Objectives

There's just going to be the one objective - keeping track - but implicitly I am looking to be quite frugal with the bankroll and this will tend to modify my approach a little in each of the 5 "venues":

1. Live cash: my live cash tends to be exclusively at the Gutshot/Powerhouse. I will probably avoid the Omaha games entirely and as for the PLH, I will concentrate on playing shorter sessions.

2. Live tournaments: again, this means Gutshot/Powerhouse: I will focus on the Monday £100 FO or Wednesday £75 FO as these are excellent dealer-dealt tournaments and I really want to win one this year. I failed to win a single tournament in 2007, which I wasn't happy about.

3. Online cash: I will probably play very little. I have had big spin-ups in online NLH but also very fast draw-downs. If I do play, I guess I will need to be highly disciplined and play at very low stakes.

4. Online tournaments: this is where I will focus in online. I may play some satellites - not something I have really done before - as that seems a plausible way to maximise the small bankroll.

5. Large events: by this I mean things like WSOP, EPT, WPT, GUKPT etc. and I also would include slightly smaller live events like the Gutshot festivals where the main event is a £500 buy-in. If I am being very disciplined then I may need to look at qualifying for such events rather than buying in.

I will consider the online & live bankrolls to be separate. I am not yet sure how to account for the possibility of any campaign to participate in the larger events.

On your marks

The good thing is I could remember all my passwords, even for ultimate bet which I probably have not used for 18months. It appears the balances are as follows:

gutshot: $1,440.75
pokerstars: $116.45
ladbrokes: $0.00
UB: $0.04
betfair: $161.26
FT: $0.00
party: $88.47

So there is a total of $1,806.97 in play and I have $823.68 at neteller, meaning I have $2,630.65 as the starting point for the online activities.

Measure for measure

So, on to the first post of this blog.

The single core idea for 2008 is to keep proper records of my performance (i.e. the financial outcome). I expect this will end up being about measuring the losses, as I certainly don't yet count myself as a winning player.

I would like to think I have the potential to be a winning player, and I do believe that just making the measurement will improve my result vs. what it would otherwise have been.

Now, first things first. We will need a correct base-line. So, first I am going to check the balances in my various online accounts. I have the following accounts:

• gutshot.com - my main account
• pokerstars - my other main account (also very useful for making transfers etc. as pstars dollars are like online currency)
• ladbrokes.com - the first one I used on Mat's intial recommendation
• ultimate bet - very dormant I think
• betfair - don't like it but I use the sports-betting part of it so I'll always have this one
• Full Tilt - never actually used it though
• Party Poker - they have such extensive marketing that you can hardly help having one
• neteller - not a poker account, as such, but some of my poker dollars are there of course

Poker Actually

There are going to be New Year's resolutions about poker. I'm certainly not going to have one that says "play better" but I am going to try be good about keeping proper records.

So whilst I'm at it, I may as well add a 4th blog to my stable.

I'm really not sure who's going to read this one, but that's OK. Hopefully just writing it will be a good exercise.