Nearly a year ago, I set some poker goals and resolutions for myself for 2009. It’s time now to review those goals and my progress towards them:

Resolution One: Keep Grinding NLHE Cash Games

This is my bread and butter game, and even if I don’t do anything to improve, just maintaining my current winrate and putting in hours will be very valuable to me. Of course I do want to get better, but my general focus will be on playing rather than doing stuff to improve (posting hands, watching instructional videos, etc.).

This was a bit of a mistake. The 2+2 strategy forums, especially the high stakes ones, have really gone downhill, so I don’t regret not having frequented them. I do feel like I ought to take better advantage of the great instructional videos that are out there, though. It’s a particularly good thing to do when on a downswing or just generally feeling frustrated or a lack of confidence.

Also, I’m not going to worry too much about non-NLHE games. I tried to do it last year, but it didn’t prove too productive. I’ll play/study them when I feel like it, but it’s not going to be a priority. I’m confident in my ability to pick them up quickly should that become necessary/desirable and I choose to devote all my time to it, such that I don’t think I need to prioritize working on them now.

I do think this was the right approach. I just don’t want to dedicate that much time to poker, and I’d rather spend that time making money at a game where I’m already very good than worry about become more well-rounded.

Goal 1: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

It’s very tough to predict or control what you earn playing tournaments. With cash games, though, it’s mostly a question of game selection and putting in hours. My goal for 2009 is to earn in NLHE cash games what I made playing any form of poker in 2008, so that anything from tournaments is just a perk. Hopefully this will help me to keep my focus even if I do make a big tournament score, since that won’t count towards the goal.

Epic fail. I made maybe like 30% of this number in cash games, and I basically broke even in tournaments if you count the 15K PCA prize package I’ve still got coming to me.

Goal 2: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

This shouldn’t be tough, and I’m already off to a good start. Basically I need to earn 100,000 VPP’s (PokerStars’ frequent player reward) over the course of the year. Having earned 3200 already, I’m on course to do this by September.

Last year, I played on Full Tilt almost exclusively because they have rakeback. My understanding is that the Stars VPP program is actually worth more if you devote the time to getting into the top tiers of it, though. Plus bigger games seem to go more frequently and are maybe a little softer.

There are a couple of drawbacks, though. For one thing, I have way more money on FTP than on Stars and it’s not that easy to reload. At the moment I’m mostly grinding up my balance playing 5/10 full ring games, and that’s going OK, so hopefully this won’t be a barrier. But I’ve already passed on a few potentially good 25/50 games for lack of funds.

Also, Stars doesn’t have Deep tables, which are getting really popular on FTP. They do have some tables with a 50BB minimum buy-in, which helps with the short-stacking problem, but I really like playing deep. There are a lot of regulars who can handle a 100BB stack very well but make mistakes playing 200BB deep. Since the bigger games are comprised mostly of regulars, that makes a big difference.

Still, I don’t think Supernova status will be tough to get, so I’m going to go for it. The next level, Supernova Elite, require 10 times as many VPP’s, though, and I don’t think I have any prayer for that.

Fail. I basically gave up on this one halfway through the year. I just don’t like playing on Stars nearly as much as I do on FTP. Full Tilt has the deep stack games and now the ante games that are just so much better. Oh and the ease of playing heads up at higher stakes is really huge too. In order to do this, I would have had to spend a lot of time playing games that weren’t particularly good just to get the FPP, and I didn’t feel like doing that.

Resolution Two: Diversify My Income Streams

I laid the foundation for this last year, but I really haven’t capitalized on it yet. Now that I’m starting to get a higher profile in the poker world, I think there are ways for me both to generate passive income and to combine poker with some of my other interests, such as writing and teaching.

Goal 3: Monetize This Blog

I was surprised by how much I made off of blog ads last year with virtually no effort. In general do find internet ads to be tacky and intrusive, but in this case I am giving away a lot of very valuable information at no cost to you, so I hope my dear readers will understand if there are a few ads on the page. I’ll try to keep it minimally intrusive, and the plus side for you will likely be a nicer layout and better content. Expect to see a new look later this month.

Semi-success. I made some effort to find advertisers, but I never really came across a good enough offer from a reputable company. I don’t want to host ads from shady poker rooms and people who claim to have a product that will help you cheat at online poker, and I’m not really in a huge hurry to get ad revenue, so I’m going to continue being patient until I find something I like.

