Saturday, December 23, 2006

Poker: End of the year so time for reflection

The end of one year and the beginning of a new one is often a time to reflect on the past and look forward to the future.... so further to my previous post "How Long does it take to become good at poker" (http://sceaga.blogspot.com/2006/06/poker-how-long-does-it-take-to-become.html) decided to analyse my previous (Online) poker results with a view to seeing how I can improve for 2007

2003 was a good year, being $250 up for the year, 2004 cost me $50 but 2005 cost me $300 and this year I spent a whopping $1000 !! I was a little surpised about the apparent worsening of my poker game so thought I had better look into why this may be.... is it me playing worse, the opposition getting bettter or what ???? Luckily $1000 is only £500 today, so about £45 a month habit, therefore still a cheap hobby (Motor racing was costing £5000 a year :-) )

Looking back at 2005 I found that I was playing lots of little games and winning overall, but when I stepped up to the $100 or $200 games I would only have bankroll to play one game and didn't cash in, so a couple of big losses effected my whole year of hard work with the smaller wins. This behaviour is easy to correct :-)

2006 has seen me settle into $20 STT tournaments as my "normal" level, so a bad run will see me lose more than previous years but also I am playing less games so this may be putting pressure on myself to "win" rather than just play my normal relaxed game ? Apart from that, this year has seen me play a more diverse range of games (I now play more cash games generally, but also Omaha and HORSE) so for these types of game am back to being a "beginner" so therefore not winning an average proportion of the games. Finally I have played six different sites (three regularly) during 2006 so wonder if this "flitting around" would effect my game, as it takes a little while to get used to a new interface which would distract from playing the games.

So those are all my excuses, what can I do to ensure I don't have a bad 2007 ?

As discussed in my previous posts, will ensure I have correct bankroll for the game level I am playing. This should ensure I can average out my results against bad runs and give more representative picture of my results (if I am still losing all the time will also have to drop down to lower stake levels!) If I have any really good runs, I will try to cash out rather than escalate the stake levels I play at, so this would ensure I dont just lose what I win (there are some gadgets I really want to buy in 2007 so this will be my incentive to win and cash out ;-) )

Will also try to first focus on my "best" game to build up my bankroll, before then spending my "winnings" on the more exotic games that I am trying to learn... also ensure that I only get into the lowest stake levels for these games as well as my win expectation is very low for these games until I get into them more.

Finally, will get around to reading the poker books I bought months ago ! Particularly for the HORSE games as I need help to master these !!

I think this plan will allow me to get my financial results back on track and reflect my level of play better, so lets see how it pans out during the year

In the meantime, thanks for reading and have a great 2007 (although not if you're playing against me ;-) )

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