Another year as a professional poker player in the books. Although it didn't end (professionally speaking) on the bang I had been envisioning but rather an annoying whimper, no complaints from me. For the third straight month in Boston I made 6-figures + and this was actually the worst month of the three:



I'd be lying if I said that the finishing downswing didn't bother my aesthetic sensibilities a bit, but luckily the year is ending and there are no better fresh mental slates than a new year for a poker player. For many of us, it's a time to take a deep breath, internalize the past year's mistakes/triumphs and make resolutions to do better the next year. Usually I'm in the "sigh, let's look at everything I failed at" camp with poker but finally this year, I feel great about the year's progress. I had a truly terrible first 6-7 months of the year ultimately culminating in busting the 50k WSOP event of the summer on Day 4 with 99 to 96s during the NL round (AIPF) then running 200k below EV the following 2 weeks online. Then I had to wire more money on, instantly went on a heater, holed myself in at my parent's place for a month to grind WCOOP before making the move to Boston, played almost every event, did terribly, lost more at cash games during the time, and wound up dropping all the initial profit and a lot of the initial wire. Clearly I wasn't exactly thrilled to re-start the grind upon getting to Boston. But this is the sick life I chose for myself so grind I did. Somehow I went from starting at 5/10-10/20 in October to having the best month of my life, all at 25/50. Obviously I ran very good during this flash of cards, but something really just clicked for me then. Since then, I've been so much less stressed by the inherent swings in my game, can count the number of times I have played less than my A- game on the fingers on one hand, and have actually been taking the time to study HHs after every session. I feel a re-invigoration for the game, and honestly enjoy waking up most mornings and getting straight on the grind. I feel like I did when I was 18 and just getting into online poker... it feels great! I guess a 3-month 200 buy-in heater will do that to most everyone, but regardless, I'm happy and grateful that it happened to me.

I guess this time of the year is when people look to the future and envision the changes that they'll make. Well, I'm not foolish enough to actually call these things resolutions since the force of laziness is pretty strong in this one, but here goes anyways:

• Continue with the current attitude towards poker. If anything, a nice goal for myself would be to actively watch out for which regulars are exploiting my tendencies and once every two weeks or so, spend a few hours on reviewing all of the recent HHs with them and proceed accordingly.

• Continue with the current gym routine. I really miss having a crossfit gym nearby so my cardio has been struggling but I've at least managed to keep myself motivated to lift weights 3-4 times a week and am getting back to the shape I was in during college. I guess if I had to make a specific goal of some sort, I'd love to be able to do 100 double-unders on the jumprope in a row. That shit is really hard.

• Make more of an effort to build new social circles around Boston. Whenever I move to a new city, I tend to have a somewhat defeatist attitude about forming new, lasting connections since I generally travel so much. Meh, it's ultimately a pretty lame excuse and I have just gotten a bit lazy after forming a solid social network with my roommates' work buddies and a few poker players in the city. I know it's going to be hard to recreate the social environment of San Diego where I could always find people down to get some drinks, go to the beach, play a round of golf at any point during a weekday, but hey it's worth a try!
  

• Meet with a financial advisor. Wayyyy too much of my money is sitting in a money market account earning next to nothing. It's kind of embarrassing. If anyone has any advice on good advisors in the Boston area, get at me. I guess I had been saving for a big real estate purchase but that's pretty clearly not happening for at least another year (i.e. I want to do it in San Diego) so I need to get my finances in order.

• Continue doing all those little things that make life what it is. Ya know.

So that's where things stand with me at this point. Coming up ahead is New Year's in Tahoe with a few poker players and a crew of strong drinkers. It should be a pretty aggressive 3-day kegger with lots of drinking games, themed outfits and your usual other shenanigans. Then back to Boston, probably lie in a curled ball of hangover for a few days, and soon after off to the Bahamas for PCA. PCA gets a bit of a harsh rep in the online community due to the pretty poor service in the hotel as juxtaposed by the pretty outlandish prices. That said, if those things don't really get under your skin, the action is great and it's a sweet vacation opportunity in the beginning of winter. I didn't really get to appreciate the winter-summer transition last year going from San Diego to a much chillier Bahamas, but this year it will definitely be nice to leave freezing Boston weather for a bit of sun.



Nothing like a solid vacation and hopefully a productive week of work to start off a new year!

Happy holidays everybody..

Cheers,
Mike