[0:01]Oh. Ricky, look who it is. It's our viewers that missed us for two years. Well, okay, this is awkward. Okay, well, guys, it's been a while, Ricky. Adults need to talk. Hey everyone, two years since my last video when I quit creating content and streaming after losing $800,000 from poker tournaments in a year. Ah, that was crazy. In 17 years of poker, I never had that happen. This video will update you on how I fully recovered from those really dark times. And by doing the unexpected. My path and ideas are not perfect by any means. It's simply what worked for me. This is not a sponsored video. There is no product. Uh, we've spent over 150 hours on this and the footage is something I've been filming for the last two years. I paid a lot to make this happen, and I really have nothing to gain. I I just hope it helps someone out there. I did this because I'm really passionate about giving back to the poker community because it has benefited me so much in my life. But by playing this game, and I just hope it helps. If you like it, let me know, but also share it, so maybe it helps someone else. And enjoy the video. Thank you, and I'll see you around.
[1:18]My name is Rayan Chamas, also known as Beriuzi. I live in Montreal, Canada. Rayan is now a high stakes poker enthusiast and entrepreneur. However, his career path wasn't always so clear. Before poker, I played a lot of games, a lot of video games when I was younger, and then eventually just like kind of trickled my way into the dark world of online poker when I was young. And eventually, I just kind of started seeing that some people made money and had success from it. $71,000. We are God. started working at Subway, making sandwiches and stuff. And I just liked that idea that while I'm working at Subway, I can just like, you know, play a couple hours after and just make some money. So I I just started playing more and more. We fucking won the tournament, boys. $40,000. It always was like a tool that allowed me to enhance parts of my life. Hello, fellow potatoes. My name is Rayan and welcome to Beriuzi. It would mean a lot if you can share, like and subscribe to this channel. I'm trying to grow this thing so I can give back to the community and to charity. Thank you, and enjoy the video. It's a very peculiar story how that name happened. To sum it up, to make it short, it's a word that was invented by one of my friends in high school. And his idea was to use it to like escape awkward situations with teachers or like people he doesn't want to talk to. I used it in class once with a teacher that like, uh, caught me kind of falling asleep during the presentation. What what was the era of something in history and I'm like, oh, it's the era of Beriuzi. I remember her face just like being like, what is he? Is he on to something? Like she didn't know like maybe I was like many like maybe it sounds like something similar. So ever since then, I just like, I want to use this word more and when I decided to create my content channel, I just figured like it'd be cool to like use this name. And I want to create this journey and document it and show to other people like, hey, you can create your own Beriuzi. You can create your own random word and make something out of it. I'm trying to create something from absolutely nothing. And I like that idea. I feel like my whole poker adventure has been something from nothing.
[3:49]Though poker has been good to Rayan at times, right now, it is not.
[4:01]So this downswing specifically is basically, yeah, it's it's around 10 months of losing on average like 100k a month. And and currently, I'm down 800k and it's I I don't see the light like there's no like I don't I I did it's just like it's not even there. Yes, you heard that right. He is down $800,000 playing well, a game. And not only is his bank account depleting, but so is his health. Mentally completely destroyed because just everything seems like it's going to go against me. No matter what it is. I could be playing a tennis match and I'm just like about to hit the sickest serve ever in the back of my head like immediately it's going to come in and just like hit the ball. No, like that's what it does to your brain. Everything becomes impossible.
[5:00]I feel like in the past when I was on a downswing, something that happened across two years, it was a lot more like, it's a bit painful. It's like a lobster being cooked in like hot water. It's nice. But when I'm doing it five times a week, because I want to make content, it it's like a speed run of just disaster.
[5:30]I've been on other downswings in the past that were probably not as rough because of the amount of money at stake. The money amount is insane. And I am used to playing these type of buy-ins.
