Man, I have been running bad. I have missed cash in 11 of my last 13 SNGs...5 of those were on the bubble too...argh! I moved up a level to $27, hit two first place finishes out of the first 5 tournies and then have missed 8 in a row. I think I may be getting too aggressive again. I am really going to focus and dial down the aggression a bit. I also joined a 50 player satellite to the Sunday warm-up on Poker Stars and finished freaking second, missing the free buy-in to the larger event. I was in twice with the best of it during heads up and my opponent sucked out both times...par for the course that day.

So you all have already read that I play WoW pretty regularly (since open Beta). I play on a West Coast server called Hyjal. I currently belong to a really nice guild called Fusion (website reference). We are pretty much in the middle of the pack as far as progression is concerned, but overall it’s a nice group of folks.

Since I started playing WoW, I have tried a number of other MMORPGs, but they have all disappointed me. WoW is a great blend of playability vs. realism with TONS of content. My only real bitch about the game is the amount of resources it takes to be a serious raider. You have to constantly farm gold, materials, and reputation in order to progress in the advanced multi-user content. If you are a gamer, and if by some miracle you haven’t tried WoW already, give it a shot…you will enjoy yourself immensely.

As usual, Vegas was a blast. I played in as many smaller tournaments as I could in and around the boot camp schedule. I did not do as well as I would have liked, but it was all good experience. I ended up bubbling in Ceasars $125 NLHE tourney and missed the money by 2 in another $150 at Ceasars. Ceasars is a really good venue for smaller tournaments if you are leery of the 500-1000 events at Bellagio. I also played in a satellite for one of the deep stack events at the Venetian but didn't get a seat. Other than that, I played some three-card poker in between Jack-and-Cokes once I was done with poker for the evening. I about broke even at the tables. Man, the hookers are getting bad again. Just walking through the MGM one evening I must have been approached six times! This is the first time I have noticed a problem in several years.

As I mentioned previously, I have been playing a lot of sit-n-gos online. I play them in blocks of 10 and then evaluate my profit/loss and try to make adjustments. Once I get up to 20 buy-ins for the next level, then I move up. Overall, I am in the black. One more session at my current level should let me move up again. In my most recent block, I cashed 7 out of 10. The break even tends to be four-ish depending on the finish. I'm currently playing $16 turbo SNGs and should be able to move up to $27. I started at $6.50 with a $150 bank. I'm up to just under $500 and I need $540 to move up to the $27 level. The funny thing was once I got back from bootcamp, I actually started losing money. As it turns out, I was simply being too aggressive. Historically, I am not aggressive enough...I swung back too far in the opposite direction. I made an adjustment and started cashing again consistently.

The camp was held at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.  The MGM is not my favorite casino, but the accommodations are decent and there are several top-notch restaurants if you have the time.  The camp was hosted in the conference center which is literally about a 1/3 mile walk from the hotel. 
The camp's instructors were Linda Johnson (hailing from the WPT and Card Player Magazine), Jan Fisher (Poker Cruises and the Tournament Directors Association), Crispen and Jules Leyser (both pros), and the headliner Clonie Gowen.

The format of the camp mixes lectures, videos, and lab exercises.  The labs are where a group of students sit at a poker table and under the direction of an instructor, walk through hands and analyze why you should or should not make certain plays.  The labs are the best part of the curriculum, IMHO, but the videos break up the lectures and hold your interest.  In general, all of the instructors were excellent and really know their subject.  My only minor gripe was that for 60 students, there should have been one more instructor or 10 less students. With the labs, 10:1 would be a perfect ratio.

In the evening of the first day, they held a student only tournament where the first prize was a WPT Satellite seat worth $1000.  I ended up finishing 6th out of 60.  A couple of people hit 3-outers against me, otherwise I probably would have finished higher.  However, the tournament was great in that after a hand was over, you could take one of the instructors aside and ask them about a particular play and get immediate feedback.

