Hey everyone, happy new year!
I’m chilling in New York at the moment with my dad. Tomorrow night I’m catching a plane back home to Virginia, since my little brother is getting back from his semester abroad in Australia. The plan is to relax at home for a week or so before his spring semester at UPenn starts up, and then I’ll fly back up to Boston. Should be fun, especially since he’s finally gonna let me teach him how to play poker 
I’m not usually real big about making new year’s resolutions, but I guess it’d be fun to look back on this post a year from now so what the heck, I’ll indulge. I’ll start with the more concrete and get to the squishy poker stuff later.
First, I want to get in sick shape this year. Sports used to be a huge part of my life, and it frankly sucks that they aren’t anymore. I’ve started working out again ad I want it to be a big part of my routine this year. I think it’ll give me something to work hard on that’s totally separate from poker – and I think it’s important to have some diversity to your interests, especially if you’re super competitive like I am, because it can be really depressing when the one and only thing you’re doing isn’t going well. I’m hoping it’ll be easier to handle the poker swings if I know I’m doing a good job with exercise.
Second, I want to start reading more. I read a ton as a kid – part of the reason why it took me 21 years to learn the rules of poker is that I never played board games etc. when I was little, I just read a lot. After I read Jurassic Park back in second grade, I was hooked… but I pretty much stopped reading towards the end of high school, and barely read at all in college (required or otherwise). Anyways, I did a bunch of reading while in Spain and want to keep it up. I’m shooting for a book per week. This week’s selection is The Man in the High Castle, by Philip K. Dick. I read one of his other books, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (it’s the book behind Blade Runner), in Europe and loved it.
Okay, moving on towards poker goals. Poker goals are always tricky, since it’s hard to come up with ones that are both interesting and inspiring, but also feasibly doable. Saying you want to win $500k this year is potentially really counter-productive, because who knows, you might go on a sick four month downswing, have to drop down in limits, etc. You might fall way short of a monetary goal for reasons that were largely out of our control, which means most monetary goals are kind of shitty.
So I’ll just say that I would really like to win $500k this year
No I’m kidding, I don’t expect to win $500k this year obviously. Broadly speaking, I want to be able to look back a year from now and say, 2008 was the year I really mastered the fundamentals of NL holdem. I guess a more concrete way of putting it is that I want to be able to teach someone how to play poker, and not just show them. I could show my brother how to be a winning small stakes player, but I can’t really teach him – my theoretical understanding of the game is just too shallow. I don’t really grok yet a lot of the standard moves in a MSNL player’s arsenal, and I want that to change this year.
In terms of moving up in stakes… I’d really like to be a HSNL player by the end of the year. I’ll be really proud if I’m playing mostly 5/10+ at some point this year.
I think that’s doable. I know I’ve got the talent and smarts to be a very good poker player – the real question is whether or not I’ve got the discipline. Discipline has never been one of my strengths. So far I’ve managed to do pretty well in life just by coasting by on natural talent, but I think it’s time for me to grow up a bit – being both lazy and extremely competitive is a guaranteed recipe for unhappiness. And really, all I’m hoping for in 2008 is to be happy. I’m not happy being out of shape and struggling at 1/2 and 2/4 nl, so I guess I need to make some changes.
Well, no point making a ridiculously long post any longer. I think 2008 will be a fun year… hopefully we can all learn a lot, make some money, and be happy
Good luck everyone, Alan
