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Meet ‘MammothTheGr8’ - Pokercode’s Newest Coach

Milko van Winden
Head of Digital Media @ Pokercode

Pokercode is adding a sixth coach to the roster! Grzegorz ‘MammothTheGr8’ Kozieja is joining the team to add his knowledge. He’s starting the month off with 2 added coaching sessions to the calendar. Read up on all the changes plus an interview with ‘Mammoth’ to talk about him joining the team.

Grzegorz ‘MammothTheGr8’ Kozieja Joins Pokercode

The already stellar roster of coaches at Pokercode is expanding with the latest addition of Grzegorz ‘MammothTheGr8’ Kozieja. On top of Fedor Holz, Matthias Eibinger, Simon Rønnow, Curtis Knight, and Steffen Sontheimer - Kozieja will add his expertise to the team and will mainly focus on Progressive Knock-Out strategy and 3-way spots.

Kozieja has been playing poker since 2012 but started playing professionally in 2017, mostly playing MTT sit n go’s on PokerStars. Because of this ‘Mammoth’ has great ICM awareness and is used to playing short-handed poker. In 2022 he transitioned fully to MTTs.

Grzegorz Kozieja at the Pokercode Festival in Bratislava

Two Extra June Study Sessions

Because of Kozieja joining the team we’ve added two coaching sessions to the June calendar. The first one already taking place on June 17th, 6:30pm CEST, where the focus will be on Progressive Knock-Out adjustments. The session is a great starting point for those getting familiar with PKO tournaments.

The second session that ‘Mammoth’ will lead is an introduction on 3-Way post flop spots. Make sure to strap yourself in on June 27th, 6:30pm CEST, and make the first steps at improving your 3-way post flop skills together with our new coach.

The new agenda for June

Interview

Hey Mammoth, we’re really happy you’re joining Team Pokercode. What excites you the most about this move forward with us?

“I’m excited about the overall journey with Pokercode. I’ve been a member for quite some time now. I joined most of the live coaching sessions and I’ve always been very active. The excitement comes from signing up as a member, becoming active, and doing some free sessions later. Now I’m a coach! A big part of the excitement is the realization that everything is possible if you put in the time and effort. I’m really happy to be here and give back some knowledge to the community. I really like seeing the progress of those around me on their own journeys. I hope this works two ways and also makes me improve. It’s just so awesome to have access to like-minded people and high-stakes poker players.”

'Mammoth' switched from SNGs to MTTs

If we zoom out a little bit, before Pokercode. How did you get in touch with the game and what was that journey like for you?

“I’m originally from Poland but I studied International Business Management in the UK. When I was in my 3rd year I started learning poker. We played some penny stakes with friends on the campus and I got curious to improve in the game. For a very long time I was playing SNGs. Then after I graduated I moved back to Poland and focused on 45-man and 180-man SNGs. I think I played over 100k games by now. I was making a little bit of money back then and I started mixing in some tournaments where I had some decent results as well.

Because of legislation I moved to Malta to play, but after a year I decided to move back to Poland. In 2018 I started coaching a little bit. After two years in 2020 I decided to move my game more towards MTTs when I realized that the SNGs were slowly dying.”

Kozieja's graph on Sharkscope

So you started coaching in 2018, how did that process start and why did you take on coaching?

“I was a little bit sick of social media so I decided to delete all my profiles. I wanted to study more poker as well. We created a Discord server and moved our study group from Skype and we discussed hands and studied together. Every weekday we did an hour of hand history reviews together. Everyone prepared topics and held group sessions as well. After a while one player approached me and complimented me on my session. I wanted to try and see what happened if I pursued that.

So I found a job opening for coaching at a stable. I applied, trialed for a month, and then I started coaching doing group sessions and one-on-one coaching. I was teaching about 5-10 players at the start, but in 2019 I started doing more group sessions. I got promoted to head SNG coach, since I had so much experience in that field. After the games died, unfortunately, I switched to MTT content. In the beginning of 2021 I started doing my own seminars as well.”

What are your specialties where you will focus on with the community?

“I’m not really into studying the solutions as they are. I strongly believe that we should focus on how to play against humans and not how to play against a bot. I like to look at node-lock solutions, asymmetries, changes. We can extract a lot of EV if we learn the correct exploits and adjustments. I like that approach and because of that Simon Rønnow asked me to do two sessions with him in the past for the Pokercode community.

I will try to encourage the community as much as possible to participate in the sessions and be active. It helps with the studying. I’ll also assign a bit of homework after the sessions. I believe this is a good way to make sure you understand the concepts that have been explained.

There are a couple of holes left in the Pokercode content that I’m trying to fill in. I’ll focus on PKO and 3-way content. There are so many PKO tournaments out there these days. I think I can provide a lot of value in those parts of the game.”

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