Happy New Year to the three people who read this blog! I hope you had a fantastic Christmas, and got to overindulge in everything while spending time with your loved ones. I’m pretty sure I ate my body weight in meat and mini foods while making a valiant attempt to give myself cirrhosis. It wouldn’t be a New Year without setting some sort of goals, targets, and resolutions, so here we are. Setting goals and having ambitions is important in all walks of life; otherwise, you stagnate and get stuck in a rut. I have a few goals for the coming 12 months, although I’m unsure of how to go about some of them.
Improve My Fitness
Does any list of New Year resolutions not have getting fitter or losing weight on it? I won’t be fixated on losing weight, although I put a ton of timber on over the last few months of 2023, because improving my fitness should, in theory, see some blubber fall off. This is one area where I’m unsure how to proceed.
In a slightly hungover state on New Year’s Day, my hazy mind thought it would be a good idea to set myself a target of running 5km and then 10km in a certain time. Thankfully, that idea was scrapped when I remembered I fucking hate running with a passion. Even when I was younger and quite fit, I despised running. I played full back for my football team during an era when they didn’t have to bomb down the wing, or I fancied myself as a Matt Le Tissier type of player, sauntering around the pitch at a leisurely pace.
Running is out of the question because it is horrible. I enjoy walking and have already racked up a significant number of steps this year, so I’ll likely continue with that and combine it with some sort of hiking seeing how I bought some hiking boots last year that I’ve worn three times!
The youngest Pudding finished building our home gym in the garage after I left it part-built for the best part of a year. It’s likely that I’ll put that to good use, although I need to come up with a plan where I can monitor my progress or lack of it.
I also want to massively improve my flexibility, not so I can try giving myself a nosh, but because I’m so inflexible that it’s not remotely funny. I’m 43 next and don’t want to be in my 50s unable to pick something off the floor without it turning into a military operation. There are tons of stretching exercises online that I’ll start doing daily.
Dive Back Into Poker, Play Live, and Try Qualifying For a Live Event
Jumping back into the online poker world before my Vegas trip was great fun, even if I didn’t manage a decent score before heading stateside. I’d forgotten about the thrill of getting a bluff through and the pain of bad beats. My plan was to hit the tables with renewed vigour when I got back from Sin City, but that has not happened.
The only poker sites I’ve opened since mid-December were to look at results for recaps I had to write for work. It’s not that I haven’t had the inclination to fire up some tournaments, more that I’ve felt all over the place. I took a chunk of annual leave in November and early December, then was in Vegas for nine nights, returned to work for two days, and then had the rest of the year off as annual leave! Jet lag lingered longer than I expected, and then Christmas-related stuff came along, meaning a bit of boozing. This has been my first week back at work in ages, and I’ve been knackered by the time I’d usually register for some tournaments. I will jump back in, but only when I feel I am fighting fit.
I’ve also to decide which online poker site I will play at. GGPoker had been my site of choice until their “superuser” scandal that they’re trying to sweep under the carpet. Giving a site like that my money doesn’t sit right with me, which is a shame because I would have loved to have tried winning a World Series of Poker (WSOP) Main Event seat. The site is dodgy as fuck. Mark my words, something big will happen in 2024 or next year.
Betfair Poker, Grosvenor Poker, and 888poker are my most likely destinations. All three have relatively small fields in tournaments with the buy-ins I play, and they also have satellites for live events. I’ve read Betfair Poker will have Irish Open satellites, as will Grosvenor Poker in addition to satties to GUKPT Main Events and the Goliath, while 888poker holds qualifiers for its 888poker LIVE tour and the new UK Poker League.
It would be great to bag a seat or package to the GUKPT or UKPL in Leeds.
Speaking of Leeds, plans are afoot to pay my local Grosvenor Casino for one of their midweek comps. The casino at Westgate has some half-decent dealer-dealt tournaments during the week, which are perfect for getting more live poker experience.
Read at Least 15 Books
Reading is something I need to ramp up this year. Not only is it enjoyable, but it ties in with a couple of my other goals. Furthermore, it’s never a bad thing to learn new writing styles and expand my vocabulary, especially as writing about similar poker news stories and promotions day in day out makes it easy to become typecast.
First up is likely to be “Poker Satellite Strategy” by Dara O’Kearney and Barry Carter. I’ve previously flicked through it but never in great detail. I’ll also read their “PKO Poker Strategy” book, too, seeing how every low-stakes online poker tournament seems to be in this format these days. I also have Dara and Barry’s “GTO Poker Simplified” which I bought before my Vegas trip but never got around to reading.
After that, I plan on reading “1984” by George Orwell, which the Mrs will find hilarious because I’ve started it no fewer than ten times over the past couple of years. “Never Split the Difference” by Chris Voss will come after that. I got two-thirds of the way through it last year, so it’s time to start it again!
I’m open to book suggestions once those are done and dusted.
Learn a New Skill
Flutter Entertainment, the gaming giant that owns PokerNews, is super keen on employees developing new skills and is happy to pay for most training. I have access to basically every course listed on Udemy, and they’ll cover the costs and allow me the time to learn those courses.
Although I have yet to have a proper search through the available courses, I know they do some on public speaking and hosting presentations for a small team, two things I’m not overly comfortable with and two things that would come in handy in my work. There are hundreds of courses, so I’ll need to spend some time going through the ones I find interesting and that I can apply to my role now and potential future roles.
I have a couple of other goals, such as trying to have a more positive outlook and some other bits and pieces, but this blog entry is already a little on the long side, and my dinner is almost ready! So, until next time, be lucky!
Good read, that makes 4 of us now.
Good luck with the resolutions 👍
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