learning curve of 2010

For the first time these last 2 week since maybe mid december I am feeling like i'm enjoying playing online poker again and have the burning desire again to play online poker again. I've always wanted to play online poker but I guess now I feel like I have a purpose and remembered why I wanted to play poker professionally. Maybe I was running so bad online,winning money play live poker and I wasn't short of money. Running bad online almost became the norm and getting up early in morning and getting volume lost importance for me.

This year so far I have been travelling alone to poker tournaments in Europe, which has given me plenty of time to be alone with my thoughts and analyse my poker career path.I think in Vienna I realized how playing live poker is easier money and another form of income but not so frequent. In Dublin I remembered the most important thing...grinding online poker. Having these large periods of time alone I learnt so much about myself and how to keep myself disciplined and focused on my career. Its so easy to get lazy or find excuses for doing other things.

At the start of 2010 several people said 2010 was going to be a big year for me.I believed them then and I still believe in myself now. I am sure I have learnt more about myself and what it takes this year than the last 6-months of 2009. I will never let myself lose the importance of getting in volume again even when I am running bad. I will also remember that online is my bread and butter.Playing live and travelling is secondary.

A case of being more professional

Since just before I went to Dublin I have thinking about my online and how I should be disciplined and professional about it. I have always had a problem with the amount of volume I play. I guess I always ran ok and that meant I was always had enough money to survive. Its not until a ran bad I realized that I had picked up some habits and a bad mind set. I always knew volume was key to making a living from poker but I guess I was just being lazy. Its funny that my coach mentioned the amount of volume I play and what I should be playing yesterday,which got thinking in more detail today.

Playing poker for a living is like running a business and the only way to make money is play. I have always known this but now the preacing has to stop and I have to put this words in action more often. I was thinking about my goals that I wanted to achieve when I first started playing the 18mans and how I was going to achieve them. I must remember these goals and carry on pushing towards them. I know from watching other people play and looking over my HH's that I have a good knowledge of the game but I must put this in practise.

Ages since last blog so a lot to say!

Its been a while since I last blogged here due to fact I kept putting it off. 9 days ago I got back Dublin which on Poker terms was a nightmare but to be honest the trip ended up being more of a holiday. The side event I was doing got due to unexpected amounts of entrants in the main event. Which I felt ok with in way because I wasn't feeling to good the first night. The second night a played 300euro event and only lasted a couple of hours.AA cracked by 99's and then hit a set of 4's and I guy hit runner runner straight. The final night I didn't want to play as there weren't enough entrants in the tourney with 3 other events already started. So I ended up spending the weekend doing the tourist things in the City and watching Arsenal lose....again.

Last week I decided I want to play some bigger live tournaments and carry on travelling. So I was keeping an eye on the european poker sites for any worth while satties during the day and found 5euro rebuy step1 with 5 runners into a sunday final(200euros). I decided this was to good to miss and jumped in it, the players being so bad I took it down and made the final. The sunday final had 8 packages with 81 runners which was so soft it was unbelievable. 3 hours later I won a package to go to Lisbon for the European Masters of Poker. The package consisted of 1.1k buy-in 350 spending money and 4 nights accom. With over 90% of the field being qualifiers from 2and 5 euros buy in tournies I know I going to have a big edge over most of the players.

This month online has been some what of a rebuilding job after a poor jan. I so disappointed with my volume from jan that I want to make sure I had a reasonable amount volume in feb. I started the month running ok then i hit a bad patch...thinking oh no not again. After speaking with coach and studying alot more the couple of days have been better and things are looking up!

If anyone is laking inspiration at the moment, Vertek has got some must watch videos on his blog which will def help.