BoyLoc0 from Team Cash: “I think the key word is exactly consistency” - Part I

In this first part of the interview, Luiz “Boyloc0” Gomes shares the beginning of his career in poker. From the first family games to the decision to pursue cash game as a career, Luiz explains the factors that led him to take up poker full-time and how Polarize Poker has played a key role in his growth as a professional player.

How did you get started in poker and what made you choose cash games? 

I started like this, I learned the game, I was very young, I must have been 13 when I learned to play the game with my father. I've always loved it. Then I didn't have much knowledge about the poker world, because there weren't many poker professionals, it was a profession so I didn't know how it worked properly.

I tried it a few times when I was younger, but I played MTT at the time and managed to make bank a few times, but I always ended up spending or losing the same amount on poker. Then after a while, when I was about 24, I started to see more about the cash game, I saw that there was much less variance compared to MTT, that you could make money every month, that it was safer. Then I got more interested, started looking into it and started playing while I was still doing my internship at university, started playing on my own while I was still working and at the age of 24 I decided to quit my internship and start playing poker 100%.

And then I started, I had a solo career for a year before I discovered Polarize... the moment I discovered Polarize, I applied, they accepted me and then I've been with Polarize for I think three years! 

What do you think were the main challenges you faced at the start of your career? Even in that first year, more as a professional, and how did you overcome them? 

The start of my career was pretty smooth, I joined the Cash Game Academy and I was already playing on my own. In other words, initially, I was playing NL25 on my own, but I was also playing tournaments, I didn't have much discipline, I played almost whatever I wanted there, while I was playing on my own. 

As soon as I joined Cash Game Academy by Polarize playing NL10 went very well, and in the first month they put me on the first team playing NL25.

In NL25 everything continued to go very well, it was very fast until it went to NL50. The NL50 also went relatively well, it took a bit longer, but there weren't many problems, as far as I can remember. It was only when I took the shot at NL100 that I had bigger problems, which I had... I've never had a very large cash reserve and when I started trying to play NL100 it went very badly and it went badly several times in a row and that was a period of about 6 months that I kept losing money at NL100 and recovering at NL50.

It's just that while I was trying to stabilize myself at NL100, I didn't take any money out for a while, which was a difficult time. 

But why do you think this difficulty arose? 

I don't know, I think it's the level where the field really starts to get tougher, it starts to have a bit fewer recreational players than 50 and 25.

So it turns out that one of the things I sinned a lot at that time, too table selection. So a guy who doesn't table selection so good, when you start having a lot of tables that aren't very good there, you end up playing games you shouldn't while you're taking the shot, at least. And besides, it was simply a weak run too, there were several attempts that I started with already in downswing and I had to get off quickly. That's because I remember in the first shot I lost 20 buy-ins in NL100, and then after that I'd get back 10 buy-ins from NL100 in NL50, so from minus 2,000 I'd go down to minus 1,000, then I'd go back to NL100 and then there are 10 buy-ins that you have to try and establish yourself, and then 10 buy-ins means that any weak run there gets you 10 buy-ins of variance, and this ended up happening several times over and over again... It took me about five months before I managed to break through in NL100 for the first time and start making money there. 

After that it was pretty smooth sailing, I progressed year by year, all my years were better than the previous one by a significant amount, so when I got to the NL200 it wasn't like that either, it wasn't easy, but it wasn't as difficult as the NL100! I already had more experience, the table selection was already a bit better, my game was already more solid, so I don't remember having the same difficulty as that time. 

Now I tried to play NL500 and so, economically it was the biggest disaster of my career, I went for the 500 shot and lost 20 buy-ins... then I had to grind again, I grinded again, playing 100 and 200, but so, I had already managed to build up some financial cushion, so it turned out that, even though the amount was higher, it was nowhere near the difficulty I went through while I was from 50 to 100.

What limits are you playing at the moment? 

I'm playing 200 and 100, because the volume of 200 is already very low on weekdays, at the times I like to play, so you end up having to look for the table at 100 all the time. 

How many hands do you play a month, more or less? What is your goal? 

My goals are 50,000 hands per month, but it varies... There was a time when I was doing a test in the Poker Stars fast games, and then I ended up making more hands... There were months when I made fewer, this month of October I had a lot of things going on in my private life, which ended up taking a lot of time away from my poker and I ended up having a much lower volume than I usually do. I think that this month, although the result was very good, the volume was very bad, I think it was 25 to 30 thousand hands, it was in that range, but it was my worst month in terms of volume in the whole year... Generally, I do at least 40,000 and I almost always try to do 50,000.

What do you think has been key to your development over the last few years?

Look, it's a lot of work, I think that's the main thing, there's nowhere to go, you can be the most talented or the least talented guy in the world, if you don't work hard both will go wrong... so you have to put in a lot of work, and perfecting, as well as the strategy, because the more years you have, the more you perfect your strategy! 

Your game becomes more and more solid, you start to better understand how to deal with different types of opponents, then your own game evolves. But there are many things that you improve on the outside that end up having a huge impact: trying to have a healthier diet, sleeping better, planning your week better, creating a financial reserve outside of the game, these are all things that I see poker very much as a sport and I compare it to the issue of high performance.

So I think this was a year in which perhaps my game didn't improve dramatically, but I think it was a year in which I was able to work on a lot of things outside of game strategy... In turn that improved my performance a lot and I was able to perform at a better level, more consistently! I think the key word for any poker player and for almost anything in life is consistency, so it's maintaining consistency, discipline and putting in the work, studying, working away at the tables... I think that's the secret to success. 

How did you get to know Polarize? 

Well, it was quite by chance... I was playing on my own, I was playing NL25 and I played a lot of tournaments there as well, I played a lot of Speed Racer that there is on GG poker, which is a fast tournament. Then I went to these Discord groups, I started talking to more people about poker, and I began to learn about other things and then one of these students showed me that they had Coaching For Profit (CFPs) of poker and so on, I started studying... And then I saw that there were two that were in Portuguese, and they were the two best at the time, which were BRPC and Polarize. So I applied to both, and at the time the BRPC didn't accept my application, but Polarize did, so I went to Polarize!

And at the beginning, did you have any difficulties with the timetable? Classes and so on? 

No, I had already quit my other job, so I only had a poker degree, and my degree was also at a distance... so I always had a lot of time there to dedicate to poker, and the classes were always in the afternoon here in Brazil, so I hardly ever missed any classes, I never had any problems booking classes with my private coaches at Polarize. 

What advice would you give to someone who wants to be a professional, who wants to be excellent and who isn't yet?

I think that if you want to take your career as a poker player seriously, you have no choice but to look for a poker player. Coaching For Profit (CFP), Polarize is the one I recommend to everyone, because I had a very good experience here at Team Cash Game... but there are several other quality CFPs too, you just have to search and find one. But I think you have to start somewhere and learn how to make money there at NL100, NL200, you'll need the structure of a CFP to provide you with a bankroll, coaching, it takes away 50% of your worries, they're over as soon as you join the CFP. 

And from then on you have to put in the work and keep going with consistency and discipline, and one day or another you'll be making money on the NL100, NL200, and you'll be earning a very good salary compared to the job market. 

The second part of the interview will be published next week.