K-Toc hit and won €500,000 Jackpot!

Let’s find out what our bitB Spins beast has to say about this huge achievement and his future plans.

Enjoy!

 

bitB Spins: Hello, hero! We are really glad to have you here among us. For those who don’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?

K-Toc: Hello, guys! I started to play poker like 10 years ago, but mostly for fun in some home games. Then, after a while, I started googling about it and I found out that there are strategies you could learn and that people make a living from it. I tried to learn a bit on my own by reading some poker articles, but that didn’t get me really far. After a few years of being off and on the game I joined a coaching for-profit program where Bencb was the head coach at that time and I started to study 6 max hypers which were quite fun. I had to start at $1.5 and after a year or so I was playing $60’s and some $100’s when games were good, but the program stopped after Pokerstars decided to cut the rakeback almost entirely and as you probably can imagine, a lot of the gains came from rakeback.

So I wanted to start playing MTT’s, but at the same time I wanted to work on my deep stack game first and since I still had a “regular” job on cash games would be easier for me to combine them. I joined a stable for that, but slowly they were focusing more on cash games played on apps. I played up to NL600 and they were profitable for sure, but I really didn’t enjoy it as I was all the time watching for bots and colluders which made me a bit paranoid! So I decided to quit those and play MTT’s. That went relatively well, I wanted to take it slow to start at €10-20 stakes in order to learn the game and to have a better approach of it. I built up a bankroll, after that, I moved up in stakes eventually I started shooting some €109’s which looking back I probably wasn’t ready for, especially since most of them were KO’s and I haven’t really put in the time for studying those properly.

Then for some reason, I joined the bitB Spins Discord public channel and since I really enjoyed the hyper SNGs at that time I always had in the back of my mind that I maybe I should try them out one day.

But I really enjoy playing MTT’s as well so the decision to try them out came when I and my girlfriend talked a lot about the future, about wanting to travel, and me playing most weekends and evenings/nights, so we didn’t really spend a lot of time together when being at home apart from eating at my desk.

 

bitB Spins: Why Spin & Go’s? Why did this poker format manage to stir up in you the desire of becoming a better poker player?

K-Toc: As I mentioned a bit earlier it is just the freedom they give compared to MTT’s. You can start when you want and stop when you want. And you can do this 24/7. So you have a lot of freedom in planning your schedule and your life. I am not saying that I will never play MTT’s again, but I think a lot should happen before me wanting to switch back as life is pretty nice right now. I also like the fact that you can follow your progress better at spins then at Mtt’s by looking at your cEV. At MTT’s you don’t really have a measurement that is why variance can be enormous.

 

bitB Spins: How do feel like an important part of bitB Spins team and what do you want to improve to your game now that this Jackpot came as a huge motivation?

K-Toc: I really enjoy being part of the team, not only for the coaching sessions, but because of the fact that you have the chance to meet other poker players with whom you can talk all kinds of things, but mostly poker stuff, of course. By being an online poker player you are alone the majority of the time. At my regular job I had a lot of colleagues with whom I had a good bond and we used to joke and laugh a lot. That’s something that I am really missing and being part of Bitb Spins team, although everything is virtual, fills that void up a bit.

I was always motivated to improve my game, but this slacked a little during the Covid-19 period because I wanted to play as much as possible. Of course, increasing the volume definitely had a big impact on the quality of my game. I’m not playing spins for that long so some of the strategies that are “no-brainers” for others aren’t for me hat is why when I find myself playing tired and unfocused I tend to miss a lot of those spots.So during the upcoming weeks, I want to try to improve that aspect and to focus less on playing for volume. But I really like to play a lot so this might be hard at the beginning.

 

bitB Spins: Let’s talk a little bit about the money motivation. I know that you hit the Jackpot and won it. Did this thing change something in you as a poker player? What hitting and winning a Jackpot means for a poker player? What was in your case? Both mental)and financial development maybe?

K-Toc: I’m most of the time a pretty optimistic person, so I don’t really worry that much about the future as I believe I will figure it out anyway if somehow things don’t work out. I don’t think that winning the Jackpot really changed me as a poker player, but I just won it so it might be too soon to say. At the moment I don’t really feel like doing anything else differently. But of course, a score like this takes some of the pressure away and is a dream to most poker players out there. You think about it, talk about it with colleagues, see other players win it and hope one day you will win it too, but since you have to be very lucky you don’t really count on it as Spin& Go player. You just try to be profitable even if you will never hit those Jackpots and when you hit one it’s just a bonus, I can say a really really big one.

I appreciate this enormous winning given by hitting the Jackpot every day but to be honest, if I could choose I would have probably wanted to hit it later. I think the satisfaction of winning it, after playing spins for a while and working hard on your game would be bigger then if you hit it early in your spin career + you have the risk of getting a bit lazy while you are far from being at your full potential.

 

bitB Spins: What do you think is the hardest moment in the career of Spin & Go player? Which one was in your case?

K-Toc: I think it’s different for everyone. For example, the moments I struggled the most with were outside of poker. I don’t really care too much about what other people think about me playing poker, but when it comes from friends and family it stings a bit. Most are very skeptical about it and I can totally understand from where this fear is coming. It comes from not knowing anything about the game apart from playing it in a home game with drinks and cigars like in the mafia movies. It’s hard for them to understand that it is a game of skill and that you genuinely can make a good living from it if you put time and energy into it. I mean I played it for quite some time, before I read any strategy, thinking it was pure luck and who gets the best cards wins. So I tend to avoid conversations about poker a lot. Those moments put some pressure on me. I remember a lot of what people said or joked about it vividly.

On one hand, it had a negative effect on my mental game, but on the other hand, I wanted to prove them wrong so it fueled me to keep trying, improving, and working. I could come up with a handful of moments where I could have quit, but I didn’t want to look like someone who has failed and proving them right. I’m sure a lot of other players struggle with this and some advice I got on this was I think in a podcast with Joeingram, where he told that you should stop trying to change their mind and keep working as the only way to change friends and family’s mind about it is when you can show them the green. Once they see you make good money they will tend to see things differently.

Shout out to my girlfriend by the way who was always super supportive, takes care of a lot of things for me, and always believed in me during the whole journey.

Of course, it’s going really well now and luck was a big part of that, so I’m far from really proving myself but I’m positive that one day I will be a poker pro.

 

bitB Spins: At the end of this interview what final thoughts do you want to share with our actual and future players? Also, maybe you can tell us please which are your future goals and the plans that you have for spending this beautiful prize?

K-Toc: Following up on what I was talking about before, and this is a piece of advice I should follow more, that if you just keep working and putting in the volume results will follow. It’s invadable, it’s math. Sure, some players will be luckier than others, but those are things you can’t control. Focus on what you can control and try to turn all the negative feelings that poker can bring in to positive fuel instead of letting your head hang when things aren’t going your way.

As Bencb used to always tell us “Champions stand up one more time”. Just keep showing up at as many coaching sessions as you can, try to be active, keep studying and playing. There are 0 reasons you can’t make it while being in an environment like bitB Spins provides you.

The winning I’m probably going to invest most of it, but I’m not yet sure into what, probably a small apartment or something like this that I can rent out. My mother is from the Philippines so I also have family over there that could use some help. And for me personally, I enjoy really good food and wine so instead of treating myself on a good dinner once a while I might treat myself a few extra times this summer!

 

bitB Spins: Thank you for this interview, hero! Enjoy this amazing prize and keep up the good work!