Hello everyone, my name is Andres Artinano, and my screen name is Educa-p0ker. I am the coach of the Elite Cash Game Mastery course here on Upswing.
I think my story is similar to many other poker players' stories.
I was 18 and went to university to study a double degree in law and business. When I was at the university, I had a lot of time and not so much money so I typed “Win money through the internet” into a search engine. First I found sports betting. I was a bit lucky at the time and won a few Euros there instead of losing it and leaving the market.
From there I started learning poker strategy. At the time--approximately 2009--it was much easier to move up in stakes in poker than it is now. I won one tournament for $800, which was a nice early boost to my bankroll.
I played mainly cash games from 2009-2019 until 2011, when I decided to take a year off from university and go to the UK for tax reasons.
I was already playing $3/$6 and $5/$10 NL as a short stack when I arrived in the UK. I got a permission from the university to continue distance learning, but this was as I was moving up in stakes and starting to treat poker as my main occupation. I eventually quit university in 2012 because I couldn't handle both time consuming occupations.
I moved to London to live with another poker player and kept moving up in stakes until I was playing $25/$50 and $50/$100, mostly bumhunting and playing multi-stack (from shortstack to deepstack).
By the summer of 2013 I decided to play less poker, so I moved back to Madrid. I stayed about a year playing very low volume and mostly coaching. This is when I created a stable that has been pretty successful, especially in cash games.
Mid-2014 I went back to the UK and started playing again, but I was unable to win consistently at the highest stakes. So, I moved down a bit and tried a new study method: studying OtB_RedBaron's game. I copied many of his strategies in order to build for myself a much more solid game. I also spent a lot of time with PokerSnowie, which I used to improve my preflop game.
By early 2015 I was prepared to move up in stakes again, and I started battling most regulars in 6-max and heads-up games. I spent a lot of time playing versus Russian regulars, who I had a large edge on. I also was lucky enough to battle Isildur at high stakes NL on a smaller site when he was already very rusty at NL. It was a big year for me.
My graph of dollars won since 2015.
At the start of 2016 I moved to Andorra for 3 months to focus on skiing and playing poker. Things were going well and I had a healthy bankroll. I was very successful in a few big matches: against wilhasha at $100/$200 and then against TrueTeller and Kanu7 3-handed at $100/$200 and $200/$400. Not so successful heads-up against Sauce, but still the year was very good.
The same year, during SCOOP, I won the main event for $578,621.27 so it was, again, a very good year.
I have since slowed down a lot my rhythm of playing. I have been involved in some entrepreneurial ventures since 2013, so I have been focusing on those and other non-poker projects. Despite the low amount of volume I put in since early 2016, I have been performing really well.
Nowadays, I'm probably leaving poker soon so there is no need to keep the information for myself, which is why I made the Elite Cash Game Mastery course.
