At present, there's not a lot of money available for poker whether online or live. After bills and expenses are considered, currently that amount left over each month is $221, unless I've borrowed a couple of bucks from somebody. Now, that amount will slowly go up during the year a little at a time as certain credit accounts are paid off. Beginning in June i'll have an additional $52.96 left over each month, so call it $53, and instead of having $221 available, I'll have $274. Also, each month I may have a few extra bucks because, for instance, I use a vape, and I set aside a $40 expense each month for my vape juice and supplies. If in the month of January, I don't need anything from the vape store, then that's $40 that goes into my pocket. It all comes down to budgeting and what I need and don't need on any particular month. As for the month of January, it turns out vape products and three different cat products, two of which my roommate and I split the cost of, as we each have one cat, are not needed. So that amount sits at $263.
There will be one live tournament played this month, unless I end up cashing in it. Ordinarily, I would take that money and play two 20 minute blind level tournaments over at Orleans at $120 each, giving me 2 chances to make a few bucks, but the reason there will only potentially be one is it's going to be a special one at the Venetian. On January 15th I'm going to be playing in the $250 NLH Multi-day $100K Gtd. Monster Stack. This tournament is absolutely insane for the price, but in a good way. First off, we're talking a $100K guarantee, now add to that a 300 big blind starting stack and 40 minute blinds. Yeah, you read that correctly, 40 minutes. I mean, as far as i'm concerned, this thing is absolutely incredible and there's no way i'm going to miss out on it. I'll be playing on day 1A, obviously it's the first of their 4 starting flights. It's necessary for me, as when I go out for the day and play a tournament, because of the arthritis that's in my back as well as other places, the following day, I usually will not be able to stand up straight. The next day I can finally stand up straight, but the pain is agonizing. The third day, there is still more pain than what I go through on a daily basis, and the fourth day I'm ready to go again. I will get into more detail about my physical issues in part 2, but bottom line, as you can obviously tell, it means I need to recover before I can even think about playing again. Since there's four starting flights, and I'll be in day 1A, if I make it to day, 2, that won't be until the 19th, which will be 4 days after I play, which means I'll be ready to go. It's going to be an exciting time and believe me, I'm rarin to go.
As for online, I'm starting 2026, with $160. To even get up to that amount over the $72, I ended the year with on the site, i had to juggle a few things. Taking into consideration the Venetian tournament, I grabbed $40 off of my $200 per month food budget. As you might imagine even at $200 that's buying very inexpensive items, but since I am quite a large man, and want to lose weight anyway, which will be discussed in part 2 or part 3 if needed, it's not going to kill me if I do this particular bit of insanity. A friend of mine has bought and paid for 20% of that Venetian tournament, which also was utilized as part of the online starting amount. Part of it went for a couple of packs of Marboros. Yes, I know I said, I vape, and I do, but I still like my Marboros or American Spirits here and there. Is pulling money from a food budget for poker whether, live or online, crazy? Maybe, but life is all about priorities and considering I'm not some thin as a rail guy who might starve, my priorities are poker tournaments and doing whatever is necessary, no matter what temporary suffrage might be involved, to give myself the best chance to be successful in 2026, no matter how crazy it may sound from time to time.
Tournaments on WSOP are not what they used to be. Almost all of them have been cut down to 8 minute blinds. The tournament availability is also not what it once was. For January, the only tournaments I'm going to be playing, starting out anyway, are a 3:30 pm $1 NLH Mystery Bounty and a 5:30 pm $5 NLH Mystery Bounty. While I do not like playing more than one table, due to the lack of selection, I find it unavoidable. If I have a good paying deep run, I might toss in the 8 pm $8.80 Crazy 8s non bounty tournament here and there, but I gotta tell you, the ones that I played in December. This tournament seemed to hate my ever lovin guts, including but not limited to, finishing on the stone bubble when my pocket aces got cracked by J5s who went runner runner straight of all things. The mystery bounties are still hard to get used to for me. I mean, a $5 mystery bounty, if you min cash is gonna pay about $5.10 cents. It's because of the juicy mystery bounty amounts they offer. The top one in that $5 tournament is $250 and I was able to grab a mystery bounty for $100 last month. When I saw the amount damn thing nearly gave me a coronary. Even though I finished in the money, just above a min cash for only $6.01, I walked away with a $106 for the $5 buy in.
I never thought I'd be able to do anything with an 8 minute blind tournament simply because of my playing style, but I have recently proved myself wrong with 2 finishes of 18th and 35th out of nearly 800 players. The fact that I have also recently reverted back to the old school style of play has definitely improved my results. I no longer deal with these 2.2X preflop raises and 1/3 pot continuation bets. This is insanity and the only reason I did it was I was studying under a fairly well known professional poker player's website who touted this as do many of the poker coaches out there. They're opening raise first in ranges are very loose compared to the old school way, even under the gun. During 2025 I probably played ten tournaments over at the Orleans and didn't cash in a single one, and the only reason the live poker fiasco last year wasn't completely hideous was the $1800 I cashed for in the World Series, $300 Gladiator event. On December 11th, playing online, I returned to the old school way where our raises were always 3X and continuation bets were 50% to 70%. Whatever happened to not giving good pot odds to our opponents? What happened to not giving our opponents an engraved invitation to chase down their straight and flush draws? What happened to when we preflop raise not inviting half the table to come along with us? I mean, do you have any idea how much the win percentage falls with your pocket aces, when you've got four or five callers, because you only min raised? What happened to not inviting our opponents to draw out on us? I do not understand why the change from the old school way to now has been so drastic, but my in the money percentage in attempting the new way was hideous.
I know these are professionals, but as a friend of mine, named Shadd, who is an excellent tournament poker player in his own right, pointed out to me it's possible that the problem with these sites that are advocating this is that they work at the higher stakes they play, but not necessarily the stakes I do. Shadd is no slouch as he has over a $130,000 in Hendon Mob earnings, so I'm listening to him more. The fact that he's even willing to help me is an absolute honor which I'm more grateful for than words can relay and he also seems to see something in me that at times I have trouble seeing in myself. He's told me more than once he knows I have what it takes. He recently told me he could see me making $25K a year playing just a couple of live tournaments a month, but one of my main problems is I need to leave my ego at the door. When someone 3 bets me after I have raised with not premiums, and the first thing that goes through my mind is, "Oh, you didn't just do that to me." has got too permanently vacate my thoughts posthaste. I don't know. I would love to think it could happen. Who knows, maybe we can start things off on a good note with the Venetian tournament.
That's gonna wrap up part one. I'll play the two online mystery bounty tournaments today and well, every day up to, and including, the 14th not counting any days off I may take. There are gonna be days I just don't feel like playing, and I think the smartest thing any poker player can do is if they are not a 100% into it, just take the day off and see how you feel tomorrow. Let's see if we can start off 2026 with a deep run which would be really nice. Part 2 will be coming to you before too long and until then, once again, a healthy, happy New Year and to one and all. Have an absolutely great day everyone and always stay safe.
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