New Kid in Town

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Hello TPE Nation,

I would like to introduce myself to this amazing community. I’m Arvydas “Merfinis” Merfeldas, 21 years old born in Lithuania (Kaunas), now studying  and living in London.

This week I got offer from Tournament Poker Edge to join their amazing team and because you are reading my blog in this website, it means I did accept it. So besides making strategy videos for this site, I will be also blogging about my own poker career and some life experiences.I am not an amazing writer and also not an native English speaker, so its quite hard, but I promise you that I’ll do my best and improve in immense speed.

My Introduction in to Poker &  Life stories

It all started when I was I believe 15 years old, one of my good friends started playing poker online, mainly just for fun, play money games and I didn’t have any idea what poker was, but I did downloaded software (PokerChamps – Now it doesn’t exist, but I looked just like BetFair Poker). My first few hours there was really funny, just because I was thinking that poker is something similar to BlackJack, so I was going All-in with all those hands ( KT/ T9/ AT… ) after some time my and my friend finally learned how to play this game, so we were playing  freerolls & play money games, nothing to serious, when suddenly we just stopped doing that.

After year or so I started hanging out with some people, who was playing some home cash games and I was involved their as well, I was winning there quite often. Then my friend who introduced my to poker showed my ‘B2B Network’ online poker room, where there was freerolls with 100-500€ prize pools and then I started playing them almost every evening, I was winning few euros and then going to play cash games with 0.5-1 Buy-In and it was always ending in the same way…

Summer of poker – So there was bunch of guys who loved poker and I was definitely one of them, I was 17 at that time. That summer was quite sick, it was just partying and playing poker, our schedule was looking something like that :

• Wake Up – Morning Freerolls.
• Meet with the guys – Live cash games.
• Go back home in the late evening  to play evening freerolls.
• Resting from poker on weekends – partying hard.

I literally remember, when I go to a bed and start dreaming at that exact moment I was getting card dealt and I was playing at some high stakes game or some big final table.

So time slowly was passing and I started making some money, enough for teenager definitely. I finished school when I was 18 and in the summer I went to work for few months in UK with good friend of mine. It was just total disaster, I was working in some shitty factory 40+ hours/week and earning absolutely nothing, comparing how hard that work was.At that time I was not playing poker, I mean extremely rarely, but sure enough I started to think that it would be great to play poker for living.  After 3 or 4 months in UK I came back to Lithuania it was October and I was already decided that I’ll take a shot playing poker for a living. I started playing micro limit sng’s and micro limit mtt’s, first month I made ~2k$ and in November I binked 3R donkament for 9k$, so playing a lot, but to be honest I wasn’t that good as I thought I was.
I spew all money I won in first two months by buying car, partying and buying some non-sense stuff…

Another summer arrived and I went to UK this time with my girlfriend. Still shitty job, but I was only for 3 nights/week and on my offs I was playing some poker. I started taking poker seriously in August when I started playing $4,50 180man SnG’s.

This little heater gave my some confidence, I thought that I was beating these games and sure enough at the end of October I left UK ( My Girlfriend left UK in September, because of her studies). This time I knew I won’t gonna make mistakes, I was prepared to invest my time to become a good player…

New beginning

I started making some friends with Lithuania poker community and I received a stake from one guy to play 3R Turbo 180’s, he was coaching me, I am extremely thankful, because he made first big influence in my game. I wasn’t winning for first few months and that was frustrating, but I knew that I’m heading the right way.

In 2012 January good friend of mine offered my stake to play SnG’s + Low Stakes MTT’s, I was putting big volume and trying to study game a lot and I was getting decent results.

First few months :

At this point I was really happy that my hard work giving my some results and then I figured out I wanna get a degree. My and my girl both applied for studies in Middlesex University in London and both got in. I realized that by being productive you really can change things.

Interesting to note that I was playing morning poker sessions back then, I was getting up at 4-5 AM to play 10-12 hours sessions.

Present / London

We decided to go in London in summer, just to have some time to find a place to rent and job for my girlfriend and I did already knew that I will try to play poker for a living. Just before leaving there I got new stake deal with another really good Lithuanian MTT player and I think that this guy made the biggest influence on my game, he taught me how to think, how to analyze situations, which I think is really important, he gave stake for my to play Mid stakes MTT’s for the start. I started by hitting 7k$ make up, I now think that it may be because I was still adopting to a new game or whatever, so after few months I went out of make up.

I and my girlfriend started our studies in Uni in October, by the way she is studying Biomedical Science and I Business Information Systems, which I found extremely interesting.

End 2012 Year Graph :

01/01/2012-12/31/2012    5,924   $4.97   $24.64   29.5%   $29,452   85

I started 2013, with new motivation and really working hard, had some decent scores already, I made Sunday Million final table in April and came 9th which was most frustrating day of my poker career, I mean it may have been life changer, own bankroll and other stuff (Yea, I’m still backed, living in London is quite expensive, I’m not taking a dime from my parents, so I it’s quite hard to get a bankroll I want). The only thing I know that wasn’t the last big final table for my and there will be bunch even bigger in the near future.

In early May I finished my first year in Uni with 2:1, which is quite okay, I wasn’t putting a lot of effort in to it, but I do plan go for 1:1 this year.  So till October I mainly focused to poker.

My summer weekly schedule contains : 3 gym sessions, 5 poker sessions, 2-4 hours in improving my game, cooking (I’m better than Jamie Oliver!), household, time with my girlfriend and obviously I like to have my own time ; reading books, watch movies or just go out at night watch at stars and do think about stuff I want to achieve in my life.

For the end pic of me&my girl  :

So that is pretty much it, thanks for reading, I would like to say that I am really looking forward to work with TPE and produce some stuff from which you guys could learn something.

The next my blog post will be mainly about my goals, the games I do play at the moment and stuff like that.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_b7bgtu2O4E

Poker is also the game of inches.

Any questions? Reply here or P.M Me

Take care!