Goals for 2009

Goodbye 2008, hello 2009!

The last year has been a pretty big rollercoaster for me involving many changes. I decided to take the plunge at the end of the year and quit what was a well paying job to play poker professionally. For anyone who has had a guaranteed salary, you will know this is a difficult thing to give up on, and we are about to see how I do without it!

A brief update on my status - I have moved into an apartment with Christian (ImTheGoatian) in Manchester to start my poker career off...well I had a hiatus from the game for the last year after leaving uni and getting a 'real' job. Unfortunately the draw of poker is too big for me right now, so time to take a shot at making it pro. Along with The Goatian, I am also learning from Jamsym (ValueTowningYou) more with regard to HU NL, and a bit of 6 max. I think that discussing hands and situations with friends is the best way to improve, and both of them are really good players so I'm in a sweet spot to improve my game quickly.

Before now I have never been able to stick to a proper BR managment system, and have inevitably been close to broke, and been broke, a few times. Obv I can't afford this to happen again, so I will be starting at low limits and moving my way up according to strict guidelines. I am going to try a mixture of HU PLO and HU NL, beginning at 50 and 100. My initial goal is to run $2,000 into $8,000 by March 1st, mainly as I have a prop bet with Jamsym as to both reaching certain BR amount by March 1st - I have to reach $8,000 and he has to reach $24,000 (split into $12,000 NL 6max and $12,000 HU NL).

Under my guidelines I will only move up limits when I have 40BI and move down when I have 20-25BI. This may sound strange but I feel very comfortable playing HU PLO at low stakes and 20-25BI is enough I feel, despite the obv variance. I will be starting with $2,000 split over two sites, Expect and PokerStars, and today is my first day.

For now I will have to manually update my progression until my PLOtracker is working, and then hopefully I will be able to post a daily graph. I might post a few interesting hands as well.

OK, so my first day went pretty smoothly. Think I played about 500 hands on PStars mainly at 50PLO, with a little 100PLO when I was fish hunting. Final standing for the day is +$717, so my current balance on PStars is $1,717.91

I plan on playing on both sites tomorrow once I can deposit on Expekt.

That's it for now, hopefully I run good tomorrow...and all of 2009!