Stephen Groom Music Producer? Poker Pro? Sports Bettor? Tune in next post to find out

2010 and Jan 2011 round-up

Well, this is rather unconventional as most people posted these type of posts at around the 31st Dec or 1st Jan mark.  But seeing as though the late part of my 2010 was very boring and I've had an incredible 2011 so far, I thought it best to hold off for one month until I had something interesting to post.

2010

Poker

Well, my iPhone tells me that in 2010, since November my total profits playing live poker were £473.00.  If we remember that prior to my iPhone getting owned I was on -£444, that gives me a total profit of £29.00.  So a breakeven year...

Online was far far worse.  I was playing $6.50 45-mans and acheiving a pretty decent ROI of around 8% and then decided to play a session of 40 $12 games.  After going on a 40-game streak with not one first place finish, it was very quickly GG bankroll and GG internet poker 2010.

So as a whole, in 2010 my poker experience was negative, but IMO the price of a good education.  With the scraps of my 45-man bankroll I was messing around with $25 PLO and found that the games are full of mostly breakeven players so plan to play a few thousand hands of this in 2011.

Christmas

Christmas was pretty uneventful, as it tends to be when you get older than 13.  As a 20 year old though I think I did astoundingly well on gifts from my very generous mother, father and close family.

It is over a month past now but I will quickly list what I remember getting

• GT5 - The most exciting gift.  I had only been waiting for the release of this for 5 years, and upon opening it christmas day, once again felt that 13 year old kid on christmas feeling.  I must say though, after putting in around 12 hours on it, it is very dissapointing as a single-player game and seems to me to be GT3/4 with improved graphics and alot of feature limitations for none premium cars.  As a multiplayer game though it is second-to-none IMO.  Maybe the single player game will be better when I put in a few hours on it.  I have been very busy recently so haven't had the time for it yet.
• Clothes - Essential.  Between everybody I got an unfathomable amount of clothing, more than I could probably wear throughout 2011 but it is awesome nevertheless.  I got 2x trainers, 4x tee-shirts, 1 jacket, 1 coat, 1x dress shoes, 1x wellington boots, 1000x socks and 1000x underwear.  There was probably more but this is what I've managed to wear so far.  Alot of the stuff is still in a bag in the back room so there's probably more goodies buried somewhere over a pile of shortbread biscuits and other little gifts.
• Cash £££ - I got some money from various places which was very generous and always nice!
• Gift card - I got a gift card from work, it was worth £25 which is far and away better than nothing, which is what I expected
• Misc - I got allsorts of small gifts.  I haven't time to write a list of everything but I got alot of cool stuff from alot of people so don't be offended if you consider your present to be a "big" one and it isn't listed above.  I haven't forgot it, I'm probably wearing/using it right now and forgot it was gotten at christmas time.

College

I will be the first person to admit that college didn't go great in 2010.  Here is looking to the future though and doing alot more work and commiting alot more in 2011.  This will be my last year in formal education and it will be an absolute shame if I don't acheive my full potential and end up oweing probably around £20-£25,000 for a lowly Foundation Degree and a failed attempt at a Bachelors

Business

Rent a Producer hasn't moved in the last few months but I am happy to let it sit dormant and build backlinks + climb in search engine rankings organically until I dedicate all of my time to it post-college in May

2011

Here is where the fun starts.  January 2011 is probably rivaling the best month I have ever had and I am hoping that this trend will continue for the rest of 2011.

Poker

So far, in live poker in 2011, I am winning £1,643.50.  I finished 5th in the Circus 1st-tuesday £50 game on the 4th of January for £455 which means I am freerolling live tournaments for a little while.  I will be playing this game again tonight and hope to repeat my performance!

Live cash games I am so far winning £1,432.50 over 49 hours, giving a rather unbelievable hourly of £28.84.  This is due to me having a lot of money in January and taking shots at £1/2 games, £2/2 PLO games and running amazing each time.  This will stop now due to me being a little less liquid financialy and will probably be playing £0.50/£1 max.

I had my first major tournament win online on the 20th of January this year placing 3rd in the Daily 40k on stars for a little over $3,700.  A big thanks to Sam James who was over my shoulder from 3 tables down giving advice (alot of which I ignored regretably) and I have no doubht that if he was playing he would probably have finished 1st for $8,000.  Sam went on to win the $39,000 GTD on Full Tilt 5 days later for $10,000

Me and Sam and two other friends traveled down to Dusk till Dawn again the following day for the January €115 Grand prix.  Over the course of the weekend, I managed to make £347.50 in cash games.  Taking away the £97 for my tournament buy-in from which I was eliminated in Day 1, I left Nottingham £250 wealthier for my efforts over 3 days.

In addition to my cash game profits me and my friend Ben Dixon decided at the beginning of the event to swap 10% of any prize money we both won in the tournament.  He final tabled and negitiated a 4-way chop giving him €10,500 , €1,000 of which was then passed on to me.

Flat Move

I am yet again moving "house" and will be moving into my father's 1 bedroom flat just up the road from where I currently live.  He has just spent a fortune renovating the flat from the ground-up completely rebuilding the interior so you can take my word that it is absolutely amazing.  Not that my current accomodation isn't nice already.

New Car

Since I had won all of the money in January, it would be a waste to not have anything to spend it on.  Thus, I reveal to you, my new (2002, 02) BMW 318Ci SE

I expect that I will have alot more that I have forgotten to write when I re-read this post another day, or a write-up after i win £2,200 in the £50 game tonight so stay tuned.

Cheers
Stephen