2008 A reasonably successful year

Overall I feel 2008 was a good year for me in all apects of my life. My online poker bankroll grown from 500 to over 6k and live I have made around the same.

I havent played as much as I would have liked, logging 80k hands. I didnt have a 'number of hands' goal but I feel like it should have been around 120k (10k a month)

I didnt manage to play in any large online or live tournaments due to moving back to the UK in the middle of the year then spending a shedload of cash knocking through walls of my house to prepare for the imminent baby.

I am still at 100nl. I wanted to be at 400nl by this time but a withdrawal of most of my online roll resticted any move up to 200nl and squashed any thoughts of 400nl. To be honest though, I dont feel ready for 200nl as of yet. I am 100% confident I can beat 50nl and i want to feel that at 100nl. I am a winning at 100nl but I am still making mistakes, big mistakes and if i do that at any higher level I will be picked apart.

I have learned a lot this year and some concepts have finally clicked into place. I am making less mistakes but still have a long way to go.

So this leads to 2009. What do I want to achieve and what are my plans to get there.

I want to be a winning player at 200nl

I want to log at least 120,000 hands

I want to become better at beating the regulars at my level

I want to make $20k in total

I want a $1000 day

I want to play in atleast 1 $500+buy in tournament

All this is achievable. What I have found in the last year is that you dont just get better by playing. You get better by putting in the effort to find the things that are going wrong. You have to search for those leaks, review hand histories and be open minded when it comes to others opinions about a situation. I have found that having a few people to talk over hand histories, to share your bad beats and your suckouts relly helps your mindset when playing.

I would like to thank Dubspoke for his insight and support. I would like to thank Ray (get yourself a blog) for his help in the first part of the year. I would like to thank the missus who is now seeing the results of all that poker talk. Last of all I would like to thank all the monkeys that played poorly against me and that have a special place in my buddy list. Without you all I would be just another losing poker player trying to figure out what went wrong.

2009 - lets hope the UIGEA gets trashed.

Time to make some real money.

Ryverrat.