Year End Review and an Exciting New Year to Looking Forward

Well last year wasn't my most productive year in poker, at least not in the way of dollars made. Between our new baby and moving to a new home, my free time was utterly drained between wife, baby, moving, and "real" work. That being said, still another profitable and productive year.

My poker:
In terms of performance, I ended the year fairly strong. I had a positive finish in 7 out of my last 8 months, included my last 3 in a row. While my games/hours had dropped this year, I am now pretty well settled and expect to gradually put in more time and effort into my games. I also finished the year at my highest average buyin level pretty much ever at $141 average buyin per game/(sit in go). Most of my focus has been $150-200 double up sit in go tournaments in which 5 out of 10 players get double their money back when the first 5 get eliminated. I've been tearing these up pretty well cashing about 57-60%. That might not seem all that great, but I would venture to say it is in the highest ranks for that limit. Going into next year I have got my niche pretty well figured out for now.  I will also probably play 1 or 2 events at the WSOP again this year depending on this success and hopes I should have a renter for my condo.

Here is my latest qoute from the David Apostolico's book based off Sun-Tzu war strategies "Tournament Poker and the Art of War": "Now the general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple before the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes few calculations beforehand. Thus do many calculations lead to victory and few calculations lead to defeat: how much more no calculation at all! It is by attention to this point that I can forsee who is likely to win or lose".

This year I also rarely had time to research my and my opponents play hand-by-hand. This year I hope to work out a few more leaks with my increasing spare time.

My buddy "dawgonu" has had a great year as well, cashing in some big tournaments and improved the leaks in his game all around. He has already won a trip to play in the Aussie Millions in a couple weeks and I expect us both to have another great year.

My poker related investments:
I plan on buying another 37"+ TV to use as a 4th monitor and get a Verizon hi-speed internet plugin as a backup internet connection. I'd also like to get a heavy duty power backup "UPS" that could endure any long lasting power outages. Typically it's not a problem here in sunny CA, but it has happened before and if I'm playing 3 $200 tournaments and registered in 2 more and I lose power, I could potentially easily lose $1,000 and my short term sanity!! Too me it's worth the investments.

My financial investments:
I pretty much cashed out all my stocks last year so I could take off 3 months of work to support my wife during her pregnancy. This was a very good decision, obviously for the time spent with my wife and coincidentally the stock market has plunged over 30% since then. I hope this years' success will give me an opportunity to rebuild that account and hopefully by then the markets have turned around.

My real job:
As with most people, my real job is not something I love with all my heart, but it pays the bills in a time where people are getting laid off, so I can't complain. I'd love to quit and play full-time, but it makes sense to keep doing what I'm doing. To me it's like paid exercise during a time in the day when my favorite game doesn't fill well anyways. I actually like doing my job which has me talking to alot people I've known quite a while and I get to drive around and do things on my own schedule in my company car. The only real downside is dealing with increasing administrative work and catching heat from management, especially over things you don't have much control and rarely getting any kind of compliments for a job well done the other 99% of the time. So I'll keep on for now until I am able to line up a better scenario.

My family:
Despite my desire to play poker 24/7 365 days a year, I realize if I want to at least maintain my current routine I will continue to try to be a good dad and helper around the house. While it makes obvious sense based on my results $ per hour etc., my wife still has a hard time seeing my time playing poker as equal to time working my real job or helping around the house. She says she understands, but when I'm sitting in a tournament with hundreds or thousands of dollars at stake and the baby is crying or the house is a mess, etc., you can tell it goes right out the window. In a way I can understand and unless I am asking for a divorce, I have just got to deal with it. I am young and already have more than most people twice my age and am very grateful to have a nice home, good family, good wife and blessed with a healthy child.

My Poker blog:
I started this blog less than a year ago with no experience or expectations what so ever. I didn't really expect to make much money off of this, but I'm glad I am able have my experiences documented and at least do something positive for others with all the experience I have in this way of life. I expect to do more reviews on mostly poker related stuff and continue to network myself around and get to know more people in the industry. I do enjoy writing but since it is something I don't really get paid for, I prefer to use my valuable free time to play. I do hope to continue to improve my content and have gotten some good comments and advice this year.

All in all I think I'm in a great spot to have a good year. The only obstacle I really see is my playing time is still at a part-time level, which should at least continue to improve with time and set me up to have a spectacular year hopefully by 2010.  Time will tell my fate I guess. Good luck at the tables. Please keep the feedback coming (email, comments, and questions). Donkeyherder


 
Play Online Poker

Feeling great despite my 1st down month in a while

After running well over the last few months I could get down on myself after having a slightly down month. However, I actually feel good about my game. I played quite a bit more multi's last month due to vacation time and I landed 3 final tables with unfortunate coinflips going the wrong way missing the big money payouts. I was running white hot on sng's until this month and finally got hammered. Even with the bad luck I think after later review I probably got a little too loose and made the problem worse. I can usually tell if it's partially my fault if I bust out of alot of tourneys too early. I keep records on how long each game takes my and if I have a large number of 5-20 min finishes in sng's or less than 60 min multi's, I'm probably not concetrating and/or playing too reckless. If you try and go by overall money results it can be deceiving if a couple wins disguise numerous other poor performances. I find if I focus on avoiding risky plays early, the results tend to take care of themselves.

