I'm really gonna do something with these twelve months. I'm gonna read a book, from beginning to end, in that order.

I'm gonna play frolf, frisbee golf, golf with a frisbee! This is gonna be my time. Time to taste the fruits and let the juices drip down my chin.

I proclaim this the year of DAN!

But seriously. 2009 is all wrapped up. To call it a failure would be a huge overstatement, but though it was successful I can't help but feel like it could have been better.

Don't get me wrong. It was by far my best poker year ever. But all poker players want more.

That's why when you talk to someone who just busted second for $800k they'll always be disappointed. It's hard to focus on the positive when you feel you could have accomplished more.

As for 2009, it started well. In the first month I got fourth in the Poker Stars Turbo Takedown for $25,000 which was my biggest cash to date. Which was obviously a sick start to the year.

That, unfortunately, was my only tournament cash worth mentioning. Though I don't consider myself a tournament player, I feel my tournament game is definitely pretty good.

I built my roll on the 45-man turbo SNGs on Stars and only started playing cash in the last year and a half.  My ROI over a very large sample of those SNGs is still up there with the best playing those today. So I feel I have a pretty good grasp of tournament poker.

Unfortunately that hasn't translated into results outside of the one Takedown cash. Granted, I really don't play tournies often online, but whenever a tournament >$500 is in town I'll play it.

Those coupled with my trip to the WSOP equaled about 12 live tournaments this year without a single cash.

Mix in a tournament win FFS.

 

Not what I call a good year, but I mean obviously I know that 12 tournaments is a retardedly small sample size and eventually a deep run will come my way. But I'm not holding my breath. 

Cash on the other hand has been pretty positive this year. I shipped around $55kish on the year including rakeback mostly at $1/$2 in around 360,000 hands playing mostly part time.

$1/$2 is easy steady income for me. Unfortunately the $2/$4 games haven't treated me quite the same thus far in my career. I made the jump to $2/$4 probably four times this year and each time I was beaten back down.

So the end of 09 had some negative numbers for $2/$4. Which I'm not very happy about.

Overall despite some of the stuff talked about above I consider 2009 a success; not a resounding one, but a success nonetheless.

Which means I have lots of room for improvement. So like Jason Mercier I'll list my 2010 goals.

1. Ship $100k in profit (Mercier's blog makes me feel inadequate as a poker player)
2. Play at least 500,000 cash game hands
3. Move up to $2/$4 (at least) permanently
4. Win or at least final table a live tournament
5. Play the Sunday Million at least 25 times
6. Think more and auto-pilot less
7. Shoot an 85 playing golf. (I've golfed <20 times lifetime but am taking it up seriously this year)
   
   

I think most of those goals should be attainable for me in 2010. Especially if I remember my new favorite saying from DogisHead, “Poker loves only the diligent and hates only the lazy.”

If I can continue to study and work hard at my game there's not a doubt in my mind that 2010 will be a good year.