Interview: Stefan "RedRat" Hadzhistoikov Manager of Pokernews Bulgaria

Stefan is a person who i recently met and getting to know his poker success and career i was inspired even more for my project "How Poker Changed My Life" that aims to introduce poker and how it changes our lives  to peoples who are not familiar with it and probably need that change.
After all Stefan Hadzhistoikov is a really honest helpful and dedicated to his job person who won my respect in a minute.
And here is the interview read and learn my friends he is the first of the many successful players that ill interview to show you that everyone can have a better life if he put enough effords.


Hello , Stefan how did you find out about poker online and how did it started a flame in your heart ?


As most people I learned about the game from a friend, and it didn’t took long to get seriously in it. I play cards since I can remember myself, so getting in poker was kind of natural for me, and quickly after I started I was doing pretty well – actually I managed to raise my starting bankroll of $100 to almost $250 in one week playing $0.05/$0.10 limit games. Now it’s like, wow, how I managed to do that back in the days? It was more than 5 years ago.

What do you do for a living now and how did poker helped you in general?

I was playing for living for almost 3 years, and during that time started to get even more dedicated to everything related to the game, and the beginning of 2007 saw me becoming a local representative of one of the world’s biggest poker sites www.pokernews.com . It’s been now almost 5 years that I work for PokerNews, and that is something that changed my life in many different positive ways. I don’t have much time to play now, but I’m making a living with my hobby, and that is just wonderful. I’ve made new friends and I get work with amazing and very talented people from all over the world, every day. For one year I was even part of the management of the company after I got a promotion and was hired to do a job that required to look after all 30+ websites that the company has – that was really great experience and during that time I learned a lot of valuable things, which are now helping me in my everyday work and my communication and relation with other people.

How did poker changed your life and how did it changed it? For better or worse?

It changed my life in so much positive ways, and if I have to get in details here I can really write a whole book about it . The game has so many similarities with life itself, and it can teach you a lot of valuable lessons. To be patient, to be responsible, to be brave, to learn from your mistakes, so you can improve your game and yourself as well. As everything else the start is difficult and the test for your EGO and your emotions is quite a challenge, but if you manage to learn how to control both then you take it to the next level where every bad beat and every mistake is just something that you are supposed to experience and learn from, so you can move forward.Poker is a very challenging mental game, and the more you get into it, the more you learn not just to play better, but how to become a better person, and how to make better decisions – not just on the poker table, but in life in general. Most people hardly make it to the point where they realize how the game can actually help them improve as a person, because they are not committed and they are looking for short term money results, and if they fail to complete that, they give up and get frustrated. I believe that’s what separates the people who succeed from those who fail. It’s just like with everything else, if you fail over and over again in doing something, that just means you are doing something wrong, and the problem is in you. The sooner you understand that the better chance you have to get on the road to success.

Which one of your successes are making you proud the most? :)

I must say that I’m proud of everything I’ve accomplished for the past five years, and as weird as it might sound, the winning of money doesn’t make me feel as good as the feeling of playing the best game, and making the best possible decisions and taking the first place. Of course the money part is nice, but for me the other means more. But mostly proud I’m with the game I played back in October 2009, where I managed to make 10 final tables out of 30 tournaments for one month, and along with some cash game success and three 1st places I finished the month with around $18,000 profit, and this is still the best run I’ve ever had. I was always playing on the micro to middle stakes and up to day I have cashed out around $80,000 playing online poker.


Best of luck to everyone who decide to walk my way, and I’m always happy to give advice or suggestion or simply discuss a hand or anything with anyone.

We can always learn from peoples like Stefan and we shouldn't just pass away from the knowledge they have.Read learn and i truly wish you all to have at least half the accomplishments he have.

(Stefan "RedRat" Hadzhistoikov At IFP London)

PokerStars Launched HOT Turbos and Announced MicroMillions

Two brand new great ways to turn a little part of your bankroll into something that can launch you in open space like a rocket.

Hot Turbos 0,55$-109$ with awesome Guarantee prize and double Guarantee prizes every sunday ;)

Check them out by writing HOT in your filter , http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/hot-turbos/

MicroMillions 100events !!!! Running from 15 march until 25
All of them with huge guarantee prizes and buy-ins from 0,11$-22$
You can simply turn 1 dollar in a whole new life with that WOW!

http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/micro-millions/

WBCOOP 2012 Is Now Over !

We had our moments in this breath taking series where the whole worldwide poker blogging community took part.
Moments of joy , moments of honor and comraderie.When you see hundreds and hundreds of peoples supporting you really wishing with all of their hearts for you to be their winner, comments saying: "You are our champion, You are peoples champion" Thease moments i will never forget !