[5:45]But what I'm not used to is playing that much, that much time. This one is just it's at the same exact time as I started taking on too many things. And when I started really wanting to be more of a content creator, it forced me to start playing bigger buy-ins and uh focus more on like improving my content by, you know, showing more high stakes stuff. And it just went out of control. All right, we're going to let Ricky decide. We're going to flip a coin with Ricky. All right, there's two sides to this remote. If it lands on the colorful parts, we're going to call it. If it lands on black, we're going to fold. It's all left to you, buddy. It's a call. And I I think this is what has completely made the downswing a lot worse. Usually, I play and I feel comfortable and I'm like I have good strategies, but now every time I was sitting down to like play a session, it was more like, well, how many of clicks and likes do you think this this video is going to get if I like completely punt to this 10k tournament. You know, and then it's just like, why am I thinking like this? It completely like messed up how I viewed everything, right? You play poker, you want to try and win, not try to make content out of it. I said, if I get 100 viewers, we're going to get chip faced. And now we're chipleading a tournament. I feel like I've definitely overstepped my limits, which is also affecting downswing because I'm just exhausted every time I try to play poker. What's at stake, what can I lose? Ideally, just money. For sure, if I keep losing, I'm going to lose a bit of my mental state.
[7:22]I am all in. I've wagered all the chips against an under the gun 3x.
[7:31]Okay, come on. Come on, please, protect us. Mighty rooster gods. Like, I I can't I can't deal with this. Yo, I pressed call. Don't time out. No, no, no, I pressed call. I pressed fucking call.
[7:54]You got to be fucking kidding me. What the What the fuck was that? What the fuck was that?
[8:10]I think the worst part is I feel like I can't even control myself. My thoughts, it just everything's all over the place. Just the way it happened. You can see in the video, like I my raw emotions come out and I'm just like in disbelief. And it felt like it was nice. I could rewatch it because it's just like it's on display. Like look how ridiculous it is. Look what you've put yourself in. If I wasn't doing the content, that situation would have never happened and it would have never cost me money. So I'm in this cage and in a way, I also have the key that I'm just like throwing away. And right then and there, I remember I finished my session, I went up to my wife. I told her what just happened. I'm just like, I think I'm done. Like this is this is it. This is the last straw.
[9:04]Hey everyone, welcome to a special YouTube video. It's a very difficult one. To be honest, I've done like 20 takes for this. I'm trying to get the perfect way of saying what I want to say. I was reviewing some old footage of mine, footage that actually got me my Gigi sponsorship. And I realized something. I have changed a lot since then. And that realization has led me down to a difficult decision. I'll give you a hint. I quit content.
[9:35]I think what's wrong with that quote is I don't hear the word solution anywhere. So of course, yeah, you focus on the problem, it's just going to get worse. Where is the solution, right? I want to focus on the solution. To solve the problem, his plan is to do the opposite one might think to do.
[9:54]Rather than focusing on his current poker results and play more poker to try and dig his way out of this hole, Rayan has decided to take the majority of his remaining bankroll to travel the world with his wife. I know that when I travel, you're just in a different state. You're just like free from all those responsibilities because you just put yourself in a situation where you're just going to be the dumb tourist with a map walking around. And in my head, it's like, I need to get out of this downswing because then I want to do all these cool things I want to do. Well, isn't that the problem? Why am I just not doing the cool things I want to do? Why am I just not traveling to begin with? Like, that is the solution. That's how I view it. And I I see this a lot in the poker world. Like everyone's like, one day when I win the really big tournament, I will finally buy the house that I want. Okay, well, what's the house? What does the house look like that you want? Oh, I don't know. I'll when I win, I'll I'll know. It's like, no, that's the problem. You need to visualize it. You need to start looking. And then it gives you the drive to like get to that point where you do get the success that you want and you do get the results that you want. And that's just what I'm doing with the strip is I I just want to go. That that's the most important thing right now. And the rest is whatever. It's like something I'll I'll deal with one way or another. In order to keep his sanity, he hopes to remind himself why he chose this career path.
[11:22]Choosing not only to gamble his money, but also his future. Can he save himself from losing it all? Learning what it takes to make it not only in this game, but ultimately life.
[11:39]It'd be hard if I just can't play poker anymore because it's just such an important part of my life. I just love it too much.
[11:53]Presca, you want to say thank you to Michael? You say thank you? Yeah, I mean taking the trip means we have to leave our amazing little doggo behind, which really, really sucks because we've been always with her for the last three years. Oh, double stretch. And then just mostly like leaving our house and stuff. I mean, I'm not really leaving anything very serious from my end, but my my wife will be basically quitting her job for three months. Um, you know, that's a very big commitment. And she's lucky her job appreciates her so much. They're like, you go do this, come back. We'll take you. My wife is the love of my life. She's my best friend. I need something that's the complete opposite and calms me down and I don't know, I I just feel like we're like those two Lego like pieces that just like.
