2008 In Review

It's time for The Future Poker Star to look back at 2008, and ask if we are on track.

First of all I apologize to readers, and to myself, for not keeping on top of this blog. I found it hard to write witty intelligent 300 word explanations of games so I neglected to keep it up to date. I know it would have been better to just write results than to write nothing. So now, after a bit of house keeping and spam deleting, I'm back.

If I look back to this time last year, I think I would be very happy and surprised to know that by the end of 2008 I am as far along the road as I am. For starters, I have been crushing the weekly local tournament. By about October I have been pretty much unbeatable there. In fact in the last 6 games before Christmas, I won 5 of them and came 2nd in the other. I have learned how to play every regular player there exactly as they need to be played which is very important. I know that to lose I have to get unlucky.

I still feel that I am best suited to tournaments as the other players that I play against don’t seem to understand the basics of tournament play. I have lost count of the times that I have heard someone say “I had to call his all in with my 7-3 off suit; he’s such a short stack”. This to me is just crazy but the players there seem to think this is how to play tournament poker. It’s not there fault, but nobody seems to understand what the end game is, that they have to be there at the end. It seems as though everyone just wants to bulldoze over each other. I find that a very tight hand selection coupled with the knowledge of what each player plays and how he plays it is the way to go.

I have started to play another tournament too. Again it is a weekly local game but it is with a completely different group of players. I get crushed here. It’s a very low buy-in (£5.00) which I think attracts bad play. It is like being the best dancer in a dancing competition in a mine field. It’s just who is the luckiest. Players don’t like to play me post flop, so they stick it all in with rubbish. I should be making a profit from these games, but they turn it into a coin flipping contest. I should really set aside some time to study a strategy for this game, because out trying to out play them just isn’t going to cut it.

A negative from my tournament play for 2008 though is that I haven’t expanded. I’m still in the same town playing the same players in the same games. I haven’t gone further afield and branched out. This is down to a few reasons but really I think I may just be stuck in my comfort zone.

Cash games this year have been a different story.

Every cash game I am in I struggle with. I can never seem to get a rhythm going. I find it hard to get money out of people in cash games. I think it is because I play so tight that people aren’t going to give me action when I want it. I would be surprised it I have even turned a profit in cash games in 2008.

All in all, I feel that I am a much better player than I was this time last year. My poker theory is worlds apart, mainly because of all the time I put into it. Every time I have a spare minute, I put the iPod in, preloaded with poker instructional mp3’s and podcasts. I read poker books constantly, and I’m always scouring the net. The more I read, the more I want.

Also my reading skills are a lot better. It is starting to come as an instinct. Just a simple process of elimination and I know pretty the range of cards someone is playing, which is improving all the time.

Oh yeah, I was on the same table as Chris Moneymaker and Daniel Negreanu in a Pokerstars tournament at one point too which satisfied the geek in me.

Happy New Years everyone, now let’s shuffle up and deal!