This was the first year that I dedicated myself to playing poker, not just as a hobby, but asa source of income. It was needless to say an interesting year as I had the great freedom that comes with being your own boss and being able to set my own hours of play, along with the added stress of having to rely on poker for part of my income. I'm hoping to recant my year as closely as possibly with the hopes of not only learning from mistakes, but also showing my successes so that I can build confidence for the coming years ahead. Before i begin I'll say that i am relatively happy with my year. Before i set out I determined that for me to actually be successful i would have to clear at least 40grand USD to consider poker as a reliable source of income. I acheived this and more, but am still disatisfied with some of the decisions i made and feel like I let myself get burned out part way through the year which caused a bit more stress on my bankroll then there needed to be.
Regardless I will try to retell the year in four parts, with the good and the bad...
part 1
It begins...
The year for me started off pretty well, I made the switch from tilt to stars after enjoying some good success in sng. For me stars was just more attractive because of the fact you can play mroe tables, so I felt starting the year at stars and giving it my whole playing tiem would be best because they have a great rewards/rakeback program which I could take advantage of if I played there the whole year.
For the first few days things went pretty well. I was focused on playing the 16 dollar turbo's exclusievly and was making the transition to playing 20 tables from 16, it went pretty well. then I went on a downswing, and it turned out to be a pretty bad one. About halfway through the month my bankroll had over 100 buyins for the level i was playing, a week later, after a few cashouts, my bankroll had about 20-25 buyins. It ended being about a 75 buy-in downswing when all was said and done and to get out of it I ended up playing 12-16 tables for a week, but eventually I built myself back up and by the end of the month I had a more secure roll to play with.
Beginning in Feb things started to click for me a little better, my roi for the month was much better and I was 20 tabling consistently. I also believe this was the month I final tabled the 10rebuy and finshed 8th netting me 1500 or so and giving me a decent roll to play with. This actually ended up being a pretty big development as it let me take some shots at the steps which led to a big score later in the year. All in all, the first two months were pretty crazy, I had a huge downswing which made me question if i should even be playing this game, and then bounced back to post decent profits in the first two months and ended up with a big final table as well. With my mian game being the 16 turbo's my goal for the rest of the year was continue grinding, build up my fpp's and take some shots at bigger tournies...
