunate position, and perhaps I'll come up with some new endeavours in the meanwhile to take over poker.
What advices would you give to the gamers out there willing to start a poker career ?
Only play with money you can afforf to lose. Find someone who's enthusiastic about poker and plays roughly in the same type of games as you do and start talking about hands and strategy with them. Don't put too much weight on learning through intuition alone and get to the habit of going through hands on paper with math to see what works and what doesn't. You'll do fine with just the basic high-school math skills and it's mostly the effort and habit that counts. At this time and age it would probably be a good idea to invest in a coaching community like CardRunners ( www.cardrunners.com) or DeucesCracked (www.deucescracked.com) if you're serious about poker because even a minor increase in your win-rate will pay itself back very fast. If you get angry easily while playing FPS games you're going to have extremely hard time coping with the mental hardships of poker.
Shoutouts are for girls
kotkis. After reading this journal, I got curious and asked him for an interview, which he kindly accepted. To make it short, the guy made about $800.000 playing online poker... in 2007 alone. From the very early roistot days to DSky glories and online poker fame, here's kotkis interview. Hi kotkis. First of all, could you introduce yourself to the crowd?
Hello, my name is Olli and I'm a 20-year-old ex-gamer turned into poker pro from Finland.
Tell us about your gaming history.
I first started playing online games in the form of a browser based real-time strategy game called Planetarion which also introduced me to using IRC. After that a couple of my friends introduced me to Counter-Strike which I played briefly for fun before moving on to a bunch of other HL mods such as Front Line Force where I landed in my first real clan called MeniEnemiis (which surprisingly is still intact but not active after six and a half years). I would consider the original RtCW my first real competitive gaming experience, and I quickly fell in love with its very strategy driven team game action.
After a couple of years of RtCW I grew tired of gaming altogether and had a brief period of time when I didn't play anything. Then at some point I heard that they were developing a sequel for RtCW and thought that it would be a great chance for me to get back to the activity I had started to miss during my hiatus. I played RtCW briefly before ET was released so I was not rusty when the new game got out and settled into the roster of an ex-RtCW group called SSR that later dropped the SS part and came to be known as just "roistot". While SSR was a pretty mediocore RtCW clan, we quickly rose to the top of the relatively soft ET field when the first forms of competitive leagues started, and for the most part remained there for the two years we played.
After those two years we were faced with the dilemma that many of our key members were due to leave to do their military service, and that coupled with the fact that many of us had slowly grown a bit tired of the same old game we had been playing non-stop for so long resulted us in finally quitting (well technically it was our second time quitting, but this time it was for good). Many of us still remained active in other genres of gaming such as 1on1 deathmatch games where we had some really intense competition among each other in games such as Painkiller, Doom3, Quake3, CPMA, QuakeWorld and Warsow. After a while also poker stepped into the picture, and that's what finally ended up drawing me away from gaming.
What are the main common points between gaming and poker ? Do you think gamers have an edge over other poker players ? What is the key, in your opinion, of your success ?
Well technically the games don't really share anything in common. Gaming requires the ability to think on your feet, team work, good reflexes and fine tuned motoric skills, of which none really translate to poker. However I still do think that gamers definitely have an edge over most people who start poker because of their competitive spirit and because they simply expect to win. Being a geek is certainly helpful too :)
How has your lifestyle changed since you started poker?
To be honest, not by much. I never cashed out once during my first half year of playing poker, and even after that it was a miniscule sum to buy a new ipod. In the past I was pretty obsessive about competing in ET and now that was replaced with getting good at poker, which I think is a pretty common personality trait among successfull poker players. I guess the biggest difference is that I have much more freedom to do whatever I want, but so far I haven't fully utilized this.
How did you evolve as a poker player? How did you start and what evolution did you follow ?
I wasn't comfortable depositing any of my own money at first, so my bankroll was born from a $50 free sign-up bonus I received through an affiliate. I played the smallest stakes games for a while and grew my BR a bit in Sit-and-Go's before realizing how much more exciting and rewarding cash-games were. Since then I've never really played anything other than shorthanded NLHE all the way back from 0.01/0.02 to the 25/50 and 50/100 games I'm playing now. I was never big into the gambling aspect of the game, so I often had to force myself to not be a pussy and move up when I had reached a secure BR for the next level. I was really fortunate in that I ran good at the very beginning so I didn't bust the $50 which is hardly a bankroll for any game, but beyond that I think the chances of me going broke have been close to non-existant because of how careful I've been about bankroll management.
