Last Year's Success and This Year's Goals.

SnG Account: $259 (down $6)

Setting targets and goals probably isn't the best thing to do considering my current slide, but it's that time of the year and I can't help myself.

In my first year of poker I withdrew £200 (about $380) and currently have around $350 in two accounts. So, from the initial investment of $25, I've made about $700. Not bad for a first year (percentage wise if not actual value wise). However, the figures are somewhat distorted. Up to September I shared my account with a friend (not on any of the sites I play on now) and he made the bulk of the profits.

There's a bit of a story behind that actually which I was going to share with you at some point so it might as well be now. Back in May I was having a horrible time with poker. Back then I was a real fish and had no idea how to play the game. I was playing in $2 sit and gos where the action was crazy and every game turned into a crap shoot. I had $9 left in my account and I was ready to give up. One day a friend on mine came up to my house and saw me playing. He had played poker too and played at much higher stakes. But he'd wiped out his bankroll and had decided to quit before things got serious. But he was intrigued that I had a bit of money in an account and asked, since I seemed uninterested, to have a bash in a $5 sit and go. He won it and my account suddenly found itself $20 richer. He then played a $2 sit and go and won that. Encouraged by his victories I played in a room and won that. Suddenly, from being on the verge of poker destruction I had a bankroll again and my friend's love for poker had been rekindled.

For the rest of the summer we set about transforming this $9 into $100, then $200, then $500. My friend was far better than me and wanted to play in the higher stake rooms, but because it was my money I forced him to play in smaller rooms where I knew that he would make profits and he did. And from watching his play I learned a lot about the game. So much so that I started to hold my own and become a player in the $2 rooms - sounds comical doesn't it?

It got to a stage where both my friend and I agreed that we should split as a poker team. My friend was making the bulk of the profits and wanted a bankroll of his own. He wasn't bitter when we shared out our profits out 50/50. It was actually he who had suggested it. By playing in the low stakes room and having to play with someone else's he learned a new level of discipline that prevented him from tilting off his bankroll. Before he had a dreadful attitude to suckouts and played the 'victim' role but now he's learned to take them on the chin as the inevitable maths of poker. I didn't teach him how to play poker I taught him how to manage poker.

Since breaking away from me he's earned over $4,000 dollars. He says that this is all down to me because it was my $9 and my help with his game that has made him a useful player. He's promised that when he wins the World Series of Poker he'll split the winnings with me 50/50. Make sure you all make a note of this, I don't want any of that Jamie Gold business!

We split the partnership with bankrolls of about $50 each. While he's made his was to $4,000, I've made my way to $500. But I've been learning the game and it's only in recent weeks that I've gone up from $4 sit and gos to $8 sit and gos and cash rooms. I know now that I'm (without this horrible swing I've had during Christmas) capable at the levels I'm playing at. I also know that, if I need to, I can drop down to the smallest stakes and grind out while and if I need to learn more about my game and the game of poker in general.

My target is modest. I aim to earn $1,000 profit this year. Considering I made $500 in about four months last year I should be able to hit this target quite easily - it only stands to reason that my game will improve. But I don't want to set my targets too high. In any other field I might say I'm not being ambitious enough. But poker is different. As the Jedi Master Yoda might say: ambitious leads to passion, passion leads to emotion, emotion leads to bad calls, bad calls lead to tilt, tilt leads to suffering.... and so on until we reach the darkside. Seriously, I'm trying to make an objective target and my statistics, rather than my ego, say that this year I will earn around a $1,000.

Here's to, what I hope will be, a prosperous New Year!