Reflections on one year of poker.

I’m not sure how long ago it was when I first played poker in Montana.  But on February 23, 2009 I took my first real step into playing poker for money by depositing some money on Full Tilt.  Since then a lot has happened.  The first phase was a prolonged period of about 10 months of poker obsession.  At this point, I’m over the obsession, but I doubt I’ll ever be able to give up the game.  Either way, here are the highlights of this year:

• Online, I’m still a $.10/.25 player where I’m pretty much a break even player.  I can’t ever seen to prolong any kind of winning streak.  Currently I’m probably down roughly $250 online with most of that lost over the first 4 months of playing.
• Live, I’m a solid $1/2 player.  I’m way up playing live, though my recent foray into Florida poker did wash away a significant share.  I believe I’m up around $1000 playing live.
• I’ve read around 20 poker books, most of which I’ve reviewed on this blog.
• I’ve played live in around 15 different places including: Atlantic City, Tunica, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Florida and Oregon.
• I’ve still never been to Vegas.
• I’ve written a little over 60 posts on my experience.  This blog gets very few visits (which isn’t terribly surprising because I write more for me than for anyone else).  I get most of my visits thanks to a single post I made about playing at a Rockford Charitable Games event, a night I didn’t really enjoy.
• My online tournament ROI is positive.
• I’ve determined that I prefer the cash game to tournaments a lot.
• I can’t decide whether I’m ever going to be very good at this game, though I am still very hopeful.  I suspect my discipline it my main problem.

Here’s an interesting observation for the starting player.  Early on, you’ll see a lot of posts about bad beats and unfairness.  Now you see very few of those.  I think this is for 2 reasons: because I’ve learned how to bet to push people off of draws when I want and because I want people to commit a lot of chips in situations where they are behind.  More often than not, they will lose.  When they don’t I just remind myself how many times it has come out in my favor.

Anyway, thanks for reading and offering any thoughts you’ve had along the way.  I appreciate the support and encouragement.