2.30am here now & I'm feeling pretty tired. Went to bed at midnight (very early for me) but couldn't sleep so got back up at 1am. I've not been well for the past few days. Its an odd illness as i feel OK in myself, still going out and doing my usual stuff but not feeling like food. Whenever i do eat, even small amounts, i feel sick & worse afterwards... Hoping it clears up soon as it's a nuisance.
I've been intending to go on a mini diet for ages now. I've never dieted in my life before and don't really need to - I'm hardly fat & reasonably active/healthy. Being a bit of a perfectionist, i wouldn't mind losing a bit of belly fat I've acquired over the past few years. Losing body fat is apparently 80% diet & 20% exercise so plan on cutting down my meal sizes and carb intake as well changing my gym program a bit to include more cardio & less weights (as it's currently near enough all weights!). Seeing as I'm off my food at the moment with this virus, ill probably start now seeing as it's probably going to be easier to eat less now rather than cutting down while I'm eating normally.
Anyway, not the best start to the year health wise but hopefully i'm getting the bad bits out of the way early on :)
On to the poker side of things.
2011 - I started the year with plans of making a decent income of the game - taking it more seriously & generally making a respectable income off it. I started off playing largely HU sngs for the first couple of months & did reasonably well at them! I had a sharkscope star in them.
By March I'd gotten a bit bored of HU, my volume had dropped considerably (it wasn't exactly great to start off!) so i switched to 18 mans. Again, i found them pretty decent to play, posted some good results and again posted a reasonable profit. I found my volume was far too low in the smaller field tourneys though to give a decent $/hr income.
By April I'd found myself back at the mtt tables at various sites & also mixing in plo & plo8 cash games with mixed success. Another profitable month but i was hardly making anything worth shouting about!
May through to July my volume was really down. Possibly a result of Black Friday, me cashing out & generally having no direction.
The rest of the year i picked my volume up a little although it wasn't exactly consistent.... I was playing mainly mtts & plo8 18 man sngs on Stars & continued posting reasonably solid results but nothing great.
I finished the year posting a profit of $11,564.50 - Hardly great for someone calling themselves a pro...
Good points i think were my ability to post winning results in a variety of games. The only area i struggled to be hugely profitable in were the cash games but i think that's largely down to my tournament mindset. I'm also pretty pleased with the consistent profit i was posting each month. Only had one losing month and that was during the summer when i hardly played - Was too preoccupied playing golf! lol
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Pokerstars results during 2011
(exc. rakeback & results on other sites) |
As you can see from my graph, my volume is just awful! A lot of pros could post those results from a month, not an entire year! Really got to work on that although being realistic, i don't see myself managing to break the 2000 game mark in a month, especially playing mainly mtts/180 mans (which where I'm going to focus my efforts - more on that shortly)
so... 2012 - Happy New Year! (a little late i know)
Planning some big things this year poker wise. A few months ago i stopped drawing a wage from my business on the side so even though I'm still a director of the company, i won't be taking any money from it or doing much work with it from now on. I'll remain a director but that's about as far as my involvement will be. As a result i really need to take poker more seriously.
As you can see from my 2011 graph, my best results came when i switched to playing mainly mtts & mtt sngs - This news isn't exactly new to me. I've always know they were my best games and that i could achieve my best$/hr playing them. I've just not liked committing the long hours in front of the computer, always choosing the more flexible sngs over more profit.
This year I'm setting myself a bit of a challenge. I never normally set myself public challenges as i'm awful at sticking at things & hate failing so i avoid them. I think i need to make it public though to give me that extra incentive to achieve it.
Inspired by 'Chilin_Dude' 2011 challenge
($300 to $100k - excellent 2+2 thread) I plan to take my current bankroll (about $5k) and turn it into over $50k by the end of the year.
Chilin_Dude successfully turned his $300 into $100k without putting it ridiculous volume and was playing exactly the types of games i will be focusing on & have always done best at so in theory, it should be a walk in the park for me to make $50k this year. We'll see... I definitely need a PMA (positive mental attitude) throughout!
I'm going to be focusing my attention on largely 180 man sngs & turbo mtts. I probably will play some reg speed mtts but focusing on turbos will both give me my best $/hr ($50/hr is my target) & also mean my sessions aren't stupidly long as even the big field turbo mtts only last a few hours.
Naturally, I'm going to encounter my biggest ever downswings but on the basis, I'm also going to have my biggest ever profitable days/weeks & months so bring it on! :)
So, with the scene set, we're already a week into 2012. I started brilliantly by not actually playing at all New Years day or today... Although so far this year i have logged 223 games, 21 hours of playing time & $262.07 in profit. I'm reasonably satisfied with my volume, not overly impressed with my week 1 profit but it is just that... 1 week. I think I've run a bit below EV in the higher buy ins although i have won a few 180 mans which has helped my claw back my losses and make a bit of profit. This is of course just variance though & of course I've not landed any mtt scores just yet.
Overall, I'm fairly satisfied with my start and feeling reasonably positive!
Going to try to keep everyone up to date here as much as possible but i don't seem to have the ability to write short blog entries so if you want to get in touch/keep up dated a bit more, give me a follow on twitter @The_Ivydrive
Cheers.
GL at the tables!
