A Good First Year

The Irish Poker Awards at this weekend’s IPO in Dublin was a good way to book end my first year in poker as a full time player. Of course the calendar year end is still a couple of months away but for me this does feel like a nice way to mark this chapter in my poker career and hopefully to look forward to a more successful year in 2011. The new WSOP main event champion will be crowned in November and season 2 of the UKIPT kicks off in December. A major goal for me in the next 12 months is to have a real crack at doing well in both (see if you can guess which I’d most prefer to do well in?). Pretty soon we’ll have some new Brown Belt members of Black Belt Poker team following Grading III, and another goal for me for the next year is to move up from Blue Belt so that I can play some bigger events throughout the year. While I have some goals and aspirations for the next year, the only things that I can really control is my own play and I aim to be as consistent, and disciplined as I possibly can be and also to work even harder on my game so that I improve technically as a player.
I have recently moved in to a new flat and I’m very happy with it. One of the nice things about it is that I have a spare room which I have somewhat converted into an office. One of the walls is all window and so my father and girlfriend worked together to make a kind of Japanese screen; wooden frames covered in fabric that I can fold in or out like a concertina. I’ve bought a desk for my computer, I have a comfortable office chair and am planning to pick up an extra monitor so that I can multitable and multitask more easily. I’m pretty comfortable playing four HU tables at this stage, and I usually go for the turbo tables but at the moment I have a bit of an overlap on the screen which I’d like to eliminate. All of these extra things should facilitate a more conducive environment for playing poker but of course my own attitude and frame of mind will be the most important factor in getting where I want to be in poker. Moving up the levels and building a bigger bankroll are the primary goal; tournament success is nice and it is what gets you most attention but being a consistently winning cash player at significant levels has and always will be my number one goal in poker.
If goal number one can be achieved then, goal number two ought to follow. Once I can establish myself as a Brown Belt then the door opens up to the possibility of playing more EPTs. Having played my first EPT in London, seen several friends have deep runs, you really get the sense that actually having that big win is not as fanciful a thought as I would have 6 months ago. The buy ins for these are significant by any measure, and the money up top is life changing. This doesn’t necessarily mean that every player in the tournament is a great player, though undoubtedly there are many. I felt comfortable at my table, I thought there were at least a couple of soft spots and if I was to rank myself at the table I would have put myself at number 3, behind Scott Fischman and Andrew ‘luckychewy’ Lichtenberger, with luckychewy being a strong first. Of course this is only my assessment over the course of a couple of hours play, and ultimately I had an early exit on my first hand moved to a new table. I know I can compete at that level, and that is where I would like to be playing as far as tournaments go.
The third goal which I mentioned was the UKIPT. Having come second on the UKIPT leaderboard this year, I am determined to go one better this year. Having been awarded 4 tournament buy ins from Stars plus my hotels, I have already booked my flights to Manchester and Nottingham. While EPTs are the aspiration, I already know that the UKIPT is within my budget and I have had enough success so far to feel like I can improve on last year and actually win one. I believe that these are due to be televised in one form or another this year which will hopefully mean lots of face time for members of Team Black Belt. I can’t tell you how pleased I am when other members of the team do well, its wonderful and really feels like we’ve achieved something collectively. It’s like it, but its not, and I think it’s important to be competing with each other to try to push the bar higher and higher so none of us can rest on our laurels. I plan to play as close to 100% of UKIPTs this year as possible, I want to win the leaderboard, and I want to win an event.
The World Series of Poker is the main focus of the poker calendar every year, and that will probably never change. This year I played a $1k side event and the main event, I had deepish runs in both but fell short of the money in both. I learned from the experience and when I was heading home my strongest feeling was that I didn’t want to let this be a one off; again, I wanted to be back again next year and this time I wanted to be coming home having made a mark. I don’t think that I would like to spend much more than two weeks or so in Vegas and I don’t expect to have that much fuller a schedule this coming year. I would like to give a better account of myself and I would like to make a decent profit this year, it is not a poker holiday.
I want to thank everyone for supporting me at these Irish Poker Awards; I think I had a strong case for ‘Best Break Out Year’, as did the other nominees, and thanks to the votes of my friends and the Black Belt Poker community I was lucky enough to win it. Just to be nominated in the ‘Player of the Year’ category was more than I could have hoped, and again thanks to my support base I managed to win that too. Would an independent industry panel have given me the award? Probably not, lets be fair, but I’m sure the other nominees will console themselves with all of the money they have won and we all know it was an internet vote. I want my results in 2011 to show that I was worthy of consideration, and prove to myself and to others that I can compete at a high level. I’ve had a good ‘break out year’, but I want to show that I’m not a flash in the pan.