Finding a Balance Gave My Game Its Identity: Interview with Vessel

Most players who reach €200s stay there or move up. bitB Spins player Vessel walked away from it, not because he had to, but because he needed a new challenge. He joined bitB Spins at €10 Expresso Nitros on Winamax, built his way to €500s, and became one of the top players in the field. In this interview, he talks about what drives him, and what it really takes to be a top crusher.

How did you get started in poker?

I discovered poker with my high school friends about 12 years ago. One of them had a poker table at his house because his father played with colleagues for fun. At some point we loved the game so much that we were meeting three or four times a week to play. I quickly wanted to get better, so every time I came home I was watching videos and reading forums, and I soon became better than my friends and was winning more often.

At that point in my life I wasn’t sure what to do. Nothing really interested me. I was always giving up on studies because they were too boring. So I decided to quit and find a job. I worked for two years as a night watchman in a club for wealthy people and had nothing to do there, so I played poker all night long. At some point I was earning close to what I made from my job, so I decided to quit and try the poker life.

What game format did you start with?

I started with cash games: €200 bankroll, playing 15 hours a day. It quickly became boring, too robotic, so I moved to MTTs. MTTs were fun, but I was a really average player, so I decided to find a coach. Friends recommended a French guy who was one of the best at the time, and after the first hour of coaching we discovered we lived five minutes from each other, which was a crazy coincidence. He quickly became a really good friend and still is to this day. I spent days at his place just watching him play, and it made me improve very fast.

He had a really creative way of playing: extremely exploitative, never opened a solver, and was among the best. I always looked up to him for that. Even so, I was stuck at mid-stakes and not really putting in the work away from the tables. I was grinding a lot but not really improving.

What drew you to the Spin & Go format specifically?

Five years ago, my friends and I went to Vegas for a month to play the WSOP. We played the Main Event, a great experience, and that’s where I met a French player who introduced me to Spins and offered me a coaching-for-profit deal when we got back. I was stuck in MTTs and a bit bored, so the idea of a new challenge really motivated me.

With that mindset, I didn’t want to be an average reg anymore and decided to give everything to try to be the best. I went from €5 to €200 in around eight months, working hard on my game, hiring a mental coach for five months, and living healthily. That’s when I really started grinding Spins competitively.

You played €200 Spins on Betclic, then moved to €10 Nitros on Winamax after joining bitB Spins. It’s a dramatic step down on paper. How did you think about that decision at the time?

At some point, even though I was earning decent money, I got bored quickly, and when I find myself in that situation in life, I tend to give up because there’s no stimulation left. The journey was what really motivated me: grinding through the stakes, getting better, putting up the best results I could so my coach would tell me to shoot higher. But once I reached €200 and the CFP deal ended, I just got bored and started playing less.

I saw Winamax as a new challenge that could give me motivation and goals again. That’s why I wanted to try Nitros in the first place, so the fact that I’d have to start at €10s didn’t bother me at all. It was something new and I could start a fresh journey.

A lot of players would find it psychologically difficult to grind €10s after winning at €200s. How did you approach that mentally?

I had enough money to live comfortably, and money has never been a big factor in how I approach things. I try to find purpose and meaning in everything. So I didn’t see it as “I’m moving down from €200s to €10s,” more like “a new challenge is ahead of me, let’s see how I navigate this one.”

Climbing Winamax’s VIP tiers requires serious volume. What did your daily routine look like during that period?

At first it was pretty rough. I struggled for a month or two because at deeper stacks I had a really creative playing style, and I struggled to find a way to translate that into this new format. As strange as it sounds, my results were pretty poor when I started, even though I’d been playing much higher stakes with good results before.

Once I found a strategy that worked, I just grinded, and the bitB Spins staff offered me to move up, which was the plan when I first contacted them.

Another player on the team, Thomas, was in a similar situation: he’d played higher stakes, had no VIP status, and was facing the same challenge, grinding without status, almost no rakeback inclusion, and overshooting a lot. I’m really glad I met him; he made that period much easier.

We quickly noticed that Winamax was far more competitive than Betclic and that we’d need to get a lot better if we wanted better results. So our routine at the time was to grind heavily to build a better status while trying to improve every day, keeping in mind that if we both put in the effort, we’d do great eventually.

At what point did you feel like you’d found your footing in the Nitro format? Was there a specific moment where it clicked?

It wasn’t necessarily about the format itself, but about adjusting my approach to the game against tougher competition. I was all over the place too much, I still am, but it’s more controlled now.

On the improvement side, I have to give credit to one of our high-stakes players, Brice. At some point, Brice, Thomas and I were working and studying together almost every day, and he really made our games skyrocket. He deserves a lot of credit for that.

You’re now playing up to €500 Nitros, and you are among the top players in the field. Looking back, how long did the climb from €10 to €500 actually take, and what drove each step?

To feel properly settled, I’d say close to a year: time to adjust my strategy, understand the field, and tackle something I haven’t mentioned yet: mass-tabling.

That was another new challenge I found really stimulating. I’d only ever played four reg-speed tables at a time across three or four years. You should have seen my face when Peter told me, when I first reached out to bitB Spins, that to play €50s I’d need to be running around 15 tables at once. I wouldn’t have thought that was even doable back then.

I went quickly from 6 to 8 to 12 to 16 to 20 tables, and now I can play 26 pretty comfortably. I tried going higher but found it too exhausting, so shoutout to Elabyss for being an alien with his table count.

The biggest step was playing €50s with 15+ tables and trying to be competitive against the Russians, who are for the most part really strong players, and some of them are pure geniuses.

Betclic Spins and Winamax Expresso Nitros are quite different formats. What were the biggest strategic adjustments you had to make?

The biggest adjustment was learning to play less postflop. I still do it more than most players, I’d say, but I’ve found a balance that I’m really happy with and that I think gives my game its own identity.

What’s the most common misconception players have about the Nitro format?

That there’s no postflop play and no room for creativity. Of course you can’t do it as much as at 25bb, but a lot is still possible.

How has being part of bitB Spins shaped your game? Is there a specific coaching exchange or moment that changed how you think about something?

Having a schedule is really great for keeping motivation up, and being part of a team means you want to bring your best for everyone. Working with Brice and Thomas, both of whom I met through bitB Spins, was incredible, and I now consider them genuine friends, which makes it even better.

You now give coaching sessions to lower-stakes players, and the feedback has been very positive. What made you want to take on that role?

Before joining bitB Spins, I was already informally coaching three players, one of whom is now on the team.

I’ve always enjoyed that side of things: the transfer of knowledge, sharing ideas, the same passion. I love this game so much that I could spend hours talking with people who are as passionate as I am. That’s why I enjoy coaching.

Is there something you notice when coaching others that ends up improving your own game?

Yes, absolutely. It’s always a good way to work on your own game too, either by revisiting fundamentals or because a fresh perspective from someone else can be genuinely eye-opening and make you rethink your own approach.

What advice would you give a player sitting where you were a few years ago, grinding reg-speed games and wondering whether to make a move to Nitros?

I think it’s very personal. It made sense for me even though I genuinely enjoyed my reg-speed journey. But if you want to try something new and feel like you could put in the work to be competitive on Winamax, then why not give it a shot?

The coaching and community Vessel credits for his success are all inside NitroAcademy. Try it free for 30 days with no strings attached: START YOUR FREE TRIAL