When did you actually decide "Ok, now I'm going pro" ? Do you have any studies beside poker ?
Ever since being a teenager I've had a lot of trouble maintaining a normal sleeping patterns, which caused me a lot of trouble at school because I was constantly missing classes because I overslept or was just too damn tired to leave home after spending the whole night awake. To be honest I guess I wasn't one of the most diligent students to begin with despite being able to maintain my grades alright with the minimum effort, but the sleeping disorder certainly made things worse. Poker didn't really factor into any of this before what was the second to last semester for most people but not me because I had already so much catching up to do. During the summer vacation preceeding this time I had started making "meaningful" money from poker in that I was consistently raking in multiple times the amount of money of what most people make in their real jobs, and then when I made $50k and $40k the last two months before the Christmas holidays it gave me the excuse I was looking for to stop going to school altogether. Ever since then I've been playing poker for living, and I can't say I've really regretted the decision.
How is your entourage reacting to your poker career ? Do you feel some "friends" are interested in you because of your success? Or did poker cripple your social life ? Did you ever feel any jealousy in your entourage about the money you're winning ?
After school was over most of my friends left to do their military service (not again, damnit!), so that kinda killed my already pretty shallow social life. I didn't mind it too much at first because I was so obsessed about poker, but lately I've been looking to change my hermit ways by trying to travel more with some of the people I've met from the poker world. At the same time I feel like I'm alienating myself a bit from my former social circles which I guess is inevitable.
What does a normal kotkis day look like ?
The absolutely best part about quitting school was that I could finally get a good nights sleep every single day of the week. Right now I've pretty much stopped trying to conform to the standard schedule of the society, so I go to sleep whenever I get tired and wake up without an alarm when I feel rested again. There isn't much structure in my life in general; there have been days when I wake-up and immediately jump at the chance to play in a soft game and continue playing for eight hours straight without taking a break, and times when I don't touch poker for weeks while in the midst of a morale draining downswing. Besides playing or talking about poker with friends I spend a lot of my free time watching downloaded TV-shows or movies from computer, reading books and playing various flash games. I'm leaving to Thailand tomorrow so that's probably going spice things up a bit.
How do you handle the pressure of being a high stakes poker player ? Is it similar than the pressure of handling though situations in gaming, with all the spectators and stuff?
It's kinda funny but I was probably more nervous while playing an important ET match than I've been while sitting in a high-stakes poker game. Playing poker seriously tends to demolish ones sense of money out of the necessity to be able to objectively assess the game, so in that sense the real life value of the money is really meaningless for me. I remember being more excited about having an exceptionally good score at the small-stakes games while I was moving up than what I feel now after a record score in my current games. The way I view poker is a lot like any other game except you measure your score in terms of money relative to your current bankroll.
The type of pressure you experience as a poker player is a lot more vicious, and it has to do with the inherent randomness that is an essential part of the game. The human mind was not evolved to deal with this type non-causal reward enviroment which makes learning the game extremely challenging (there's a great book about this subject called "Fooled by Randomness" by Nassem Talib). You can make plenty of mistakes and still profit, or play close to perfect and end up losing for weeks, and the worst thing is that you don't really have a clear picture of what you do right and wrong because you don't receive direct feedback from your actions. I've tried to distinguish myself from this type of intuitive learning as much as I can by going through things on paper and using theory rather than experience as a guide to what works and what doesn't, and I'd say this is easily the strongest part of my skill-set.
Did you ever consider a transition to live poker, or think about giving a shot to WSOP ? Why ?
I don't enjoy playing live all that much, but I'll probably end up playing one or two big live tournaments just for the sake of experience. Perhaps I'm just a geek, but I never really got the staring-at-peoples-faces aspect of the game which a lot of casual players seem to associate as the essence of poker. I'd say it's something that can benefit you tremendously against inexperienced players, but beyond that its importance pales in comparison to pattern detection and understanding the game on a theoretical level. Besides that there just isn't much for live poker to offer for me in comparison to online: Live poker most often runs as a full-ring game which is a much less exciting and stimulating version of the game than what I'm used to playing, and when you only see ~30 hands/hour in comparison to the 200-500 I see online you can probably understand why I find it boring. Home games as a social activity are a whole another thing though :).
