Resolutions

All right. A new year is upon me and it's time to get serious or get out of poker. I've spent the last two years dabbling as a tournament player, but I haven't given it the kind of concentrated focus that is absolutely required to succeed.

A bunch of people have come up to me recently and commented on how I always write about how badly I play. That isn't really the point I've been trying to get across. I don't think I play badly all, or even most, of the time. I just like to be honest when I do. But I have to admit that I played below my own expectations in 2002. Too many tournaments slipped by where I found myself packing up to go home after the main event and I hadn't cashed or made serious money in the entire tournament.

Here's a shocking admission: I don't really know how I did in 2002. You see, I don't keep records. It's embarrassing, but true. I usually cram my tournament receipts in my pocket, then dump them out in my hotel room, and then stuff them into my briefcase or sometimes into the bottom of my shaving kit. After that, I don't know what happens to them.

So, I end up having a bunch of receipts, but certainly not all of them. I gave most of the ones I could find to my accountant. And then there's live play. I basically have no idea how I did in live play in 2002. I wrote some session results down, but I'm not sure where. I know that I have no money in any of my online accounts right now. I never put that much into online poker, mainly because it's so hard to get serious money into those accounts, but I certainly lost all of it, whatever those amounts were.

Clearly, this is no way to go about a poker career. So, I hereby resolve to keep exact records of all of my poker play, live and tournament, during 2003.

And, in the boldest experiment in poker publishing history, I will publish a monthly summary of my results in my column here in Card Player. I will list the tournaments I played in, the buy-ins/entry fees, and any money won. I will do the same for live action, in summary form.

I'll even keep track of the last-longer bets I've started making with World Champion Chris Ferguson. He and I bet $1 on who'll last longer in each tournament we both enter. I jumped out to something like a 7-0 lead on Chris when we began the last-longer series at the Bike last year. He somehow pulled even with me at about 10-10, but now I have a slim lead. In 2003, the world will be able to play along in this high-stakes series.

I'm going to provide it all - the good, the bad, and the ugly - so we'll all know exactly how badly I play.

I am going to make a run at being a real poker professional. I want to see if I can survive by playing poker. Keeping records will be an important part of this quest. Now, many of you are probably saying to yourself how obvious a point this is. You're probably right, but I would bet that the vast majority of poker players keep absolutely no records. But the vast majority of players don't need to rely on poker to eat. I'm going to do just that in 2003.

Oh, here's one more thing. As a poker pro, I guess I'm going to need an actual bankroll. Up until now, I've glibly funded my poker directly from my own funds. If I won, great, if not, there was always Uncle Adam to rely upon. That's over now.

From this moment on, I declare my poker bankroll to be $50,000. If I lose it, I'm out. That total includes tournaments and live play. I'm going to have to carefully manage my tournament entries, watch my game selection, and play as if my livelihood depended on it - or else this column may get mighty dry come April when I'm sitting at home watching daytime television and playing $2-$4 online.