My January consisted of me working the first 2 weeks at my job and the last 2 weeks I grinded 8 sessions. Tilt seems to be my biggest issue and I think by the 4th session of the week I got it pretty much nipped in the bud. For these 8 days I made 6 fts, 4 of which 1st made at least 1k. I got, 2nd, 5th, 7th, and 6th in those. I ran really poorly at those fts. Had I won 2 key hands(yes I got sucked out on pretty bad) in the 25/25k I'm probably looking at making 7k in January, but that seems to be my MO when it comes to big mtts.

What I'm proud of since I started playing for a living:

-I got 4 weight lifting sessions last week
-I got 3 30 minute sessions on my recumbent bike
-Because of the 2 above I lost 5 lbs
-I've gotten better at not tilting mostly because putting in 169mtts in 8 sessions u get numb to bad beats


Things I need to work on:

-reviewing more of my hhs
-posting more in strategy forums
-start meditating every day

What I can do to improve on the above is I think I can post in the strategy forums at least once a day. I'm thinking that reviewing a hh on my off days is the best I can do. Meditating I think would work best right before a session, but I find myself often rushing to make some lunch right before I start playing at 3pm.

Now that I have put in some time grinding full time I think I need to set some goals.

Personal Life:
-Get a routine going such as sleep schedule, days off, etc.
-Lose 100 lbs this year, yes I'm a fat bastard

Money-wise:

Tier 1- Make 38k for the year; this would allow me to live really comfortably however I wouldn't add any money to my savings/roll

Tier 2- Make 47k for the year; I think this is achievable unless i suck at poker, I guess we will see

Tier 3- Make 100k for the year; I'd have to run amazingly well for this to happen, but hey I can dream right?

Poker:

-Hit a new high score, currently my biggest cash is 3.7k; this should be pretty easy
-Hit a 5 fig score
-20k roll
-30k roll
-I'd like to go to vegas during the wsop this year; this really depends on how grinding goes. Most likely this won't happen this year.

The updated totals:

MTT buy ins: $391.70
MTTs played: 20
Cashes: 2
FTs: 1
Money won: $374.40
Profit: -$17.30

Year to date:

Total ROI: 23%
Total Profit: $770.58

At work things have been really slow, so my company I still technically work for decided to transfer 6 of us to other departments for less pay. I wasn't really crazy working for 4k less per year so I decided to quit. I'm going to take a shot at playing small/mid stakes mtts starting out around a $22 average buy in.

This wasn't an easy decision I went through a range of emotions after finding out I was being transferred. At first I was pissed, which seems obvious. I was like fuck this place I'm going to play poker for a living w/out really looking at the big picture. About a week or 2 later I got irrationally scared because my family was telling me it was a bad idea and in most cases my family gives great advice, but they don't understand that over the long run poker is absolutely profitable. Finally after talking to a few more friends who were in good jobs and who could easily take a shot if they were single told me it seemed like a feasible and maybe even a great idea. At that point after looking at living expenses, my bank roll, and my savings I decided this might be my only shot to give this a try.

I took a careful examination of whether keeping my job or going pro(I say going pro cuz it's quicker then saying playing mtts for a living) was the best idea. The money assuming I have around a 50% roi was going to be a bit more going pro so this point was a wash. Benefits, well benefits have gotten worse the more I worked at my job and expect it to get much worse when our contract ends in July, but still my previous job had an edge here.

The next thing I looked at was which option would I be happier. Playing a game I love with the ability to put 100% of my energy into it given my competitive drive has a huge edge over doing some mundane, slightly dangerous job. At my job I was going to have to work from 6pm-6am 14 of every 28 days which sounds beyond shitty where as going pro I'd work 8-12hrs/day starting around 2pm 5 days/week again edge by a long shot goes to going pro. The next thing to look at was taking personal days off. At my job even if you're sick with a doctor's excuse you get charged an incident after 3.5 incidents in you're in deep shit and can't miss another day for like a year or you're close to getting fired, poker you can take a day off whenever the fuck you want, edge by a long shot poker.

So as of today I have about an 11k bank roll and close to 8 months living expenses. As I mentioned I'm going to start out playing around a $22 abi and get in about 400 mtts/month. I'll post a bit in what my goals are for 2010 including some life goals in a few days.

I heard that the wbcoop is coming up on pokerstars. The wbcoop is a series of freerolls for poker bloggers and since I both blog and like free money I'm going to sign up to play.




I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker! The WBCOOP is a free online Poker tournament open to all Bloggers, so register on WBCOOP to play.

Registration code: 225608

I had a really weird 2009. I made 4 fts to big mtts for me during the first 3 months and ran really bad at them getting 2 4ths and 2 8ths. However I did manage to increase my roll by almost 65%. Then I went on a sick downswing from after my last of the 4 fts until around August where I lost almost half my bankroll. From August until the end of year I made just under 7k. I missed my goal of making 10k which seemed like a lock early on and managed to make 5.7k for the year which is really disappointing considering I made 3.5k in the first 3 months.

I told myself I would greatly reduce the amount of time I spend playing/studying poker if I didn't make 10k. At this point it seems really stupid to quit as I feel I've grown a ton as a mtt player. Although I ran bad for most of the year I'm sure if I was as good as I am now 7 months ago I might have binked something biggish during that big downswing. What turned around my year besides improving was game selection. I've become more conservative with my bank roll and unlike the first 6 months my bigger buy ins are in smaller mtts with 600 or less runners which means playing a ton of UB 44s and 66s, I've binked 2 of these in the last few months.

Something that I noticed looking at my results is when I was on my crazy swing shift schedule (working 3 different shifts in a week) I was down roughly 6k and in the 4.5 months I was on a set schedule I was up around 12k. My thinking is playing on a fucked up schedule = a terrible idea.

For the year my 4 figure cashes were:

FTP $26 4th for 2.3k - Jan
FTP $26 4th for 2.3k - Mar
FTP $11 1st for 1.4k - Jul
FTP $11 1st for 1.4k - Sep
Stars $5q 1st for 2.3k - Sep
UB $44 1st for 2.3k - Oct
UB $66 1st for 3.7k - Dec.

October I'm really not sure how I did somehow I misplaced 1k of my bankroll due to some math errors after adjusting for an extra 1k I made right around 1.9k. After my first 2 sessions where I played 34 mtts and managed only a $86 cash I won a UB $44 mtt for $2.3k I also took down a stars $8/6 max after making a deal I won $600.

After my crushing downswing I decided to change up my game selection. I think a big part of my downswing besides variance was my biggest buy in mtts (nightly $55s) also had some of the biggest fields. I cut the $55s out and lowered my abi a bit and added 2 mtts that are $44-75 so long as they have smaller fields. It seems to work and negates a bit of varaiance where instead of busting 300th in a $55 and being out the entire $55 the smaller field mtts I have a better shot of at least mincashing much less fting.

I also changed my attitude. With my roll just under 10k I see no problem playing some smaller stuff to build it safely instead of going for the big score (5 figures for me) over and over and seeing me not cash in 25-30% of my total session buy ins.

August was terrible I finished the month playing 122 mtts and lost $1.5k. September was very much the opposite I only played 72 mtts but finished the month up 3.3k. After my first 2 sessions where all I managed was a mincash. In my 3rd session I finished 5th in a stars $5 quad for $750 and took down an ftp $11 KO for $1.4k. In my 4th session I shipped a $5 quad for $2.3k. That's all for now I have some thoughts but I'll get to them in another blog.