2013 - The grind to 200K supernova and 400NL

Hi, my name is Steven, I'm 21 years old and aside from working closely with pleno and Andrew "Boomer2k10" Clayton coordinating the english poker school, I play online sit & goes for a living...

Or at least, I did.

I'll give a back story of my poker life etc i'm sure if you TL;DR there will be some fun goals for you to follow at the bottom.

TL;DR START

So in 2007 I discovered poker, I was 16, living in Liverpool UK (still am here), got invited to a friends house to play a £2 buyin game, ended up chopping heads up for a tidy £2-3 profit. and from then I was hooked, signed up to some sites in my dads name and grinded out the freerolls most nights lol, just loved the game. Parents wouldnt let me deposit until i turned 18 so before then i was just grinding the play money and the freerolls and studying.

Soon enough I turned 18, deposited $100 and started grinding, my dad recently told me although at the time he didnt really approve, he presumed that I would deposit, lose my $100, realise i wasnt as good as I thought and get on with my life. He was certainly wrong

so I played casually for a while, studying, being a small winner at micro/small stakes mtts and sngs, made a couple of confidence boosting scores and after deciding to not go to university and being underpaid in some awful dishwashing job in late 2010 I got a backing/coaching deal, so at the beginning of january 2011 I told my parents I'm being a poker pro, I started grinding 90man sng's and got me one of those sharkscope stars (for a little while) and had a graph that looked something like this:

Also as a side note in feb 2011 I got backed for UKIPT nottingham and came 12th - so here's some fun stuff:

10 min Documentary on my UKIPT run trolol http://www.pokertube.com/videos/the-fitzy-story-at-ukipt-nottingham-2011

my minute of fame on national TV (from 7.45-8.50...also a compliment from liv boeree): http://www.pokertube.com/videos/ukipt-s02-ep11-22

forgive me, i was such a live donk sigh...not to mention i couldnt stack chips and i hate how fast and stuttery and incoherent I talk, I was 19 and this was my first live tournament so I guess im okay with it.

then good old black friday happened. motivation died along with almost all my net worth and after bumming about doing nothing for 3 months and slowly watching the rest of my bank balance deplete with nothing to top it up I went and got a job as a poker dealer in october 2011. did that for almost a year until august 2012 when i got sacked for pretty marginal reasons that i think were pretty unfair but could end up being for the best.

During 2012 i played relatively little online poker and went on a stint of trying my luck live (at least from jan-september), came 9th in DTD deepstack for £3.8k (£61k uptop sigh) had another little score coming 11th in another tourney in nottingham with £10k uptop. I bricked hard at live cash and overall with travel/hotel expenses i probably ended about breakeven and unless you're going and having a laugh with a bunch of friends I think travelling the live circuit is just exhausting. I'm glad I did it but i'm ready to chill and play online now. I also got backed by Pleno for 50NL during 2012, more about that post tl;dr

(btw i say the live circuit as if i was some live pro, i just meant i travelled to play poker a couple times a month and got exhausted from that cant imagine doing it like all the time)

TL;DR END

2013

so in september 2012 i decided to go all out and buy a new computer after getting sacked from my job and decided to start taking online poker seriously again. found i'm good at 18man sngs on stars and started playing them...alot.

in about march 2012 Pleno decided to take me on backing me for 50NL, for about 6 months i was a losing player and I think about 3-4 months ago i really started to find my footing and started solidly beating the 888 50nl games. although my volume has been relatively poor im churning out small profits and have made us both a small amount of money since he started backing me, this year i want to try and make my living playing sngs but put in enough volume of cash on the side to climb the stakes. Also Pleno has promised more coaching this year so if that happens im sure I can achieve some tasty winnings at online cash.

We're finally here, my goals for 2013:

[ ] make 200KVPPs on pokerstars and do an ATM cashout of that pretty $2.6k bonus you recieve when you make 200kVPPs

[ ] be playing $30 and $60 18man sngs regularly

[ ] have one of those sharkscope leaderboard stars

[ ] play 20,000 sngs during the year

[ ] make $20K from SNGs alone pre-rakeback ($1/game assuming i reach my volume target)

[ ] play 12k hands of cash/month (i'm aware this is low volume, but it accounts for approx 1h/day 20 days/month 6 tabling, and considering i will be working some hours every day, playing sngs 6 hours/day and coaching my own students 1h/day too I feel this is a suitably difficult goal)

[ ] be beating 200nl by years end and be looking to play 400NL (im relatively skeptical but pleno believes it can happen so what he believes I believe)

[ ] net 2013 income of $40k

[ ] not check stars balance more than once per week, just focus on playing my best poker and not think about how much ive won or lost, get out of the habit of locking up wins and chasing loses instead just focus on playing and volume.

I will check my sharkscope graphs and account balance exactly once per week, I plan on not looking at my account balance on stars other than every week on a thursday, just focusing on getting volume in and going on the assumption that if im a winning player there is no need to look since volume will take care of the profits and i don't want to get into the habit of playing 20 games, winning $300 and 'locking it up' for the day, which has always struck me as a stupid concept but i do it anyway, another thing i need to put a stop to, infact theres another goal right there *jots goal down*.

So I will post updates on my sngs every week and updates on cash whenever seems suitable. i've had a good 2013 so far in the 1 day i've played:

and i will update with a new graph this thursday then every week and talk about how my week has gone. I will obviously reply to any questions and perhaps post some hands here sometimes, especially interesting cash hands.

fwiw my stars name is the same as here so you can scope me yourself if you're ever interested.

okay i'm out

-F18