I had forgotten that you have to have a subscription on sharkscope to reset your stats, so tomorrow I will re-up with them and reset everything.  I have had a good couple of days at the tables on FTP, so even though I still have a small bankroll, it’s gone from “nano” to “micro”.  I am playing in 2 large tourneys today, the Big Little tourney and the 100k guarantee.  I satellited into both of them with FullTilt Points.  With the proper amount of run good, I could start my year off with a few thousand dollars in the bankroll.  How hard could it be to outlast 33,000 other players?

Crossposted on CardPlayer.com

One of the skills that I have been sorely lacking in developing as a poker player is an honest assessment of my play.  When I play well (or at least do well) I feel like shouting from the rooftops and want to talk to everybody about how good things are going.  When I do poorly, I just want to shut down and not think about it.  That is a destructive cycle for a player and one of the habits that I am most in need of breaking.  Doing well at the tables doesn’t necessarily mean I played well and doing poorly doesn’t necessarily mean I played poorly.  If I get knocked out of 10 tourneys in a row on the bubble to guys who had 2 outers get there, I wasn’t playing poorly.  Making time to review my play and honestly assess what I did right and what I did wrong are going to be important.

Tangentially, SawItOff offered a few relevant opinions that I would like to respond to.  He made some good points.  First, he said, ” After you have been playing online for 5 years or so, and are break even at best, I cant see an epiphany happening for you. Online poker is evolving at a rate that is hard for the pros to keep up with.”  That’s a valid point, I just happen to disagree.  I’ve always played by instinct and let the chips fall where they may (pun intended).  In the 5 years that I have played online, I have spent very little time trying to improve my understanding of the game, I just kept playing and when I had bad runs, just tried to do better next time.  I’m not saying that I will definitely get better and that by the end of 2011 I will be a poker god, but I do believe that poker is a skill game and like any skill, you can get better, even if you have been doing it a long time.

SawItOff also said, “ ”SnGs, mtts and cash games.” Like all the great players, you have to find where your skill set fits in best. The ebb and flow of cash games to sngs is like night and day. Find one thing and stick to it!”  Agreed.  I have to admit that my statement in that post seemed all-encompassing.  I am going to play SNGs mostly.  That’s where I am comfortable and that is where I feel like I am closest to being really good.  The MTTs will be just on the weekends and mostly as I satellite in.  I want to do them simply because of the fact that they have such enormous payouts.  One Sunday Million win or FTOPS or WCOOP win would be life changing for me, so I don’t want to continue passing up those opportunities.  The cash-game learning will be on what would otherwise be down time.  I want to be well rounded, but I’m not going to try and make cash games my bread and butter.  I don’t have that in me, I don’t think.

And don’t worry, buddy, I’m not going to put all my money into it.  I never wager something I can’t afford to lose.  My Dad taught me that, but that’s a story for another time.

Crossposted on CardPlayer.com.

I’ve been rethinking about starting all this poker revamping on January 1st. Why wait? It seems like an unnecessary conceit to need some line of demarcation like the start of the New Year. I think this weekend I will reset all of my Sharkscope stats and begin the tracking of my stats on CardPlayer.com.

2011 is the year that is going to make or break me as a poker player.  This is the year that I’m going to make a real go at building a bankroll into something that matters.  I’ve been grinding sideways (as my brother puts it) for years now and my results in 2011 will decide whether I am going to pursue poker as a revenue stream or just continue to be a recreational player.

About Me:  I am a highly experienced amateur player.  I have played some form of poker since I was 5 years old (I’m 40 now).  I have had online poker accounts since around 2004 with my first forays into real money play in 2005 (I think).  I have enjoyed some successes and failures but have maintained a small bankroll of no particular consequence for many years.  I am small time to the point that I have had many meals in my life that cost more than my entire poker bankroll.

My Goals:  In 2011 I plan to post a profitable year and improve as a poker player.  I think I am going to leave it rather vague as I don’t want to draw a line that says I need to have 10k (or whatever) in my account by the end of the year or I quit.  That’s not the purpose of what I am doing.  My main purpose is to get disciplined, fix my leaks, and learn how to continously improve my skills while posting a profit.  If I have only made a few hundred dollars by the end of the year, but feel like I’ve solidified my game, I will take that as a win.  If you look at my Sharkscope, I’m a losing player.  I was looking at that not to long ago and feeling a little bummed by it.  I soon turned to rationalizing it.  I was thinking that what I have lost is a fraction of the rake I have paid over the years, so I’m beating the games, just not the rake.   I hope you spot the BS in that way of thinking.  The rake is part of the game, too.  If you can’t beat it all, you are still losing money and it doesn’t matter who is getting it.  I’m pretty sure that SharkScope is missing some wins and since they didnt keep track of MTTs until fairly recently, I have lost less than what they say.  I’m not precisely sure how much, because I haven’t kept good records, but I haven’t deposited that much money online, so the discrepancy is in the hundreds of dollars.

My Game Plan:  I currently have just slightly under $200 in my FullTilt account.  My wife agreed to let me invest a few hundred more dollars into online poker so I think I’m going to put up another $600.  Originally I had planned to spread $200 each into PokerStars, UB and Doyle’s Room, but I’m starting to question the wisdom of that.  I get rakeback on Doyle’s Room and the games are soft, but you have to play whatever is available there since it doesn’t have the same traffic as FullTilt or PokerStars.  I’m going to have to ponder on this awhile.

I’m going to focus on SNGs and MTTs mostly with some micro stakes cash games thrown in just to learn.  I currently suck at cash games and it is definitely a growth area for me.

I want to learn to use the different stats trackers (I have Poker Tracker 3) to analyze my game and look for improvement.  I have all kinds of information available and use next to none of it.  Huge leak in my game there.

I’m going to use CardPlayer.com as a resource for my development this year.  I will input my play and use it to track how I’m doing, plus use the blogs as a sounding board for my ideas.  It should also help me order my thoughts and keep the focus on my primary goals.

That’s enough for now, I hope to see you at the tables.

Changed the Wordpress Theme and am going to try to revive the old blog over the next few months. I will be talking mostly about my endeavors to create a name for myself in the poker world, but I have a life outside of poker and there will be personal commentary, too.

I have sparked an interest in poker in at least two of my friends, Joseph and Todd.  I am proud of how quickly Joseph has become a reasonable threat at the tables and would be willing to bet that Todd can become one in short order, too.

I find it a little disappointing that I am down to #6 on the Google Search “I hate Home Depot“. Maybe because the blog is getting dusty, maybe because I just don’t have the traffic I used to. Either way, I still hate Home Depot.

I’m optimistic that this 3rd attempt will also fail miserably.

Sooner or later this will work and all of my accounts will be linked.

This is a test post to see if my blog posts show up in both Twitter and FaceBook.  This is only a test.

Update:  Didn’t work.