Charles Hawk: How long have you been playing poker? What was the hardest to learn?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: I've been playing poker for at least 6 years now. I started with the notorious "short-stack strategy" as a hobby but I changed to FR SNGs in a few weeks. It was very strange and exciting to earn twice the average Hungarian salary just in a few weeks playing middle-stakes against the worst players ever. Unfortunately, I was spewing my winnings to all sorts of unnecessary stuff and I was kinda worried about moving up too. This made me stuck at middle-stakes for a couple of years, then all of my roll got stuck in FullTilt on Black Friday. So I had to start over. I started playing turbo and hyper heads-ups. Last year I've made it to the 60's division, but nowadays I'm experimenting with Spin & Goes. I really enjoy them so far, but the variance is crazy!
I think the hardest stuff for me was the whole regwar thing. It felt as if I had to re-learn playing heads-up. :)
Charles Hawk: What does your standard grinding day look like?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: I usually play 4-5 hours a day, 6 days a week, two sessions in the morning and three in the evening. I think taking proper breaks is extremely important. I try to take breaks which do not involve sitting in front of the computer: reading, going to the gym, taking a walk, having lunch with a friend, etc. I recently started experimenting with meditation and yoga too.
Charles Hawk: What are your long-term goals?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: I'm going for SNE this year with 60$ spins. For 2016, it's very hard to tell what will happen with poker. For this reason, I started learning online entrepreneurship and am already experimenting with alternative income sources. My long-term goal at the moment is to have an online business which allows me to travel around the world and do crazy stuff. Poker helped me a lot to maintain this lifestyle in the past and I hope it will for as long as it can, because after 6 years, I still enjoy it!
Charles Hawk: Describe your main strengths and weaknesses?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: I think my biggest strength is work ethic. I play almost every day, even try to grind a little on holidays. Unfortunately this work ethic often fails when it comes to learning: I usually choose grinding over plugging leaks and studying theory. I think this is the main reason why I couldn't reach higher stakes before.
Charles Hawk: Any interesting or funny stories related with poker?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: Poker gave me the craziest experiences in my whole life: surfing and hiking a volcano in Bali, getting attacked by monkeys while climbing 1200 steps to reach a Buddhist Temple in Thailand, skiing in Bulgaria for the first time... And you can meet poker players everywhere! It's fun to meet players IRL after chatting on the internet and busting each other's rolls. I remember one time in Thailand, when we played midstakes HU-cash with a bunch of hyper regulars while being pretty drunk. We had a few special rules, you could only 4x or minb from SB, and only mincb or overbet postflop. It was fun to see how people could not adjust for a long time. Eventually, we got busted of course.
Charles Hawk: Do you imagine yourself playing poker profesionally your whole life?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: If you would have asked me this question two years ago, I'd have definitely said yes! But a lot has changed since then. Games getting tougher, online gambling hitting walls in different countries and of course my mentality has changed too.
Charles Hawk: What are your hobbies?
Adam 'xblackdahlia' Pantocsik: I really enjoy playing the guitar, reading and going to the gym, but my favourite hobby (well we can say it's a passion) is traveling. I hope I'll have the opportunity to visit as many countries as possible.
