I'm not sure if I have enough to write about to post here every day, so I'm going to try grouping a few days or a week. That way I'll have played more hands and have more poker-related things to say.

I just followed a link to CTS' old blog, and have been reading that this time in 2006 he was setting himself a $100k/month target playing stakes of 10/20 or less. I'm currently playing 5/10 or below, so I wonder if I am under-selling myself to only have a target of something like 15k-25k. Perhaps like in certain areas of sport, knowing a target is possible in theory means it becomes possible to manage it.

I'm fairly sure I can't have a comparable 50k target because I can't play long sessions (my results nose-dive after 1 hour, except, possibly, when playing just one table heads-up) and could never play as many hands in a month, and while my bb/100 is the same, I am winning that by table selecting well and only playing 4 tables, so I doubt it is that scalable.

But, I do find that whenever I have targets in mind, and then reach them, my motivation disappears. I don't play anywhere near the same number of 1 hour sessions in a week. So, over the next few months I'm going to see if I can have at least one $40k month, and always have $25k as a minimum-target.

This month has got off to a good start: +$9,500 in 3000 hands (only 3k hands in 3 working-days though) running almost 3k above expectation, so it's a good starting-block for re-calibrating my targets.

A lot of it was heads-up against 1 regular. I ran well at the start, and he clearly felt I was outplaying, because he started opening right up. In fact, all I had been doing was hitting a lot of flops and value-betting, and that meant that was all I had to keep doing:

***** Hand History for Game 1060554884 *****
$1000.00 USD NL Texas Hold'em - Wednesday, October 08, 10:57:21 ET 2008
Table Dymlingen (Real Money)
Seat 1 is the button
Seat 1: Alexdb ( $3224.00 USD )
Seat 4: Globas ( $1000.00 USD )
Alexdb posts small blind [ $5.00 USD ].
Globas posts big blind [ $10.00 USD ].
Dealt to Alexdb [ ]
RAISE Alexdb , $25.00 USD
RAISE Globas, $80.00 USD
CALL Alexdb , $60.00 USD

Flop:
[ ]
BET Globas, $130.00 USD
RAISE Alexdb , $320.00 USD
RAISE Globas, $780.00 USD
CALL Alexdb , $590.00 USD

Turn:
[ ]

River:
[ ]
Globas shows [ ]
Alexdb shows [ ]
Alexdb wins $1999 .00 USD from main pot

I am waiting for Excel 2007 to arrive in the post because I have been thinking through a spreadsheet to try to solve a small element of regular play that I suspect is solvable and worth the work. I'm not sure I'm going to go further into that yet though, especially if it turns out to be as useful to my game as I think it might. I will post some results if I get to test it out.

Outside of poker I am thinking of applying to work as a magistrate. It's a voluntary job, a few days a year, and I'm sure it would look good on a C.V. if I need to return to work. I also think I would be good at it since it's a practical application of logic/evidence evaluation/etc, and I think I would really enjoy helping pass judgment down onto petty criminals. For some reason petty crime really annoys me, probably more than 'proper' crimes. Its like in football, I'm far more annoyed by a player moving 10 yards forward while taking a throw-in than tackling too hard, and if I was a referee that's when I'd be showing the cards.

I might also apply for a position on the Independent Police Complaints board, but I think I'm a lot less likely to be successful there because they appear to want past experience of similar hearings.