My leak

It is much harder to get around to blogging now that I don't spend countless hours wasting time at work.

Countless hours is a sore point, actually, as I am not putting in enough hours at my new vocation. I need to give serious thought to my scheduling; the mid-morning to early afternoon don't seem like great times to play, because the proportion of serious or professional players must be larger on either side of the Atlantic. Meanwhile, the evening is when I am frequently called upon to perform social obligations, and more keen than usual to do so since I will be leaving the country quite soon (not that many people know that yet).

Anyway, the first fortnight of 'professional poker' has not been good - indeed, I am slightly down at this point. The reasons, to my mind are:

1. Not enough hours
2. Not enough focussed hours. I simply must focus more if I am remotely serious about this.
3. Not running terribly good, particuarly PLO high and even more so in...
4. ... 6-max limit Hold 'Em. Yes, for some reason I dived into this with nary a thought and even less experience. Early signs were encouraging, with an astonishing winning rate for the first seven hours or so. Since them it has been nothing but a succession of awful beats and a growing sense of total disorientation until I didn't know whether to bet, check, or stick a daffodil up my arse.
5. Bad game choices. I looked back at my first fifty hours and realised that I had spent only a third of those hours playing my two most profitable games.

I am not too discouraged overall. This may even be the best thing that could have happened to me; last time I 'went pro' I started like a train, got over-confident and pissed my bankroll away. Instead I have been taking stock and thinking things through.

I've knocked limit hold 'em on the head until I have studied it more. I firmly believe even right now I am a winning player at it - my hours so far are utterly irrelevant in terms of conclusions, but the evidence of my eyes and the play I have been up against tells me I am a winner. But I am not ready for the swings while my bankroll has yet to grow, and the swings are more vicious and the beats more frequent than I am used to.

I've knocked heads-up matches on the head completely. I can't afford to play high enough for the winnings to be meaningful.

And I am focussing on my two most profitable games; PLO8 and sets of four sit and goes, at which I am playing higher now and doing nicely.

This is such a boring post. I am still enjoying this life immensely, the freedom and flexibility, but there's not much to say about it. I did buy a PSP yesterday, and what an impressive piece of kit it is. My leak is not sports betting or craps, it's simply spending too much money on impulses.