A new blog for a new year!

Hey guys,

Just starting out a new blog for the new year. I know im a bit delayed and all but with university exams its been kind of slow.

Regardless, about myself:
-20 year old student in Nottingham, England
-Started a fresh bankroll in the summer at $100 and by the new year to roughly $4k (£2700 at the time)
-Mainly playing online tournaments and the occasional 50p/£1 cash games live.

My Poker resolutions for the forth-coming year:
-Have a £5000 bankroll by Easter
-Have a £7500 bankroll by the start of summer
-Have a £15,000 bankroll by the start of 2010!

So those are the monetary goals. To get there i have decided i will spend more time studying and improving my game. I'm sure i have leaks, just got to find them and fix them ;). I also would like to play more live especially deep stack tournaments such as GUKPT or EPT or something similar. Although i'll have to satelitte into something like this which kind of sucks.

Anyway, onto this new year, well i haven't played as much as i would like to due to Uni exams (which are going so-so) and a pretty bad case of food-poisoning. But luckily enough managed to take down a £55 tournament at Dusk Til Dawn (local cardroom) for £1100 which was very nice. Biggest "up" day so far and definately a healthy boost to the bankroll. Other than that i've played a bit of cash this month, mainly on the 50p/£1 tables online at crypto and im up 1 1/2 buyins at quite a solid 4.5bb/100 so im happy with this too. Not bad considering the only reason i was playing it was to grind out the £25 bonus. Funnily enough, i've paid £153 in rake too which sucks big time and i will have to do something to sort this out in terms of a rakeback deal or playing more cash to qualify for the crytpo rakeback option.

Last night being a sunday i loaded up alot of tournament tables and even though i got deep in 3 tournaments didn't profit on the day which is a big blow. I final tabled the party poker $8rebuy but came 10th after loosing a race. The tournament was really soft but it did just turn into a big crapshoot at the end and im sure the antes are significantly smaller than they should be. Oh well, i think i'll keep playing this tourny as it is a nice one. On pokerstars i managed to get super-deep in the $11/$10k gtd but came out in 26/3240. Just loosing those crucial flips seems to be really damaging. Its frustrating getting so deep and only coming out with $68...But i guess i won't be complaining if i took down first place where all the money is weighted. Similarly, i had a good run in the $11rebuy/$70k gtd but placed 84/2400.

I'm really unsure what my plan is in terms of online tournament grinding. I enjoy stars and full tilt and their software. But the variance is sickening. I got really deep in those two tournaments and beat 99.2% of the field but still manage to end the day on a down. I have two minds about this. One is that i should keep grinding these tournaments on a regular basis and sooner or later i will win those vital flips near the end for the big money or i stick to the smaller, low-variance, options of crypto/partypoker and possibly one other network. I'm sucking pretty hard at full tilt tournies lately but pokerstars i seem to be quite consistently getting in the top 100 and then loosing races at the crucial times. Maybe there is a problem with my game, i'm not sure.

For now on, ill stick to grinding out on crypto/party and leave pokerstars and full tilt for the big day: Sunday. If i'm not getting enough volume in i'll probably try adding another skin in. I'm thinking Betfair, but the software tilts me pretty hard. Or maybe pacific but same goes so i'm not sure.

Sorry for the long first-post. I doubt they'll all be this long. Anyway good luck at the tables!