Catching Up

2 Feb 09 - Yes, I have been lazy with documenting my poker travails over the past few weeks. Partly, I was disappointed that I missed out on the WPT Beau $10k and so I decided to take my ball and go home. But yes, I have been playing....

So a little background on 2009. First of all, I have made the commitment to focus exclusively on donkaments this year. My cash game play will go way down, as I'm going to spend the next 11 months improving my MTT game. Certainly, in my opinion, cash game play is more consistently profitable with less volatile, short-term variance and seems like a better (smarter?) route for those who want to carve out a living full time. For me, however, MTT is what captures my attention these days. And being focused on winning is critically important, and I just don't feel like I possess that trait in the cash games. I am more inclined to the constantly changing landscape of MTT; the fundamental mathematics behind it; and the competitive, survival aspect to it. So... there you have it. MTT it is for 2009.

With all that said, I did not go to Tunica mainly because my bankroll is insufficient for a week-long trip with buy-ins, expenses, and what-not. I am doing my best to follow some reasonable semblance of bankroll management, and it would be a gross misapplication of my roll to spend $2k on buy-ins by basically taking shots all week against large fields. Also, my sometimes backer(s) aren't as keen on spending $$$ on poker in the current economy... so I am on my own. Which is cool, because I haven't really done much to warrant backing anyway. And honestly, I would rather grind up a roll and do it myself. The idea of makeup and 50% equity seem gross when you finally score big. It's bittersweet, so I am going to find a way around it.

With that said, I have played a few of the weeklys at the Beau, per usual, with nothing interesting to report. The poker room has been pretty sparse, which may be due to a variety of factors, but hopefully due to the conclusion of the WPT and the crowds at Tunica. Hope so. I have also been playing online. This is one of my main goals for the year - to play online as much, if not more, than live. Putting in MTT volume is very difficult live, and it just hampers the learning curve to play only 3 tourneys per week. For instance, I played around ~125 tourneys in 2008. I played 40 in the last week online. In the last week, I have played 3500 hands online in about 50 hours. By my calculations, that amount of hands would take you 14 8-hour days to achieve live. The amount of experience and the raw volume of hands you can attain online is unrivaled, and it's just stupid for me to pretend that option doesn't exist...

So, that's the roadmap for '09. I hope to continue to improve and post some worthy results. I also may be at the Beau this Sat/Sun for the $20k gtd weekend events. Good luck to everyone playing, most notably Mean Gene who is headed to Vegas for the Venetian events.

Later.