Quarterly Review - hmph

A pretty dire quarter comes to a close, with me registering my first losing 3 month period in over a year. $5,300 was the damage, and results in a disappointing end to a good year on the poker front. Consequently, I’m quite happy to see the back of 2008, and am hoping that 2009 will give me a bit of fresh impetus and focus.

Live Tournaments (290)
This area has been a non-event. I didn’t play the UKPT Grand Final after failing in my October online challenge, and December has been a write off, with very few tournaments available. When I did look to play in the £300 warm up event for UKPT at the Vic, it sold out the day before. I’ll be trying to up the live tournament volume in 2009.

Live Cash - Omaha/Holdem +162
I’ve grouped these together, as many of the cash games I play in are mixed HiHo games anyway. I was slightly surprised to note that I’d managed a small profit over the quarter in this area. I guess I only remember the drunken blow ups, as opposed to the numerous less conspicuous profitable nights. That said, if the £1,500 pot at the LC Xmas Party hadn’t gone my way, it would have been a different figure.

Home Games (2,234)
A disastrous few months on the home game front, culminated in my drunkenly vomiting £1,000 on the table at the December cash game. I also took a couple of heavy hits at spontaneous games at the Baron’s place. Bizarrely my tournament record was excellent, with a first and the third in the Main Events, but if you are bleeding money on the cash table there will only be one outcome.

Online Omaha Cash (1350)
Very disappointing on the Omaha online cash front - most of my loss came in one night, but I definitely became too loose in the game and began not to respect my opponents. This leads to unwise check-raises and lead outs, which becomes expensive quickly. I wisely took a month off this in December, while I regained focus and tightened up. The Baron has got the 1/2 tables pretty much cracked now I think, and he plays a selective starting hand strategy and I think perhaps this is the way to go.

Online Tournaments (664)
Despite the loss I felt I played well in online tournaments this quarter. I lost $2k in one poor night playing some big buyin FTOPs events, and if it wasn’t for this I’d have shown a healthy profit. The night when I double final tabled the 7pm micro buy in events on FT and PS was a highlight, as both of these tournaments boast monster fields. I will be looking to this area to provide some decent profit in 2009, but worryingly I have had zero motivation to play in the last 6 weeks or so. Despite pencilling in several nights for online work, my hand hasn’t touched the mouse.

So add in about $900 of rake and it has been a rocky few months. Hopefully I’ll respond in the same way I did to the previous downturn, and go on another 15 month winning streak.

So 2008 is in the books - a profit of just shy of $60k. Adding this to my prior year winnings on 2007 ($23k) and 2006 ($3k) takes my “career” earnings to about $85k.

Tomorrow I’ll blog some plans for 2009.