Yesterday the Casino I work for held our annual charity memorial tournament for a staff member who passed away a few years ago. It's always a lot of fun, bordering somewhat on a staff tournament that also might include a bunch of gaming staff from other establishments. This year was a more tame affair than last year (which was barely still in control), but it was really good none the less. I straight gambled that tournament since I wanted it to just be fun and move onto playing a cash game with colleagues. There was a good turnout from staff, regular players, and other friends as well.

We started up a PLO8 inclusive Dealers Choice game shortly afterwards, and that was a lot of fun. The other week when I was told that PLO8 wouldn't be available in Cash's DC game I was pretty frustrated. Looking back it's not such a big deal. They will still allow me to build a inclusive DC game so long as it's planned ahead of time (and I'm planning on doing that at least once a week), and as much as I've occasionally been the beneficiary of a recreational player blasting their entire stack in during a hand of PLO or PLO8 thinking they were actually playing the other game, that's a really bad scenario from a sustainability standpoint. Reg's can suck that mistake up, recreational players aren't going to want to come back.

Following that some friends and I went to eat, and afterward I wanted to keep chasing the target I gave myself a few days earlier to try and end the month on. Looking back I'm not pleased with how I performed in my second session yesterday. While mildly frustrated, reflecting on my mistakes while I take a night off (after sleeping all day for once) feels pretty good.

March has been an awesome month in just about every way I'd look at it. A few weeks back I committed myself to redoubling my efforts towards becoming the best competitive version of myself in the context of poker, setting quotas and targets to push through until the end of the calendar year. Between then and now I've mostly been doing fantastically both measuring up to my targeted numbers, and generally in life.

I won't get into the full details on here of what the specific goals are, but I would like to have people hold me accountable if they want:

1'st 1/4 2015 Stats
319 Cash Game Hours Played (aiming to clock >90 per month)
31% of my targeted $ goal
23% of my targeted bankroll
1/21 - 39 Remaining Sunday $165's
1/2 way through (PL08 Revealed by Dan Deppen) my first of 9 poker books.

Here's to making the best of the next nine months worth of smashing those goals!

Time to get more serous...

So it's coming up on four years since I began playing poker. The first year and change was a pretty rough learning experience, the six months following that I was a break even player. Since the beginning of '13 I've been a consistent winning player, though I've always been pretty swingy.

In the last few months I've been mulling over what I'm looking towards setting my sights on for goals for the next several years. I remember back when I was gaming online hard on a daily basis I didn't want to start playing poker because I knew that I wasn't ready to put in enough time to be satisfied with my efforts. Part of me has kept saying that in the back of my has though these last few years.

I have been putting a respectable amount of time and energy into improving my skills, which has been yielding very respectable gains in my ability. Even still, I haven't been obsessive with studying, discussion, review, and otherwise immersing myself in the ocean of game knowledge available to me personally in the contacts & friends I've made (and a little thing called the internet).

I enjoy working in the casino industry as my career. But the work I most enjoy in it is not going to offer me as much money as I'd like to be debt free and as financially secure in the future I want to build for myself. I've not been interested in playing for a living, though now I am committed to investing my complete attention into becoming the most monstrously capable player I can be.