Time for a new operation. 2007 was not, in truth, a good year for my poker career. I had intended/hoped to make $12,000 - I barely made half that, and ended the year on a depressing 11k December totalling -$270. As you may have noticed, I posted a plea for help with my game and was very pleased to get some offers from players whose games I respect greatly, so I hope I'll be able to take advantage of their kindness in the coming weeks.

Yesterday saw me kick off my 2008 campaign with just under a thousand hands at Mansion Poker, part of the Ongame network (and where I have my juicy 36% rb). A short daytime session saw me literally boggling at how bad the players were compared to Full Tilt. A longer evening session saw me adjust my view slightly - while there were still poor players, a lot of the villains I was up against were in the range I find hardest to deal with - players with laggish ambitions if not necessarily all the required skills, stats of say 37/18 and an inability to fold. I had a day of coolers, mostly small scale with the occasional half-stacking, and my default game of small-ball aggression had significantly less effect against these players.

Having said that, I'd have been level par if it hadn't been of a 72/21 with position on me who just had my number. At first I was pleased, having identified him as an over-player, calling and raising in too many dubious spots. But either he calmed down, or I overplayed my hands against him, because he took maybe half a stack with a series of position-based small pot wins and a soul-destroying hour where he two-paired Q8-type hands vs my TPTK THREE times and straighted vs my set a further time to leave me 2 buyins down on that table.

However, I believe I largely played solid poker throughout, my only big dumb mistake being to bet too hard with low two pair when the board paired on the river. I have a couple of failed double/triple barrels but compared to the large number of successful ones I'm certainly not berating myself about that. What I should do now is have a reviewing session and see whether I was really in the zone or whether actually I was spewing a few BBs here and a few more there.

So, no sample hands from yesterday, just a resolution to make back the $88 I lost. I am toying with the idea of trying 100nl 5max at Ongame - if it's easier than Full Tilt's 50nl game then I really should, since even 2ptbb/100 at 100nl is verging on the respectable in terms of income. But I should probably wait until I've been sweated by a few better players so that the most obvious leaks at least can be addressed - I have no doubt there are plenty of them.

Thanks for reading this far, and keep watching this space and letting me know your thoughts!

Have a great 2008 y'all,
Mark