Grindin'

Not much new going on. My trip back home was great; it's always a blast when I get to hang with my siblings. I slacked pretty hard that week poker-wise, only making $36, but it was worth it to have fun at home. The following week, I didn't even get to put in 30 hours due to a busy weekend schedule with the business, but I did well when I did play and pulled down a couple grand. I'm playing NL 100 exclusively now; after reviewing my stats, it's pretty clear that my winrate is better at NL 100 than NL 200, so it only makes sense to put my hands in there. In theory, I could make an argument for staying at NL 200 and learning how to beat it for a better winrate, but I don't think it's worth it. I only plan on supporting myself with poker for another year and some change, and right now, I'm perfectly fine with my winrate at NL 100 (about $45 an hour). I might experiment up there from time to time, but nothing too serious I think.

Full Tilt recently brought back the bank transfer method of withdrawal, which is great. It only took 4 business days to clear, slightly faster than the 6-7 it takes for the paper check and with less effort on my part. Slightly incovenient that the max is $2,500 per transfer, but since you can make one every week, it shouldn't be too big a deal. Even if I was consistently pulling down more than $2,500 a week, I shouldn't need to withdraw that much; if I did, I could always just get a check and get off my ass to pick it up.

Financially, I'm pretty comfortable. I don't spend much money as it is, but the $8,000 i've withdrawn since late September has given me a nice cushion so I don't have to worry about money much. I still have plenty of things I'd like to spend money on though, so there's plenty of motivation to keep grinding (at least for the next $200-$300k).

I'm looking forward to the holiday season, but it's going to be very busy. I've got a lot of travel planned in November and December, capped off by moving to Texas in late January. During that travel, I have to try to play as much as possible to take advantage of the holidonks. Last December/January was great for me, even by my current standards. I put in about 175k hands and pulled down about $9,000 (not bad considering 3/4 of that play was at NL 50). Obviously, this year I'm hoping for an even better payday. I don't think $12,000-$15,000 is unrealistic, and combining that with the substantial tax return I'm getting for the business, I should have my living expenses for 2009 pretty much covered by the time I head down to Texas. Better than I expected when I started this, for sure....still surprises me to remember that this time last year, the only poker I was playing was $10 SNGs. Hopefully when I look back a year from now, I'll be similarly surprised.