Monday, January 15, 2007

The Year That Was: 2006 Progress Report

Period: July 05- Dec 31


Its been about six months since I began this blog and began taking poker seriously. A lot has happened to further my poker knowledge during that time, and a lot hasn't happened that I thought would. All in all its been six months of very high ups, very low downs and lots of inbetweenies.

In the Beginning

I went back and read my first ever post today and it was funny to see what all my expectations were back then. For example, in my first post I beleived that I could play 10,000 hands in my first week, when in actual fact it took about 3 months to reach the 10,000 hand mark. In the beggining, I was to make poker and bonus swindling my "sole source of income" as it says in the blog description, but a month or so after the start of the blog I got a regular job which brings in about twice as much in a day than I make in a whole month from my gambling pursuits.

Ring Games

I finished the year up by $481.80 for ring games, which included 1/2 and 2/4 full table, and 50c/1 shorthanded. The biggest thing I learnt, or experienced in ring games was to do with variance. I wasn't prepared for the mental aspects of dealing with the swings that come with any form of poker. I'd like to think that I've improved my control of my feelings and emotions when I'm on a downswing, but I know I still have a long way to go here. To this point I've played 19,000 hands in ring games.

Tournies

For some reason, Poker Tracker doesn't track my tourny stats properly, so I no doubt missed some results from tournies played pre 20/09. After realising the problem I've started keeping track of all my tourny stats in excel. I started off playing mainly large MTT's and 180 person SNG's on Poker stars and full tilt at the $10 buy in level, but I quickly lost 10 in a row and was down $110. I decided to drop down to games at the $5 buy in level and played tournies with less ppl on full tilt, ie. 9 and 90 plyr sng's and smaller MTT's and I've seen my results greatly improve. Recently I managed to completely wipe out my negative balance and make into the black.

Strategy

My original poker strategy was to only play "Nines or better wired, Jacks or better split, three high cards to the flush,"- Rounders. The 'True-grinder' strategy where I would play very tight but about 4 tables at once. I'm not sure whether this strategy is wrong, or if I didn't implement it correctly, or if I was just on a downswing, but I quickly fell down to -$200 and decided to change my strategy. I purchased a book on small stakes holdem and applied their strategies to my game, and from this point saw my results improve and playing also became more fun. Since then I've purchased many more poker books on limit, no-limit, both and some others, but none were as informing as the first.

Stats

Early on I decided to fork out and buy Poker Tracker and download Poker Patterns to track and analyse my stats. These two peices of software are well worth the money and I strongly recomend that every new poker player has them. I had intended to learn how to use them to their maximum potential but didn't really get into it... yet. More recently I've been playing poker on my mac laptop which isn't supported by pokertracker so I haven't been able to use it. Instead I've been tracking my basic result stats in excel, which is good because results never go missing as hand histories often seem to.

Targets

I set myself many targets and goals over the course of the past 6 months but was dissapointed that many of them weren't acheived or weren't acheived as quickly as I'd hoped. The main target that I did reach was that I got to the point of being up by $400 (double the my results low point of -200), and was able to move up in limits from 1/2 to 2/4. I had hoped to have my bankroll up at the 8000 mark by the end of the year, this soon dropped to 7000 then 5000 but I was unable to even make it to that. Many unforceen difficulties contributed to my not reaching the target, so I'm not particularly disspointed, and I'm not going to give up or anything.

My key targets for the months to come are to move up from 2/4 to 3/6 by winning $1000 at 2/4, as well as get my entire bankroll up to $7000 so I can withdraw $3000 which will become my live bankroll.

Casino Bonuses

I'm very happy that I started doing Casino bonuses all those months ago because that is one of the major reasons that I'm where I am today. Over two thirds of my total bankroll are profits from Casino Bonus Swindling and doing bonuses taught me valuable lessons about variance and patience. Unfortunately, as already mentioned, I have been unable to finish of the last of the casino bonuses lately, but I should get back onto them soon.

Affiliate Program

The other reason that I'm glad that I did the casino bonuses is because it has allowed me to develope my affiliate program which I have almost finished now and will hopefully be very successful.

Above and Beyond

I've already discussed my targets for the next few months, but I have some ideas of where I'd like to be by this time next year. I would like to be playing full ring game stakes of at least 5/10 and short handed stakes of 2/4. I would like to have progressed up to the 10-25 buyin tounry level as well as started playing NL holdem cash games. In terms of live play, I hope to build my AU$4000 bankroll up to $13000 then use $1000 to do a course for blackjack-masters and start playing blackjack in the casino for money.

If I can acheie all of the above... I'm considering taking a year after I finish my uni course, which will be in 2 yrs time and become a profesional gambler for a year...

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