Quarter in review (and some nonpoker content)

First three months of the year has gone by and so I figured this would be a good time to look back and see how I have been doing so far this year. I also figured this would be a good time to look back at the goals I set for myself for this year and see if I've accomplished anything or come close to accomplishing any of them. A lot of my goals that I set were more in relation to tournaments. One of them was to qualify for a $10,000 tournament (whether it's WSOP, WPT, etc) and that, I guess I could argue that I came close to it but then again, I feel like this is one of those goals where you either did it or didn't. There's no "I came close to it", in my opinion, so that's still a goal for this year. Another one was to win an MTT tournament of any kind. I've come close in some of the satellites but I'm not sure that I can consider taking that down as winning the MTT. The irony is that I'm still not playing that many MTTs... I also had a goal in regards to successfully multitabling 2-4NL but in hindsight, that seems kinda silly to me now. Silly because it would seem like it would be hard to measure success. Obviously, making money would be one indicator but if I'm making x amount of money playing 2-4NL but I can make the exact same amount playing 1-2NL, is that playing it successfully? I think not. But since x is impossible to define, I'm not sure how to measure this... having said that, as long as I keep improving my results, I'd have to be happy about that.

So, in Q1 of 2007, one thing I have to say is that I made more money than I had expected. I didn't have any set number in mind but if at the beginning of the year, I said I should be able to make this much, I wouldn't have believed it. Possible, but unrealistic is what I would have thought. Funny thing is, now that I am looking at the amount, I am upset that I didn't make more. Expectation at the beginning of the year and what I expect of myself now has changed and that's obviously playing into my perception of how I've done so far. Also seeing what other bloggers have made at the same level tells me what I can potentially be making and comparing my results to that makes me realize that I'm way short of that. If someone can make 5 figures playing 2-4NL in a month, I should be able to hit that in a quarter... right?

I also learned that I am a total donk with AQ, both suited and unsuited. I really need to look at my plays with AQ and see how I am playing the hand because I am losing waaaaay too much money with that hand... to the point where I feel like I should just fold it preflop when the action is folded to me. Of course, I'm not gonna do that but I really need to reevaluate my play. I also think I tend to play a little too tight on the turn and the river. I'm not trying to overcall here but I need to realize that not every bet represents a made hand or a monster. I seem to fear the check raise a little too much and that leads me to be more passive and naturally, my opponents pick up on that and so they start aggressively betting... until I can't take the heat and fold. I intend to find some of these hands and maybe post them here or on the forum to get some thoughts.

On a more positive note, in the past three months, I've learned so much more from these blogs. When I first started this blog, I wasn't sure where it was going to go and what I was going to do with it. All I knew was that it seemed interesting so I figured why not. And as I started venturing into other people's blogs, I've learned so much more in terms of thought process, creativity, and moves that I never really thought about before. I've read a lot of poker books and that's obviously helped a lot but these blogs really illustrated those points I've read in the past.

***NOTE: NONPOKER CONTENT HERE***

On a totally different note, this weekend was Monument Ave 10k race in Richmond, VA. This has become a very large event and there were 24,000 participants this year. Well, I haven't really been training for the 6.2 mile run as much as I wanted to but I have been running a few times a week on top of playing basketball a few times a week so I was hoping to finish in about 51-52 minutes (a little over 8 minute mile pace) and I figured that was definitely within reach. My starting wave was supposed to start at 8:30 but because I couldn't find a place to park, I missed my starting group. I ended up starting with the group that was 5 waves behind me (but it really doesn't matter because the time is taken with the race chip that you attach to your shoe). The only concern there was that the pace might be slower but I got lucky and found a couple of guys who seemed to be running at a fairly decent pace. When I came through Mile 1, the clock read 30 minutes and I heard someone utter nearby that they were running 8:08 mile. So, I figured this was a pretty good pace and so I decided to keep it up. At mile 2, I was coming through around 37:40 so I knew that my 2nd mile was pretty fast in terms of my pace. However, I didn't feel like I was going faster than the first mile so I was fairly optimistic about my first mile. By the time I crossed the finish line, the clock read 1:10:xx so I knew that the last 5.2 miles, I ran it in approx 38-39 minutes so I was pretty excited about how I did. I don't know how fast or slow my first mile was at that point but I knew it was not a 10 minute mile so if that was the case, I was able to break 50 min which would be a very big accomplishment for me... that evening, I checked my time and my official time was 47:55!!! My 5k time was apparently 24:11 (didn't even know they tracked that) so my second half was stronger than my first half. I was very psyched about that and that was my personal best. Good stuff!