Getting Ready and Focused for 2012

I haven't done a whole lot of playing so far this year mostly due to being unmotivated. The sessions I have played have lacked focus and have been far from my best unfortunately. The high limit games have been pretty dead, at least the times I've been on so the majority of my play has come at 15-30. I'm hoping the games pick up towards the end of the month. I'm intending on playing the majority of my hands this month during the last couple weeks.

I started doing cardio again yesterday and have been eating a lot healthier than normal. I'm hoping to continue the healthy trend and regain my focus and concentration at the tables. I'm confident it's only a matter of time.

I'm planning on taking a much less results oriented approach this year and as a consequence won't be posting too many graphs of my results. I also intend on looking at my results tab in HEM as little as possible. I'm sure I'll have a decent idea of how I'm doing by my account balance but the idea is to give as little attention as possible to results and give all my attention to making the best decisions at the tables. It's not going to be easy, nevertheless it's one of my primary goals this year.

In other news I turned down an offer to write for a magazine. I actually initially accepted it and changed my mind after realizing the amount of time it would involve. I hate doing anything halfheartedly and the amount of time it would of taken to produce quality articles wasn't worth the amount of money I'd receive in return. Also, educating the poker public and my opponents has an attached cost as well. Though it would be nice to say I write for a magazine, I don't think the benefits outweigh the costs.

I'm sure most reading this know about the change in rake methodology implemented by Poker Stars this year. It's going to negatively impact most regulars and some quite severely. It's the biggest news in the online poker world right now and the players are doing everything in their power to negotiate something better. Personally, I'm not sure how it will affect me but I don't think it will hurt me nearly as bad as most players, if at all. So far this year I've played 1400 hands and have actually earned 5% more FPPs/VPPs than I would of under the old rake structure. It's hard to say whether this is an aberration or the norm but it's probably safe to say it won't have too big of an impact on me.

If anyone's wondering how I fared with Jose Parica, I fought pretty hard the first day and was even after about five hours of play. I lost the longest game of 1 pocket I've ever played, a 2.5 hour game in which I was ahead six to negative one and from there lost the last 3 games, losing 4 games on the day. The second day I played some of the worst pool I've played in over a year and Jose beat me 8 or 9 games. Jose is a really, really difficult opponent to play. He's exceptionally deliberate, to put it bluntly, he's slow. I played the two longest games of one pocket in my life against him, the 2.5 hour game and a 2 hour and 15 minute game. I found myself losing patience and interest at points so that's an area I need to work on later this year when I start playing again.

At the moment I'm in Cozumel, a view from our room is below. We're heading to the PCA in 3 days. I'm playing day 1B of the main event on Sunday. I have the lowest expectations I've ever had going into a major tournament, mostly because I've put no time into my NL game. I'll report back Sunday but I don't anticipate good news. Either way, I'm happy to be in warm weather and have a nice view of the ocean.