It feels good to be back on the felt after a three week vacation hanging out with my family and friends. I hope that your Christmas break was as relaxing and recharging as mine. I must say it was much needed because I was burnt out after playing full time from September 1st to December 16th. I decided to write this article because before I left to go to the Indianapolis airport for vacation, I finished working on a very important piece of paper that it now taped to the wall right next to my computer. It included all the goals I wanted to reach by New Years Eve (my birthday) 2010. You always hear great teachers and inspirational speakers talking about how important setting goals are. I have been setting goals for many years now, but I never wrote them down until the beginning of 2009 when my brother Scott told me to. He persisted on saying you have to write them down. He never really explained why, but told me that you will understand why in the future.

I remember having a long week session at my lonely desk (did not have two poker roomates last year like I do now) and not making a dime to show for it. When I was down in the trenches and wondering why I choose to become a professional online poker player, I would get out my goal sheet inside my desk draw. It was the best way to remind myself what I am striving for and what I aspire to become. A great tournament poker player! It did not allow me to become complacent or discouraged. I knew my full potential and after looking at that small piece of paper, I told myself that I was going to reach those goals. I found out the reason for writing my goals down fairly quickly. I would look at them for inspiration when I was feeling down or thinking about taking time off just because I was running bad. I looked at that sheet at least ten times a month last year. Well, I am proud to say that the goals I wrote down on January 4th, 2009 were all reached (besides winning the Bodog 100K)! All the numbers I wanted to have in my stat summary have surpassed my goals for 2009. What a surreal feeling it was to find that paper two days ago and realize that I actually, for the first time in my life, reached a true goal.

This is a great time of year for resolutions and setting goals. If you are serious about poker, I persist, like my brother did, to write down your goals! Do not just think of them, write them down and look at them every day. Not only does it remind you of your true goals every day, but it is also a great tool for starting to learn the technique of visualization. For most, the online tournament poker grind is a journey,and for me, visualization is by far my biggest tool for my recent success in that journey. It was the hardest to learn, but I use it everyday to get though the daily grind of tournament poker. Visualizing a long term goal is a great start to building a technique that can be implemented in a professional poker players everyday life. It can not only be used for goals, but also stress release techniques mentioned in my last article above. Believe in your goals and know you are going to achieve them! Focus on your goals , set your course, and have the right attitude to reach them. Keep persuing and keep believing!

Enlarge your vision,

Steve "BODOGNUTZ" Skowronski

I just got done watching game two of the World Series and I am not happy with the outcome since I despise the Yankees.<SPAN> </SPAN>I am an avid Chicago Cubs fan with being born and raised around the Chicago area in northwest Indiana.<SPAN> </SPAN>I was a pitcher throughout my high school years at Lake Central High School in Saint John, IN, and always looked up to the Cubs dominant pitching rotation. I just have to say that the pitching duel between A.J. Burnett and “the most influential player to play in Yankee stadium”, Pedro Martinez, was a joy to watch to say the least. With Burnett’s knee buckling curve ball and Pedro’s devastating change up, I was astounded by their talent and wish I could be in their shoes.
<SPAN>…but I was thrown a curveball in my life and ended up in the poker world my senior year at </SPAN><SPAN>Indiana</SPAN> <SPAN>University</SPAN><SPAN> in early 2008. I just got back from busting in the $555 WSOP circuit event in </SPAN><SPAN>Elizabeth</SPAN><SPAN>, </SPAN><SPAN>IN</SPAN><SPAN> at the magnificent Harrah’s Horseshoe Casino Southern Indiana. David “Whitey03” Whitehead and I decided to give our luck a try in the one day event.<SPAN> </SPAN>I did not have any luck in either of the Elizabeth or </SPAN><SPAN>Hammond</SPAN><SPAN>, </SPAN><SPAN>IN</SPAN><SPAN> events, but was very please with </SPAN><SPAN>Hammond</SPAN><SPAN>’s 1,412 entrants in the $345 first event which was a record setting field.<SPAN> </SPAN>Poker has come a long way since the Moneymaker effect.<SPAN> </SPAN>In both Hammond and Elizabeth I felt that I was the table captain and best player (which was not true last year), but things just did not pan out for me.<SPAN> </SPAN>I was never able to build a stack in both tournaments with short stacks crippling me four different times in Hammond and being non-stop coolered while losing with AA three times in Elizabeth (making the correct lay down with them showing their hands in all three instances). <SPAN> </SPAN>The pain of losing on the $555 was dampened by the $2-$5 cash game the night before where I cashed out $1241 at </SPAN><SPAN>2:00AM</SPAN><SPAN> after a 5 hour cash session.<SPAN>

