Well, since it's late on January 1st and I'm too lazy/tired to start a summary of my first year playing poker, here's at least my poker graph for the year :P.

With this New Year's Day, cashing out from my most profitable session ever, after having been to the floor twice in December, I come to reflect on not only the last month, but also the whole last year as this latest Holiday Season reaches its end.

My first year flirting with this beautifully cruel mistress that is poker. My first year dabbing at the weird, geeky, often smelly, often whiny, always entertaining community around this poker game that one can hardly ever quit (part of the year's lessons are, I guess, the 2 times I almost went cold turkey, once because of/for a girl, once cause I sucked :P... I suppose some people do quit, but I'd be very very curious to know the real stats about that one ;-)). My first year, babbling the jargon and slang and finding out the proper terminology, so much like an infant opening up to its own consciousness... My first year figuring out odds, pot as well as implied and the famous infamous, and often underestimated tilt odds, falling victim to each many many times already... My first year understanding why maths have a statistical branch and praising karma for those lame-ass stats classes I was forced to take in college... My first year since a long while discovering a new interest, eventually overshadowing the Old Mistress Cinema, even... My first year finding some hobby in serious contention of being a... passion, actually... My first year (re)realizing there's always a place to challenge one's own self... My first year finding myself back again...


So, in order to keep with the light of the day, here's a quick list of poker resolutions (well, more objectives, but hey :P) for 2008:

• Play at least 50,000 hands of online poker
  
• Play way more live, and find a personal comfort zone
• Settle at NL10, then NL25 and NL50 by the end of the year
• Develop a proficiency for another game (Razz, Stud or Omaha)
• Start dabbing at split games
  
• Win a tournament
  
• Pull a major stone-cold bluff
• Hustle some poor schlob in a pub or hustle myself a date :P
  
• Visit every Montreal poker room
• Take a week-end trip to Atlantic City
  
• Run a tight blog :P
• Keep the mailing list/discussion group alive
• Stay aggressive, uncompromising and unapologetic at the tables, while remaining affable, lighthearted and zen
• Create myself a slick avatar
• Create a Poker course
  
• Keep taking bad beats with the reverence and awe of a devout
• Write my Poker & Self-Enlightenment piece
  

Last November 8th, I set myself what I thought would be a very tough target to reach, to play ten thousand hands of online poker before my next birthday, 69 days later (unintentional coincidence, I swear :P). Well, I am proud to say that, on December 31st, 2007, at 11:30:56 EST, I played my 10,000th hand, a measly 10-5 offsuit :D!!! I must admit the silly prop bet with Nic gave a lot of incentive to the whole endeavour ;-). Anyway, here's a little something stupid I did to mark the occasion :P...

Congratulations! You're one step closer to hitting bottom.

- Tyler Durden, Fight Club

Ok. I have fomented somewhat of a first hypothesis as to what happened around hand #5,989... Panic! I then went through my widest bankroll swing ever, trying to play a lot more pots and a lot more aggressively, never backing down from any top pairs, regardless of the kicker, for instance. In a span of about 300 hands, I tested that kinda play and reached my biggest net profit, only to lose it all (twice even) in the greatest downside of my year... And this is when I panicked and thought I simply sucked at the game, not putting any of these losses in any kind of perspective... Even thought about quitting, plain and simple. Not remembering I had a good first half the year and forgetting about the old 'a poker cash game is one continuous never-ending game with swings and trends' can become quite costly it seems ;-).

Later
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Another decent hypothesis would be that I do not feel comfortable at NL5, mostly because we have uber-Gus-Hansen types, players playing humongous numbers of hands (you'll rarely play peeps with >50% VP$IP at NL10+, but you might end up on a table with an average VP$IP of above 50% for the whole table at NL5, as well as uber-maniacs playing more than 3/4 quarters of the time... Just crazy; how can you put any of these players on any kinda hand?!?!?!?). I have to admit having, on average, better sessions and steadier wins at NL10 than NL5... I'll have to check the number of hands played at these two levels before being absolutely convinced... But I don't think I'll get back to playing NL5 ever again in any case, though :).

Quick update on the tally and that target of 10,000 hands by my birthday. Well, the latter is going pretty well, as far as number of hands played goes :P; last time I checked, I was on pace to hit 10,376 hands!! Sweet!! Now, if those could only end up being winners... lol

As for the bet, the tally kinda speaks for itself. "But why suddenly more than 600 hands behind, bubbleb0y??", no one asks. Well, the answer to that my friends is: sick days. God's greatest gifts to the poor schlob when said schlob is the one taking the day off :P... In our case, Nic's the one taking a sick day Monday, logging about 1,000 hands :P!!! So that's that, as they say. But, it seems his PC died on him, so I think I have plenty of time to close the gap :).

Ok. I'm starting to think I suck at poker. Looking at these, one could also argue I kinda lost my mojo after hand #5,989 or so... Was there ever two graphs more dissimilar, seriously???? And off course, my old male ego thing is getting owned these days, as my buddy Nic is running great these last 3 months, reaching each and everyone of his goals in the expected amount of time... Just now, chatting with him while at work ;o), he's telling me how good he's running, finally playing NL10 and being up by a buy-in and a half... While being absolutely thrilled for him and his successes (which come with their lot of hard work, believe me, even at our small scale), I come to realize the last time I doubled-up in a cash game is... probably the last time I played Play Money games... Am I supposed to double-up in cash games is now a very decent and relevant question...

After futher investigation, it turns out Nic doubled-up 8 times since September, out of about 250 sessions, for a wooping 0.03 %... Doesn't tell me much; is this a must? Can one rake in great profit while never doubling-up?

The thing is I wanna be the best that I can, and I know I tend to be result-oriented, which is just wrong with poker...

Oh well, looks like this is going to be one hell of an introspective Holiday Season :P...