Goals

A year ago I figured I would work on limit holdem and build up my skills and bankroll to be playing regularly in the $2/$4 games online. It hasn't turned out that way at all.

Somewhere along the line I switched to no-limit and have had better results and enjoyed myself more. I can see the merits of getting better at limit, but no-limit is the current low-hanging fruit.

I'm still playing low limits though, so I have to work at improving my skills and moving up. In the shorter term, though, I've been longing for a new Mac notebook for a while. My current iBook is about 4-5 years old and starting to feel its age. It still works, though, for most things I do on a notebook, so I haven't been able to justify spending the money for a new one. I mean, yeah, the battery is old and getting to where it can't keep a charge anymore, and the power adapter cord is frayed at the connector and I've patched it up with electrical tape twice now to keep a good connection, but otherwise it's fine. Not cherry, you know, because I did manage to bust the LCD screen that time when I propped it up on a window ledge and then caught the power cable when vaccuuming and yanked it down, crashing the display into the corner of my kotatsu. Replacing the screen would have cost me about 90,000yen, but I found someone selling a replacement screen on Yahoo auctions (much more popular than eBay here) for 30,000yen, so I took a chance and cracked the thing open and replaced it myself. Never having worked on laptops before, it was a nightmare of figuring how to take the thing apart and keeping track of 17 different tiny screws and still having two left over when I got the thing back together. But it worked! And still does.

I was going somewhere with this, I know I was.

Right, the point was, it still works fine so replacing it is a luxury. But I'm liking the idea of funding small luxuries with poker winnings, so I get to buy something I otherwise would not have, and have motivation to keep playing and improving to win more. The Nintendo DS Lite I bought for C was with poker money. So was about half of the cash for the Dyson vacuum cleaner we bought for Christmas. (It was her idea, I swear.)

So my next goal is to build my bankroll to where I can pull out $1000 to dedicate to a new iBook without decimating it, then cover the rest from "real" money. Depending on how things go, maybe I'll keep going and pay for the whole thing with poker money. That would be nice, but maybe too optomistic.

The new iBook would run Windows, too, so I could play on PokerStars with it. That would be "paying for itself" on a new, subtle level.

Anyhow, let's see how this first goal goes and I'll set a new one after that.