At the beginning of last year, I set some poker resolutions and goals for myself. It’s time now to see how I’ve fared during the course of 2008. I’ve already posted about my resolutions to Focus on Short-Handed No-Limit Hold ‘Em Cash Games and to Keep Getting Better at Other Games.
Resolution 3: Diversify My Income Streams
I’m happy with how this turned out. I got into coaching, joined Poker Savvy Plus, and increased my income from poker writing (slightly).
Goal 7: Start making money on the blog/website. (Achieved)
I’m not making money, but at least I’m not losing it. I made about $15 off of the ads on the blog- not the old Google ads but the Amazon affiliate links on my poker book reviews. Obviously that’s not much but it was enough to cover the cost of hosting the blog, which was the goal. It makes me realize that if I were to put some effort into it, my site could be worth some money. Also the blog has generated some interest for my coaching and probably contributed to my getting hired by Poker Savvy.
Goal 8: Start coaching. (Achieved)
I dove into this pretty aggressively at the beginning of the year but didn’t find it as satisfying as I expected. It’s tricky to find a price that’s fair to the student but also worth my time relative to playing poker. To my knowledge, the students I have had have all increased their profitability and considered their lessons worthwhile. Still, the price remains a sticking point for a lot of potential students, which is understandable.
The thing is that for me to block off an hour of my time tends to be pretty disruptive of my schedule. Like if I have a four hour block when I might otherwise play poker, but a student wants a session right in the middle of that block, then it kind of screws the whole four hours. I get out of the zone and lose a lot of time in transition if I try to play for an hour, then stop and coach for an hour, then play for two more hours.
I do enjoy the personal interaction of coaching and I like seeing my students improve their confidence and their games. I’ll just need to keep working on the right formula. One thing that I think will help is that Poker Savvy is now allowing me to offer free subscriptions for my students. That will both increase the value of the package for them and give them access to a lot of my own thoughts on poker theory, freeing up their paid time to focus exclusively on their application of key concepts.
Goal 9: Affiliate myself with an instructional website. (Achieved)
Early this year, I did some guest videos for Poker Savvy Plus. Those proved popular, and I met with the entire PSP team while in Las Vegas for the WSOP. Starting in August, I became a “Core Pro” and now produce four instructional videos per month for them. I’ve done series on Flop, Turn, and River Fundamentals, on some of my deepest tournament runs, and am now in the midst of one on Full Ring play and one joint tournament video with Tony “Bond18” Dunst.
My familiarity with education and teachers has definitely been an asset. While I’m far from the best player on the PSP staff, my videos have been among the most popular- probably because of my ability to structure and explain important concepts.
Goal 10: Get a book deal. (Failed)
Meh. I didn’t really try at this, and I’m not at all sure I want to. The book market is saturated and poker’s popularity is already on the decline with the general public. I don’t think the kind of book I’d want to write would have broad appeal, and besides names seem to sell poker books a lot better than quality content. It’s just a ton of work for surely less monetary reward than actually playing poker and less “sense of accomplishment” reward than my work with the Boston Debate League.
I do appreciate all the people who have encouraged me to write a book, though. An ego boost is always welcome!
That’s the last of the resolutions. Tomorrow I’ll post some year-end miscellany: more stats, biggest pots won and lost, etc. Then on Monday I’ll have my resolutions for 2009. Hope the new year is treating everyone well so far- it certainly is me!
I read with interest the blog in which you say that you use AQ as a four / five bet semi bluff.
With what hands are you getting called with?
I ask, because in analyzing how to play against Harringbots, I discovered that there are some unusual hands that do well against standard Harrington hand ranges. For example, KJs is almost as good against AQ+/77+ as AQo. The benefit of playing KJs is that opponents will automatically add KQ and AJ to your range which will presumably make the AA/KK hands even more profitable. Of course, KJs does not occur as often as AQo but playing AQo 2/3 of the time and KJs 100% of the time would give you the same semi-bluff frequency.
Your thoughts?
P.S. Shouldn’t the titles of your blog posts be links? I can’t find a way to reference your old posts.