Hi everyone,

My Name is Florian from Germany and I am 34 years old. This Journal will be about my return to the tables and the process of becoming a better poker player. In this first post I will tell you a little bit more about me and my poker bio and also about my rebuilding project and I hope you'll find it interesting. I am always looking for feedback on how to improve, advice, content etc. So it would be great to see some disucssions here as well.

I guess I can be considered a veteran who started playing in 2006 and has a lot of experience in various game types and limits. I started as a Limit Hold em player who quickly switched to NLH and then SNGs, grinding mostly 27$ 9 and 6max Turbos and Midstakes MTTs with occasional Major shots in 2009-11. At the time I was a student in Bielefeld and later Birmingham (UK) and played like semi-professionally part-time earning solid 5-digits+ a year. I also played NLH SH up to NL200, SSS and MSS up to NL1k and considered myself being a pretty decent poker player. I also thought about going pro but then decided to invest most of my roll into my Master studies in the UK (Tuition fees, living costs, rent etc.). Shortly after I moved to Birmingham I suffered a sick downswing which killed a big part of the rest of my roll. So I found myself back at NL20 and my mindset was devastated and pokerwise I never really recovered from that tbh.

I started several rebuilding projects over the years, experimenting with various game types like PLO, FLH, NLH Cash etc. but never made it back to the small or midstakes. I guess my biggest leak was my mindset and work ethic. I quickly switched games once I ran bad and felt somewhat humiliated by playing micro- and low stakes because I ve been beating higher stakes games in the past. I also wasted a lot of time on finding the best rakeback deal and figuring out what and where to play instead of working on my game and playing it in the first place. At the time it got more and more frustrating and I lost the motivation and fun that brought me to the tables years ago. So in 2013, when I started a new job, married, became a father of a wonderful daughter, I quit poker.

But in the last year I occasionally found my way back to the felt and played some hands or tournaments just for fun but never really thought about trying to seriously build a poker career again. But I enjoyed playing again and the idea materialized to start a final rebuilding project.

So here we are :) But this time I had a lot of time reflecting my poker bio and want to learn from my mistakes. I want to do it right, seriously like a professional building on the experience I have and avoiding the mistakes I made in the past. I want to create a Mahlzahn 2.0 so to speak. On and off the table. With solid game theoretical foundations, a valid gameplan, a clearly-designed process on how to study, play, practice and become a better player while integrating the game into my life as a full time employee and family guy. Thus I already spent days on planning the whole thing without playing a hand... because the project can only be successfull if I fundamentally change my approach to the game and some other parts of my life. And I need feedback, help and this journal as a resource and control mechanism to document my way. And RIO is the perfect place to do all this and I hope you join me on my journey.

Mahlzahn

P.S.: I will write more about my exact rebuilding strategy and other aspects of the project/my life later. So come back and let me know what you think.