On day 2, the class included getting feedback on our performance at the tournament as part of the lectures.  Day 2 also covered tournament strategy and online poker.  Overall, the camp was great.  If you are interested in becoming a proficient player, this camp will take your game to a level that would take many years to come by otherwise.  It does require a substantial investment, $1695, but I highly recommend it.

I have finally started getting serious about my online play. After a fair amount of research, I have decided on a plan of attack. In my experience, limit cash games, no-limit cash games, and tournaments almost seem to be three totally different games. Tournament poker is my strongest game at the moment, so I have decided to focus there. My plan is to stick with a particular level of buy-in, primarily with Sit-n-Gos, establish a positive cash flow, and then move on to the next level. I will risk no more than 5% of my online bankroll on a single buy-in, so part of having a positive expectation at a particular level is to build my roll. Financially, I could tolerate starting at a high buy-in, but the consensus from successful online players is to start low and grind your way up, gaining experience and building your bankroll fairly risk free.

I prefer live poker, but I do enjoy playing online. Online card rooms give players an opportunity to gain experience at a pace that cannot be equaled in a B&M casino. I have also started using online play to improve certain aspects of my game. For example, my heads-up play is not the greatest. Online I can play 10-20 matches in a very short amount of time, using different styles to see what works against different opponents. I think it is also a great opportunity to get familiar with less popular games like Razz, Omaha, or even Stud (most recent Holdem players have never touched a Stud table).

BTW, if you have not been to the Card Player site, definitely check it out. It is quite good. Card Player.

I received my Asus gaming laptop a few days ago and it totally rocks! It has a super nice 17" high-definition widescreen display and a decent graphics card. It still does not run World of Warcraft like my desktop, but it is definitely playable. I spent a few days getting all of my WoW add-ons, Ventrillo, and my online poker clients installed, but the end-product is exactly what I was looking for. It even came with a matching backpack style case and a high-end optical mouse.

I am also headed to Vegas for WPT Boot Camp later this week. I am flying in early so I can hit some local tournaments and relax a bit before boot camp. I am hoping to get into one of the $1000 buy-in NLH events running as part of the Deep Stack event at the Venetian. I figure I will hit a couple of satellites Thursday evening and see if I can get in cheap. If that does not work out, then there is plenty to do on Friday the day before the camp starts. I spent a while mapping out all of the regular tournaments held at most of the card rooms on the strip so I know exactly what my options are ahead of time. My plan is to blog the trip on a daily basis, but we’ll see how busy things get.

There are no cash available games in Atlanta, other than home games of course. I have always been leery of random home games and will continue to stay away from them. However, there are a couple of fairly large "leagues" in the area. The one I have played in occasionally is Bar Game Promotions. The way most if these leagues work is you play for points throughout the "season" at different venues around town (typically bars/taverns). At the end of the season, the top X point holders participate in a tournament for some kind of a prize. BGP will be giving away a WSOP Main Event seat plus some travel expenses. There are some very bad players that come, but I was surprised at the number of decent players that show up that take the game seriously. If you don’t have ready access to a B&M card room, games of this kind can give you some good tournament experience. Please check out their website.

So I broke down and decided to purchase a personal laptop. I have one as my PC from work, but you are not allowed to use it for non-work purposes. I wanted to get a machine that would run World of Warcraft reasonably well in addition to online poker sites, web browsing, and the typical productivity software. I hit the Dell and Gateway sites as well as my favorite parts outlet NewEgg.Com. I purchase a new desktop pretty much every year and for the last four or five years I have built machines myself buying the parts from NewEgg. I decided on the Asus G2 gaming series. NewEgg had a sale and Asus was offering a $250 rebate so I ended up getting a $1700 laptop (normal NewEgg price) for $1200. 2.2 GHz dual core AMD Turion, 17" widescreen UXGA, 2 GB RAM, 160GB HD, ATI Mobility Radeon HD2600 with 256MB DDR3 and the usual assortment of odds and ends. I am eagerly awaiting the UPS truck!

