Monday, December 31, 2007

Goals reached and the new year

I hope everyone had a nice time over the holidays and that everyone is safe tonight. I myself pulled the short straw tonight so I'm the one who has to drive on "amateur night," but it's probably good anyway. At least tomorrow I won't be piecing together my night during the bowl games.

This year I didn't get into a college bowl game pool, that sucks. Thank god it's almost time for March Madness, but I am dreading the 2 worst months in sports which are approaching ever so quickly. I'll just have to learn to avoid ESPN again. :sigh: I guess it won't be that bad.

On the poker front I had a great December making almost $1200 if I recall correctly. I'll probably get some more exact numbers up once I'm able to review my records, but that's pretty accurate. I was also able to acheive my goal of getting my bankroll up to $3k by the end of the month. I rewarded myself for that with a small cashout that will hopefully be the first of many throughout the new year.

My game really took off this year compared to the last few years that I've been playing. I've made more money and taken more positive steps than ever before. The idea of having a constant supplemental income from poker has now become a possibility that I hope to make a reality throughout 2008. So with that in mind here are my goals for 2008:

- Getting a minimum of $500 into my bank account every month
- Becoming a consistent winner at the $60 SNGs on Stars
- Playing and beating $5/10 Limit Hold 'Em for over 1BB/100 hands
- Reaching 'Supernova' status on Poker Stars

Those are in order of importance to me over the year. I will need to work up to many of these and I will be making more short term goals from month to month to help me attain these. I believe that all of them can be done as long as I continue to learn and focus on the game. I have never been more focused than I am now with regard to becoming a better player and I don't plan to stop anytime soon.

2008 is going to be my best year playing poker ever.

Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas!

I hope that everyone has/had/is having a good Christmas with their family. I ended up getting a lot of things with relation to moving out. I guess it's about that time. Eh it was a good run living off of my parent's money =D

I have finished my 2 year degree over at fullerton college, so I suppose that I can put 'college graduate' on resumes now. I should probably look into getting a new job too.

Lots of changes coming in the next few months for me as I start up at Cal State Fullerton.

On the poker front I decided to give myself a gift and sign-up for SNGicons, so far it seems like a pretty good investment. I have really wanted to work on my SNG game for some time. I think the only reason I was winning before is because I naturally play tight and that just worked out for me. Now I feel like I'm grasping more of the fundamentals of the game itself. Or I could be wrong, but I at least feel more confident - and that's always good.

I hope everyone has a happy new year and if you see me online feel free to say hello. I'll be playing a lot in the coming weeks.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

My Triumphant Return to Limit

As the title may suggest I've started playing limit again. I just love it too much to stay away. There is nothing more fun to me than being able to pound people like to can in limit. When you make that river check/raise that you can tell hits the other guy like a punch in the face. The raise that forces him to think for a second after he had been insta-betting the entire hand. He thinks, acknowledges that he's fucked and then pays you off anyway.

Who said no limit was sexier?

So basically I've been 8-16 tabling $1/2 LHE on stars for the last week. I've put in about 4k hands and am running at 1.5BB/100 but I think that I can get myself up to 2BB/100 if I work at it. I'm already rolled for $2/4 but I want to make sure I'm really comfortable with my game at one level before moving up. Probably going to play another 6k to 11k hands at $1/2 before going and demolishing the $2/4 games.

This move has also allowed me be the points junkie that I've always wanted to be. I'm about an hour of play away from goldstar for this month and I think that I'll be able to get up to platinum during January. Since I won't be in school, all the important things get to come back into my life. By important I of course mean poker, partying, and going to the gym. I'm already excited for it.

To update on the bet I covered briefly last post:

- 17 people entered
- $50 a person, for a total of $850 to the winner
- I have over $120 in side action with more to come I'm sure
- I'm already down around 221 for a loss of 13.6lbs.
- No one else has a chance.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

The Bet

Long delay between posts I know, but it is finals time for us college students and I've been quite busy.

As you may guess that does mean that I haven't had much time to play poker, but when I have played I've felt pretty good about how I'm playing. I've recently focused more on 6-max cash games as opposed to full ring, for 2 reasons:

1. It's a little more fun to be able to play more hands, play more read-dependent poker, and get to be more aggressive.

2. It keeps me from turning into a robot and playing 12 tables because I just can't play that many for 6-max. Right now I'm usually only at 4.

Poker updates will probably come in the next couple days as I should have a good amount of time to put in at the tables. I have a cash goal for the end of the month that may or may not be attainable, it probably just depends on me putting in the hours.


Now on to more interesting things, prop bets. The company that I work for has started a prop bet about losing weight. $50 to enter, whoever loses the highest % of their body weight in 60 days takes the entire prize pool. Over 20 people have entered and the pool is looking mighty fat. As some of you may know about 1 year ago I weighed in at about 290 pounds and through not much more than my diet I've been able to drop myself to just below 230. I still have a lot of weight I can lose though (I'm about 6'1") and feel really good about my odds for the bet. I used to wrestle in high school and the discipline involved in cutting the weight shouldn't be too hard. My goal is to be down 40-50lbs. by the end of the bet. That should put me around or over 20% of my body weight. I can't see the competition beating that, especially as many of them are over 40 and it's not going to be as easy to lose weight as they think.

So I'm on a super crash diet (compared to what I was eating) and I'll be going to the gym quite a bit more over the course of this time. The final date is 2/8/08, so wish me luck =D