Thinking Time

As the post suggests, I feel the need to have a long think about poker and what do to keep up the volume.

For me, this Christmas marks the end of one era and start of another. Granted, its easy to say and we have been there many times but as of January I really need to knuckle down with uni studies but I don't want that to mean poker is all but forgotten. Shipping the tournament a couple of weeks back has allowed me to not worry about finances and I should be able to live comfortably for the remainder of the year without working. I also anticipate saving a lot lot more money than I have done in previous years, for the following reasons:

1) I NEED to get at least a 2:1 this year or I jeopardise my ability to secure a training contract in 18 months time.
2) The majority of my friends graduate this year, thus, with their finals coming up nights out will inevitably be few and far between.
3)Its all getting a bit repetitive now anyway, we have done most things so we just do less things, less frequently.

For me this is only positive, I'll save some money which will enable me to take more spontaneous trips, which I love, or have a super summer holiday (thinking Australia). If I can knuckle down and remain focused in respect of my degree then come July I could be able to predict what I shall be earning over the next three years from a training contract.

So, its out with the old and in with the new. I have done extremely well to put some money away this semester and retained a lot of the cash I started with. This was one of my fundamental aims at the start of the semester but its come at the cost of university because I was eager to put in the hours at work and maintain the job for as long as possible. Although its silly to say, its "lucky" because the first semester is "less" important than the second...I can catch up from the first semester but if I fall behind as of January then I would have a problem. So in some respects its positive that I am in a decent financial position because I can do nothing but concentrate on nailing my degree over the next 18 months.

In terms of poker, I am sitting on $2000 and unable to use it. In pure business terms this doesn't make sense at all...I should be making that money work for me. I believe poker can offer me financial rewards in the long term, as opposed to taking the money out and investing in shares or commodities and selling them on. So, its my intention to keep on playing and working the bankroll up. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, the amount of volume that can be achieved over the next four weeks is probably fairly minimal.

As a result of this, I have decided to invest $300 of that money into a friend at uni whom I consider to be fairly decent at poker, at least at micro stakes. He's played online a fair bit before and we have had plenty of games together. He's by no means brilliant, far from the complete package and riddled with numerous leaks. That's the brutal truth. However, I think by providing Dan with 90 buy-ins for the $3.40 18 man SNGs on Stars, he can improve as a player and I can earn at least $60 per month by staking him. Further, he is provided me with a guarantee that the amount of volume he can put in will be far more superior to mine. As a result, its a no-brainer. I won't go into the ins and outs of the deal but I hope its profitable for both of us and that I have made the right business decision.

From my own point of view, I need to have a think about what my schedule should consist of and what my long term plan is. I think I really need to have a schedule that permits me to play whenever I have the time. As it stands I have very few tournaments on DTD/Bwin and are spread between 5 and 10pm (9 tournaments). Stars obviously has regular scheduled tournaments and has the 180 man SNGs on offer but the size of the fields in the scheduled are ridiculous and unless I put in a ton of volume in the 180s, there is little point.

I have been giving some consideration to the following:

1) Transferring the entire roll to Stars, following a bankroll building ladder and playing 18/45/180 man tournaments.
2) Transferring the entire roll to Stars and playing a bit of cash and SNGs
3) Adding another skin or two to my current three. If this is what I do, it would likely be Betfair and/or Ladbrokes.

I will do some research into all of these before deciding but I want to have it set-up by the time uni starts up again on 11th January, purely for the purposes of getting into a set routine.
Clearly the advantages of treating poker as my work is the flexibility. However, I'd like to dedicate two nights per week to poker where I definitely put in a ton of volume, then whenever I have other time spare, I can put in "overtime".

I'm going to play a handful of tournaments tonight and tomorrow night just to put in a little bit of volume and keep my mind thinking active. Unfortunately the only other night I could put in volume is Tuesday night - I hope to hammer the volume out then, but otherwise that will be it before going home, which is when I shall have to re-evaluate!

A lot to think about.....