Ahhh, feels so good :)

It doesn't happen too often in poker where you get total satisfaction. In cash games you could have always have done something different or better to squeeze out a few extra dollars. In tournaments you rarely win, but when you do win you forget about any mistakes you made or any small edges you could have pushed harder. If you win the tournament (without chopping) you accomplished the best possible result. Even if you would have played better you could not have made anymore money for that given tournament.

What I am getting at is....I won a tournament today! Matt was sweating me online and once I got down to heads up he suggested I mention making some kind of deal with my opponent because he felt like he was a pretty good player. He was a good player, but since I had been doing so well lately and I really wanted to just win something out right I opted not to mention it and just played him for the whole shebang. I caught some decent cards, played well, and made quick work of him to take down the $55 tourney with 1 rebuy and 1 add-on for a cool $18,665.

That was a fantastic cap to an already good month of poker for me and hopefully February will be just as productive. I doubt I will win as much money in February as I did in January, but if I can stay motivated and work just as hard I will consider it a success regardless of my results.

BOOYAKASHA!

Newfound work ethic :)

Who knew I had it in me? I managed to reach my short term goal I posted in my last blog of getting to 100 hours played this month. That is doubly impressive for me, because I didn't get to play any poker until January 8th.

I also worked really hard on my game this week by working out some more situational math for the CAP NL games and having a few discussions with poker friends whose opinions I respect. I am really starting to make progress in my quest to learn the CAP games. I know this because I have managed to win money not at showdown over my last 25,000 hands (I know you non-poker players have no idea what that means and I don't feel like explaining it either. Just rest assured, it is hard to do and took me lots of work to get there.)

January was a really successful month for me and I look forward to working just as hard in February.

I reached both of my short term goals from last blog and I am on pace for every one of my new years resolutions! Booyakasha!

I think I might take tomorrow off from the cash games to play tournaments, unless the CAP games look amazingly good when I sit down to start playing. I am not going to mix cash games and tourneys because I think that hurts my results in both of them. Maybe I'll win a house tomorrow??

Year progress report...

So far, so good! My results have been very good so far this year and I have definitely been on the fun side of variance lately winning more than my share of all-in pots. I didn't get started playing until the 8th and my playing time has been hit and miss since Anne and I have been doing so much stuff for the house. We also just had Eric, Kelly, and Carter stay with us for a few days so that cut in to my playing time a bit as well....not too much though...thanks Anne :)

I've managed to play 47 hours and 22,000 hands so far this year and I am up almost $7,000. I had a great session today and then another great late-night session where I won $5,300 all total. Hmmm, so I guess I wasn't doing all that great before today, but now I am!

I have been doing better working on my game outside of playing and I definitely need to keep that up. It is a very good thing when I get in a groove where I am working on my game...it kind of builds on itself and makes me want to work even harder.

Some short-term goals:

-I would like to make a push to get to 100 hours for the month so that would mean playing over 50 hours in the next 10 days. That is basically impossible for me I think, but if I can get in at least 30 more in I won't feel like a total turd.

-Continue to work hard every day and don't get cocky with my results. I want to focus everyday as if I hadn't won in a month straight and I on the verge of going broke. I am going to try not to use AIM or surf the internet while I play and I am going to really concentrate on making the best decisions and exploiting other player's leaks.

Its time to go wake Anne up (its 5:45am and she has to go to work)!

Failblog.org

In case you have never been to the site failblog.org you should definitely check it out...you can't count on it to waste a few hours of your life for sure.

Promoting that website isn't the purpose of this current blog, but it is definitely an appropriate title since I am recapping how I did on my goals for 2009.

Here were my goals from 2009:

1. Improve my poker game on a daily basis as much as possible.

Result: FAIL. I pretty much abandoned working on my poker game and took my ability for granted for most of 2009. I did start working really hard on my game towards the end of the year and my results showed it with great results to end the year.

2. Buy a house.

Result: WIN! I did by a house and while it was much more work than I bargained for I am very proud of it now.

3. Play 1300 hours of online cash games and log 600,000 hands.
a. This equates to playing about 31 hours per week for 42 weeks per year and averaging around 6 tables at a time.
b. At my current lifetime win rate of around $118/hour I would make around $150,000 and I think I can realistically expect to make over $220,000 at the limits I plan on playing (3/6 and higher) with the potential to make $300k+

Result: FAIL. I played a little over 800 hours and only manager 357,155 hands online. I did play PLO for a good portion of the year so that can explain some of the decrease in hands, but so few hours in an embarrassment.

4. Weigh 200 pounds or less by 2010, I am currently around 225 pounds after an astronomical surge in weight gain caused by my week in Cabo.

Result: FAIL. I am currently 235 pounds...awesome huh?

5. Save a minimum of $10,000 in some form for retirement and $15,000 in other general investments.

Result: Minor FAIL. I don't think I saved this much, but I did max out my ROTH IRA and save a little bit extra on top of that. It isn't quite as easy to save when your results aren't what you planned on and I spent a decent chunk of change on the house.

6. Prepare to buy a second house sometime in 2010.

Result:This seems a bit far fetched, but I would love to do it provided a good year of poker.

7. Get married and have kids….GOTCHA!

Result: While this seemed totally impossible and was an obvious joke at the beginning of 2009 my girlfriend's dog is sitting on my lap as I type this because she is scared of the vacuum Anne is running in OUR bathroom in OUR house....crazy, huh?



Overall recap: Poker was not as successful as I had hoped for 2009, but it was a good year overall for sure.

Goals for 2010:

1. Play 1200 hours of online poker (more wouldn't be such an awful thing, but my history suggests that is nearly impossible).
2. Max out my ROTH IRA ($5,000)and accumulate another $5,000 to be saved and used for future money making opportunities.
3. Work very hard to not only stay ahead of the poker learning curve, but excel more than I have in years past (I have no excuses not to work as hard as I possibly can, but that is very tough to maintain).
4. Put in some type of effort into learning more forms of poker, because I am certain that poker will continue to move in that direction.
5. Have ZERO losing months (as I did in 2008).
6. Sigh...get in better shape. Who doesn't say this around new year? It should help having my dietitian girlfriend around though.
7. Set lots of short term goals throughout the year to help me get to the above goals.

These goals are a little more vague that past goals. I don't really like the idea of goals being vague, because it is hard to measure success. The reason they are vague is because I had not put too much thought into goals for this year until now. I just wanted to get something written down before I got started playing for the year. Yes, January 8th is my first day of poker in 2010...in fact I have only played about 4 hours of poker since December the 15th! On a side note, I did manager to dominate the leader board on pokertableratings.com for 3/6 CAP NL games for the month of December despite only being able to play half of the month :)

Short term goal:
Play 12 hours of online poker and win $1,000 before we have to start unloading and unpacking the moving truck on the 12th.