December in review and looking forward

You definitely couldn’t call the first month of this project boring. Circumstances led to me not being able to play nearly as much as I would have liked. Now that I’m back in FL and the holidays are over I’ll be able to get a full month of play in. Let’s take a look at my December stats:

Profit: $454
Hands Played: 25,305
Bonus/Rakeback: $897 (after $367 in monthly rakeback)

Numbers wise it was a pretty disappointing month. It just goes to show how important putting in a lot of hours really is. The 25,000 hands is about half of the minimum number of hands I should be playing each month. This is reflected in only making $897 of the $1300 in bonus money/rakeback I set out to earn. A bankroll management error at the end of the month led to a big loss and knocked down the almost $2000 in profit down to $454.

All that being said, the month wasn’t a total disaster. I’m not going to go hungry only making $900 in bonus money, and my bankroll did increase. It also should make it clear to both you and I how important professional management really is. I started this blog to improve exactly that. If I had been playing higher stakes I would have made plenty of rakeback money to cover the $1300. This month showed that those flaws still exists, which is no surprise, as I hadn’t intended to have them completely fixed the first month. I know what I need to do to fix these flaws, and that is the most important step in getting it done.

So where does that leave me for 2007? Well, here are my goals for January. They’ll be a bit more modest than my December goals as its more obvious now that it will take some time to fix the flaws in professional management of the game.

January 2007 Goals:

Play 50,000 Hands
Make $1300 in bonus/rakeback
Study 10 hours a week
Practice excellent bankroll management

If I take care of my business like I should these will all be very attainable.

Happy New Year!