Lex Veldhuis - Pokerspecialist

One of the most important weeks on the stream so far. Monday was so poor it really got to me. I quit streaming after a few hours and started doing some studying. I was evaluating my game and thinking about things. The amount of top 20 finishes over the past 3 months are stunning. I reviewed some hands to see if I made a mistake closing them. That is always step 1. Is the part the I write off to variance really variance? Am I lying to myself? Am I victimizing myself? Sometimes you will see a tendency of looser all-ins in spots vs strong ranges, almost as if to just bring more pain so you can confirm that you’re running bad. A lot of you will recognize that. Deep down you will know it was a spew. I feel this is where anger comes from a lot. I’ve said this on my stream many times. I didn’t see any leaks (that I’m aware of at least). Ok so step 1 completed. I didn’t tilt. So it was variance. That’s good news. Then why the fuck do I let it get to me so much that I quit for the day and miss out on great tournaments?

Honestly, I think it’s a combination of things. I had TwitchCon, after Twitchcon my dad got ill, and on top of it last week there was a weird schedule because of daylight savings time messing up the time-zones. The hour earlier start + my dad made it so I could neither work out nor do coaching. Two things I love to do and give me a lot of energy. Working out also makes you strong mentally. Sweating is good. It clears the head. Both my dad and the daylight savings time are completely out of my hands. So why am I punishing myself for it? Monday evening I decided to make the best of the situation.

To make sure I didn’t start making mistakes and to go over every spot, I started talking about my decisions more than usual. I think this way I force myself to not make marginal mistakes as well. How am I gonna say ‘Aww I think this guy’s range is pretty strong here, but I have a decent hand, so I have to call?’ Can’t get away with that shit when 1000 people are watching! Tuesday was one of the most positive streams I have ever had. I am not even gonna mention results because IT DOESNT MATTER. Short term doesn’t matter guys. Don’t let the short term fuck the long term up for you. I was playing well, I was improving, and I was having fun. I didn’t make mistakes based on things I already knew. I made plenty of mistakes that were new to me, so we learned. Good.

Rest of the week I was able to keep this going. I played some great tournament poker and some great PLO too. This is one of those weeks with a lot of close calls where you could have won thousands of dollars. I would take this week over a winning week auto-piloting every fucking time. These are the kind of weeks that restore the balance. I know how to play poker, I’m going to play it to the best of my ability, and you guys are gonna be there to see where that takes me. Insane amount of subs and support. I’m so happy the pay-off of showing everything to you guys, is that I can help motivate you. I received so many whispers and pm’s this week about how I was helping people change their motivation around too.

Blowup Friday is always a nice ending to the week, whatever the week was like. I couldn’t hit water if I fell out of a boat on Friday and I tried a different approach that I will do from now on. If I bust every 1st all-in of every tournament in the first 2 hours, I’m gonna switch it around. I went to play some PLO cash and that was tons of fun. I have to be a bit careful that I don’t do too much crazy shit on BUF with cashgames, because that would become way too expensive. But playing different types of poker was fun.

Another very fun thing was H1Z1. I played the game for the first time on Friday. A lot of people enjoyed watching it too! I retained 300 viewers! That’s insane! I streamed it for 5 hours yesterday too. It’s really cool to play it in a team of 5 and get to know subs better. Playing with Julius, Bfrench, streamysauce, bizzo, ucoward, aadpaling and others and to get to know them playing a team-game, is just awesome. We have a sick community guys. If you haven’t been able to interact much with other people, try out discord. It’s a great tool to talk to each other and even learn poker. I also do cool giveaways there.

This week you can expect more of the same. I’m gonna think out loud a lot. I’m gonna keep my mind in the game. Finally back on the old schedule. I’m about to go to the gym and I really want 5 gym sessions this week. Also have coaching planned with kingkaiser this morning. My dad is in a nice facility and he seems to get back more clarity and a healthy daily rhythm. This will be another great week. Hope you can come over and watch it.

As always, thanks for the support. Without you guys there I wouldn’t be able to turn stuff around as I did.

LETS FUCKING GO.