<SPAN>Although I did not have any luck at the live WSOP circuit events around </SPAN><SPAN>Indiana</SPAN><SPAN>, I had a lot of online success with my most profitable month yet as a professional online poker player.<SPAN> </SPAN>The month of October netted me just over 20K in profit, breaking the pocketfives top ten in the Indiana sortable rankings, and also became 84<SUP>th</SUP> place in bluffmagazine.com silver online player of the year rankings updated today.<SPAN> </SPAN>I ran well on Absolute poker this month with me taking down some big tournaments.<SPAN> </SPAN>I was able to take the down the largest tournament of my career with 1,068 entrants in the $20 15K Sniper.<SPAN> </SPAN>Also, I was fortunate to be victorious in the $30 rebuy 15K guaranteed.<SPAN> </SPAN>On Bodog poker, I was able to take down four tournaments: $150 5K, $69 3K, $12 rebuy 3K, $32 turbo 2K.<SPAN> </SPAN>I am very pleased with my October results and I see only bigger results in the near future.

Our poker crew, Midwest Connect Poker Crew, has a website midwestconnectpoker.com that has been up and running for about two months now. I am finally learning how to update it on a weekly basis.<SPAN> </SPAN>The website has everything you need to keep up to date on our poker crew, including jhebs and bigtone52.<SPAN> </SPAN>The main index page has summaries of the past week tournament victories along with the past week/monthly money winners and tournament challenges completed.<SPAN> </SPAN>It has history of the crew, member pages that include online stats and info on the players along with pictures and average online schedules.<SPAN> </SPAN>Also, we have a tournament challenge page that has 45 tournaments needed to be won in a span of one year.<SPAN> </SPAN>We took every weekly tournament that Bodog and Absolute Poker offered that had a buy in of $10 - $300 on the two poker websites including the Sunday majors.<SPAN> </SPAN>I am very proud to say that we have took down 20/45 tournaments in the challenge in just two and a half months.<SPAN> </SPAN>I alone have taken down a third of the challenges with 15 out of the 45 won.<SPAN> </SPAN>We also have a $300K profit challenge which we challenged ourselves to profit three hundred thousand dollars as a crew from our Bloomington, IN move in date from August 15<SUP>th</SUP>, 2009 to August 15<SUP>th</SUP>, 2010.<SPAN> </SPAN>We currently sit at $44,476 profit in two and a half months in the challenge.<SPAN> </SPAN>It is short of the pace needed, but I have no doubt that the crew will persevere in the challenge.<SPAN> </SPAN>We also have a blog page in which our crew members have wrote poker blogs about the daily grind of being a professional online poker player, including this one.<SPAN> </SPAN>The website is always being updated and would love to hear some ideas about what we can do to make it better for the viewers.<SPAN> </SPAN>Send your ideas; I would love to get some input!

What is in store for the Midwest Connect Poker Crew in the future?<SPAN> </SPAN>I am starting to figure out the grind of being a professional online poker player.<SPAN> </SPAN>Since moving to Bloomington, I have not been consistent with sticking to my 5 days a week 30 tournament day schedule. In October, I only played 82 tournaments on Bodog Poker which is well short of what it should be. My Bodog Poker online schedule should be playing ten tournaments a day on average.<SPAN> </SPAN>I should have been playing 200 minimum. On Absolute Poker I played around 225 tournaments, which is also short of my preferred schedule. I play between 15-18 tournaments a day on Absolute Poker, so I should have played around 300 to 380 in October.<SPAN> </SPAN>Although I was well below my preferred online tournament schedule, that was the most tournaments I have played in a month since I started playing online poker. <SPAN> </SPAN>I look up to players like daisyxoxo, 011pokerdr, and beland66. I aspire to be a more astute online player and plan on putting in the same volume as them within the next year. <SPAN> </SPAN>I looked forward to November with the Bodog Poker Open 4 Championship Series starting on November 1<SUP>st</SUP>.<SPAN> </SPAN>I plan on November being even bigger than October for the crew.<SPAN> </SPAN>I should be playing at least 500 tournaments because the WSOP circuit events are over and there is nothing besides Thanksgiving to distract me from my goals.<SPAN> </SPAN>I am very excited about the future of the Midwest Connect Poker Crew and I have very big expectations for jhebs and bigtone52.<SPAN> </SPAN>They have been running extremely bad for over a month now and I hope November brings some much needed luck to their side. <SPAN> </SPAN>I think that November is going to be the biggest month for the crew yet and hopefully we will put a huge dent in the 300K challenge along with keeping up the pace for the tournament challenges.<SPAN> </SPAN>I hope that a Sunday Major will be taken down and off the list for the crew in order to get the Midwest Connect Poker Crew on the map in the online poker community. As always, good luck at the tables and expect to see more of me on the virtual felt in November.
Steve “MWCSTR8NUTZ” Skowronski <SPAN> </SPAN><SPAN> </SPAN></SPAN></SPAN></SPAN>