Did you ever coach someone ?
I've done a couple of sessions for people I know at a discount rate compared to what I could charge if I took it up seriously, but nothing more than that. People regularly pay up to $400/hour to get coached and that's not even the highest price range there is, so there's certainly a lot of money to be made from the business, but right now I've concluded that in my case it wouldn't be cost-effective for either me or my potential students. I'm good friends with an ex CS-player who has become one of the most highly regarded poker coaches, and he makes a good buck solely from teaching people how to play.
What's the sickest hand you've ever been a part of ?
My style tends to end me up in a ton of pots where the money goes in with some pretty questionable holdings, but probably the most memorable hand for me was from a year ago where I successfully 4-bet shoved a bare gutshot on the turn while over 300xBB's deep at 5/10. I'll try find the handhistory somewhere.
5/10 Texas Hold'em Game Table (NL) - Sun Dec 17 13:01:55 EST 2006
Table Table 126581 (Real Money) -- Seat 1 is the button
Total number of players : 3
Seat 1: kotkis ( $3100.75)
Seat 3: someguy ( $177.75)
Seat 6: Villain ( $4150.19)
someguy posts small blind ($5)
Villain posts big blind ($10)
** Dealing down cards **
Dealt to kotkis [ 5c, Ad ]
kotkis raises to $33
someguy folds.
Villain calls $23
** Dealing Flop ** : [ 9c, Ts, 2d ]
Villain checks.
kotkis bets $55
Villain calls $55
** Dealing Turn ** : [ 3d ]
Villain bets $150
kotkis raises to $450
Villain raises to $1250
kotkis raises to $3012.75
kotkis is all-In.
Villain: wowo
Villain: t9
Villain folds.
I'd say the chances this guy folded T9 are extremely small and it's much more likely he was just trying to make a play at the pot and was saving face when I picked on his plan.
What have been your best and your worst poker month ?
September was my first losing month at -$14k and then I had my record month in October for +$252k right afterwards.
Do you still play games online ? Can we expect to see kotkis back again in the Wolfenstein serie ?
I got back to Warsow for a very brief period and recently spent a lot of time playing the new TF2 during the beta stage, and even considered getting into the competitive games again, but now that I'm going to Thailand for several months I gave up on that idea. If a new Wolfenstein game were to come out I would seriously consider it but it's hard to say anything beyond that.
Best memories from gaming ?
I always enjoyed entering a new game and seeing how the strategies and level of play developed as the game matured. The thing that appealed to me the most in RtCW/ET was how diverse tools the game offered in creating these strategies, and how every now and then a new team would have an innovative tactic that would later become the new standard. I guess you could say my best moments were related to exactly this, experimenting with new strategies and then putting them to use in a match.
What was your dreamteam of the time?
Hmm, I dunno. I thought ET really rewarded teams that stuck together and knew each others tendencies well, so I doubt I'd take any team of individuals over a well established top clan.
What would he liked to have seen done in the game to keep you interested?
I don't think there was much to do really. I thought ET was a great game and I really liked the direction it was going, but I just had had enough for the time being.
What's the craziest expense you've ever done with the money you won ?
I'm not much of a spender. Let's see... I have bought two laptops and I'm about to make my second trip to Thailand and that's pretty much it. I'm trying to be wise and invest most of the spare money although I'm pretty damn lazy at even that.
On what sites do you play and why ?
I used to play on Party for a long while but have recently migrated to iPoker which I've grown to like very much, and I think the style of play there suits mine very well. I'm also trying to get some money to Prima to get something going there too.
How do you picture yourself in, say... 10 years ?
