Saturday 2/18/2006

Been evaluating my progress, both for this month, year, and overall. I admit that I am new to playing poker as a business, but not new to poker. After reading so much on the different forums, I just figured I was experiencing some good luck and was hoping to sustain my run for as long as possible. Then, I realized that a lot of the people telling me that I was most likely not a winning player were losing players themselves...and those that were not losing players were not winning very much. I am blowing by people that used to talk trash about my game. I have been playing and keeping my stats since April 2005. I am finally convinced I am a long term, profitable player. I no longer worry about what anyone says about my game, nor do I care whether people think I am a good player. BOTTOM LINE: I now have the confidence in my game where I believe I can continue to grow my bankroll.

Poker is a funny game. Your game seems to be only as good as your confidence...and your confidence is a delicate balance between good cards, solid play, decent luck, and positive results. the sad thing is, it only takes one of the four aspects to fall off to completely kill all confidence. With so many variables affecting the success of your poker game, it is easy to see why it is such a tough way to make a consistent living. The only thing you can do is look at your history and, assuming you are truly a profitable player, you should just continue to play your game and the results will come.

the next logical question is, how do I know if I am a profitable player? That is a much harder question. Do I need 1000 sngs logged to determine whether I am a long term winner, or do I need 10,000. Obviously, the more sngs logged, the more reliable your numbers. However, we obviously want to know whether we are winning players before we have logged 1000 sngs, muchless 10,000.

well, I have listed all the reasons I have had doubt in my game and the thought process I have been going through the past 10 months. Am I going to be a long term winner? Am I a good player? Will I be able to move up in buy in and still remain successful? All these questions, and doubts, enter your mind to keep you focused and humble. I think I am finally past doubting my skills and need to focus more on my gameplan.

I guess this post is the first time since I started blogging over 9 weeks ago that I feel like this blog is going to be around next month, or next year for that matter. I feel like I am the only thing that can stop me from getting to where I want to be...if it is up to me and my discipline, then there is a lot of fun to be had in the near future. So, I wanted to celebrate that today.