jjd323's blog

This year I will be blogging about my poker development. My main aim is to hold myself accountable and to make sure that I stick to the improvement process I lay out for myself. This is, in part, inspired by the current motivational success I am enjoying from the training log I am keeping on 2p2 to monitor my athletic training for my attempt at the Bob Graham Round in summer 2010.

I spent 2009 mostly learning to play all the mix-games on PokerStars. I feel comfortable playing at the 2/4 level at every game spread on the site (except 5-card draw – > Hey DC make some videos for that please). I also cut a modest profit from NLHE, mostly 6-max, although I learnt to play HU as well and that contributes a little too. In all, I would describe the year as a modest success. However, due to the learning of many new games, I spent a lot of time on the analysis part of the what Jared Tendler calls the “poker process”; a cycle that separates each part of the improvement process, for poker. It goes something like :

Prepare —> Perform (results) —> Evaluate —> Analysis —> (loops back to Prepare)

Last year my learning was very unstructured and mostly involved me doing what I wanted, sporadically. I would be learning two games in parallel, jumping into a third variant or the 8-game and playing a few orbits and then sit out and cook dinner. My goal for this year is to bring each part of this process into balance. I haven’t yet decided on exactly what this means, or precisely what my goals are, but the acknowledgement that something needs doing feels like a step in the right direction.

I will be using this blog to record the evaluation part of my poker process. I already started by making some pen&paper evaluation notes from my first session of 2010, and will be posting about those later today. Obviously, my evaluation will refer to all aspects of my poker related experiences, but my focus here will be on the evaluation part of the process.

Happy New Year for 2010,

j