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.