He Who Now Plays With Purpose

It has been nearly a year since picking up the game of poker regularly again, and in that time I have logged about 183 hours at the tables in cash games and profited nearly $3,000. To be more exact, it was $2,985. The money made in the past year has helped my wife and I get through a one-income period while I was out of work, it bought us a new, larger refrigerator for the house resulting in the old fridge being put in the garage for my soft drinks, and it has also been used to pay for nice meals and extra clothes that might not have been purchased had my poker playing not been profitable.

Something I have noticed about the past year though is I never have a bankroll to play with. Whatever money I make is regulated to a bill or a big purchase to make my family’s life a little better. While that has been a wonderful blessing on my wife and me, it has limited my playing some. Because I never have more than $400 or so to play with I sometimes am regulated in how aggressive I can be or some of the bets I want to make during a game.

So what can I do about that? A recent blog post from a buddy of mine has helped give me a little direction with my poker playing. Slope, that is my friend’s name, has given himself a goal for next year to play a certain number of hours in online poker games to get special bonuses awarded to the most frequent players. What he has done is set an attainable objective and now he has a purpose when it comes to the game. Obviously the ultimate purpose is to make money at poker and by logging in his hours he hopes to accomplish that while at the same time receiving his bonuses. To take a page from Slope’s playbook, I too am going to set a goal for 2011.

Despite making almost $3,000 in a year playing poker, more than half of that was obtained between Nov. 18 and Dec. 30. In that time span I profited $1,615 and had played 56 hours and 30 minutes of poker. Since the beginning of Jan. 1, I have only played 126 hours and 45 minutes of poker. My playing time in the last month-and-a-half of 2009 was significantly more routine than this year, and I have to figure with a full-time job and child on the way it isn’t going to get any more frequent.

I have a monthly game in Weatherford that I consistently play in, WinStar trips are made about once a month and the occasional trip to Shreveport or Las Vegas also allows for poker games to be played. Therefore I can figure to get about 25-35 sessions of poker in for 2011. Should it be on the low end of that estimate and I could average a $200 profit in each session, which is a tough but doable goal, I can figure to win $5,000 in a year by playing cards. That does not factor in any of my Sunday night tournament play, which I don’t know if I am going to count as I want it to really be cash game money only.

So I think I am going to establish my goal at starting with a $400 bankroll on Jan. 1, 2011, and ending the year with $5,000 in that bankroll, built up completely from cash game profits only. If I can have a $5,000 bankroll that will give me all the freedom in the world to play at the $1-2 table and not be concerned with losing. It could even lead to playing in a $2-5 game with some regularity in 2012 and seeing if I have the chops to handle the players on that level.

Next year, the purpose of this blog will be to chronicle my journey to build a sizeable bankroll from poker profits only and not siphon off any of that money for other budgetary reasons. Posts will include hand histories and questions posed about my playing. I want to continue to use this site as a tool for my advancement in the game of poker.

Until then…