Poker Wannabe: 2/2/2005 - January Recap

Yet another month has come to an end and my poker career continues to boom. I played pretty exclusively at 5/10 six-max both on my "main site," Empire, and on any site I was whoring at, switching to 5/10 full or 3/6 or 4/8 six-max only if 5/10 SH (short-handed) was unavailable. Doing this served me well as, for the third consecutive month now I had my best month ever online.

Serious live play also made a reappearance in January as I made not one but two casino trips. Despite my losing month-end trip, I still did very well overall, including notching my first-ever live casino tournament win. Overall, I posted my best live-play results since August.

So overall, I posted my best winnings (earnings?) month by far, eclipsing December, the previous record, by more than 60%. It's been a great month.

One thing I can attribute my success to is maintaining a fairly active life outside of poker. I work a full-time day job. I go to the gym and exercise regularly. I play video games and hang out with friends. I read. All of this activity helps prevent the time I spend playing poker from becoming dull and repetetive. I tend to play online an average of only about two hours a day (albeit six tables at a time) and that allows me to stay fresh and on top of my game every single hour I'm at the tables. There's no playing by "remote-control" and thus suboptimally. I also focus my play to the most lucrative times--late evenings during the week, and late evening to late night on the weekends. I could almost certainly win more if I played more, but I think keeping my play time limited to the most profitable times when I'm in my sharpest frame of mind yields by far the largest returns for my time invested. Is it really worth it to increase playing time by 50% if it will only increase profits by 10 or 15%?

There's a great thread over at 2+2 where people talk about playing lots of poker and going into "poker daze" where they just sit there day in and day out playing poker and compiling all this money, but get little actual satisfaction out of life. That's one thing I'm trying to avoid. Instead of becoming a money-hoarding machine, I've made sure to spend a little bit on things I'd enjoy but which aren't necessary and/or pure investments. I bought a second LCD monitor. I'll be getting XM radio for my car. Nothing too extravagent, but I figure instead of just investing and nothing else, I should enjoy this extra income a little bit while I have it.

I am definitely hesitant to get too comfortable with what so far has been essentially printing money. Every day on 2+2 I read about at least half a dozen self-proclaimed successful poker players, who have won so much money over so many tens of thousands of hands, going on excruciatingly long losing streaks of hundreds of big-bets over ten, fifteen, even twenty thousand hands. My biggest downturn so far has been 130BBs, so I'm just waiting for my day to come. I don't doubt at all that one of these months I'll barely break even, or even lose some, over 20 or 25,000 hands.

And who knows, maybe I'll turn out to be one of those guys who wins tons of money over a matter of 6 or 8 months, and then loses it all over the next 6 or 8 months. All I can do is keep my expectations for results low, my standards for my own play high, and stay focused on each individual hand. That's what I've done so far and it has worked. I can only hope it continues to work in the future.

Poker Wannabe

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2/2/2005 - January Recap

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