Past, Present, and Future

OK, I said I would give a rundown of how 2009 went for me but I'll try to do it without getting overly detailed or turning this into a brag/look-at-me post. Those of you that have known me for a while probaly know I'm fairly modest in reality and in fact I'm still not convinced I'm all that good at poker. Still, I think it;ll be good for me to review where I started from and up to where I am now. Perhaps this should have been done sooner but but better late than never.

Like most, I started by dumping a few bucks onto a poker site and playing here and there. I started with limit cash games and did fine. As with most things I start to do I wanted to "do it right" and learn how to play properly. I found a few sites on the internet and even joined a teaching site called Cardrunners for a couple months. There I learned the basics of 6-max No-Limit cash games and did well playing those also, though I still only played a low volume.

I had seen a couple videos on playing SNGs on Cardrunners and I realized I might like that game more than cash. Eventually I decided to start playing them on Absolute Poker and started at the very bottom with the .60 games. I did very well in them, more likely because the competition sucked more than it was my own skill... I probably was the only guy that a least had a clue.

Naturally I wanted to improve and be able to play the bigger games... like the $5 ones. This is where I contacted Jennifear and had my first lesson with her. Four hours later I realized there was a lot more to this poker than I had ever realized. From this point on is where I began to really take the game more seriously. Lucklily for me I found a great friend in Jen, a friendship that has gone beyond just the poker aspect of things. I'm happy it ended up that way too.

I took another formal lesson with Jen in July of 2008 and this became the "Aha!" moment of my poker career. We covered a lot of the "games beyond the cards" stuff at this point and it just made a lot of things that we had talked about fall into place. There is still a ton of stuff that I can see I still don't fully understand but it was at this point my eyes were really open up wide about how the game works.

In September of 2008 Jen showed me the cashout plan that I've been using and which I've outlined in my plan. The structure of it was a bit looser than it is now but it still gave me an idea of where I was, where I could go, and better yet gave me an idea of how much I could cash out based strictly on how much I played. I never played above my head before, in fact the plan actually helped me understand more where my top-end game actually was (I tend to play too low sometimes... which is better than too high, but whatever).

My bankroll had climbed to around $750 from the $100 I started with at this point. As I played more and used the plan I had I managed to not only cash out some of my winnings but grew the roll to just short of $1300 by the end of 2008. A good bit of this was the fact I really played more games than I ever had previously, but I had learned a lot about the game as well.

That brings us to now. Early 2009 was a struggle to be honest, I had doubts as to what I was doing and really had to wonder if I was good at all. Despite that I kept at it and still showed small profits for both January and February and even had won my first MTT during this time. March thru July proved to me that I had some idea of what I was doing and even managed a few larger scores, moving my bankroll to around $3000 with help from a $600 cash in one of the Daily Doubles on FTP at the end of May. Because of the bigger bankroll I was now playing bigger buy-in games than ever before.

In early August I won the Bodog $16.50 turbo for the first time which pushed the BR over $4000. At this time things went south for a while and showed me for the first time that the bigger games truly can produce bigger swings. When you are playing $1 SNGs, a loss of $5 in a day deoesn't seem bad. However, when you sit down and play $500 worth of tournaments overa weekend and end up down most of that it can get downright sickening the first time you suffer throught it.

Come November I saw my roll drop to under $2800 again. Fortuneately I was still learning what I could from the game and keeping to my "MDFR" mantra. I was constantly checking my play with Jen, Stu, and others to be sure I wasn't the cause of my own demise. Things started to turn around for me at this point and during Thanksgiving weekend I had a huge swing in my favor, winning three different MTTs and ended up profiting close to $2000 in those couple days. Calling this a "confidence builder" might be an understatement but it sure did help knowing that by playing your best all the time, everytime, eventually your luck will catch up with your skill... at least that's what I hope it is.

December started rough but I stuck to it as always and found another big MTT win (as mentioned in my blog already). Which brings us to now, where I stand at a bankroll for a little over $5800. To be honest, I thought getting to about $3000 would have been terrific. Nearly doubling that was far above what I could wrap my mind around at this time last year. In 2008 I had a profit of around $1500, it was $6100 this year, a good chunk of that came in one weekend! Playing tournaments is like that, at least now that I've been through both the ups and downs of it I'll be able to handle them when they come again... and they will.

So here I am, looking to up the ante again by increasing my volume even more than I have in the past. The swings will be bigger but I understand that now. I'll be able to handle whatever comes my way because I have a plan in place. I'm excited about the new year and the challenges it will bring. Let's just hope I can meet those challenges.

Wish me luck! The fun starts in about seven hours. Weeeeeee!