I thought I would post a year end graph, but I ended up just putting up a graph of all the hands I have in one of my databases.

The graph below represents approximately half of my career hands. It doesn't represent rakeback, bonuses, any hands I have played on my laptop, nor does it include hands from a database that I had crash or any hands missing from imports that failed to come through...

http://rolledontheriver.com/images/Dusty/lifegraph.png"> SRC="http://rolledontheriver.com/images/Dusty/lifegraph_small.png" ALT="Dusty Graph">

Click for full size image



First off I want to say that I played a ton of poker tonight, New Year's Eve. I have never stayed in on New Year's in my adult life, but when you have a newborn you don't have much choice. That being said, I may never go out again on New Year's. I have never played softer games at the higher stakes than tonight. It made the good old Party Poker games from years past look like a table full of Phil Ivey's.

Unfortunately I also may have never run worse. I ended up breaking even despite winning about 10 stacks from people who thought it would be fun to call an all in with hands like 3 8 offsuit and 59 offsuit. There were clearly a ton of very drunk people at the tables, but unfortunately I got coolered most of the night and ran about $5,000 behind EV on top of the coolers.



It is a bit of a bummer that I ran bad because it has been weighing on me that I ran $160,000 behind EV in 2009. It has just been one of those years. It was the opposite of 2007 when I ran $80,000 above EV. Last year I ran about $130,000 behind EV and this year I ran $160,000 behind EV.

Poker is just one long session and I know in the long run it works out. Fortunately I am playing very good poker for me anyway, and I am certain that I am looking ahead to a massive 2010. I feel a big year coming on.

For the year I ended up winning $635,000 at the poker tables. I am pleased with this result because I really only played about 1,000 hours at most. I spent a lot of time getting back into golf, representing myself in Federal Court with the USGA case, having my first child and writing my first book, Treat Your Poker Like A Business, among other things. All in all I consider the year a success.

Investment wise I had some skunks and I had some home runs. All in all it was a tremendous year investment wise. I also grew a ton as a person. I remained true to myself in the areas I never want to cahnge and made some adjustments where I am falling short. Like any human being, I have a long way to go. I guess life is kind of messed up in the sense that by the time you have it all figured out, you're about ready to be dead..haha.

My book continues to be something I am really stoked about. I wrote it hoping that I could write a book that I could be proud of and was only hoping that people would enjoy it and consider it a worthwhile investment. What has followed has been incredible. I still haven't come across a bad review and I have recieved numerous messages from people going so far as to say it will forever change their lives!

The most incredible compliment came from a man who bought my book and then 2 days later bought 10 more. My business partner contacted the man assuming it must've been a mistake in the ordering process. The man said that he read the book from cover to cover in one day and wanted to order 10 more for his executive board members which he was going to give them as mandatory reading. He is the CEO of a midsized company and said that if all of his executives applied the business concepts that I teach in my book, the company would be infinitely better off. That is maybe the best compliment I have ever gotten in my business career!


For those interested in a copy of Treat Your Poker Like A Business, you can buy a hard copy to be shipped or download the e book immediately at http://www.dustyschmidt.net">http://www.dustyschmidt.net/">http://www.dustyschmidt.net

I think my newest claim to fame is going to be that I was on the same radio show only one week after WSOP champ Joe Cada. Joe was on last week with the guys at Mediocre Poker and this week I had the honor of being a guest.

Bret and Eric are a lot of fun. I think this is my 3rd time on their show and they are hands down the best duo I have done an interview with. They really are pros at what they do.


If anyone is interested here is a link to the podcast

http://mediocrepokerradio.com/podcasts/



This week has been amazing. Celebrating Christmas with my daughter was incredibly fun. There is actually a new home video that I am sure my wife will never discard where I opened presents with Lennon (my daughter) and did some running commentary where I was a super corn ball. I thought my wife was just taking pictures while we were doing this, but apparently she had it on the video camera mode and so there is this video of ours where women would probably say I'm "the cutest dad ever" and my friends would never let me live it down..haha. In any event, I am sure it will be worth having some day.

Poker has gone amazingly well this week. I haven't been able to say that this year too often in being over $150,000 behind EV, but like I said a few months ago, I was a big time stock market luck sack this year so I'm not complaining.

