I’ve been playing poker for a good 4 years now, a professional player for 3, and a winning player for at least 2.5.  I shouldn’t have dropped out of school when I did, but miraculously I didn’t end up on the streets, despite being a breakeven low-stakes limit holdem grinder.  Thank god for rakeback and the good ol’ days of bonus whoring.

I’ve traditionally had a lot of problem putting in volume, which means that instead of pulling in mid six figures a year I’ve just coasted along playing the bare minimum number of hands to support myself.  I would stop playing whenever I hit a downswing, causing them to stretch into torturous, month long affairs.  I got good at the game of poker but I had a lot of trouble with the psychological strength needed to deal with the inevitable downswings.

I think I may have figured out part of my problems with putting in volume, and have been doing a pretty good job of putting in the hours this year.  I’m back in school so I don’t have as much poker time as I would like, but I’m enjoying my classes and giving myself options other than gambling for a living.

I guess I’ll end this post with a graph of my year to date.  My main goals for the rest of the year are to keep up this level of volume and to run up my account balances on stars and ftp, because cake is dead above 2/4.