[12:53]And like, they only work like that, you know. That's how it feels to me, but yeah, eight months of a bit neglecting her and and my responsibilities as a husband. We just got married recently too, so I want to I want her to be happy. That's all I want. And I want to be the best version of myself for her. So my wife and I really really love traveling. We've been traveling a lot. I think we counted at one point that we've been together in 23 different countries. That I think it's the foundation of our relationship. And ever since we've just been wanting to like travel more and more. And I think every year, except 2020 due to COVID, we've been somewhere like some place that we've been wanting to visit. And in 2023, we didn't really travel because I was so overwhelmed with content and poker and stuff. And yeah, it's time to fix that. Our plan is to just get fascinated by the things we know nothing about. So Asia and Southeast Asia and New Zealand and Australia, like it's good something completely new for us.
[14:42]And sometimes I know that seeing how things work in other places really puts into perspective how lucky and blessed we are to have the life we have in Canada.
[16:47]So we arrived into New Zealand, uh, early February. It was kind of on the way towards Asia, so we wanted to like go there. We do really enjoy being in places where we can speak the language because it makes things a lot easier. But New Zealand has this like lore about it where it's just this new country. Like they've done everything different and it's very clean and there's something special about traveling to new places. It's it's such a different experience because it's something you've never really seen before. It's kind of one of our the main reasons why we want to try going to so many different places because we always learn about something else. And then we try to take those traits or whatever it is that we learn and utilize it in our own life. Poker is a lot like life. At first, everything is new and fun. The allure is attractive, and we tend not to notice the dangers. Our passion and curiosity blinds us, hoping the reward is worth the risk.
[19:17]And it stemmed a bit from uh a bit, I would say of a traumatic experience where I was supposed to go on like a high school trip to Europe with a lot of my friends, but my family did not have enough money.
[19:30]I feel because we signed up for the trip and I got all these hopes of going on this trip with all my friends, and then having to withdraw last second because we didn't have enough money, but like all my friends did go. They have pictures, they have stories. I felt the I guess the FOMO or the yeah, like I I felt very left out. And I told myself, I just I don't want to ever feel that again. And I knew that money was the main problem. So the at the time when you're 17, like I'm working at at, you know, a grocery store and a subway store where I'm making sandwiches. I'm just like, this is not enough money.
[20:07]How can I improve on that? I had a bit of money and I just decided, all right, invest in coaching, build my bankroll slowly, and hopefully that leads to something. It was then that I started approaching poker differently. Poker has allowed him to see places most only dream of. His talent and hard work have paid off. But talent can only take you so far. One must have a solid foundation in order to make it in this game.
[20:40]Got building in bad shape, decided to redo everything. All right, this is where it starts. Got rid of all the shit. Just completely got everywhere. Oh my goodness, look at this crap. This is actually better than what it looked like before. Completely doing the kitchen, obviously. Still a lot of work to be done. Basically, just started.
[21:08]Around when I was 20 to 21, I started really looking at properties and wanted to just invest my money into something that like you can literally use. And not just exist in a bank account. So I bought my parents house, fixed it up a little bit, and then sold it.
[21:30]That's how I started viewing myself more as a property manager, an entrepreneur, and wanting to provide that to other people while, you know, hopefully poker still kind of goes well. Uh, and if it doesn't go well, well, at least I still I'm providing apartments and homes to, you know, people and I don't know, it it makes me feel good.
[24:01]I think poker is probably a microcosm of life. Uh, I think the same disciplines are required in poker to be a successful player that are required to be a successful businessman or to make your way successfully through life. And whatever area you're pursuing.
[24:23]Self discipline. That's the key factor, self discipline. You'll find that all the great no limit players have this discipline about them. Uh, one of the reasons that I wear a coat and tie when I play is to remind myself to remain disciplined. Over long periods of time, you'll find that sometimes your attention dissipate a little bit. And uh as long as I'm suited as I am, it reminds me. It's a little stimuli that I have that touches me. For someone new to the game, it it seems so basic, like look at cards, look at cards, and then put money. But in reality, there's so many different steps to every decision that we make. You know, there's pre-flop, post-flop, adjusting to opponent, uh, adjusting to your own perception, and in life, I find there's a lot of these things as well, uh, especially in business. I mean, a lot of my decisions in life come because I've just thought of things from a poker point of view. You know, all these things are really help with relationships, with life situations, with decision making skills. At first, what I loved about poker is that it's such a complicated, diverse game where a lot of different strategies, even though they're very different, they can still work and achieve the same goal, which is to, you know, win. I think what's beautiful about it, like it's like one of the only games where part of the the main tool is actually money. So like, you play a basketball, you play with a ball. Play soccer, you play with a ball. In poker you play with money. So it's rare that there's a game like this. And I think that makes people a lot more serious automatically.
