Hello again folks. It's been a number of months since I posted on here, but I"m going to start writing again and this time it will be a bit different. There will be no more messing around getting cheap laughs by resorting to Norfolk stereotypes or attempting to tell amusing anecdotes: this time it will be mainly poker-related. I"ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about why I enjoy playing poker and how it fits into the bigger picture. Most of this year I"ve spent flitting between different forms of the game. I"ve had spells playing cash hold"em, cash stud, cash stud hi/lo, 6 handed hold"em sit and gos and tournaments of all sorts. I"m comfortably in profit for the year, but what I have found is that the only thing that I have consistently made money from is tournament play, so from this day forwards I intend playing tournaments and nothing but tournaments. In addition, for the first time since I started playing the game, I intend exercising some loose form of bankroll control. The thought processes behind what I"m planning next are:
1) I"m 40 in a few days; maybe it is time for a bit of introspection
2) Soon I"m selling the flat I have lived in for the last 10 years. This will leave me in better financial shape than I have been in for ages
3) Any time I"ve had a good win over the past couple of years, the money has been spent on something not necessarily connected to poker.
4) I"ve been playing way too much. There were plenty of days when as soon as I"d got home from work and had tea, I"d do nothing but play poker until I went to bed. This has to change.
5) For all the above reasons, I will only play on an evening when I know I will be at home and have nothing else arranged. I will play a single tournament and nothing else. Whether I win it or I go out first hand I will not play any other poker at all once my involvement is over.
6) Crucially, any winnings will be ring fenced. Initially I will restrict myself to tournaments with a buy-in no greater than $6. Only when I have built up my profit to a point when I have a large number of buy-ins at a higher level will I consider playing higher. With no outside calls on my resources, I will be very interested to see how high I go. Feel free to post on here and call me arrogant, but I"ve known for a long time that I am a far better player that the level I have been playing at. My results in APAT events over the last 2 years and on the few occasions I"ve played above my usual level indicate that I could make good money way above the $5 fishfests I"ve been hanging around in since I started playing.
7) I will not play in satellite tournaments. If I can"t afford to buy directly into the event I"m looking to play in, I won"t bother.
8 ) I will only play in events where I believe I can play a modicum of real poker. There are all too many tournaments on all sites which are no more than bingo. Yes, to win any tournament requires a degree of luck, but I will not play any competition where the only sensible move is an all-in from the word go.
I may also occasionally post on here to talk about my writing endeavours. I write mainly, but not exclusively, poetry (no, my stuff doesn"t tend to rhyme). Once a month I attend Cafe writers in Norwich where normally around 50 people meet to hear a guest speaker or 2 and there is an open-mic slot. A large number of people there either have degrees in creative writing and/or are published authors, so for an enthusiastic amateur like me it is a daunting prospect to stand up and recite a self-penned piece. I haven"t yet been booed off or heard any adverse comments, so maybe I"m not that bad.
There is also a BBC competition, open until December, where they have asked people to write about real-life experiences, with a handful of the best being turned into something to be broadcast. There is an entry I put on this blog on August bank holiday Monday last year about a walk around Norwich and various things that were going through my head at the time which I like a lot. Over the next week or 2, I intend tinkering with that with the intention of turning it into an entry for the BBC competition. I"m not trying to pretend that I"m on the point of being published or that broadcasters are beating a path to my door, but sod it, there"s no harm in trying to punch above my weight occasionally.
