Interview with Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero
Charles Hawk: So how much $ have you earned in winnings and propbet combined?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Here is my graph (EV in green, Profit in blue). This totals 63k$EV + 30k$ rakeback + 100k$ from the propbet = aprox. 193K$. I ran a lot under EV so I won 128$k in reality.
Charles Hawk: Have you the opportunity to celebrate your win? Tell me how :)
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Yes, I celebrated it with my roommate and friend who live here. It wasn't an enormous party or something like that, but I was so happy and had a really good time just feeling the freedom of not having to play so much spins that night :P
Charles Hawk: What did you do?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: We drank a lot, had dinner in a good restaurant, speak about the challenge... you can imagine...
Charles Hawk: Nice. From now on I guess you'll be celebrating all successes with lots of girls around?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Hahahaha who knows, I hope I will celebrate more successes in the future, probably not many more as a player, but new ones as a coach, which is what I want to focus from now on.
Charles Hawk: Tell me honestly please about main goal behind the propbet? Have you thought about possibility to promote yourself as a coach when thinking of this – I would say - baller-idea?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Well, the idea of the Propbet born because I planned to work a lot during March and April (it was 26th of February) to motivate myself to grind a lot. I was speaking with a friend and suddenly I thought of the idea of doing it as a challenge in public with some bets if there were interested people. My friend told me which odds he thought were fair and I just went for that. There were a lot of people interested in the bet since first day. My first thought was something more modest like 10-20K of bets against me or so but finally it ended in 6 numbers propbet .
Promoting my coaching group and me as a coach is another interesting reason for doing the challenge, but I really didn't start it for this reason, but yeah, I def think it had added value to the propbet.
Charles Hawk: Why do you want to dedicate all your attention and work-hours to coaching when you can beat the game with such impressive winrate? Probably the reason/answer is clear - in coaching there are more money even than those which you won?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Thinking just in money, my best option would be mixing both activities, and I will play most likely in the future, but not that much. I want to focus my time as a coach because that's what really motivates myself, I feel very satisfied when people start working with me/us, with an amateur thinking process, playing low stakes, and 2 months later they are crushing at 100s. This feeling is probably even better than earning money myself. Also coaching is much less stressful than grinding.
Another reason as well, is that my elbows/hands are very sore after the challenge and I must recover very well before starting to play good volume again. For coaching that's not a big deal :)
Charles Hawk: Will you be coaching specifically in Spanish only and for Spain-speaking audience only?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Until now, I just have coached in Spanish (just a few sessions with english speakers), but now I'm about to start coaching in English. The plan is to build a great English coaching group very soon :).
Charles Hawk: Tell me about the toughest days during the challenge? Have you had any serious doubts or mental breakdowns during the process?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: There were 3 very hard moments during the bet:
- 1st one was first 1500 games, where I started with such a bad evROI% (negative evROI%) and lots of doubts because I was nervous with the bet and adapting to a new set up. After the game 1500 or so, things started going much better.
- 2nd one was around game 13k aprox, when I suffered very big pain in my hands and I needed to stop playing 2 days only after doing 100-150 games (which is poor volume for a std challenge day). I still had to play 7k games more and my hands were very sore. Until the game 15k aprox, it was a very hard moment, but I finally survived it :D!
- 3rd one was from the game 17.5k to the game 19k where my evROI% dropped from 3.4% to 2.9%. At that point I even thought of giving up the 3% bet, and just play lots of tables and finish in the least hours possible. I would have also been very happy wining the 2.5% evROI bet (which was 80% of the bet aprox). So I just loaded up a lot of tables next session and suddenly I made 1k$+ EV and it motivated me to do the last enormous effort and drop down number of tables and focus on evROI% again. This was 12-14 hours a day, 4 tabling to maximize ev, which was insanely tiring considering I was very very tired from the challenge at this point.
Charles Hawk: Tell me about your daily routine now. Did you have any strict schedule? Any eating or drinking rules? Have you made any other decisions to help you be as dedicated as possible?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: My routine was very simple. Everyday I would get up very late because the previous night I would go to sleep when the sun came up :D. When I got up I would just start grinding. Luckily, I found a company who sent me 5 meals each day and that helped a lot, I tried to drink a lot of wáter and exercised in the free time between sessions. I always tried to do anything that improved my situation with the challenge.
Charles Hawk: Did you buy any special equipment for this challenge?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: I bought some things for my elbows and hands at amazon. Also lots of different mouses (vertical, joysticks, etc...). Basically everything which could potentially help/support me with the challenge I just went ahead and bought it :)
Charles Hawk: What were the main factors of your success? Would you say your sharpness and tilt-free ability making ev calls over and over again? Your youth and health? Anything else?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: I think my ambition and consistency were my strong points. If I am totally honest I am way too far from tilt-free yet :D.
Charles Hawk: Tell me about the feedback you have received from various players/propbet viewers and also those who made the bet against you?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: Everyone congratulated me and all the bettors were very nice to me. A lot of players have told me that I motivated them to work harder, and I think I did the same with most of my students, which is very nice.
Charles Hawk: Introduce yourself to the community, to those who don't know you.
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: I'm very recent in poker world as a professional, started playing in Feb 2014 and grew as HUhyper player in PokerStars.es , moving up stakes very fast, in less than 3 months I climbed from 3s to 50s and by the end of the year I was playing the highest stake, 250€. In 2015 I moved to PokerStars.com and started playing 60$ spins, my results were mediocre, I also started coaching and that’s what meant a big increase in my thinking process as a player.
Once I feel the need of teaching a concept, I have to understand very well this concept, so thanks to coaching I learnt a lot and after a period of 5-6 months out of PokerStars.com. Because of regulation problems in the new country I was living (Portugal), I returned this January 2016 to .com playing 100$ spins and since first games my results were very different than previous year ones. One month later I started the Propbet and now Im here answering questions in husng.com, which sounds pretty ridiculous to me and still can't believe it.
Charles Hawk: What are your hobbies?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: I was a swimmer when I was young, Im still very interested in this sport. Also I love football, big supporter of barsa, obviously!. I enjoy playing videogames and watching films and series, also just spending time with my friends doing nothing. But in the last two years I have been very focused on poker, maybe after this challenge it is a good moment to spend more time living and finding new hobbies :D
Charles Hawk: Let's contemplate the idea that Amaya (On Pokerstars or on Full Tilt Poker) is introducing PLO Spin and Goes in 2017. What action would you take in this scenario? Would it change heavily the dynamics of the whole industry in your opinion (not many mtt/stt regs are the experts of PLO)? Do you see lots of opportunities for coaching business then? Do you see the possibility to lots of regs to transition fully there?
Alvaro “spin4play /alvaro951951” Romero: I would see it as a profitable opportunity I guess, if lots of rec players play them and field is soft, I will try to study the game and maybe also try to coach it. I have no idea how could this hypothetical new spin scenario would impact my projects. But I was very angry when PokerStars announced spins, as a HU hyper reg myself at that moment, and now I'm one of the players who have played more spins worldwide haha, so I will see any new format/game as an opportunity. Adapt or die!