[26:22]It automatically just makes you try your best. I like that, and I always, I'm always trying to be the best version of myself. So it's I'm lucky I found the game that's like, all right, sit up straight, good posture, like do your best, you know. And not just like, oh, I'll just mess around.
[26:52]Hello, the birthday boy. Repping myself for a big day, getting all my necessities. It's funny you show up at this exact time. That was perfect. I just heard your car beep. I'm like, who this? What do we got? What is this? A lot of caffeine, breakfast, breakfast. Just everything's prepped. Like, I don't know, we we like to not wake up and like panic about how to make breakfast and stuff, so we just ordered these, you know, pre-made stuff. And yeah, we just get started.
[27:33]This is the house we rent every summer. We first time we rent from the owners for this house specifically, but we just like to have a really nice space where we can just chill and hang out. Um, instead of staying in the hotels, so pool, basketball, tennis, volleyball, ping pong, and everyone has a really nice spacious bedroom with like a really stock kitchen. Like, we just love that and I'm stay with, you know, my really close friends that I've stayed with multiple times now. And the vibe is just always really fun. No matter what. Like, if someone's running really bad, like, everyone else becomes this like needy cat that needs affection and goes up to them like, hey, it's going to be okay, you know. So it's a really cool, I don't know, we just all emotionally support each other, no matter what. And usually if someone's winning a lot, we just shit on them a lot, so. Yeah. She's a really good massage. So she just give him give him a massage. Now he's all like, yeah, I feel good with my little tiny stack going to day two.
[28:44]Who the wears a hoody in this weather? Great weather as always. Yeah. Get some sun, get a massage, and then get trolled by all your friends. It's a good way to start a day, right? It's hard to watch. All the sun, yeah. My name is Alexey Panikov. I'm professional poker player from Latvia. And I'm the one of the happiest person on the planet because I live happy life. Alex is just like one of my best poker friends. I've just learned a lot from him. I treated him just as a tool to finally be happy, to treat your family well, to enjoy every second of this life.
[31:47]He's just like, he's become so, so much better as both a person and a player. And I always admired his work ethic, um, even when I was with him in New Zealand recently, like, the guy is just like still studying every every day he has a bit of time off, he just running Sims and stuff. And it's just I I can't do that when I'm on vacation. I'm just like I don't care. But he's like always been like this.
[32:15]And no wonder why like he won a Triton recently, but he's also just been putting in like really, really good results. And my whole approach was that, uh, I'm either gonna punt and learn from it, like being aggressive, just try new things. If it's a mistake, I'm gonna learn from it and become better. And if it was a good thing, just a bad outcome, I'm going to be happy. So what I did, I just all the negative emotions I can receive, uh, during poker session. So, as I mentioned before, uh, you make a move, you lose. So there is two options. You're either wrong, or you're right, but he had it.
[32:51]So what I did, I just erased any doubts. So if I made a mistake, I learned. If I made a good move, I got confidence. I know it's just a bad result, bad outcome.
[33:43]I think poker is probably a microcosm of life. Uh, I think the same disciplines are required in poker to be a successful player that are required to be a successful businessman or to make your way successfully through life. And whatever area you're pursuing.
[34:05]Self discipline. That's the key factor, self discipline. You'll find that all the great no limit players have this discipline about them. Uh, one of the reasons that I wear a coat and tie when I play is to remind myself to remain disciplined. Over long periods of time, you'll find that sometimes your attention dissipate a little bit. And uh as long as I'm suited as I am, it reminds me. It's a little stimuli that I have that touches me.
[39:50]Ultimately, like life, poker is a game of choice. Should I do this, or should I do that? The outcome simply isn't up to us. A downswing happens gradually, and sometimes lasts a very long time. Players are handcuffed, questioning every single choice they make. To stay sane in this game, one must focus on what they can control and forget the rest. However, if they fail to do this, there can be consequences. In life, we sometimes do not realize what we have till it's gone. Is there anything in your life that you have lost that you wish you had another chance at?
