By DeuceSeven on January 11th, 2010 (more posts by author)

I had a really weird 2009. I made 4 fts to big mtts for me during the first 3 months and ran really bad at them getting 2 4ths and 2 8ths. However I did manage to increase my roll by almost 65%. Then I went on a sick downswing from after my last of the 4 fts until around August where I lost almost half my bankroll. From August until the end of year I made just under 7k. I missed my goal of making 10k which seemed like a lock early on and managed to make 5.7k for the year which is really disappointing considering I made 3.5k in the first 3 months.

I told myself I would greatly reduce the amount of time I spend playing/studying poker if I didn't make 10k. At this point it seems really stupid to quit as I feel I've grown a ton as a mtt player. Although I ran bad for most of the year I'm sure if I was as good as I am now 7 months ago I might have binked something biggish during that big downswing. What turned around my year besides improving was game selection. I've become more conservative with my bank roll and unlike the first 6 months my bigger buy ins are in smaller mtts with 600 or less runners which means playing a ton of UB 44s and 66s, I've binked 2 of these in the last few months.

Something that I noticed looking at my results is when I was on my crazy swing shift schedule (working 3 different shifts in a week) I was down roughly 6k and in the 4.5 months I was on a set schedule I was up around 12k. My thinking is playing on a fucked up schedule = a terrible idea.

For the year my 4 figure cashes were:

FTP $26 4th for 2.3k - Jan
FTP $26 4th for 2.3k - Mar
FTP $11 1st for 1.4k - Jul
FTP $11 1st for 1.4k - Sep
Stars $5q 1st for 2.3k - Sep
UB $44 1st for 2.3k - Oct
UB $66 1st for 3.7k - Dec.