All my readers and fallowers all my friends who were supporting me the whole way throught this know ,
what im blogging about im not blogging my bank down and upswings or how i did that ,did this.
This blog is all about how you can make a diffrence how we cannnot surrender to any circumstences,
we will never back down.How poker can change our lifes and how we all deserve the chance of a better life,
and we can all have it, because huge part of this sport is the motivation of a player.
And whats a greater motivation then the motivation to survive ?

The Best Blogger Award Winner!
Will be announced after a day or two as PokerStars mentioned @twitter.
The judging panel is now taking care of it they will go through all the submisions and decide on the winner.
We will keep holding our breaths and hope they will appriciate our  purpose.Keep your breaths my friends ! WE ARE ALMOST THERE ! :)))

How Poker Stars Changed My Life Media Project !!!

Im starting a new media project that will inform everyone suffering the crysis how they can succeed without running off their country and how they can turn their potential into profit.Below ill write why Bulgaria

needs poker,freelancing and anything not realated to the country economics to survive.

The Project will include daily blogging,an  interview in a TV show with over 1,000,000 audiance ,Facebook page, and maybe a book in future

if i manage to gather money for publishing :)

First i would like to start with a little background of my country:

Bulgaria is a country with a great history , a long suffered beautiful country that continue to suffer from its 500 years of slavery on this day 3 march 1878 my country gained its freedome from Osman Empire.

After Bulgaria gained its freedome few wars tryed to bring it to the bottom and eventually disapear.

The bravery of my country mans saved it as it is.Then comuism fallowed after the WW II as part of the eastern block Bulgaria was in another slavery of communists.1989 the Berlin Wall was crushed down and the slavery was over.But what happens then ?

Democrate Politicians start skinning the country and this continues for another 23 years and here we are now.

An average salary of 200$ a month and about 34% unemployed young peoples in the age of 18-28 how do we make a living with that ? We cant.

Its a fact that food in here costs more then any european country the power costs same as other european countrys we pay the same bills but we recive more then 10 times less the money.

An enormous part of the peoples emigrate, another enormous part of the nation is living with the below minimum standart of living.And another tiny part is peoples who have control of 99% of the peoples money.

How can poker change our lifes?

The simple fact that with a little bit of reading, practice and motivation we can build our own strategy

and work it over to become a profitable players and turn the potential that we have into profit.

My first deposit was a small one it was about 10 Buy-ins into a micro stakes SnG tournaments.

I managed to turn this into 100$ in a single day !!! And this was awesome because i had to work 15 days as a construction worker and handle over 3 tons of materials a day to earn them.

Then my motivation overcame i felt that this is what i want to be doing.

Instead of feeling godlike i decided to improve myself and get to be even better player that i was.

Ive started reading books from some of the greatest poker minds in the world, started to analyze every single hand of mine and how did i go right or wrong in it.

After few months of playing with real money ive started to earn enough to cover my bills and have some spare money to actually live like a normal person wich is a great success in my country ;)

I was getting better everyday and still a miles away from the poker player that i want to be one day

Now without pushing myself too much i can easily make 200$ a week and thats an average month salary.

.I want to let everyone who has a potential of a poker player but never heard of it to know about it,

and how poker can make our days better, 34% of peoples of age 18-28 are unemployed this is about 2,000,000 peoples who are struggeling with life while they can put their spare time to become a great poker players one day.Not everyone will go for it but there will be a huge part of them who will be intrested :)

Im doing this without getting paid, i dont even have Ads in my blog im doing this because everyone deserves a better life.

Poker & Life Two Alike Challanges

The world of poker is almost the same as our world. FACTS?
Pretty easy to figure in life we always struggle to be winners.
We are studying thing we dont always like because they are a good hand that you can bet on.
We bluff sometime because we need to win but not always we hold the best hand.
We are challanging each other competing in job interviews like we compete in tournaments.
We lose sometimes ,life is not all about winning as well as poker.
But what do we do about it ? We learn from our mistakes, we adapt to the circumstances and try not to repeat the same mistake.
We sometimes play like donks in real life and win as well as we play like professionals some times and loose.Life is all about making the right decision so is poker!

WBCOOP Series 1-2

Feb 23 - NLHE,BADUGI 
Event 01-NLHE
I have started the series with the NLHE pretty deepstacked(10,000chips 15min blind levels) for me as im mostly into turbo tourneys.
The tournament however went good in the begining with some crazy hands including few bad beats but nothing shocking, busted out after 130 minutes of play with pocket 88 and 8 on the turn vs QQQ :)


Event 03-Badugi
This awesome game is alot of fun to me its more of a chill game for me.
Also went good in the begining but after a served 5-42A and massive raises at all of the bet rounds,
my opponent busted me out with a 4-32A Badugi :)
Still alot of fun.


Im not from the peoples complaining about loses , we are all supose to never back down.
Cause this is how all the great ones became great alot of risks and alot of raising up from the ground :)