I only played about 20 or so hours and profitied a little over $35,000 on the week. That is one of my better weeks of the year and probably one of my better weeks ever when you consider I only played less than 3 days worth of poker.

As for a quick update on the Treat Your Poker Like A Business, I realized that I forgot to thank everyone who helped with my book. Of course I listed them in the acknowledgements section of my book, but wanted to thank the community in general for their support as well as these people in particular.

I am deeply grateful for the contributions of the following people, without whose contributions, guidance and encouragement this book would not have been possible:

Nicole Schmidt , Matt Amen, Nick Grudzien, Matt Bolt , Jared Tendler , Michael Skelton , Rob Wise, Casey Martin , Johnny Mac, Jim Pellegrino, Jim Varnon , Taylor Caby, Ed Miller, Alex Huang , Jim Galfano, Dan Deppen, John McKenna, Daniel Briz, Derek
Gardener, Andrew Brand, Johnny Watkins, James Taylor, PGAPro, Jianhua Li, Steve Wilson, Steve Odeegan, Michael Ashley, Jeff Conway, Tracy Hopper and Sara Brown.
I would also like to thank the following online players, who helped bring this book to the poker community: Tallskid, PokerTheorist, schaffem111, CHPokerBrat, KreativeDal,
sandtiger, wilneedheart, AceSweaty, totals, SpiderJ, trigpoint, tiltboy, Boum, dzikiljack,kalebra, masterholmes, pokege, betapro, WhiteMass, folkdsb, BigEd157, imnuts,
fink494, sisnarf, joeyg50, scotchMist, TheRaguu, Ketlar, joeaugie, HighOctane, npiv, somervillejoe.

Thanks everyone!

The book continues to blow me away each and every day. The emails and PM's and reviews have all been very flattering. Who knew writing a book would be such a rewarding experience? I knew that I would get personal satisfaction out of accomplishing something like that, but I guess I never really thought that anything I could write would actually inspire people to write me thanking me for the book. I thought I was supposed to be thanking the customer, not the other way around..haha.

In any event I am proud to say that I have personally written each and every person who took the time to thank me or ask questions about the material in the book. I have been budgeting time each day to do this because so far the support has been pouring in. But I am happy to do it and I encourage people to ask questions. That is part of the value in the book. I presume a lot of authors don't do this unless it's just an email or two a day, but it honestly is a lot of fun. Reading the responses makes my day.

FYI I will be posting a year end graph as well as a lifetime graph around New Year's day.

Thanks again to everyone for the support. If anyone is interested in getting a copy you can visit http://www.dustyschmidt.net

If anyone is interested in getting my daily poker updates you can do so by becoming my friend on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/#/profile.php?ref=profile&id=1168891656

This youtube was taken from the Portland Mercury website. http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2009/12/22/">http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2009/12/22/">http://blogtown.portlandmercury.com/BlogtownPDX/archives/2009/12/22/ They stopped by and asked me a few questions while I was playing poker on the streets of Portland and took some video. Anyway, thought you guys might enjoy this. This was on a much warmer day. Some of the days I played it was under 10 degrees (windchill) outside. On this particular day it was in the high 30s and much, much more pleasant.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vzg9I0Q0c4&feature=player_embedded

Give the concept of paying it forward a try. It is simply the best concpet ever. If you can do something nice for 3 people on the condition that they do something nice for 3 people and so on, the world would drastically cahnge for the better. Give it a try.

PS The Portland cops are the best. Once he learned what we were doing he just rode away on his bike. Seemed like a great dude.

I want to first off announce that my new book, Treat Your Poker Like A Business, has arrived. It can be found on http://www.dustyschmidt.net So far we have been fortunate enough to get some great reviews on Stoxpoker http://www.stoxpoker.com/blogentry_more.php?blogid=3920&langid=1&memberblog=false#MORE and on PokerNews.com http://uk.pokernews.com/news/2009/12/book-review-treat-your-poker-like-a-business-dusty.htm-5457.htm

If you do check out the book, definetely don't be afraid to PM me or email me any questions. Thanks so much for your support.

Here is my video blog: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciEUs-87VvM