A look back at 2009

It turned out to be a decent year for me poker wise. I'm gonna recap by reviewing small and midstakes cash, high stakes cash, online tournies and live tournies seperately. First up is small to mid stakes online cash games, these went really well since I began grinding and writing this blog in April. Its a pretty decent sample and shows that I can beat these levels pretty decently. Profit = ~$75k sfter rakeback



High stakes however has turned out to be completely different for me, I just havent managed to get a grasp of the better regulars, lack of fish etc. I'm pretty sure i will eventually but my first 100k hands havent been great. Beating 1kNL for a decent winrate over a large sample in 2010 is definitely going to be my main aim. profit = ~ -$25k after rakeback.



Online tournies went really well this year, I played some of the biggest online tournies that took place and had some pretty decent cashes in tournaments which had good quality fields. The highlights was obviously the 52.5k in the Sunday 500 for 3rd and the 35k win in the 100 rebuy. My profit across all sites is probably about $100k.




Live tournies went really bad, played about 8 and no cash, a few deepish runs but havent really played well in any. Hopefully i'll put this right next year. I have already qualified for the Irish open and once thats over I'll probably set my sights on the WSOP. Would like to play a few events. Will have to wait and see if I can get the holidays to have a good go at them.

My plan for the first 2-3 months of 2010 is to stop playing tournies for a while and concentrate solely on cash games. I might just play a few Sunday Majors but I'm going to stop playing the 100 rebuy, 1R1A etc. during the week. I think its the only way i'll ever get the better of high stakes as too often i end up playing 4 tables of 1knl along with 3-8 tournies at once. It might sound mad to quit my most profitable games but hopefully in the long run it will pay off.

Galway

Had a good weekned in Galway, great hotel, good atmosphere around and got to meet up with a few boardsies. Poker wise it wasn't great. Started with 20k in chips on Friday, dwindled down to 13k over the first few hours, recovered a bit to 17k then doubled up to 35kish with a set versus AA, for the rest of the day things went pretty bad, got 3bet every time I had a marginal hand and couldnt get any cbets through. Finished the day with 23k.

I won one or two pots on my first table of day 2 to bring me up to 33k and then got moved table. Played 2 hands in 4 rounds of blinds here before I exited! First hand I open 88 utg, button 3bets and the sb 4bets, I fold and button folds. Next round of blinds its folded to the button who opens, sb 3bets and I shove about 25bb with 99, button folds and I run into KK, no 2 outer and I'm gone. Cant really complain though just never got going in this again. Great to hear that Irelands first supernova elite BigMickG managed 4th in this though, a really nice score and another great result for him. Hopefully he's celebrating wont stop him reaching elite again this year!

Off to a flyer!

So this month has kicked off nicely, running good in cash. Up $8k, mostly from running above ev but I'll take it. I also came 2nd in the $100 rebuy on stars the other night for $13.5k and last night I managed to take down a package for the PPP Irish open 2010 on ipoker. My first coaching session went well last week also and already I feel I've plugged up some leaks in my game. I'm not sure if I'll get in too many hands this month though as planned, especially with the IPC this weekend and Christmas holidays fast approaching.