VoiceOfJoe had asked in relation to my previous post what levels of ring games and STTs I expect to be on by the end of the year.
This is something I had been thinking about a bit over the last few days as we have moved through the first quarter of the year. Now I am really pleased with where I have got to so far, but I also think I have picked off the low hanging fruit and in order to hit my targets I am going to have to deal with more difficult poker situations.
In terms of targets then I still hope to deliver on those that I set at the start of the year. That is building the STT bankroll to $1.1k and be sitting in the $50 SNGs, and building the cash game bankroll to $2k so that I am sat in the $200NL games.
Two things immediately strike me.
Firstly, the bankroll management to reach these goals is seriously flawed. This was something I was conscious of at the start of the year. It is just that given the amount I can play, and given that I want to be playing at higher stakes, it was a risk I was prepared to take. I'm playing with free money anyway and with 'good' bankroll management to step down when variance slaps me in the face, it should stop me going busto. The fact that I may yoyo up and down at the higher, more difficult levels, may undermine my ability to hit the year end targets for both SNGs and cash games. I may even increase the bankroll required to step up if I find I am yoyoing too much.
Secondly, I have come to the realisation that the concept of annual targets is a bit of a nonsense. I love poker, and hopefully it is a game (more like a passion) I will keep for the rest of my days. Nothing changes on 31/12/07; I don't simply give up if I don't meet my targets. I will stick to them as I think they will help drive me forward but effectively my overriding target, and this may take 12 months, 63 months, 143 months, or never happen at all, is to be in a position to earn around $30/hour from my poker play (SNGs, MTTs or cash games). Once that gets up to $50, and if I can deliver that for 6 months in a row, then thinking about early retirement is a possibility. Therefore I have got 24 years to get there, any earlier than that is a bonus. Of course, I want to get better every time I play.
I played my first set of 4 $20 SNGs last night and even from this small sample I think there is a marked difference in quality. I managed one cash (2nd), two 6ths, and a 7th. 2 of my busto's came when my push at the 100/200 level with JJ and TT walked into AA. Surely I can't go from being a 30% ROI player at 10s to a loser at 20s? We'll see.
Cash games haven't been touched since January. I've started to datamine a few sites so that I can step into 4 $50 buy-ins soon.
FBF