Another great story this month, my friend Steve Frasure, who won a seat to Aruba last year, at the last minute, won another seat, went to Aruba and made the final 10 players/500+ and is taking home over $30,000!! http://www.cardplayer.com/tournaments/live_updates/16189/21564 All being said it was a good month with solid potential going into October to have one of my best months this year.

Near the end of the month, I quickly picked up and focused on a new game on a smaller site. After 60 hours of play it has shown to be very profitable so far. I'm on vacation again this week and will continue to see how things pan out. I would say it takes at least 100-500 hours of play to really get a semi-reliable statistics, which depending on how your play can still change.

My rule of thumb for trying to improve on my game is to try and focus on one game and try to use the same playbook while changing one thing at a time. This way, if your results dramatically improve or fail, it is much easier to pinpoint what works and what doesn't. If you try make make multiple changes to your game it makes it hard to figure out which changes have worked out for the better. Alot of players tend to get bored playing the same game over and over, but let me try and break it down. If I went to school and studied all subjects equally it would take me 10 years to graduate. I might know a fair amount about everything, but if I tried to debate a professional in any one particular field, I would be way out of my class. Another example might be if I had 10 new video games. If I played each game 10% of the time I would be an average player at 10 games. If I played 1 game 90% of the time I would probably be able to master the game in a very short period of time and be able to move on to trying my success in other games much quicker. If you play poker strictly for fun and recreation then by all means play whatever you enjoy most,but if you really care more about making money you might want to specialize.

I would like to try and start leaving poker book reviews. I probably have about 90% of the books you'll find at the bookstore and while I don't think a book will necessarily transform your game, for a $20-30 investment if you pick up just one idea or plug one leak the small investment will pay for itself probably multiple times over. I think just the act of reading the book and dedicating yourself to focusing on your game and learning is what pays the real dividends. To the new or casual players, it seems like so much work and so far-fetched, but as with most hobbies or skills you start small and continue to build, until before you know it you've gone from a skinny stick boy to a buffed out poker body builder.

The current book I'm reading at the moment is "Poker Essays", by Mason Malmuth. Most of his books I've read tend to be basic strategy books which can be a bit dry even for the greatest of poker enthusiast. "Poker Essays", however, while probably written many years ago and revised, is geared towards all the other things that have to do with poker, other than how to play pocket 77 from UTG+2 with a TAG or your right and LAG on your left, blah, blah, blah. It gets a variety of issues: Money management, Image, taking notes, structure, psychology, etc. Not a bad read so far to kill some time while waiting around. It primarily focuses on live poker and does use some refrences to Stud games (which used to be more popular years ago until No Limit Holdem took over the world). All in all I would say it's worth a look especially when you're bored with the same-old strategy books. It retails for about $24.95 in the U.S. I'm giving it a DonkeyHerding rank of 7 out of 10.

Here's this weeks dose of Chinese war master "Sun-Tzu" : "If your opponent is of choleric temper, seek to irritate him. Pretend to be weak, that he may grow arrogant".

Good luck grinders, please keep the comments and questions coming. I look forward to reporting on a already great October. Donkeyherder.Here is a link to the "Poker Players Alliance" website which posts the latest poker legislation news and is the largest lobbying group supporting our right to play poker. http://pokerplayersalliance.org/

My 1st blog and poker bio started on May 11th if interested: http://donkeyherder.livejournal.com/2008/05/11/

If you would like to check me out you can look me up on a few sites. PokerDB.com shows big tournament results http://www.bluffmagazine.com/thepokerdb/DONKEYHERDER2/UltimateBet/2782106/player-profile.asp. I play under "Donkeyherder"(Pokerstars),"Chipstacker2000"(FullTilt), "donkeyherder2"(UltimateBet), "d0nkeyherder"(Absolute Poker), and on Cake Poker (Which permits name changes on a weekly basis). I started with a single $100 deposit and turned it into thousands. I have never had a losing year. I won a seat to the 2006 WSOP Main Event (The biggest poker tournament ever played) and cashed in the top 10% of the field out of over 9000 players. I've made 84 Final tables (50-1555 players) and recorded 11 1st place wins. Most of the time you can find me grinding out Sit-n-Go's . Business opportunity inquiries can reach me at: Donkeyherder2000@yahoo.com

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