My goals are still unfolding along pretty straightforward lines--to right the ship that had gone very far off course from 2008-2010: Get out of debt, work on bankroll management, discipline, and balance; incorporate more overall professionalism and avoid self-destruction at all costs. These are all relatively simple "soft skills" that come naturally to truly elite players, those who have a consistent edge, plenty of gamble, but no risk of ruin. But there is a larger faction of professional poker players who struggle against their own worst instincts and repeatedly bust themselves in a variety of ways, all rooted in degeneracy and addiction. I am attempting to leave that faction and join the other.
On a micro level, I told myself that I wanted to strive for online poker results like those from last March, when Ocrowe and I were living in Topanga Canyon and grinding long days of online poker. Focusing on poker without TV and the benefit of lots of new music and surrounded by nature, I had what was, at the time, my best month in online poker. Here's the graph of my tournament results on PokerStars from March 2010, as tracked by the website SharkScope:
Although I didn't have a mountainous hippie wonderland as the backdrop for my poker setup this year, February 2011 was my best month ever for online poker results, including my biggest-ever score, a few short days before the Stars deal was announced (look at the vertical arrow, just after the 100-game mark on the graph below).My performance was undoubtedly buoyed by the confidence gained from the sponsorship but more obviously by a bunch of plain old good luck, or what poker players call "running good." Here's what last month's graph looks like:
But how much did you lose? If you're wondering what I "did with all the money," refer to the second paragraph of this post. I paid back approximately $80,000 in poker debt and more than $25,000 in credit card debt. Most of the rest went to improving my work setup with a new computer and to overdue body work on my car. I'm left with a short, but hopefully sustainable bankroll for the stakes I am playing and a few months worth of expenses.For a more complete perspective on what a poker tournament player's results can look like, check out what the month of March 2011 has had in store so far:
So, I'm keeping my head down and staying focused on the grind and, as I mentioned on the 2+2 PokerCast (found: here), I am still "far from Easy Street."***
I also threw down some of that February money to WFMU, a free-form radio station that you just might have seen mentioned in this space before.
WFMU's annual fund-raising marathon is winding down and concluding on Sunday, March 13th. For readers who want to pledge, the box below will take you to a form for that. If not, check out the station here, and I have no doubt by next year you will be lovingly shelling out some money for the "Harvard of College Radio" that just doesn't have an endowment:
***
And here's a picture of me representing my two favorite institutions via t-shirt:
(From the recent Bicycle Casino event "Big Event" that is ongoing at the Bell Gardens, CA cardroom. Thanks to Eric Ramsey of Pokernews for getting it to me).