2009 Wrap-up, Twenty-Ten Goals (Part 1)

Wow what a year 2009 was. I mean, I don't really know how to sum it up but I'll try.

It started off amazing. I ended 2008 with a 13K profit month and entered 2009 with high expectations. January met those expectations by being a 40K profit month (between both sites). I was sure '09 was my year to break through.

If you had told me at the end of January '09 that I'd be grinding micro MTTs to start off January 2010 I would have laughed in your face.

The rest of 2009 is basically a blur at this point. These are the only things I can really remember:

a 12K Main Event package win

a deep run in the mini FTOPS main event (11/11,983)

the 25K Project

But the one thing that stands out above anything in 2009 is how it ended. The last four months were atrocious. I ran into a total brick wall. I had to drop down in stakes again and again. I would grind, move back up, get killed, move down, grind, move back up, get killed, move down, grind, etc etc etc.

So this is where I am at the start of twenty-ten. I find myself deep inside an epic four-month micro grind. I'll get more into the future in just a bit.

Here are my OPR results for the year 2009 on both Full Tilt and Stars:

I'm somewhere in the vicinity of 50K profit on the year (not looking forward to paying taxes, but such is life). The disgusting thing is the majority of my profit for the year all came within one month, January. The entire rest of the year yielded only marginal results as far as I'm concerned.

To illustrate my frustration with how '09 played out I'll show my MTT graph from full tilt:

Now, sharkscope didn't track my 12K main event package win because it was basically a satellite tourney in their eyes. So somewhere in the middle of that graph there should be a 12K spike. Either way though, its clear I've been frustrated for a long time.

At this point I'm very glad to sweep 2009 under the rug and move on. However, it would be foolish for me to try to move on without being honest with myself and looking at some of the mistakes I made.

For one thing, and this is most important, I have to come to terms with the fact that I have some form of depression, bipolar most likely. There is a lot of inner turmoil going on inside me and it affects every single thing I do in life and in poker. I consumed a lot of alcohol in 2009 to ease the pain within my mind.

There is no question all this had an affect on my 2009 poker results. Last February I went to a doctor and was prescribed an anti-depressant. I've been on it for all but one month since then and I can say that it helps take the edge off but it nowhere near solves my problems.

I have great difficulty sleeping, racing thoughts, feelings of grandeur and paranoia, intense feelings of hopelessness and loneliness. It's an incredibly frustrating thing. Every single day is a challenge.

I'm tired of pretending like there is nothing wrong with me and being hard on myself all the time. I'm tired of being erratic and feeling like I live in another world. I've got to face up to this and learn to deal with it more appropriately rather than taking drastic, irrational measures when I feel incredibly overwhelmed.

I'm not exactly sure how I'm going to work this out but I do know three things:

1) I am most definitely my own worst enemy

2) I'm going to try to stop being so hard on myself

3) I'm going to start seeing a therapist so I can get some thoughts out of my head and figure out whats going on inside my mind

Hopefully, through brutal honesty, I can start to make progress with all of this. The more stable I become the better chance I have of being a more consistent poker player, both in terms of profit and consistent playing.

Well I feel this post getting long so I'm actually gonna wrap it up for now. I'll do a post with my thoughts and goals for twenty-ten within the next couple days.