On to the Next

2010 was a good and bad year for me. The good was that I succeeded in having a lot fun and enjoying life, which was my main goal. The bad was that with respect to poker I was in the red on the year. This was mainly because I stopped running hot at nosebleed PLO and I didn't do anything spectacular live, despite starting off the year cashing the PCA and having a great run at Aussie Millions. My lack of success at poker isn't really surprising. When you play as little volume as I did in 2010 at the stakes I played your results are going to vary wildly. Focusing more on other things and less on poker is unlikely to help. That being said, poker was not my main goal, and losing never really affected my mood. I still had a great year overall.

Losing in 2010 didn't really change my situation financially, though you probably won't see me playing much nosebleed for a while. That being said it's not something I intend to repeat in 2011. Since I got back from Asia I've been rededicated to grinding somewhat. I've spent a lot of time playing 25/50 full stack PLO and mixed games in the 40/80-250/500 range. Some of my limit games still need some work but I'm really enjoying the new 10 game mix as Badugi and NL 2-7 SD are both fun games and games I feel I'm relatively strong at compared to the field at this point. I think if I keep putting in hands as much as possible while being smart about game selection I'll have success. Making some more steady income from cash is important as my tournament results are always going to be erratic, that's just the nature of it.

As for 2011 I am doing a lot of the same traveling I always seem to do with a few changes. First, I'm skipping PCA this year. Instead I will be playing the 2.5k and 5k
events at Fallsview. These events will have a lot of value and are much easier to travel to. PCA is overrated once you've done it a few times anyways, and while the main event is one of the best tourneys of the year most of the $2k+ buy-in side events are nothing special. Immediately after Fallsview I'm off to Australia again for Aussie Millions. The schedule looks great this year and Melbourne is infinitely better than Atlantis in terms of a vacation spot in January-February. After the tournaments are over I'll be kicking it with my mates down under for the first 3 weeks of February. Finally, I'm heading to LAPC again on Feb 20 for the final week of events there. That's as far as I've got things planned at this point, hopefully I get off to a great start to a great year on and off the felt! Happy New Year and best of luck to everyone in 2011.

Mike