Important decision .....

Firstly a quick thank you to all the messages of support I've had over the past few days. It's fantastic to know I have so many friends and family out there who care so much about me. Hopefully from now on my posts will be much cheerier and more relevant.

Over the past few days I've thought a lot about poker and the rest of the year and I've decided that I'm gonna stop til January.

The reasons are many,

1. I'm pretty sure I'm not gonna get that $3k bonus now and don't wanna leave myself close to it cos would end up overdoing it trying to hit it and probably lose more than what the bonus is worth.

2. I want to enjoy December and christmas, so I've withdrawn a large chunk from the poker account which I can use to buy more presents for people and have some good nights out between now and New Year. I'll be able to redeposit for my Supernova elite quest in the new year.

3. My neck is still sore, it's probably wiser to rest it for a few weeks rather than try and push through and cause some serious damage.

4. I know how much I'll be playing come January so it's nice to have a little break before really pushing myself.

5. I don't really feel like playing poker right now which means I'm not gonna be playing my best. Would be throwing money away.

6. I'm not convinced my head is sorted yet, and I found out earlier in the year that I cannot play my best when not 100% ready.

7. I've worked my arse off this year, and dammit, I deserve a rest!!

So there you have it, I'll still update the blog but it's gonna be more about what's going on in my life and maybe some of my in depth thoughts. I'd really love this blog to get more popular so in the new year I'll run some competitions and the prizes will be better than curly wurlys!!! I got a call of the VIP guy at poker stars and he said I could get recommended as a member of their online pro team if I play enough next year and also build a bigger online profile, also means I have to stop abusing people who outdraw me!

So these are my final poker stats for the year......

VPPs earned - 331,431
VPP bonuses earned - $6,600

FPPs earned - approximately 1,000,000 (Hard to know exact figure of what I earned before hitting supernova, I've worked it out based on being gold star the whole time when I was platinum for most of it so might be slightly more.
FPP bonuses earned $16,000

SNG profit - $24,678
MTT profit - $17,743

Overall 2011 profit - $65,021

Add to this $8,000 which was lost on my account by 2 friends which is being repaid in 2012 and we have an overall profit for the year of $73,021

I am absolutely over the moon with this, January I was still working full time and only playing very low stakes, February I didn't play above $30 games, June-August I pretty much didn't play and when I did play I broke even cos of Mum and December I've not played so really I've made this much over just 6 months of play.

It's around £45,000 and because the government doesn't make you pay tax on gambling winnings it works out as the equivalent of about a £75,000 a year job and only really working 6 months of the year.

Gonna include some poker and life highlights as well, and maybe some poker lowlights too.

Poker highlights.

1. Chopping that Saturday eliminator for $8,500. That game lasted 11 hours and I feel I played my best poker throughout the entire tournament, if I played that well every time I played I'd be a millionaire by now!

2. Reaching supernova. I really never thought I'd ever play that much in a year, and never understood how anyone did it but great to see I now have the discipline to play at top levels.

3. Being top of the leaderboards in fifty 50 games from March til June. I've ended up 6th overall but that's because I haven't played very much since June but it was great to see I was the number 1 ranked player across every poker site in the world at the type of games I was playing.

4. Winning a $109 poker tournament for $3600. It was a great win and a testament to how I can play a short stack.

5. Winning my first tournament with a field of 1000 players. I've always won tournaments since I first started playing but they were normally 60-150 runner tournaments. When I finally one a game with over 1000 people in it I realised I really had the ability to make it at this game. I've since won 3 other tournaments with fields of 1000 or more players.

6.Cashing 18 $100 fifty 50 games in a row. In these games 5 of the 10 players will at worst get their money back, so it's fifty 50 as to whether you'll cash or not (if you take the skill element out) One night in May I made the top five in 18 of these games in a row winning about $2,000 in the process.

7. Finally retaining a multi. In September I finally won the same tournament two days in a row, the $22 big antes tournament that starts at 3:45am. It was only about 70 runners each day but it was the first time I'd ever successfully defended a tournament crown.

8. Cashing all 8 fifty 50 games in one set. Earlier in the year I would play a set of 8 fifty 50 games and then after that do another one. It took me til July to finally make the last 5 in all 8 of the games. and then I did it again 2 sets later! (Shame they were all $30s)

9. Realising I could play 40 games at a time and continuously. Since discovering table ninja and knowing I can do this it opens up so many possibilities for next year and almost limitless earning potential.

10. Discovering fifty 50 games. I started my account with just $90 in January before I found these games. Quite incredible what I've acheived since then.

Poker Lowlights

1. The worst moment of the year for me was when I was down to the last 100 from 3000+ in the supernova $1,000,000 tournament, $100,000 for the winner and I was all in with TT v AJ the board came T 5 4 3 2. Win there and I was average stack with 100 left and a real shot at a massive prize! I won $500 but should have been so much more.

2. Losing $3,000 in one night. It was back in May and was just horrendous, every hand I played
I lost no matter what I had, felt like crying by the end of it.

3. A friend accessing my account and losing $4,000. It was whilst I was on holiday, I won't dwell on it too much as it's all been sorted now but at the time I felt so upset.

4. The 70 billionth hand scandal. I mentioned it on the blog when it happened. Stayed up all night playing cash games (which I'm crap at) only to find two cheating germans won the 70 billionth hand through skullduggery

5. Phase89 winning his prop bet. I have nothing against him personally, just hated how lucky he kept getting and he really didn't deserve to win the bet but the effort he had to put in to win it was pretty incredible.

Can't think of many other lowlights off hand so that's pretty good for me!

I'll do life highlights another day.

Gonna go through a few records on the year.....

Biggest profit in a single day just from SNGs - $1,936 29th April
Biggest losses in a single day just from SNGs - $2,397 9th May
Biggest profit in a single month just from SNGs - $11,055 April.
Biggest losses in a single month just from SNGs - $5,415 October (This is my only actual losing month in SNGs all year!)

Biggest profit in a single day just from MTTs - $7,889 30th October

Can't really get the figures for other stuff on MTTs sadly.

Best day of the week to play on - Sunday (overall profit $14,500)
Worst day of the week to play on - Tuesday (overall profit -$1,500)
Best hour of the day to play SNGs - 2-3am (overall profit $5,200)
Worst hour of the day to play SNGs - 12 noon-1pm (overall profit -$4,000)

Most games played in 1 day - 326.

Rake for 2011 (Money paid to the poker site) $59,661. No wonder they think I'm a VIP!

Can't think or find any other categories I can put some stats up for but if anyone wants to know anything else just ask me and I'll do my best to find it. I'd love to know exactly how many hours I've played for but sadly I dunno where I can get that info.

So there you have it, my 2011 poker year summed up. Quite interesting to see it all written down, I need to find out how much of that money I lost playing bingo online or betting on sports! probably won't be too bad.

Be interested to see what comments people have on this.

Speak to you all soon :)

Jon x