2007 Review

For the first time in my life I've ended a year and don't feel like saying "wow, where the hell did this year go?" is applicable. It's been an event filled and action packed year to say the least. I spent about half the year traveling or away from home, met a lot of great people and saw some amazing places. If I don't write up at least 2 trip reports, with pics, and post them in here within the next week I'll give everyone who reads this $100. It's about time I stopped being lazy about things like this.

Let's recap my poker for '07.

It has been a very interesting year to say the least. Out of 12 months there was only 1 month where I felt I really played enough hands and grinded it out. The year basically looked like this:

Jan - Skiing in Canada, little to no poker played

Feb - Staying in San Diego, little to no poker played

March - Back in Brisbane and played a fair amount of poker but still nowhere near enough what I should be playing.

April & May - Spent too much time going out/partying/drinking/etc - not the best months of the year. Very little poker got played in this time.

June - Grinded insane amounts, including several days with 7-8k hands. This was a good month.

July - Back in San Diego. IIRC this was my best ever month of poker and was when I was on a winning streak for maybe 25 sessions. That said, I played very little poker, perhaps 1.5 hours a day on average. Not enough.

August - Went to Turning Stone and Vegas this month. You might think this would mean I played a lot of poker but no, I played less than in July.

September - Another trip to Vegas + My trip to Europe started. Did not play enough poker.

October, November and December - Back in Brisbane for the most part, India in December. Just wow. I played almost zero poker over these 3 months. I honestly don't think I played more than 10 hours or so combined. Although I didn't play my spending habits were still as though I was bringing in 5 figures a month so you can imagine this did not bode well for my BR.

So there you have it. If I had to guess I probably played 150,000 to 180,000 hands of poker over the year, and 70k of them were probably in June. I wasted WAY too much time this year on absolutely pointless things such as watching TV shows or spending the whole day in bed because I'd been out drinking the night before or whatever.

Despite all of this I still almost reached the monetary goal that I had set out for myself. I wanted to make $150k and made (approximately) $120k. I'm disappointed that I didn't reach the goal I set when I very easily could have if I just applied myself a bit better and stopped letting my laziness and other factors get in the way. I have made a list of goals that I hope will help remedy this problem in 2008 so without further ado, my list of goals:

1) Earn $500,000 through poker in 2008. This is absolutely possible and something I'm going to make happen.

2) Buy a house. I know, I know. But this is something I want to do. I see the main incentive of buying a house is that it forces me to save, something I have had a LOT of trouble with in the past. Ultimately I would like to do this before my 20th birthday (April 26th) but that's not much of an issue.

3) Get, my, god, damn, freaking, drivers license. Seriously.

4) Start to learn to play an instrument. I'm thinking about the guitar but could do something else. I think it'd be a fun hobby to have.

5) Cook more.This was one of my goals at the end of last year and I definitely did cook a lot more in 2007 than I ever have before and it has really grown on me. I now want to grow my skills and become a better chef.

6) Eat more healthily. I'm better than I used to be with watching what I eat, but I would still like to improve my diet in a few areas. I'd also like to learn more about why I should be eating specific things rather than following a pre-prepared diet blindly.

7) Drink much less alcohol. It's just really illogical and stupid to be drinking as much as I do sometimes.

8) Get back into shape. I haven't been working out for a while now and with my back problems will have to take it slow, but I want to get back into a routine of doing some sort of cardio every day of the week and working out with weights 3x a week.

9) Watch less TV & Read more books. I have wasted SO much time watching repeats of TV shows that I've seen many times before. I also want to reduce the number of new shows that I watch. I've gotten into the habit of watching an episode (or a few) of TV each night before bed to help me fall asleep. This is really bad. I'm going to replace this with reading each night before bed instead.

10) Travel less. I spent a lot of time traveling last year and while it was fun and I had a great time, it wasn't the most productive thing ever. Who knows how long poker will be as profitable as it is now and if I'll still be able to beat the games / want to be playing it in a few years time. I'd rather solidify my financial security first and travel more in a couple of years than the other way around.

11) Dress better. I've already started this but would like to continue on the path that I'm going. Over the last year I've spent $3-4k on my wardrobe and choosing an outfit/looking good has become something I now enjoy rather than it being simply a task to complete as it has been in the past.

12) Improve my personal hygeine. Now I'm pretty good with this atm but there's always room for improvement. I'd like to shave more often and not be lazy and have 10 days growth just because I don't have to go to an 'office' to work or whatever, also to floss on a daily basis rather than just when I can remember. Another thing I'm going to do is look into getting my teeth whitened from my dentist.

13) Make regular posts in this journal concerning my poker progress and review where I'm at. Also keep posting and reading this forum and 2p2 to stay up to date in the poker world.

14) Get my website up and running. Get the charity website that I said I would make up and running. No more procrastinating, no more losing my focus, no more wasting time.

15) Do some charity work around Brisbane once a week or fortnight.

16) Actually do the above 15 things.

A recent post from EDF 'Forming Good Habits' () has made me want to do the same, so look forward to an update on this subject in the next few days.

That's about it for now. Thanks to all who've been with me over the past year and GL to everyone for 2008.

some questions/comments about your 2008 goals:

- are you $ goals in USD or AUD?

- goals are good, but i think a more interesting post would include action plans that explain how you are going to accomplish them. this would make you a bit more accountable when you don't reach them (e.g., i'm not playing enough hands because ______ despite scheduling 3 hours x 5 days of play each week).

- save for a house = good. buying a house now = maybe not so good. i'm not so familiar with the ins and outs of the aussie market, but i've heard that it's overpriced still by quite a bit. the last thing you want to do is buy a depreciating asset.

- how do you plan to make 500k? games, stakes, hands, swapping %s w/ xas (lololol), etc.

- what is your br management style? i think this would solve so many of your problems -- that is, you might be motivated to play more if you could only spend what you earned less investments and set expenses.

- life coach, ftw?