What?! I have to deposit again!

After a horrible August and early september that saw my bankroll dwindle from $2000 to nothing. I had to redeposit for the first time in 3 years. I am playing exclusively on FullTilt right now and decided to start over on September 21st. I deposited $500 (I haven't played with a bankroll this small since I first started playing on FullTilt back in '08).

After a couple days of delicately selecting what types of tournaments I would play in, I was able to get deep in an $11 superstack and played very well to finish with the headsup chop for $3200+. While the player I was matched up against headsup was not good enough to beat me most matches and we were fairly deep (me 50bbs and him 75bbs) I was so desperate for the bankroll that I did not want to risk the drop from $4100 to $2700 in first to second place money. He definitely knew I was better than him and was more than happy to take the chop where he took $3500+ and I took the $3200+. I was very happy because it was the first sign of success that I had seen in quite awhile and I was able to take some money out and my bankroll was back at $2000 (not ideal but we all have to start somewhere). While I am happy to get my bankroll back, I think the place where I will make the most money in the future is in the $26 tournaments. It is great to have the opportunity to play bigger (as I did when I was staked), the problem is, that when I play, I want the edge. Frankly, there are so few people doing this for a profitable living in the lower stakes tournaments (I would guess less than 15%) that I have a massive edge in those tournaments. I believe that while I may be giving up some equity in playing the bigger stuff, with my bankroll, this is where I want to be.

GOALS

My goals for poker in the upcoming months have shifted. I had hoped to make $50K in the time leading up to the end of 2010. Due to many things happening and my utter lack of focus; that was not going to happen. I have reset my goals and I am planning on getting my yearly profit back to $50k for the year.

Current Yearly total: $21,298

This is definitely my lowest profit at this stage in a year since I started and it has nowhere to go but up.

I recently added a couple deep runs in tournaments and will just include shots of the lobbies for ease of explanation. I have been playing really well in the last couple weeks and in October I have been fortunate enough to play in 4 of the 5 days. I have cashed in 9 of 32 tournaments and am feeling really good about how I am playing.

In the coming weeks and months I hope to post many more winning sessions and deep runs. A couple of the negatives of playing the way I am:
1) I limit the number of tournaments I can play because I only play on FullTilt (by far my most profitable)
2) With such small volume, there will be more time between big scores - playing every day helps
3) I have found myself playing $1 tournaments!! Now sometimes I think they can be profitable and can help with a decent score ($1600-2000 for first) but the main reason I still play them is that I know if I can avoid getting below 20bbs I will run over that field. I can be pretty sure that there are not many players of my caliber that would bother entering those tournaments and even if there are, it is unlikely that two of us would get deep in one of those fields, needing to survive all the landmines of bad players.
4) I am limiting my chances of a big score.

All of these issues are serious and in the back of my mind when I set up for the day. The best thing I can do is get back to reviewing hands and writing about poker again. I had become complacent and need to get the interest in playing more. With NHL starting up again, the Leafs will surely draw me away once in awhile but I will make the effort to play much more (22+ days a month with 150+ tournaments).

Will be back to update my action very soon, may take the day off or just play the night-time stuff.

Life is good :)