The big 2-9

While 2-9 is one heckuva hand, I'm talking about turning 29 in 2 weeks. I have been playing poker seriously for around 1 year and I suppose this is my motivation for starting a poker blog. 29 is going to be the year I go from learning to earning. I will use this blog to actually track what I am doing, whether I am making or losing money overall, lessons I learn from pivotal hands, general observations, and I'm sure a lot of nonsense.

Live Play
I try to play around once a week in a home game at "Jaysen's Poker Palace" (hereafter JPP). The buy-in is $10 with $5 re-buys. We'll have anywhere from 8-15 players and the payout is top 3 so roughly 50-30-20%. Of course, when I first started there last summer, I was never in the money. Then I started law school in the fall of 2005 and I couldn't play JPP as much, but I was still practicing online (but never during class, noooo way.) Then I went on a very good streak at JPP where I was in the money approximately 7/10 games. I know that I am in the top few players in the game, outlasting most of the calling stations with a shot for the money... but I have no idea where my live cash balance stands. I do know that I lost in a $40+$10 at The 101 Casino (a.k.a. the "Cow Shit Casino") in Petaluma, CA on a trip there last month. There were 86 players and I busted with 88 v. 77 when the 7 hit on the river. My cousin Gregg made it to the final table and we had a blast.

Online Play
I know that I am ahead online, because I know what I have deposited and I know what my balances are at a handful of sites. Of course my objective the past year has been to learn and not to make money. If I was trying to make money, I would say that over the hundreds of hours I have played that my average profit of about 10 cents/hour probably isn't worth it. However, I consider not losing any money in online poker to be an accomplishment, and now it is time to start thinking about money management and actually knowing how, when, and where I am most profitable. Here is the approximate online bankroll I will be starting with on my blogger mission:

Bodog -$190
I cleaned up for a while at Bodog on the $5+.50 and $6.50 (Turbo) SNG's. At one point I was up over $300 on my initial $50 deposit. I think I need to move some of this money to another site, but for now it is the only place where I am still playing $5+ SNG's.
Titan - $50
I put $50 on Titan to take advantage of a $25 deposit bonus. I also got a $25 friend referral from 23skidoo. He encouraged me to play it all on a .25/.50 table (I rarely play cash games) and an hour later I was up another $75. So why do I still only have $50? Don't ask. Do I know what I am still doing at Titan? No. Maybe I will figure it out or maybe I will consider the whole thing a wash and move it somewhere else.
Mansion - $12.50
I made the minimum $10 deposit to play in the "Poker Dome" freerolls and the $500 "1 cent" freerolls. You need to make the top 6 out of 600 in one of the freerolls to make the weekly Poker Dome qualifier. I have made it to around 30th a couple of times and also won $2.50 in one of the freerolls. As long as they continue having such manageable sized MTT's to take a stab at $500 or getting on TV, this is going to be my MTT practice ground.
UltimateBet - $10
This is the first site I deposited $25. I was up over $100 at one point and moved $50 to Bodog. Then I went on a good losing spree, playing too high of limits and goofing around and now I am going to see if I can make a comeback from a measly 10 bucks.

I don't think I am at the point where I am going to set any poker goals. Hell, I might not even keep up with this... If I do there is always New Years. The only goals now are to record, observe, learn, and improve...