Introduction
Hello everyone, My name is Steven, also known as DWstevie, here in the RaiseYouredge community. I am a 19-year-old poker streamer, since this year part of the RYE team and an ambassador for RYE. I would like to start off with telling my life story as I feel like lots of things become clear out of it. Some people may recognize themselves in certain moments and I hope by telling this I can inspire some of you, give you guys the opportunity to get to know me better but also to give myself some sort of a path to look back on.
It ain’t only green grass and high tides
The story I want to tell, shows that it is not only green grass and high tides, even though lots of people like to make it look that way, especially nowadays with the Social Media’s. That is not me, I say what I think and feel, which also has it’s downsides. I speak openly about my flaws, admit them, because then I can go on and fix them and maybe help some others with it as well who do not have it in them to speak openly about it with someone.
I am a true lone wolf, a one-man-army, not by choice at all. I love working with people, surrounding myself with likeminded, collaborate. But I’ve never been able to, maybe because of some misfortune, or because I say what’s on my mind. If I actually look back on how I used to be socially and how I am now today, I have made enormous progress, I see now that it is not always smart to say everything that is on your mind, I see now that it is not always smart to discuss everything, sometimes you should let people just believe what they want to believe.
My football journey
I used to be a goalkeeper, as we all know, goalkeepers are very often not really part of the team, they are considered goofy. That was kinda true for me as well. I always got placed in the second team, to this day I still believe it had a lot to do with nepotism, either way, the second team was the losers team and the first the winners. It was literally that black and white, my team didn’t take it serious at all, if we lost, they were celebrating hand in hand. It was wearing on me, I don’t like losing, I don’t like such a mentality. Luckily for me, I was pretty good at what I did, my parents or I always got to hear from the opponent how good I was, which was fun but at the end of the day, even though I may have saved 10 shots, there still went 5 in. You lost, period, end of story. That was the cold hard truth, it didn’t matter to me how good I did, we lost. I actually got scouted by Ajax, AZ and the national team, got invited for private trainings just for scouted players. The trainings were of such a high quality and so much fun, also my goalkeepers trainings were always a lot of fun. But when I got back to my own squad and had to train with them, it was the complete opposite again of course. Long story short, it took out all the fun for me. I quit, I could have gone to another club and looking back on it, I probably should have, but there was no fun for me after all those years. People blaming you all the time, even when they scored an own goal, the celebrating when we lost, etc etc. This is where the first one-man-army sign showed up, where the huge self-pressure started.
How I got into poker
I got into darts, if there is a game where you cannot blame anyone else but yourself, it is darts. Was really active with it, trained a lot, collected a lot of darts, was active on forums etc. I was pretty decent, so I started to play some tournaments as well. That didn’t go too well, I expected the same quality as I always delivered on the football pitch, the pressure I put on myself was huge. And darts + pressure is not the best combo, the pressure I put on myself took out all the fun of the game. I was never good enough for myself, slowly I rolled out of the darts world. But I did get to meet a friend, who got me into poker.He was talking about that he won a tournament for 1k, which was for me a lot of money at the time, I sometimes played poker a bit with my dad here and there and always really enjoyed it. The fact you could beat your opponents and make money off it was incredible to me, if you beat someone on Fifa you don’t really gain anything. He told me if I wanted to get more into it, I should watch this guy on twitch, named Jcarverpoker. And that’s where it all started for me. Have been hooked by the game ever since, in February 2017 I started streaming poker myself, got the bankroll kicking by winning the Big $7.50 for $3.6K. Got partnered in the summer of 2017 and joined RaiseYourEdge in August and in begin 2018 I joined the team.
“Just believe in yourself”
Right now I am actually taking a gap year, I graduated in 2017 from Pre-University Education (highest highschool degree in The Netherlands, the same as Gymnasium but without Latin and Greek). I really disliked school, also here I used to be a one-man-army kinda, probably because if someone was a prick I told him, we all know how those things go then, even when people agree with you, they rather join the prick, afraid to get picked on themselves. Always got my grades easily, never made my homework, never needed to study. Up to the final year, where I started off really bad. Got bad grade after bad grade, I started to panic as I am not used to not getting results, I panicked to a teacher of mine and asked him what to do. I still gotta thank this teacher one day to be honest, he first told me to do certain assignments, but he knew I wasn’t gonna do that. He knew me way better than I thought at the time, at the end of the conversation he told me to just believe in myself and I would be alright. Well he was right, I didn’t do the work, went into the exams, almost sick of the stress cause I regretted not doing the work, how was I ever gonna make this? I don’t want to be here for another year! Then I thought of what my teacher told me, to just believe in myself and I am not sure how I have done it, but I passed easily. To everyone’s surprise btw, except the teacher that told me to just belief in myself, most teachers kept telling me I was not gonna make it. Well, they were wrong, luckily. At the graduation, you always get a book, which everyone has written something in, including the teachers. The teacher that gave me the advice, knew me so well that it is kinda scary how accurate he was with what he had written down. He wrote: he is a sensitive guy, who often wears a mask to hide it. Well not anymore, I am still sensitive and not always mentally strong, but I don’t hide it anymore, for the reasons I named earlier.
Falling into old habits
When I look at “my story” myself, I feel like I have a lot of those mental flaws, due to the things that I described above. Because when I was way younger, I was completely different. I was a cheerful guy, was always laughing, I woke up talking and went to bed talking. That changed over the years, I am more on my own now. Something I struggle with, because I am not really like that, I got better at it, but it is not my nature.The past year I have been working really hard on improving myself, socially, poker, english, just the whole package. Been making a lot of progress, but there is still a long way to go, it is an never ending game of course. But I still have those moments where I have a really tough time, mentally. Past week has been such a moment, results have been decent, just stagnating. But my confidence? That is nowhere to be found, no matter how hard I study, how hard I work. It is not enough for me, I am demanding too much of myself, the pressure is too high. Which all seem to arise from the things I mentioned before. It is killing my happiness. I know better, I know it is a long term game, I know there is a lot of losing, I know you can only influence your own decisions, I know you gotta be patient. I go into every session fresh, focused, but lately after a few things not going as I would like them to go, I fall into my old habit of pulling myself down. Right now there is only one man beating me and that is me.
How to go from here
The past few days I have been reading a book, a classic, “think and grow rich”. Been really enjoying that, have been consuming some GaryVee content as usual, been studying a lot of poker as well. Starting to feel better. First step is recognizing where it goes wrong, I just told you the story. Second step is having it in you to admit it, being capable to stop regging in a session when you aren’t feeling great is part of it. Third step is finding a way to fix it and execute on it and that is where I am now.
I am writing this down, because it can guide me along the way, inspire people to open up about it as well. To let them know, it is okay to struggle, it is not a weakness to talk about it but a strength. Together we can make each other stronger, winners don’t build the biggest building in town by tearing others’ down, but by actually building one. I will continue to update this blog, write about how I am doing, what I am doing and why I am doing it. Thank you guys for reading so far, in the coming days I will tell the goals that I have.