2010 Review and 2011 Goals

Hey,

Yes this post is coming early, but I've just finished off my last poker session of the year as I'm leaving Nottingham and heading to my family home in Dorset tomorrow where I'll be seeing friends and family for a few days before then jetting off to India on the 26th and returning to these cold shores sometime in mid-January.

So 2010 has been a pretty busy year for myself. I finished my last ever year of formal education (perhaps!) and managed to graduate. I went to Vegas and had arguably the best summer of my life. I got back with my girlfriend earlier on in the year and things are going great on that front. I also took holidays skiing in France, binge-drinking in Turkey and throwing snowballs in Vienna. Oh, and I decided to give playing poker professionally a shot! I'd say 2010 has been a great year.

Although this is my lifetime graph of the games I've played I think the year started around game 3000. I was on my last year of university and wasn't working on my game, exercising any bankroll management or really playing much at all due to a lot of real-life commitments.

I only played on Sundays for a while and partly ran bad, partly didn't deserve to do too well which resulted in a pretty nasty downswing to start the year off with. In fact in the first 6 months of the year I only managed to play a measly sum of around 1000 games losing pretty badly throughout.

Around game 4000 is when I returned from Vegas. For the readers that have been following the blog for a while it was safe to say I was pretty much busto. I hadn't degenned my money off hard or even lost significant portions of my bankroll. That would have probably made for a better read, but the truth of the matter was I had to put a lot of money aside for future living expenses, paying up front for 9 months rent of my flat/my bills/a new computer etc. etc.

This left me with around $2000 for poker, but with lots of spare time and enough money secured in the bank to keep me a float for the next 9 months regardless of what happened. Yeh, I felt pretty busto!

I'm happy to say that with some careful bankroll management, putting in a lot of volume, working on my game and exercising careful bankroll management the next few months to finish off my year have been really good. I only reported two losing weeks since coming back from Vegas and those were both the two weeks I played the least amount of games in. I've got a bankroll again and I can't wait for 2011. It should be a big year...

My Goals for 2011:


1) I don't like setting monetary goals too much. You can control how many hours you put into studying your game and you can control the amount of hours you spend grinding the tables. What you can't do though is control variance. I would however like to see myself grinding my current schedule hard for a couple more months and hopefully, with a little run-good on my side, get my bankroll over the $50k mark. Then I'll be fully rolled for the majors. Which leads me onto my first goal of 2011. Winning a major. I don't care what site it's on, I don't care when it happens. I just want to ship one!

2) Fitness and health. I really need to sort this one out. It's only been a few months since going pro and I really feel that if I'm not careful I will start to put on some chub in the forthcoming year. You feel so much better when you work out and eat healthily but it's way too easy to just sit on the computer chair all day and order takeaway food. I'm going to try to work out before every session. Keep cooking healthier food and cut back heavily on my takeaways. I enjoy cooking, it's just the effort and time of cooking which annoys me. So lazy I know!

3) Improving my game. The game is constantly evolving and if I want to keep ahead of the curve I'm going to have to keep evolving my game too. That includes noting hands down mid-session which I'm unsure about and trying to watch at least 3-4 training videos every week.

4) Live Poker. Weird as it may now be, I really am starting to enjoy live deepstacked tournaments a lot more. Sure, they are frustrating as hell, but I want to keep grinding them. I'd really like 2011 to be my break-through onto the live scene. I've played a surprisingly large number of live tournaments in the past couple of years and really other than a few scores here and there I have had next to no success in them. I don't believe I have huge live-game leaks, although maybe others can comment on this one. My approach for 2011 on the live poker front will be to try and qualify online for as many seats as I can. Keep focusing and keeping my A-Game and preying to the poker gods that sooner or later I have my breakthrough and can put in a really good result live. I seem to get deep in most live deepstack tournaments I play but can never make it to that elusive final table let alone ship one. I guess getting in the volume is key here. Thankfully, DTD is on my doorstep which helps a great deal. I plan on playing every £300 deepstack they have there and winning a few seats to other events around the country/Europe too.

5) Travel. I love travelling and I love how poker can give the freedom to travel. But I don't think as of yet that I'll get that much travelling done this year other than to live events. I'm almost certain I'll go back to Vegas for around 4 weeks in the Summer and maybe book a trip later on in the year. But other than India at the start of the year, this might be a little bit more of a quiet year on this front.

6) Las Vegas. I'm already looking forward to this trip though. This time round I'm going to pit gamble less and hopefully hire a car so that I can play more live tournaments at my own leisure. I'll play less online, if any this time round. I'll see Vegas as a holiday to work towards as well. I'd love to have the roll to play $1ks off my own money without having to sell action and similarly be in great shape before heading to the land of the obese! I mean it's going to be inevitable I'll put on weight over there again, so I might as well prepare myself and get in shape before I go so I don't come back feeling like a massive slob again.

And that's that. I'm clocking out for 2010 now and eagerly awaiting 2011. See you all in the New Year!