April

Goal 1: Average 15 Hours/Week Playing My “Regular” Games

I’ve found that 15 hours/week enables me to earn a pretty healthy income, far more than I could make at any real job I could get, without impeding too much on my lifestyle.

I consider my regular games to be anywhere from 2/4 NL to 50/100 NL as well as big tournaments like the Sunday Majors, the FTOPS, and the WCOOP; time spent playing any of these will count towards my goal.

I’m now a full week ahead of schedule, plus I know I’ll be playing a lot in the coming weeks with the SCOOP going on. That’s good, because I intend not to play at all in late May/early June.

Goal 2: Earn $X in NLHE Cash Games

It’s very tough to predict or control what I will earn playing tournaments. With cash games, though, it’s mostly a question of game selection and putting in hours. It’s not something I’m going to announce publicly, but I am going to set a target, and I am going to put in extra hours towards the end of year if I’m on pace to come up short.

Grrrr, this is like half of what I wanted it to be. I do feel like I’m playing better every day, though, so hopefully I’ll close out the year strong and catch up.

Goal 3: Earn Supernova status on PokerStars

My plan for this is to table select as usual in the beginning of each month, and then assess my progress towards the end of each month. If I’m on pace to come up short, I’m going to put in extra hours above and beyond my weekly goal just grinding 9 tables of $1/2 NLHE (or smaller) until I hit my VPP target for the month. Hopefully this is something I can do relatively stress-free, just an hour or two at a time, when I’m not in the mood to put in a proper session in higher stakes games. To be honest, my hourly rate should still be quite good multi-tabling SSNL, so hopefully this will incentivize me to make a little money in what would otherwise be downtime.

I re-upped my Platinum status like two weeks into this month, so I’m way ahead of pace now. I don’t want to get cocky, but I feel like this is in the bag. I have years’ worth of uncashed VPP’s, too, so hitting Supernova is going to be worth big money to me.

Goal 4: Monetize This Blog

I know I keep saying it, but sooner or later I really am going to look into making money a little more directly from this blog. I feel like it’s right on the cusp of being pretty profitable. That doesn’t have to mean ads, though it might. Maybe I’ll…

I’ve decided I don’t really want to have ads for ad’s sake. If I ever end up with some legitimate interest from people with decent products/sites, I’ll consider it, but as long as I build interest for coaching and book sales, that will be enough for me. Fear not: I intend to continue telling the shady operators where to stick it.

Goal 5: Write a Book

I’ve talked about this before, but this is the first time it’s ever been an explicit goal. I’ve already got some downtime sketched out in the next few months to work on this and have been kicking around some ideas in my head. Rather than trying to write one big, expensive e-book as a lot of people have done, I’m thinking of doing a series of smaller, modular works that could be purchased separately or as a set. Those of you who read this blog regularly are going to be a big chunk of the target audience, so keep an eye out for posts in the next few weeks soliciting your input about what you’d like to see in a poker book authored by yours truly.

I’m proud to say this is now well underway. I’ve got like 20% of it drafted and nearly all of it outlined. Thanks for all your suggestions and encouragement, and please continue to offer ideas as they occur to you. Nothing is set in stone yet!

Goal 6: Average One Blog Post Per Day

I know it’s been a little quiet on here of late. Part of that is the holidays, and part of it is just laziness. I want to get back to posting once a day. There will probably be more non-poker content, and not all of the poker stuff will be equally in-depth, but overall you can expect to see more and better content here.

Definitely fell further behind, I think I only make like 22 posts this month? Hopefully SCOOP will provide some good fodder.

Goal 7: Average Five Hours of Coaching Per Week

Coaching was extremely fun and rewarding for me last year. So far, except for my group seminars, I haven’t done much to market myself as a coach or actively solicit students. I’ve mostly just worked with students as they’ve come to me, and so so far that’s kept me just about as busy as I’d like to be with coaching. I want to ramp it up a bit this year by setting a monthly goal and actively soliciting students if necessary to ensure that I’ve got a regular stream of students.

I haven’t kept up this pace, and I don’t think I will, but I’m happy with how things are going. I’m quite happy with the students I have right now, and I know they all feel like they are getting a lot out of the experience. I could accommodate more students, so if you’re interested, check out my poker coaching information.

Goal 7: Average an Hour a Day of Dedicated Studying and Improvement

I’m going to be very broad about what this can include: reading books, watching videos, reviewing hands in Hold ‘Em Manager, talking poker with a friend, and even blogging (when it’s related to reviewing my play).

Falling further and further behind. The book is taking up a lot of my non-playing time, but I’m OK with that. I do think in some ways I’m getting better as a result of writing it. It forces me to crystallize my thinking on things that I’ve only kind of half-realized until now.

Goal 8: Use Hold ‘Em Manager

I switched from Poker Tracker to Hold ‘Em Manager last year. PT2 is great, but HEM is just better. For the last part of the year, I was playing without it on my laptop. It does get in my way sometimes, but I’d rather learn how to work with it than insist on playing without it.

Still getting better, slowly but surely. I was surprised how lost I felt the few days that it wasn’t working on Stars after the software update. This time last year, I was rarely using a HUD at all, and now I feel blind without one.

Goal 9: Finish the Year with a 4BB/100 Win-Rate at 5/10 NL and/or Higher

Same goal as last year, since I didn’t achieve it but still think it’s very viable. It might be cheating a little, but I’m going to allow myself to count my results from bigger games towards this goal or not depending on whether I do better in them than I do in 5/10 (this was the cast last year). Basically, if I am at 4 BB/100 over a big sample at 5/10, then I don’t care how I’m doing in bigger games. If I’m not doing quite that well at 5/10 but am at 4 BB/100 if I also count bigger games, then that’s certainly a fine result as well.

My win rate at 5/10 is down to 3BB/100, and it’s 2BB/100 if you add in higher games. This is mostly because of a few bad heads up matches, though. If you just look at ring games, I’m over 4.5 BB/100 at 5/10, and a hair over 4 BB/100 including bigger games.

Goal 10: Play 50,000 Hands of Heads Up NLHE at 5/10 and Higher

Last year, my win rate at heads up was twice what it was at ring games. Plus, it’s a great way to improve poker skills in general, and at stakes above 10/20, it’s often the only way to get action.

I’ve got 16K hands, with a negative win rate. That’s not counting the FTOPS $500 heads up tournament, though, in which I took 12th out of over 1000 runners, so that’s something!

How did April treat you?