One of the downsides of playing poker for living is that there lie so many uncertainities about the future. Obviously the thing I fear the most is if there were to be a sudden change in the legislation of EU that would ban or complicate the availability of online poker, not so much because it would prevent me from playing, but because it would end the hobby of many casual players who maintain the poker economy with their deposits. A little over year ago the Bible thumping legislators in the US managed to sneak in an act to ban the credit card transactions to certain genres of online gambling sites which had a noticeable effect on the quality of the games because many of the casual players were forced to quit while the professionals and semi-pros found ways to get past the ban and now sharing a smaller piece of the pie with each other. It's very hard to try predict what will happen in the future. If things remain the same I would predict that the quality and amount of games is going to slowly decline, but at a slow enough pace that I would not have anything to worry about as I'm located pretty high up on the pyramid and a lot of people are going to lose their piece of the pie before I have to give up on mine :). I'm not too worried about my future at this point as it would seem EU has a pretty firm pro-gambling stance because of certain free trade agreements. Then there's also the brighter prospect of the potential Asian gambling market opening up, and there's also a decent chance that the US will revert the previous legislation for the sake of being able to tax and regulate the market.
If the games remain decent for the next five years I think I'm set for life, and ten years would already be luxury. I'll try to use my time wisely and make the most out of my fortunate position, and perhaps I'll come up with some new endeavours in the meanwhile to take over poker.
What advices would you give to the gamers out there willing to start a poker career ?
Only play with money you can afforf to lose. Find someone who's enthusiastic about poker and plays roughly in the same type of games as you do and start talking about hands and strategy with them. Don't put too much weight on learning through intuition alone and get to the habit of going through hands on paper with math to see what works and what doesn't. You'll do fine with just the basic high-school math skills and it's mostly the effort and habit that counts. At this time and age it would probably be a good idea to invest in a coaching community like CardRunners ( www.cardrunners.com) or DeucesCracked (www.deucescracked.com) if you're serious about poker because even a minor increase in your win-rate will pay itself back very fast. If you get angry easily while playing FPS games you're going to have extremely hard time coping with the mental hardships of poker.
Shoutouts are for girls
I think what I did wrong was that when I went from 14$ to 1700$ i cashed out instead of continuing to grow my bankroll.
internet is serious business!
but I seriously doubt this will be legal for that much longer...
write more clear next time
grats
amazing career :O
My dream life! :o
omg omg omg
all i can say :ooooo
He just got me interested in playing poker online :o)
I know how you feel. :(
my respect you have
im curious to know about his parents' feelings about his current lifestyle and whether they actually supported him or tried to persuade him away from it in the beginning
DSky vs iN - Cares panzer on Oasis, still one of the best games ever :x
I'd like to know what the program is called that makes you the statistics with the winnings/losses over, lets say, a month.
Another question that I can think of is what are/is the program(s) called that keep up with the hands you and the other players at the tables had. I played pretty actively at 2/4 and 3/6 NL and I've been searching to such a program. I heard it costs money, but that doesn't really matter.
Nice interview and gl !
gonna start playing poker again ;)
I still feel it's quite stupid to drop out of school without a diploma though.
Would do for me :P
With high standard I mean:
- 2nd house
- multiple vacations
- no restrictions as to buying clothes/food
- being able to do funstuff when I want to
Lets guess im at fulltilt poker with a buddy and we join headsup with highstakes just to get our bonus money. the losing player retransfers the money over fultilt.
will they take consequences or anything like that?
Nice interview, was nice to read how someone had progressed in their career outside of ET :)
Like an amount of money you'll never use , or when you lose a certain amount you will drop back to lower tables?
Do you only play cash games or tourneys aswell?
I only play cash-games save a few of the bigger online tournies maybe twice a year.
and sleeping all day long?
life < u
gl in Thailand ;]
Oh yeh and kotkis!! INVEST YOUR MONEY!!!!!
GL with your carreer. Hope to see you at an EPT end of 2008 or start of 2009 (thats my planning to go to one this year)
I'm living near Stuttgart u know, that's why i asked :D
Do you have more girls around you since your amazing winnings ? :p (just asking, it's ok if you dont want answer :b)
Financially he's pretty much set for several years. I mean, if you get an average job with 5 to 8 years of studying and make about 5k a month, you'll still only make 60k a year. You'd have to work for about ten years to earn what kotkis made last year alone.
If you're referring to life in general; everyone will learn about life in their own pace. Enthusiastic poker might not be the optimal solution for learning how to live by common standards, but who defines what life should be anyway? Finding one's own way is important, and kotkis' activities with poker guarantee him a wast amount of choices in the future.
yes i would base my life on that.
gl