A Month In Elba

We all need a rest from time to time. After a rather over ambitious jaunt across Russia, Napolean spent a brief period exiled on the Tuscan islan of Elba, before regrouping, escaping and then getting a good pasting a year later at Waterloo. For long periods over the last month, my body has felt like a weary french footsoldier plodding across the seemingly never ending Russian terrain, urged into playing endless hours of poker by my dictatorial brain.

In all seriousness, I’ve realised that I have stopped playing poker to win, and now just play to drink, laugh and enjoy the game. This is not necessary a bad thing in small measures, but it has left me devoid of goals and resulted in me gambling aimlessly. I’ve also had way too much drink on occasion, and have seen aspects of my character that I really don’t like.

As a result, I’ve decided to stop playing live poker for a month, and concentrate on my online game, which has been neglected for so long now. I’ve also come up with some basic goals for the next month to keep me focused. I guess the period can be split into two sections - October, which will be all online play, and the remaining months. I’ll deal with both in turn.

October
I’m going to chuck $3,000 into my accounts. $2,000 of which I’ll use to give me a shot at playing a decent volume of tournaments, and the other $1,000 wlll be used in cash games. I have decided I need to turn this $3k into $6k by the end of the month, or I won’t play in the UKPT Main Event in November ($6k buy in).

This is a pretty modest goal in doubling my money, but at least it will give me something to shoot at. I aim to play twice a week - one session of cash, and the other a tournament session. One Saturday in the middle, I’ll do a 12 hour stint playing through the night on Stars and FT to try and register a big score on the tournaments. Unfortunately I won’t be able to play a Sunday session, because work is so manic at the moment, and I can’t afford to take a day off.

November/December
Again modest objectives, but if I can achieve them I can enter next year with confidence:

• Win a further $2,000 playing online cash
• Win $2000 for the period playing live cash
• Win $1000 for the period playing live tournaments

I’m going to keep a mini October P&L to see how I am doing, and I won’t update the Main P&L numbers till the end of the month. My first session will either be tonight or next week depending on how I feel. Hopefully, when I return from my exile, I’ll have a different perspective on live play, and won’t find myself stationed on St Helena one year later.