You see me cover in writing a lot about the online poker exploits of others and my opinions on them so here is my candid review of how my year has gone so far in terms of poker. It has been full of ups and downs, mostly of my own making but more of that shortly. I am constantly impressed by the software capabilities and how aesthetically pleasing it is to play poker at sites like bwin.com, where I play a lot of my hands. They should be commended for constantly thinking about what players want and providing an online poker experience that we all enjoy.

The biggest surprise this year has been my performance in online poker tournaments. It makes sense that I have had some decent results as I play an aggressive game where I am happy to get my chips in if I feel I am ahead. I tend to either bust or build a stack and whilst I am trying to tone this down to more predictable and considered play I understand the importance of getting a stack in the early stages. Remembering you must accumulate most of the tournament chips to get even a reasonable cash this keeps me pumping chips into the pots and hoping for cards to hit that win me these pots!

Most poker player’s talk of their bad luck, but to be honest I have probably been more lucky than unlucky in the last few months. I have won myself a tournament ticket to a large tournament in May and have hopes of winning another big ticket for another tournament shortly. I enjoy these types of freerolls in big tournaments because even min-cashing means a lot. But this does not mean I play to cash, I always plan and play to win every tournament I enter, as you should.

Confession time. I must play more cash games because I have severe work to do in order to make them profitable at a level I want to. This takes work, losses, lessons and hard review. These aspects of learning are all things I resist. I am the type of person who does not box because I do not like to get punched, so losing and paying tuition to cash games in order to learn is not something that comes easily to me. That said I have seen much improvement in my game particularly the tough spots where I used to scratch my head and everything I did seemed to work out wrong. Poker knowledge is as much about knowing you are doing something right rather than getting a result every time. But you need to know you are doing things right so not to kid yourself things that are mistakes are bad luck. Thinking you are unlucky is a great disguise for being a fish!

Currently I am clearing my obligations to only include poker and my main job. This way I can concentrate on getting better and creating that all important poker income. My main leaks in terms of effort are eBay, Playstation 3 and blogging. I must be harsh with myself in order to achieve my poker goals. After all, there is much money to be won in the bwin.com tournaments, cash games and player jackpot tournaments that my wasting time playing games is not helping my poker game.

Modern poker requires dedication, talent and time. I plan on moving up a level in the next six months to test out if I am a good enough player or not to win at the online poker tables. Join me and find out if you are too.

By Malcolm Clarke

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