End of the Year+Beginning of the Year

Well first, I realize I was ridic lazy with updating my blog last month. It's kinda odd being that it was my best month ever. I shoulda been bragging it up hardcore, but was just never really in the mood I guess.

Anyways, 2009 really ended with a bang for me. See below for my bigtime Dec #'s.

Heads up - $19,589
Other Sng's - $319
Rakeback/Bonuses - $1,367

That makes for a grand total of $21,275. Pretty sick by my standards for sure. What makes it even more sick is how lazy I was with playing the last week or so. It was all good though since I'd just play like 8 games in a day and go 7-1 or some shit. It was nice to end the month in god mode after running like poo in Nov. I still ended up playing a total of close to 500 games, my hours just were not there like they usually are. I must have had a lot of quick matches or something.

Here are my heads up graphs for the month of Dec. I played more on Full Tilt this month then Stars which is a little strange for me, but I completely tore up FT so it worked out nice. In the future I think I'm gonna try to keep more then 50% of my games at Stars.






It feels great to have the kind of success I experienced in Dec. It would be sweet if I could score a couple 20k+ months in 2010.

I'm actually kind of shocked to see that I still made 3 spots on the sharkscope leaderboards despite playing a lot on Full Tilt the last few months. I made the $101-$300 HU total profit, the $101-$300 any game total profit, and the pokerstars total profit leaderboards. I prob could have easily hit top 5 on the first 2 if I had remained playing on stars 100%. However I'm sure there are a few people who could make statements like that.

I consider 2009 a success for me. Here are the goals that I had made for 2009 in an entry around this time last year:

1. Play at least 625 heads up games/month(at least 20% at the $230 level)

2. Control tilt(getting better at this all the time, but I still go a little retarded every now and then)

3. Exercise 3 times/week(gotta get back into doing this, healthy body=healthy mind)

4. Continue to study/improve my play

5. 100k profit(if I keep my 4 goals above this should happen)


I didn't quite accomplish #1. I averaged playing about 565 heads up games/month this year, however my % of games that were at $230 and up was way above 20%. Not sure exactly what it was but prob around the 85% range. My main game continued to be the $115 in the beg of the year, but after scoring a 19k month in April(9k more then my previous best at the time) playing mostly $230/$345 I never really looked back. So even though I didn't avg 625 games/month, I'm still gonna consider this goal as a success being that I killed the 20% at $230+ goal.

Goal #2 is kind of hard to tell. I def tilted. I don't think I'll ever get to a point when I don't tilt at all. It's just my style, I realize that now. Trying to get rid of tilt completely for me is just not gonna happen. However I will say I did "control" my tilt better overall so this goal was also a success.

Goal #3 was, without a doubt, a failure. Getting exercise and staying healthy is such an overlooked part of success in this game. When I play after getting in a good sweat I always seem to be thinking more clearly, and get tilty/upset way less when things don't go my way. I kinda started off strong with this goal the first 2 months then it went to complete shit until about Nov when I picked up doing it again and have been doing it ever since.

Goal #4 I will call a success. I think I study the game more then I even realize I do. I'm constantly reading different articles on poker strategy and whatnot. It's great that after all the time I've put into this game I still find different strategical concepts amazing. The game constantly evolves also, so there is always something to think about. I've also made a habit of going back through a game in the hand replayer when I'm done playing it and looking through all the hands. This is basically studying the game, and seeing where maybe I fucked up and could have done something differently etc etc. I feel I am a better player now than year ago. You have to constantly improve in this game. In poker not improving is like going backwards.

Goal #5 was a monetary target that I was hoping would be the end product of accomplishing the other 4 goals. I finished the year with a poker profit of $139,103, so I obv nailed this one.

Now it's onto 2010. My 2010 poker goals are going to be the same as above with changes to goals #1 and #5

1) Play an avg of 550 games/month.(I'm not gonna push myself with crazy volume goals or anything. I don't want poker to become too much of my life. I will be happy with 550 games a month. Quality over quantity FTW. Maybe if I'm feeling motivated I'll be able to avg over 600.)

5) 150K profit.(If I can match what I did this year I'll be happy, but 150k sounds like a nice round figure to shoot for.)

I'm also debating how hard I want to push playing higher stakes games. I feel uber comfortable in the $230 and $345 right now, but still can't help but feeling a little uneasy playing $570. I will prob just keep with what I'm doing now and randomly take shots in the $570 when I feel like it. Who knows, at the beg of 2009 I was very uneasy about playing the 230's. Maybe by the end of 2010 I'll be a 570 reg. Never know.

I am also going to try to keep updating my blog somewhat consistently. I'll try to not have a repeat of the 1 post performance of Dec. The times of making 10 posts a month I think may be over, but I will def update on a weekly basis. You can count on your pal bartchalker.

Good luck in 2010

bartchalker