Getting Serious About Improving

Well good news in that the renovations to my house are 98% complete. It's been a difficult time for the whole family, and coincided with work being really busy, which in a poker sense has meant I havent been able to dedicate a lot of time. Sure, I have played, but thats what is really has been, just playing, without much thought or concentration to be honest. If anything, I've used it as relaxation, a pastime to unwind from the stresses of work and the house. In retrospect, I'm lucky I didn't burn through my BR completely :)

But I didn't, and now I think I finally have a bit more time to dedicate to thinking about my game rather than just grabbing a session or two when I can. I've made some firm decisions in this direction - I really want to improve, rather than just play. I'm going to commit to it, I want to be more than just a recreational player. That's not to say I have any delusions of grandeur on turning pro, far from it. But I've managed to put in I'd guess around 100k hands of poker in the last 18 months - that number would be a little rubbery, but if I add up the various PT databases it would be close. Over that time I am a consistent, if modest winner. This gives me some confidence that with some solid application I can continue to grow my BR and aim for higher levels.

I'm working on firm goals - and I've been reading some great stuff in that area, in fact improving the mental aspect of my game completely. I'm reading The Poker Mindset by Matthew Hilger and Ian Taylor, and there is some good stuff in there I have already begun to use. I'll leave details to another post. I want to try and get more serious about discussing hands, and actually trying to apply that learning to my game. Most of all though I want to try and develop a time efficient method to study. I'm not saying minimise the time, more maximising the effiiciency of the time I have. There's no point flailing around blindly. To be honest I still see this as my greatest challenge, finding an effective method to learn and improve. But the first step is to commit, and hence why writing this here - a firm commitment to improve, grow and develop my game.

More to come - I'll be posting more often, yes I've said that before, but ...well, trust me!