Back from the dead

So, as has been pointed out to me, I've been a right lazy sod with the blogging recently. Why? For the reason that most poker blogs die - I haven't been winning anything.

It has been, crikey, five months since the last post, and I've lost money in each and every one of them. OK, only October was really bad (and a lot of the damage was explained in the last post), and February was only £6 down (but still a red number in the spreadsheet) but it still all adds up.

I've cut down on the tournaments now, after going through another one of those runs where I end up spending £55 on a tourney every night and going a whole month without a cash. Cash has been very up and down, spoilt by the times where I know I've made a silly call for a big pot. A bit more discipline and either more or less bluffing is required.

More or less bluffing? Yes - I've been getting into situations where I'll raise with crap, or bet with crap on the flop, build the pot up, then chicken out of continuing with the bluff if I get called. Think I'll go for the less bluffing spot, as I've decided to play my cash games on Blondepoker (now of Tribeca, soon iPoker) and I think there is a marked decrease in the quality of the players at my level ($1/$2), so a more straightforward plan should be called for. I may even try three-tabling in order to keep me honest and stop me from check-raise bluffing (mostly).

The probelm is partly that, due to the fact I have a job, I don't actually play that much. In five months I've only played 6500 hands over 42 hours. Just five of those hands account for all my losses, which goes to show what a martyr to fortune the NL cash game player is.

Anyway, as it is (belatedly) the first post of the year, it's time for my poker goals for 2007. The ones from last year were mostly successful (won the £15K Guaranteed, played in the World Series) but I didn't really follow the third, which was to play more cash. This will be my main goal for the forseeable future - play cash, build up the hands, collect the rakeback and finally work out whether I would ever be cut out to play this game for a living. A couple of hours every night should be my goal - hopefully my bankroll will grow and I'll be able to move up/set money aside for qualifiers to offline events.

I also want to do some writing about poker, which has got off to a fantastic start by me agreeing to write something for Blondepoker two weeks ago and not being able to come up with anything since. Rekindling the blog is an effort by me to blow the cobwebs from my mind and get the creative juices flowing again. Let's see if it works.