I heard from many online professionals that when you first start playing full time expect to lose a lot of money because the long hours are very strenuous and it takes time to adapt to the full time grind of a multi table tournament professional. They were right! The Midwest Connect Poker Crew has been in Bloomington, IN since August 13th. The crew started out ice cold and the 300k challenge in which hebs, bigtone52, and I challenged each other to profit three hundred thousand dollars in a one year from August 15th, 2009 to August 15th, 2010 seemed like it was unattainable. We were down close to six thousand dollars after the first week (I was down over two grand the first Sunday playing in the new house). I thought that I was prepared, but my actions and results beg to differ.

After the first week I was down money, but more importantly, mentally I was way off course. I was screaming out loud after taking beat after beat, and I kept saying very negative connotations throughout the whole day. Some example are: "Obviously…Of Course!", "I can’t ever win these flips!", and "Why would I ever get there on that massive draw!" I never screamed out loud in my old house because no one was around me. I lived with my friends, but most of the time they were in the basement, when I was grinding in my room. They all had normal jobs and did not play online poker for a living. Now that bigtone52, hebs, and I all play in the same room, I feel obligated to scream out loud and show them what a bad beat I just took. With all three of us doing this, I get to see triple the amount of bad beats in one day. With the crew playing close to ninety tournaments in one day, that is a lot of bad beats seen. Also, with all three of us screaming in the room, it does not exactly make for a great environment for staying positive.

In the life of a professional online poker player, staying positive is very crucial, probably the most important attribute you can have. The techniques I have picked up while working my way up to becoming a professional in the last year are the biggest reason why I am making money and have such a positive attitude towards the game. First off, in the last two weeks, I have noticed that screaming out loud only intensifies the bad beat by at least four fold. Usually, I can get over a bad beat in a couple of minutes, but that first week in the new house it was taking me at least ten minutes to get back to the proper mental state for playing good/solid poker. Secondly, I stopped saying negative connotations completely. By saying these out loud or even just in your head you expect to lose the next crucial situation along with the one you just lost. I stopped saying anything negative out loud and it took me about a week to stop saying it in my head, but now I expect to win. Finally, visualization is a great technique I learned within the last six months. I do not use this technique when I am playing, but I try to use it after every session right before going to bed. It is more of a stress release technique, but it also helps with staying positive for the next day’s session and helps me fall asleep faster. I got this very helpful idea from the book The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and tweaked the technique towards poker. As poker players, it is natural to always remember the lost crucial late flips or big draws that just did not pan out instead of the big hand that held. Even after playing in over 3500 tournaments I would still lose sleep from thinking about them. Not any more! In bed, right before I try to fall asleep, I visualize me winning the huge flip and getting there with two over cards and the nut flush draw! Furthermore, I then visualize me heads up eventually taking down the tournament. This technique took me months to perfect, but it is huge for getting through and sometimes forgetting about the daily grind!

I am proud to say that after week two I am actually up two grand thanks to a win in the twenty five dollar 10k on Absolute Poker tonight! Mentally, I am a lot stronger and staying positive from the techniques I discussed above. The crew overall is up over seven thousand dollars and putting a nice dent into our tournament challenge, 7/44! I hope this blog helps online players with some of the mental aspects of the game or at least allows them to tweak my techniques in order to stay mentally strong. To see the details of our tournament challenge, read other blogs by the crew, and to keep tabs on the MWC Poker Crew, check out our website at midwestconnectpoker.com.

Best of Luck,

Steve "MWCSTR8NUTZ" Skowronski