Journey To Being an Online Poker Pro

Happy New Year everybody!  Hope everyone has had a great holiday season and a great New Year’s Eve.  Unfortunately I had to work and got to witness all the drunks staggering around the hotel and out front.  It actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be but I’m extremely tired right now.  I’d go to bed but I started playing this small buy in tournament on PokerStars when I got home.  That was 4 1/2 hours ago and I’m still going.  Blinds are really catching up to me but I’m hanging in there, standing 24th out of 28 remaining right now.  I’m also playing .50/$1 on Full Tilt right now and I’m up $135 so far.

Every year people make their New Year’s resolutions and I was thinking about certain things I’d like to accomplish with online poker and life in general this year.  Below are some of my goals for the year:

$4/$8 Blinds

This one is obviously for cash games.  Right now I’m playing mostly .50/$1 but I think I can make it as high as $4/$8 and maybe even $5/10.  For now I’m going to go with $4/$8 because, at the moment,  I don’t get a whole lot of time to play so I will have to run good and be on my A game for most of my sessions to get there.  Based on my bankroll and win-rate requirement, that means I’ll need $8K to play on this level.  My account on Full Tilt was up as high as $1800 due mostly to a great run in December.  I owed a friend of mine some money that he really needed so I cashed it out of my Full Tilt account and now I’m down to about $1100.  At PokerStars I’m starting a fair bit lower so my goal for that site will be $2/4, $3/6 at most.  I’m only at $225 on that account so it will be more of a grind until I can break through like I have on Full Tilt.

Tournament Title Goals: Midnight Madness, Daily Double

These are two tournaments I’ve had really good runs in and the fact that I haven’t been able to get there is frustrating as hell.  I haven’t been able to play these very much because with my graveyard shifts, I wouldn’t be able to finish the tourney.  No point in even starting if you can’t finish, right?  The Midnight Madness starts at 9:00pm PST while the Daily Doubles start at 6:00pm PST.  I start at 11:00pm PST so really it would be kind of pointless.  However, having finished 3rd in the Madness and 6th in a Daily Double as well as a few top 30 finishes in each, I feel I can get there with a little more tournament play improvement.  Which leads me to…

Play More Satellites to Bigger Tournaments

If I do get to play more on the weekends, I want to play some of the bigger tournaments.  Sundays are clearly the biggest day of the week as far as playing in tournaments are concerned.  The Sunday Million at PokerStars is the biggest of them all, with a $2.5M guarantee prize pool it guarantees a 6 figure pay out for a few lucky players every week.  There are also others such as the Second Chance and Sunday Brawl on PokerStars as well as the $750K Guarantee on Full Tilt, all of these to name but a few.  I’ve played in each and cashed in each but no real deep runs in any of them.  There are much better online tournament players that somehow crush the tournaments every week and I’d love to be one of them some day.  So, to get into these tournies I’m going to start playing the lower buy-in satellites to try and get my seat that way.  If I can get my roll up through cash games I can maybe buy straight in but I don’t want to have to spend the money if I don’t have to. 

Healthier Diet and Exercise

Some may be wondering what diet and exercise have to do with how one plays poker but the truth is it can be very important.  Eating a healthy diet with plenty of exercise keeps the blood flowing, keeps your attention span at the table, allows you to focus better.  I have not been eating well at all and am not happy where I am health-wise.  I had a bit of a wake up call today playing in my annual alumni volleyball tournament and let’s just say I was choked to play the way I did.  I know a major factor was conditioning so I’ve make a pledge to myself to get into better shape, not only for poker but for everything in general

Hopefully as the year goes along I will be able to reach some, if not all, of these goals.  As always I will let you know how it’s going periodically and I look forward to playing throughout the New Year.

Tournament Update:  Just busted out in 22nd.  Not bad, I suppose, and it did pay $48.  I guess winning 12x your buy-in isn’t bad at all.  If it was a 10K buy in and I won 120K I’d be very happy so that’s how I have to look at it.  Man I can’t wait to get that one good win.  It’s gonna happen, I almost guarantee it!