Freaking stock dropped back down

After thinking about the finances a bit more, I am looking into finding a per-diem consulting gig that I can work around poker schedules. Having some steady income will help mitigate risk and allow me to put more calendar time into poker. If anyone knows of a software development consulting company in the Atlanta area looking for a process consultant or trainer, please let me know!

As I’m sure most people would agree, education is a life-long endeavor. In order to improve my game, I have decided to bite the bullet and sign up for the WPT Tournament Boot Camp. I have heard lots of good things about the program. I will be attending in February in Vegas. Once I get back I’ll write up my impressions and try to give everyone a sense of the benefits for both the beginner and intermediate player.

It snowed in Atlanta recently for the first time since I have lived here. The accumulation was an inch or so and nothing stuck to the roadways whatsoever. Regardless, most of the schools were canceled due to inclement weather and there were nuclear disaster proportion raids at the supermarkets to buy up milk, eggs, and bread. Apparently, most of Atlanta feels they need a 2 month supply of French toast in the larder in case this is the next ice age. One of my neighbors assured me this is typical behavior for Atlanteans. The barest dusting of snow in the south brings out survivalist tendencies in all of the natives.

BTW, the bloody stock took a hit

Work sucks as I’m sure most of you can agree. I envy the people that have a career/job that they truly love. The current project I am involved with at work has devolved to the point that I am really, really dissatisfied. The pay is good, benefits are good, it’s an overall great company, but the level of incompetence and strategic blunders committed by a succession of senior managers has brought it to a head. I hate to end a 14 year career, but I have decided to make a change. Since I am going to make a job change anyway, I realized this would be a good time to give poker a real shot. Now comes the next problem…money.

I am fortunate enough that I received a good hunk of stock options before they dried up in the corporate world. For those of you that don’t know, corporate stock options have all but disappeared except for very senior managers. The whole Enron fiasco brought about some changes in GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) that are forcing corporations to recognize stock options as liabilities on their balance sheets. They were previously invisible to financial reports until they were actually exercised.

So my plan is to exercise my remaining options when the stock reaches a certain level. I should clear enough after-tax money to live on for a year plus a fairly sizeable poker bankroll. I figure I’ll give poker nine months after I quit work leaving three months to find another job. If I am actually able to make some money during those nine months, it will allow me to extend the duration of my experiment. The good news is that the stock is only about 3% below where I want it to be, so assuming the quarterly results are positive, I have a good shot at hitting my target very soon. Once I get the money, I’ll stick out the job until I get too pissed off or work gets in the way of a tournament I want to attend.

I started playing poker around 1998, prior to it becoming the phenomenon it is today, but I have always been a gambler. I started making frequent trips to Reno with my parents the instant I turned 21. From the beginning, I was attracted to the poker room, but hesitated to sit down. The etiquette and jargon involved was like a secret society to which I had not been indoctrinated. One day I started playing some low-limit stud and Hold’em to learn the ropes. Finally, the hook was set when I won the large piece of a bad-beat jackpot (about 4K) in a local casino. I have been an enthusiastic amateur ever since.

I have read numerous poker books, play in brick and mortar (B&M) card rooms whenever I get the chance, and play online periodically. However, I have never been able to be consistently profitable. Part of my problem I think is not committing the time to play. With working full-time, raising a family, and engaging in my other hobbies, there just isn’t much time left for poker. I think my second biggest problem is game selection. Since I only “fill in the cracks” in my schedule with poker, I have never paid much attention to this important aspect of the game.

This leads us to the reason I am starting this blog in the first place. I am going to chronicle my attempt at starting to play poker at least semi-professionally. I know the odds I will be successful are very small, but I felt the need to allow myself a real attempt at making it work. As a number of life-factors are aligning to make this attempt possible, I thought it’s either now or wait until I retire. I am not a young kid (41), but I am still a ways from retirement. Who knows…instead of buying a sports car or having an affair with a 22 year-old, this may be my mid-life crisis