2011 Recap, 2012 Goals

At the start of 2011, I was on top of the world.  Well, the poker world at least.  My personal life was the complete shit show it still is today, but I had just come off an incredible year.  I wrote this post http://heynotilt.blogspot.com/2011/01/2010-recap-2011-goals.html and figured it'd be fun to look back.

Lets see how I did...

2011 goals:

[ ] Enjoy life.  Great success for the first 6 months of the year.  Tahoe was incredible, met some great people and traveled to some awesome places.  Last 6 months of the year, epic fail.  Grinded live poker and lived an overall miserable life.

[ ] Start working out regularly, put on 25 pounds by the end of the year  Well this was a pretty massive fail.  I probably worked out a good 5-6 times all year, including a 3 day stint of P90x.  I'm still the skinny Jewish kid taking all of your paper.

[ ] Eat healthier  I did pretty well on this and it's only getting better.  Getting into cooking has helped a lot.

[ ] Feel comfortable enough to snowboard on any mountain in the world after 3 months in Tahoe  While I wouldn't say I'm a world class boarder, or even really an expert, there's no mountain I wouldn't hit now.  I'm still a huge clown in the park and managed to mess up my knee pretty bad at the end of the year, but I've definitely got a new hobby.

[ ] Travel to 5 different countries  I'm cheating a bit here, as I only stopped in Copenhagen's airport for a few hours, but.... Bahamas, Spain, Italy, France, Denmark.  Oh, and a night in Monaco so I win.

[ ] Volunteer as often as possible  I'm a shitty human being.

[ ] Break par on the golf course Shot a -2, 70 at Trophy Club in Atlanta sometime in August I believe.  Haven't really been close since but I'm fairly happy with where my golf game is.  Looking forward to going pretty low in 2012.

[ ] Win another ALTA city championship if I come back to Atlanta  Check

Yep that's me Tebowing in the front right.

[ ] Find something I want to learn and potentially go back to school  No effing clue.  But grad/culinary/med school are potentially on the horizon.

[ ] Learn the basics of trading stocks, options, bonds I'm still a pretty big fish in the market.

[ ] $200k profit from poker Was certainly on pace, Black Friday didn't help too much.

[ ] Cash a $10k tourney (planning on playing at least 3) Cash the EPT Grand Final in Madrid for 35k euro I believe.  Busted PCA on day 2 and dusted off a nice stack in the WSOP Main day 2.

All in all it was a moderately successful year. I accomplished a few poker goals, and a few life goals, but there's still a lot to be desired.

So what's in store for this year...

[ ]  Figure out where I'm going in life

[ ]  Watch the start-up I invested in make me billions

[ ]  Cook one new dish per week 

[ ]  See 5 new countries

[ ]  Participate in an improveverywhere-esque mission  Srsly check it out

[ ]  Make some money at poker when I happen to play

New Year, Same Old Life?

Wow, it's been a while since I've last written, and since I'm sure everyone that reads this blog has just been smashing refresh non-stop for the past 6 months, here's something new.  The last I wrote, I was having a pretty terrible summer in Vegas for the World Series.  Well that continued and I managed only 3 cashes in around 30 tournaments.  After a pretty profitable first half of the year, I managed to dump most of it back in 2 months.

After Vegas I went home to Atlanta and tried to figure out what the hell I wanted to do with the next few years of my life.  Unfortunately, I still haven't come up with an answer to that question.

I've tossed around countless ideas with a ton of people.  At one point I was 99% set on moving to Whistler with a few poker buddies and going for SNE again in 2012.  That fell apart.  A few weeks later I was 99% set on moving to Whistler with another group.  Nope, no go again.  I think some part of me is dead set against moving abroad to continue playing poker online, as I'm looking to work my way out of poker. Moving to Canada would simply keep me in for much longer then I had ever intended

So, I've decided to stay in Atlanta, and am trying to figure out what it is I want out of this thing called life.  Poker was certainly fun and good to me for the past 3 years, but it's run it's course and I'm ready for a new challenge.

No, this isn't an "I'm Quitting" blog.  I still play a few big juicy live games (nitontilt is now a PLO pro), and have put a bit of money on the Merge network to pass the time.  I don't think I'll every truly quit the game unless I go broke (which at the rate I'm losing this year could happen quite quickly!)  However, I think it's highly unlikely I'll put as much time or effort into the game as I have the past few years.  I've been fortunate enough to make enough money to hold me over for quite some time until I find what's next, so that is the ultimate goal.

Good luck in 2012 everyone,
- Daniel