Pokatleta - Poker Pro's IronMan Journey. Balancing Life and Poker

Hi everyone,
Poker player + (beginner) Triathlete = Pokathlete or Pokatleta with a spanish touch. I think it sounds nice and defines my life pretty well right now ^^. It's definitely the balance I have been looking for a long time.

I've been playing cash game online for 10 years now (with some long breaks) between 200 and 1knl. I felt I had trouble beating the games sometimes last year and decided to start working on my game again. This blog should help me stay motivated.

Over the years I have made a lot of efforts to improve my life and try to have a decent work/life balance.
The idea with this blog is to share some of these improvements with you and talk about my journey to build a wealthy/healthy/happy life. It will be mostly about poker but I will try to share some things about my life (I'll probably share more of the later on instagram or youtube, not sure yet).

POKER

Here are my most recent 1M hands which are like the last two years and a half. I’m ok with my results but I know I can do better. I'm still struggling to put in enough hours.

I have two strategies to optimize my hourly when playing poker :

• Mass tabling at 200nl. I can play up to 800-1kh/hr with an ok winrate. The issue is that I will not improve this way and will stay at this limit. Plus sometimes there aren't enough tables anyway.
  
• Play focused at 500nl+ (with some 200nl if needed). The better option but games are tough sometimes, it is not easy to find good action.
  

Right now I do a mix of both but I hope I'll drop 200nl soon and only play higher.
I play on wellknown rooms but I try to stay away from the ones with insane rake. I don’t want to reveal my nicknames for now as I might share strategies here.

I think I have quite a lot of room for improvement still. Last year I started getting much more structured in my studies and I'm definitely more efficient.

TRIATHLON

Almost two years ago I decided to get into triathlon and really enjoy it. It finally brings me sustainable motivation to exercise. Now I can't imagine not doing sport for more than a day. It is so beneficial for poker. But I think now it's a well known fact.
As poker players we have a very sedentarist way of life and it brings many problems over time. Exercising regularly is the best way I've found to solve all of these issues.
The good thing about triathlon is that you don't have time to get bored of one sport as you basically practice three.
The funny thing is that I was terrible at endurance sports. And i have a lot of issues with back/hip/knee pain coming from my scoliosis. I'm by no mean made for this haha

I really started from 0. I could barely run 5km and I think I would run it in 35minutes or so.

Here are my PBs rright now :

• 5km run : 22min (started at 35min)
  
• 10km run : 47min (started at 1h06)
  
• Cycling 1 hour FTP : 3.5w/kg (started at 3w/kg)
  
• 400m pool swim : 6min39s (started at 12min)
  
• 1500m open water swim : 30min (started at 38min)
  
• Sprint Triathlon : 1h19 [750m swim, 20km ride, 5km run] (started at 1h35)
  
• Olympic Triathlon : 2h32 [1500m swim, 40km ride, 10km run] (started at 2h58min)
  

GOALS

2025

Poker/Wealth

• Improve volume. Play 25hrs+ or 15kh per week, aiming for 1k hours in the year. For this I need to start tracking my time playing.
  
• Study on a very regular basis, make it part of my everyday routine. This should be easier now that i have structured it so well.
  
• Make 100k+. Not a big deal if I don't reach this goal as long as I reach the two previous ones
  
• Crush 500NL+ 6max
  
• I might also start learning tournaments to play live events
  
• Start a business (most likely will be ecommerce)
  

Sports/Wellness

• Gain mobility and flexibility
  
• Workout 3+ hours per week in total (includes gym, stretching, yoga, ...)
  
• Run 5km under 20min
  
• Run 10km under 44min
  
• Improve Cycling FTP to 4w/kg
  
• Swim 400m under 6min
  
• Finish a Sprint Triathlon under 1h15
  
• Finish an Olympic Triathlon under 2h30
  

Long Term

• Own a business
  
• Run half marathon under 1h30
  
• Finish an Iron Man 70.3 [1900m swim, 90km ride, 21.1km run]
  
• Finish an Iron Man 70.3 under 5 hours
  
• Run a marathon
  
• Finish an Iron Man [3800m swim, 180km ride, 42.2km run]
  

Let's do this !