“I am not really motivated by earning money, I am motivated by exploring.” – sbala90, $500 Spin & Go player.
Here at bitB Spins we have the top poker pros. We like to call them “beasts” because their force of learning and their motivation exceed any kind of limit.
Our players are similar to some war machines and they are ready to use all their weapons for winning “The War of Spins”.
Today we bring in front of you sbala90, one of our $500 Spin & Go players and top coaches who achieved the performance of crushing the $500’s with 42 cEV on 16,173 games!
Saydana: Hello, champion! I am glad to have you here among us. For those who doesn’t know too much about your past as a poker player can you please tell us a few things about you and your poker background?
sbala90: Hello, everyone! I am 29 years old and I live in Budapest, Hungary. I studied Business Informatics and I started to play poker in 2008 when I turned 18. I started with 6-max cash games and I played this poker format for 7 years. Most of the time I was playing NLH200-NLH1000. After this period I made the switch to Spin & Go’s.
Saydana: So why Spin & Go’s?
sbala90: Because I was having a low volume at 6-max cash games I was not spending enough time to improve my strategy for many years. After a while, this thing became very boring for me. Poker didn’t show anything new to me or rather it can be said that I wasn’t exploring anything new in poker.
I am not really motivated by earning money, I am motivated by exploring. I felt that I had to change some things in my poker routine so I decided to try the Spin & Go format. With this change it was the first time I was calculating EV’s for different lines, for example comparing EV for Checkback, Iso and Isoshove with different cards, etc.
Most of the time these were preflop calculations because at that time there wasn’t any preflop GTO, but I also created variance simulator and many things in Excel. I become better and better in understanding the situations, knowing the variables of the equation, like Equity, Realization factor, etc. I started to explore, and I was enjoying poker again.
Saydana: In your opinion, which is the hardest moment in the career of a poker player?
sbala90: There wasn’t a hard moment, there were hard periods. I don’t know what is a hard moment or a hard period for a poker player in general. For me, a hard period was to keep the balance between my private life and poker. I was focusing on poker in 2018 too much.
Another hard period was to manage our Spin & Go poker group, Spin & Win. We were under EV by a ton, thing which caused frustration, but we were merging with ProPokerBacking at the end of 2018, and I think now we really complete each other. I am thankful for the merge. I have learned my lesson, and now my only goal is to enjoy a good job in poker and enjoy my activities besides poker too.
Saydana: Which is your current strategy for improving your game?
sbala90: I like to learn well. For me, quality is over quantity. I know I could earn more by analyzing less and playing more, but as I said, I enjoy exploring. I think there are many different things one can do wrong in learning poker.
Not focusing on the right thing, not following the logic of the GTO, not understanding how to exploit it well, forgetting strategies, having unstructured strategies, not having the optimal environment, etc. You can do many things wrong in learning. I think I am able to learn well, because I realize bad processes and I pay attention on avoiding bad habits in learning.
Saydana: I am really intrigued to hear this so I can’t help from asking: on what do you focus the most? Strategy, mindset, etc?
sbala90: Generally, I am focusing on my mindset at the moment. As I mentioned I had a hard year last year and I learned that enjoying our experiences is the only thing that matters. Being the best player is a misleading goal to have. It can be a result of a process, and you can enjoy the process, but it is a wrongly formulated goal to have. So generally I am working on my mindset.
Regarding poker, I am in the process of learning the full GTO solution of the Spin &Go’s. I think I will reach the knowledge of a very close to GTO play with multiple bet sizes on every streets this year. I also want to raise the number of tables I am playing while keeping the same quality of the game.
Saydana: What can you tell me about your daily poker routine?
sbala90: I don’t have a strict daily routine. I go to sleep and wake up roughly at the same time, I am doing sport or learning poker/do coaching between ~12:00 and ~19:00, then the evening is really free, I can also stay at home and learn poker, be at the PPB office, meeting with friends, playing poker.
Saydana: Which are your current goals? Because as I said before, now you have reached the top.
sbala90: The top means for me to learning the full GTO strategy, and I didn’t reach it yet. So in poker my goal is to learn all the possible strategies for the Spin & Go format. Besides that I just enjoy the moments of life.
Saydana: What hobbies do you have?
sbala90: I like quality food, cooking, table tennis, painting, gym, playing piano, I am interested in history, politics and psychology.
Saydana: Thank you for this interview, Sbala90! I had a really good time speaking with you and I am really sure that you opened many doors regarding the attitude that a poker pro should have. I wish you a successful year!
Stay tunned! Another bitB Spins beast is ready to share his poker story with us!
Until then, don’t forget to:
JOIN US!
[was-this-helpful]