I'll be looking at the 1st January 2013 as the start of a brand new poker campaign. A clean slate and a fresh start that I perceive will be the beginning of a very exciting adventure. Behind the campaign - in my favour - will be years of experience, a positive long-term run of results that sees me as a winning player overall, and a body of knowledge about the game's strategy and psychology that should give me a fairly reasonable edge. Running against me will be: a very poor run of results over the summer (and much of the Autumn) that puts me down around £1.2K for the year; a very noticeable trend in the live game towards aggression - which I've not yet fully adapted to; a shockingly bad recent trend towards playing my cards rather than playing the player and a lack of playing more volume (this year) which puts me a little bit out of touch.
I am calling my new campaign, The Experiment because I'm really in the dark now as to how this is all going to pan out. Am I just getting too old for the game? Am I missing all the new trends and just not adapting properly? Am I really just getting terrible cards and terrible luck? Have I still got what it takes? Am I just no good anymore? Was I really any good in the first place? Am I going to turn it all round?
I hope that by doing The Experiment, I can answer at least some of these questions.
The Rationale
As there is a possibility that I'm not cut out for the modern game after all, I don't think I can really regard myself as a "semi-pro". On the other hand, I can still remember the magic moments and the glory days of winning reasonably large sums over a few sessions only a very short time ago. So I'm keeping an open mind and regarding myself as a reasonably good "amateur" player; someone who intends to make a long-term profit rather than who's there just to make up the numbers or to have a good time. I will probably just keep track of my live games as the £1/£2 games (and the odd £1/£1 game) involve larger sums than the smaller stakes games which I intend to play online.
I only intend to play when I feel the time is right and so I can't really be specific about volume. It will generally be on the odd Friday and/or Saturday night. I'm also undecided about my buy-in amount. Usually this will be the max or something close to it but with recent events going the way they have, I might be changing this strategy to suit the conditions. Finally, the all important bankroll: well, after a fairly heavy year (financially) both my liferoll AND bankroll have taken a bit of a hit. Therefore, although my effective bankroll will be £10K, I'm going to draw the line and state a stop-loss figure of £3K. In other words, if I get hit for a total of £3K for the year, The Experiment will end and be chalked-up as a failed business venture. I'll no doubt probably need to call a halt to my poker playing activities as well - and take up another interest.
Preparation
To prepare for this project, I'm actually going to play very little live poker over the next two months. My game is totally off the boil at the moment as something in my head really is telling me to make some god-awful decisions. Therefore, while I pinpoint exactly what that might be, visits to the live felt will be rare occasions.
Preparation, then, will mostly involve practice at the $0.10/$0.25 and $0.25/$0.50 online tables at PKR, along with reading up cash-game strategies in publications previously mentioned.
Roll on 2013.
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