The blog was helpful, however, in raising my online profile and helping me to get some writing, reviewing, and coaching opportunities. I owe much of that to my girlfriend, who did such a great job giving Thinking Poker a badly needed makeover earlier this year.

Goal 4: Get Back Into Coaching

I’m not going to set an hourly goal for this because I don’t want to force it, but I think I ought to do some more coaching. With the right students, it is in fact very enjoyable and rewarding. Plus, Poker Savvy tells me I can offer my students a free three-month subscription, which hopefully will sweeten the value of the package without costing me any more time. I may also consider doing group sessions that lower the costs for any individual person while helping to get me an hourly rate comparable to that of actually playing poker. Expect to see more information about this soon.

Success! I worked one-on-one with some higher stakes players and also offered a few group seminars for smaller stakes players. Though the latter are a lot of work, both proved very successful. Everyone I’ve worked with has been very satisfied with what I was able to do for them, and many of are already achieving the goals they set for themselves in terms of winning at higher stakes, improving their win rates, and just generally feeling more confident at the tables.

From my end, I got to meet and work closely with some very smart and very cool people from all around the world. Playing poker is generally such a competitive, individualized, dog-eat-dog experience that it’s nice to take a break from that and work cooperatively with other players (not at the tables, of course!) towards a common goal. Helping others to succeed is very rewarding, and I’m looking forward to more of it in the coming year.

Goal 5: Market My Writing

I’m still just doing the easy stuff, writing for the occasional people who approach me. I think I want to get my name out there a little bit more and publish in some more high-profile ways. I don’t know about writing my own book, but I’m in discussions with a well-known player now about contributing a chapter to a book he’s doing.

Meh. I didn’t end up doing too much with this. Other than showing up in translation on a Finnish website and seeing occasional blog posts show up on the Poker Savvy and Cardplayer feeds, I didn’t do much with this. Maybe next year…

Resolution Three: Improve My NLHE Skills

This is a lower priority than just putting in hours. Then again, practice is the single best way to improve, so I want to do what I can to maximize the learning value of my time at the tables.

Goal 6: Use Poker Tracker More Effectively

I barely use Poker Tracker for anything beyond record keeping, and I know I’m only getting like 10% of its value. I often don’t even use the HUD because it distracts me when I’m playing a lot of tables. But I want to be able to do at least some basic evaluation of my play to try to identify some leaks, such as I found with suited connectors in one of my year-end posts. Plus I want to put together a HUD layout that is truly useful for me.

Fail. I’ve been living nomadically since September and playing pretty much exclusively on my laptop, where I didn’t have Hold ‘Em Manager. Even on my desktop, I didn’t always use it because I found the HUD intrusive when playing a lot of tables. That’s more of a problem on the smaller laptop screen, but I need to figure something out, because it’s too valuable of a tool to ignore.

Goal 7: Finish the Year with a 4BB/100 Win-Rate at 5/10 NL.

This is somewhat beyond my control because I won’t play a large enough sample size (there are good players who have had 100K hand break-even streaks), but if I can maintain this win-rate, which I think is about twice what my “true” rate is now, I’ll be in great shape.

Semi-Fail. Overall I’m happy with most of my win-rates. I’m actually doing a lot better at 10/20, and in both games combined, I’m at 2.6 BB/100 over 250K hands. Drilling down even further to games at those stakes with 3 to 6 players, which are my real bread and butter, and I’m at 3.4 BB/100 over 140K hands. I’ve got 25K hands at 25/50 NL with a 2 BB/100. I’m happy with all of that, even if the 5/10 rate isn’t quite where I’d like it to be.

Goal 8: Play 50,000 Hands of Heads Up NLHE

If I’m not going to do PLO, heads up is probably the next best game for me to get better at. At stakes above 10/20, it’s often the only way to get action, and that’s even more true the higher you get. Not to mention that thinking through heads up situations makes you better at playing marginal hands in general. Maybe I’ll read and review Moshman’s new book as well….

Success! I played 47K hands of heads up NLHE with a 5 BB/100 win-rate, so close enough.. Zeroing in on just the 5/10 and 10/20 games gives me 40K hands with a 6 BB/100 rate. Still haven’t read Moshman, though.

Milestones

Largest Pot Won

Kings over Queens at a 40/80 deep table

Largest Pot Lost