World Series of Poker Bracelet For Sale

I can’t imagine that my blogs over the last year have been a very enjoyable read. It certainly hasn’t been fun writing blog after blog about how I’ve been busting out of tournaments, and I wish I’d had better subject matter.

At this time of year people usually write a bit of a review of the past year and outline some ambitions for the year ahead. I could really sum the year up with one four-letter word and leave it at that, but John O’Shea is the only Boylepoker.com pro allowed to swear in his blogs so I’ll have to expand it a bit.

It hasn’t been a completely terrible year for me overall I suppose. I did get married and have a great honeymoon. Also, I had a much worse year in 2009, doing my brains playing poker online and loaning people money, a lot of which I’ll never see again.

In terms of profit and loss, 2010 wasn’t nearly as bad. I lost money playing poker, but not a huge amount relatively speaking, and I made most of it back on sports betting. It was still a very disappointing year though, as I’m supposed to be a poker player primarily, and to lose money over a period of two years probably means I’m doing something wrong.

Sports betting was actually disappointing too, as although I made a profit, I was up close to six figures half way through the year, and have lost most of it back over the last 6 months.

I also had a very expensive year, travelling to Australia for a month in January, and then with the wedding and honeymoon later in the year, so while I’m not really in financial trouble just yet, I certainly could be if I were to have another few bad months.

I knew that I had run unbelievably well in poker in 2007 and 2008, and didn’t expect that kind of success to continue, but even at my most pessimistic, I never imagined I could do as badly at poker as I have this past year.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I’m doing wrong, or what I’m doing differently from the days when it seemed to come so easily. To be honest it doesn’t feel like I’m doing that much differently, but I know that can’t be the case.

It doesn’t help that I genuinely have run badly this last year, and poker has definitely gotten harder too, but I have to think that I’m not playing as well as I used to.

Maybe I’m not concentrating hard enough, maybe because of all the success I’ve had I’m not as patient as I was before and I find it hard to grind it out when things aren’t going my way. I’m definitely a lot less confident than I used to be. Some of those things I can change though, and that’s what I have to try to do.

I’ve gotten fed up with poker on a number of occasions this year and I briefly considered doing ‘a Peter Eastgate’ and retiring from poker to live off the interest. Unfortunately the interest only works out at about three quid a week so that isn’t a realistic option at this moment in time.

If I have another year like the one I’ve just had then I might not have any choice though, so motivation definitely won’t be a problem.

On the subject of Peter Eastgate, I read recently that he raised $150K for charity by auctioning off his WSOP winner’s bracelet on EBAY. I’m very proud that I also won a WSOP event and the title means a lot to me.

However the bracelet itself doesn’t really mean much. I’ll never wear it and I haven’t even looked at it in over a year. I know Peter is a Main Event winner and mine wouldn’t fetch anything like the price that his did, but if I thought I could even get a 5-figures sum for mine then it would be a shame for me to hold onto it.

I did consider selling it for charity before, but I just didn’t think it would fetch much of a price. I’m not going to put it on EBAY, and I wouldn’t let it go for any less than 10K as I think its worth at least that just at face value but if anyone is genuinely interested in buying it ,or knows anyone who might be, then get in touch with me. On the off-chance it does sell, I will donate any money it raises to the kid’s hospitals in Belfast and Dublin.

Happy New Year everyone.