A new focus

First things first, a bit about myself. My name is John, and I'm a recent graduate from the Univeristy of Toronto. I studied communications, culture and information technology, with a specialist in digital enterprise management, as if that matters. I'm passionate about a lot of things in this world, but few engross me currently any more than poker does. I'm not sure what it is about the game that attracts me, but it does. It's like a moth to a flame with me.

Maybe it's the lure of the money I know is out there, as I have friends who pulled in $1million profits last year. Maybe it's addiction - I mean, I play almost every day. My girlfriend asks me sometimes that if I tried, could I stop playing? And while I think I could, why would I want to? It's been a profitable hobby for me for many years, and has financed a decent portion of my education. What I do know if that I have a lot of gamble in me, and poker is a gamble with a positive expectation.

Few people in my life understand how this game works, and this blog isn't an attempt to enlighten them by any means. So what is it going to be? I really don't even know. It's being started for more selfish reasons than anything. Hopefully by having this I can refocus my game, and properly set and achieve goals.

My ultimate goal is to make $100,000/yr, which is both reasonable and attainable, as absurd as that may sound to some. It wont be this year, and it may not be next year, but it will happen. Currently I am playing No-limit holdem (NLHE) with a capped buy-in of $100. My monthly goals are $4000, playing ~25-30k hands. My current winrate is 9.52ptbb/100 hands (playing, on average, 3 tables at once) , which is ~$23.50/hr (this is low, as some of my sample includes $50 buyin tables). This equates to almost $50,000/yr.

My stats are still unstable, and I expect my hourly rate to rise as I have increased the amount of tables I'm playing (this will probably negativley affect my winrate, as it detracts attention from other tables). But it's all about that hourly rate.

For now I'll post a graph, and it includes every hand I've played since school ended 45 days ago:

In dollars, thats about $2000. I havn't put in as many hands as I would've liked in ring games, as I devoted a lot of May to a multi-table tournament contest I got involved in (which netted me an additional $2040 with my ridiculous ROI% of 314.09 over 110 tournies). I had two first place finishes, three 2nd places, and two 3rds. A super hot run, to say the least.

In case anyone is curious, that big dip around hand #10,000 was a $450 pot I lost with a big stack and a monster draw. I had AdTd and the flop came KdQd7c. SB bet the pot which I called, and a player behind minraises. Original raiser calls, and I push for another $150 (pot was already ~$72), representing a huge hand. Minraiser folds, initial raiser instacalls with Q7o and I get no help. I'm surprised he called with only 2pair, but I was still around ~40% to win the hand. C'est la vie.

Okay, so in summary: I'm going to make $4000 in June, or ~ $1000/week for the rest of the year. These goals will likely change as my life and bankroll do. This should be a lot of fun....