Stephen Groom Taking a shot at becoming a Poker Pro

2011 wrap-up and looking forwards into 2012

Here we are at the top of 2011 and for the last 4 months I've been considering myself a "Professional Poker Player".  My risk-of-ruin had been pretty high from the outset and already once I have recovered from being pretty close to busto.  For this reason I am very happy that for now at least, I have managed to survive in this game.

The poker is the main talking point of this blog nowadays and what 95% of the content will be about in the future but as it is a pretty fun and important part of the year I can put that to one side for a few paragraphs.

2011 has been a very good year for me all in all and for once as I reflect I am happy with most if not all of the choices and decisions that I have made.  I am now 21, I have a BA degree with 2:2 hons, I have a new car and flat, a good circle of friends with similar interests, a new job (some might not call it that yet) which so far has been very rewarding and I have a better quality of life than I can ever remember having.

2012 for me is going to be about next-steps.  Taking everything that I have now and making a conscious effort to improve on what I would call a good solid foundation which I worked towards in the latter half of 2011.  I have already decided on a few achievable and measurable goals for what to achieve in the next 12 months and this post should hopefully allow me to revisit them and see how I am doing at achieving them and sticking to the famously useless New Year's resolutions.

What I want to achieve in 2012

• Play around 700,000 cash game hands on Sky Poker at stakes no lower than £0.20/£0.40 over 11 months
• Spend a full month of poker playing MTTs and play at least 600 individual tournaments
• Make £18,000 total profit (inc: bonuses) from Sky Poker
• Move up a limit on sky and be a consistent winning regular at £0.50/£1.00 on Sky
• Get onto Team Sky Pro
• Have a regular fortnightly home game
• Travel around playing a small, select sample of live poker games inc: bimonthly long-weekend trips to Nottingham for the deepstack festival
• Increase my bankroll enough to be comfortable playing £2/£5 live cash games
• Buy/adopt a Staffy dog
• Have at least one holiday abroad
• Increase the amount of socialising that I do in my spare time

I will use this list throughout the year to check back and report on how I am doing with my achievements.  I expect that I will probably review my progress quarterly.

As well as all of the positive things which I'd like to achieve and improve upon in 2012, there are ofcourse the negatives which ought to be addressed too.  This part is usually tougher:

2012 New Year's Resolutions

• Gambling
  I'm not sure of the best way to address or measure this but I certainly want to reduce or totally stop indulging in -EV gambling (casino games, fruit machines, slots, bookies etc).  This hasn't been a major problem for me but I have definitely spent/wasted/lost more money than I would like to have over the last few years. I think getting in control of this while I still play small will help me to stay away from such games when I have the ability to punt away large amounts of potentially life changing money.  I will start by saying that for the foreseeable I will totally stop all of the above activities.
• Health and Fitness
  This is a must-have on everyone's list but all jokes aside it will be very important for me this year given my working situation.  My diet could actually be far worse and I know a great many people who spend 6+hours a day in their home office who have far far worse diets than I do.  I don't overindulge on takeaways, I don't sit all night and munch on convenience-food and unhealthy snacks either.  I always have at least breakfast, one big meal and some smaller in-between meal snacks per day.  Now obviously this isn't ideal and I should be aiming to have breakfast + 2 meals per day but I find it tough when I am awake at night to be motivated to make a big meal at 4am.  I also have problems motivating myself to cook for just one person.  If there was someone else around I know for sure that I would eat more consistently and also cook better meals with more variety.  That is the thing which I would like to improve on more than anything else.  Quality of my meals.  I often find myself digging around the freezer for a quick 20-minutes and done meal to throw in the oven but really this isn't very satisfying or healthy.  There is nothing better than having your own home-cooked steak dinner but as I mentioned earlier it is tough to justify the expense and effort when eating alone.

  In terms of exercise I made a small start earlier in the year when Ben and I chose to start jogging.  Our laziness and Ben's injured foot means that this didn't last very long.  I will keep this up and maybe have a view to joining a Gym, swimming pool or some kind of sport to keep me busy.  In addition to this, if all goes to plan and I get my puppy (yaaaay), 3 walks a day will ensure I don't become heavier than my age in 2012.

I have now basically typed myself out so to all readers, friends, opponents etc I hope you had a very good Christmas and hope you have a Happy New Year!

Stephen
x

Blog when you’re winning…

So as always seems to happen with peoples blogs (especially mine for some reason) I have managed to let between 3 and 4 weeks pass since my last post.  The reason?  I can only assume that it's because I've been losing a tonne.  From my high point at the end of November I am currently still stuck over £1k on Sky and overall it has been pretty tough.  Somebody commented to me that I seemed to be pretty stressed out and introvert at the peak of my losses (I was losing close to £2k about a week ago) and looking back I guess they were right.  These are the biggest losses I've ever incurred on my own money lifetime and to say that it didn't have a bad effect on my emotional state and personality would be a pretty big lie.

So yeah.. Where did it all go wrong?  November was my biggest winning month since leaving work and second biggest winner lifetime.  As I remember I had gotten pretty complacent and lazy towards the end of the month and when December rolled around I don't think that my head was in the right place.  By the 7th day in December I had lost all of the money in my sky account, loaded up another £1k and taken out my anger over at betfair casino losing a pretty hefty sum of money playing casino games (predominantly blackjack) which I don't mention in the quoted losses above /\.  That money I guess is expenditure, but it is very wasteful and changed my mind about table games very quickly.  I will definitely have something about that in my new year's resolutions/goals post in about a fortnight.

For all the bad it has done, my massive downswing at the beginning of this month has had it's benefits too however.  It has once again shown me how cruel poker can be and I have learned that emotionally I am not as close to being ready to deal with this as I once thought I was.  It has also taught me the importance of volume, planning, discipline and motivation.  At the beginning of the month I decided that I would aim to make around 16,000 sky poker points (£625).  This would have been equivalent to around 106 hours of 6tabling 50nl.  By day 13 of this month my target has now become a far greater 24,000 points (£1,250) and already by the end of the 13th I had made 11,652 (78 hours of play 6tabling 50nl).  Coupled with the fact that at my low-point this month I spent a few days playing 20nl and moved all the way back up through the limits playing 20, 30, 40 and now back to 50nl it is a pretty impressive feat.

At this point in time on an average day I am playing 8 tables of 50nl and playing between 6 and 8 hours per day.  Assuming a 20 day working month this should net me between 24,000 (£1,250) and 32,000 (£1,875) points per month.  If you then add to this the money made in-game this should lead to me having a very comfortable lifestyle next year at 50nl.  This is before we even discuss plans for moving up.

So in 2012 I will be making at the very least £15k from rakeback alone.  This solid foundation allows me to speculate that I should easily cash out over £20k from Sky Poker next year and allow me some kind of perspective for planning my year out in terms of profit and savings goals, moving up and potentially recruiting and mentoring micro-stakes horses as my roll allows.

I am going to take a leaf out of my friend Jon Lundy's book next year who showed me a very interesting structured plan for how he was going to spend his time in 2012.  No more staying up till 9am drinking and then sleeping in until 8pm the following day and missing grind.  I mentioned at the start of this process that this is a job first and foremost.  A person who treats his job with as much respect as most grinders treat theirs will have a very unrewarding and mediocre career and I need to do my best to keep some perspective.

My next planned blog will be around the 29th-31st detailing my plans for next year, new years resolutions and targets as well as my findings from 4 full months as a pro.  Please as ever leave a comment below if you enjoyed this read and have anything for me to discuss next time.

Cheers
Stephen