Back in Sac-town

The photo is me and Jack - my nephew from Dallas.

I'm back and continuing the laziness. I actually played 3 tourneys today, but for whatever reason I can't get the new update on Tilt to download on my desktop so I can't use my pokertracker and don't really like playing on this laptop. I think I will be getting a new computer next year because it is now like 7 years old and is just getting slower and slower.

Our Wisco friends' flights got canceled so my wife and I will just enjoy vegging out a bit this weekend. She needs and deserves it - she works way too much. I am hoping to get in a couple of movies since so many good ones are out now.

Christmas is pretty anticlimactic this year since my wife is working 30+ hours, but we will be celebrating with her family when they come up next week for new years.

In Dallas

So I am enjoying my time just chilling with my family here in Dallas. I have gotten a couple of messages from people wondering about the possibility of becoming my "protege" next year. I'll be honest and say that I really haven't given in that much thought, so I am not sure exactly what it will entail or how I will go about picking possible students. No matter what, it won't happen until February. Once I do figure it out, I'll make sure to let interested people know.

Depending on how well I travel, I should be home tomorrow - and then we have some friends coming (this time if they travel well) from Wisconsin on Friday. Then my wife's family comes up to visit us for New Years so I probably won't be playing or posting much until next year.

Getting bored?

So I have been doing nothing the last couple of days and thought I was getting bored enough to play today. Turns out I am bored but still not really into playing. I entered 2 tourneys at 5:00 with the plan of playing the quarter million on stars and the sniper on UB at 6:00 but after I made an iffy call in one and got coolered in the other I just decided to hang it up.

Tomorrow I have some errands to run before we head off to Dallas so I won't be playing then either.

Motivation seems to be my achilles heel - hopefully I can figure something out because the only way for me to make more money is by playing more volume.

Year in Review Time/Goals for Next Year

At this time of the year there are always programs recapping the last year on tv, so I figured it is time for me to do so as well.

My goals for this year were:
1) pass the bar exam
2) attain at least a 50% ROI playing poker
3) make $100 k playing poker, and
4) get back in shape.

I accomplished 1 and 2 and although I didn't make 100k I made enough so that with our combined income we lived perfectly comfortably. I am still woefully out of shape so of the four goals that is the one I failed most miserably.

I also became an instructor for pokerpwnage.com which was unexpected but has gone really well so far. So all in all, I feel like I had a really good year.

My goals for next year are going to be pretty similar to last years':

1) I want to maintain an ROI of at least 50%
2) I want to profit 100 k playing poker
3) I want to play at least 2500 tourneys (doubling my volume this year - and basically guaranteeing a 100k year if I can get close to a 50% ROI)
4) I want to continue garnering more exposure in the pokerworld which will hopefully lead to more moneymaking opportunities (sponsorships, writing deals, etc.), and
5) I want to get back in shape.

I am also seriously considering taking on a student or two as a sort of "protege" and will coach them in return for a percentage of their winnings. The only thing keeping me back from announcing this at this point is that I want to really concentrate on getting my volume in first - once I feel that I have that under control and have time for coaching I will do so.

The rest of this year will consist of playing when I can but there is going to be a lot of non-playing time too with all of the visits and visitors we have planned.

Getting Christmasy

So I haven't played since my final table on Tuesday (which really shouldn't be a surprise with me). When I actually put in volume I let the house go to crap a bit, so I've been catching up on raking the yard, cleaning the garage, just generally getting the house in order.

I also bought a christmas tree, only to realize when I got it home that it was too big for our tree stand. So a couple hours of using the crappy saw that I have and shaving parts of the trunk off and I try again... only to realize the tree is just too damn big for the plastic stand that we had. The f-bombs were definitely flying but today I walked the dog to the neighborhood hardware store and got a new stand. And finally we got the sucker up. Yay for small successes.

Pokerwise I am thinking seriously of what I want my goals for next year to be. I am debating about whether I want to take a student or two on or if I just want to focus on playing as much as I can. I do know that I want to try and double my volume - if I can keep around the same ROI as this year and double my volume I should have a super successful year.

Tomorrow my father-in-law comes in and my wife is off for the weekend, so I'll probably be back and playing next Monday.

Little hot streak going

I got 5th in the Nightly 100k on pokerstars. I feel I played really well overall so even though I am disappointed not to take down the 1st place (which was over $20k), I still can't be too upset.

The last three days I've played I've made a final table so that's pretty amazing especially considering the low volume I put in (I only played 4 tourneys tonight). My bankroll is comfy again too, which just takes a lot of stress off.

A big part of me is considering just coasting into next year with a nice profitable December and not really playing anymore this month, but we'll see how bored I get.

Errands

I haven't played much because I am just getting stuff done. Yardwork/x-mas shopping/cooking/etc. We are going to be doing quite a bit of family/friend visits as well these next 4 weeks so I definitely won't get a full schedule in this month.

This weekend my father-in-law comes. Next week I go to Dallas to visit my sister and fam. X-mas week we have some friends from Wisco coming in. And then New Years we have my sister's family coming in.

I will try and get a session in tonight and the rest of this week until my suegro comes in on Friday.

Big steps

I won the $55 Freeze out on Stars for over $15k today. It feels great to win again and plowing through a field that big (almost 2000 entries) is really tough. Basically I won back everything I lost playing cash, so I am just vowing to myself that I won't play cash anymore. I win money playing tourneys, I lose money playing cash - so it should be a no brainer.

Anyhoo - my wife is off tonight and tomorrow, so I'm taking a little time off and then I'll be back at it next week.

Small Steps

I got 3rd in the afternoon $55 tourney on Fulltilt. I still felt a little (ok a lot) deflated as I got reamed/coolered in 2 huge hands late. It's easy to say all you can do is get it in good and focus on your play not the results, it's a lot harder to swallow when 3rd place is 2700 and 1st is 6k.

The nice part is that I finally had a positive day after so many consecutive losing days. The bad part is that it really only covers about 3 days of losses.

I am playing really really well though, so I feel a big score coming...

Volume is tiring

I played really well this afternoon, but didn't get much of a break in during the afternoon like I usually do and played like poo tonight. It was my first time playing like poo for a while so I just need to make sure not to play when I'm tired.

Tomorrow is another day...

Poker time

Well, I finally have like a two week window where I can put in a lot of volume. November was really frustrating because I played so little in terms of tourneys and I never got a real good score, and I was playing quite a bit of cash which just went horribly so my bankroll has suffered.

The last two days I have (and will be) playing a lot of tourneys, and I am playing great, but just not getting rewarded. Yesterday was full of bad beats which just shows I am getting it in way ahead. Today was not bad beats as much as it was just never winning a race when I really needed to.

My bankroll is now the lowest it has been for months, and I am anxious to get it back up again, but I need to make sure to just keep playing well otherwise I have a tendency to get overaggressive trying to make things happen and I just blow up opportunities to make deep runs.