Reg's Ramblings

Ok, so its been a while since my last update, no reason for that, other than nothing much has been happening that was noteworthy.

We got our pay deal settled at work. We eventually settled on a pretty disappointing 2.5%, with a guarantee of an inflation matching payrise in Jan 11. Its not great but given that some people are having to deal with pay freezes and/or job losses, I suppose we should be at least grateful for small mercies. At least this deal spares me the ordeal of having to negotiate again next year, whilst we're still likely to be in a recession. The key part of the deal for me, was the guarantee of matching the RPI next year. The company is obviously gambling on the RPI dropping significantly but I suspect it might stay quite high, at around at least 4.5% and I wouldn't have wanted to bet on us receiving that amount had we started negotiating afresh in November.

Things have been going well on the poker front. I'm having my best ever cash month, having cleared $2k for the month. I started the month on Betfair and I went on a ludicrous heater. The wheels started to come off last weekend and I never really recovered, so I made a decision to move my new improved roll over the Betfred on the ipoker network, where for the first time, I'm comfortably rolled to launch a serious assault on their $50nl FR games.

The title of this blog refers to my medium term ambition for the rest of the year. I have set myself a mini goal of achieving an hourly rate of $25 between now and Xmas. Its an ambition of mine to eventually earn more from poker than I do in my day job, so I then don't live my life in fear of redundancy, like the rest of my colleagues do. Having a very real immediate fallback position of being able to support myself and my family from poker earnings would really ease the pressure should I lose my job during this difficult time for British industry.

My plan is to stay at $50nl, saving almost all of my earnings(allowing for the odd luxury as a reward)So, should I be unfortunate enough to lose my job, I can have enough savings to allow myself a shot at supporting myself full time should the need ever arise.

Its a big step for me to to go public with this ambition, as I've pretty much kept it to myself until now. I know that to some people, my ambition will seem somewhere between unrealistic and utterly ludicrous but its a logical next step to me and I know if I work hard at learning to be more consistent and unaffected by swings, either positive, or negative, I know I stand a decent chance. This is important to me, so I'll sure as hell be giving it my best shot.

Thats all for now. Until next time, stay well and be lucky.