2018 is over! Time to reflect back on what went right, what went wrong and what our goals are for 2019!
The first half of 2018 was really more of the same thing we had been doing in 2017 and 2016. As you climb the poker ranks you find yourself going through a lot of inclines and a lot of plateaus (Hopefully not too many valleys!). In the early days, you don’t seem to plateau very long and your peaks seem to come at a lightning fast pace. You are constantly learning new things like Cbets, pot odds, good opening ranges on certain stack sizes and the improvements to your game and your win rate will spike consistently.
As you start to have a solid base of fundamentals, these inclines come less frequently and you find yourself on plateaus longer and longer. You also tend to go into robot mode where you are doing the same things you have always been doing and chugging along on the daily grind. Truth is, when you have been playing and studying for as long as I have, it can be really hard to stay hungry and motivated. You can also be blinded by the doldrums of doing what you always do, not even realizing that you are the cause of the fact that you are stuck on a particular plateau.
That’s where I found myself for 2017 and the first half of 2018 without a doubt. Chugging away and blinded by the doldrums, having the same level of success as always and just doing what Toe does. This year’s World Series of Poker is where everything changed.
On a whim, I threw out a suggestion that a few Gold Stormers and I make a tag team for the WSOP Tag Team event. I didn’t get much interest until 5pm the day before the event was going to take place. I had really given up on playing it by this point but the next thing I knew, PokerPastor , Crazysixes and his buddy Marc were in, and we were reporting for duty at 11 am the following morning! We made our epic day 3 run busting in 24th place and this is the exact moment where I had burst through my plateau and went on an incline at a rockets pace! Crazysixes and I had been talking about spots and hit it off right from the start. We were hanging out at my house after the event and suggested that we start studying together. Iron sharpens iron and it was a huge blessing to partner up with someone who I respect and I think is great player. We started meeting up once a week for a few hours and quickly saw huge benefits on both sides. We quickly escalated to bringing in a few friends and meeting up twice a week. This then escalated to us all joining one of the top coaching programs out there and purchasing all the “must-have” poker programs out there to improve your game.
Flash forward to about 2 months of this sort of intense regiment and we had our biggest month ever in November! We even shipped an OSS event along the way! October felt like a down month for me and even then we were +2K! And we CRUSHED December with another 5 figure month and this time there wasn’t even any series running on any sites! Crazysixes has been on a massive heater as well with two 5 figure scores in the last 3 months himself! BOOYAH! It just goes to show that the saying is true “Hard work and dedication pays off”! We also had great success in other poker related areas as well. Our Twitch stream cracked 3K followers and 100 subs and we made HEAPS of new poker friends.
As we head off into 2019, I must say the fire inside is STRONG. I would say it is stronger right now than it has been for quite some years. The success is undeniable at this point and we are setting some lofty goals for 2019 because of it. Here they are
- Play 12 live events (this is a tough one for an online player like me 🙂 )
- 100K profit (given the trajectory of our last 3 months this is achievable but we are going to have to continue to work hard and play our A game.)
- Get partner status on Twitch. (We are pretty close. There is only the average viewer count of 75 that is holding us back. We have a few strategic changes coming down the pipe that should help push us over the mark within a couple months)
- Continue to study 3 times a week. Every week.
- Invest in improving with some higher level programs like PIO
These are definitely achievable and enough of a stretch to be a challenge. We are coming into 2019 like a bat out of hell and you know what that means. They have NO. FUCKING . CHANCE! Be sure to come along for the ride Toe Army. This is going to be one hell of a show.
–TOE