Hi Guys,

After some thoughts, I decided to write this post in hope of motivating myself to reach my poker and life goals, as well as inspiring others who read this.  First of all, sorry for the cheesy title.  Well, as an excuse, I took it from one of my favourite pieces by Pat Metheny: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cI_Sq-S5dug :)

I have been somewhat active on the forums for the last couple of months, but many of you (especially non-PLO players) might not know me.  Before joining this site, I have been quite active on 2+2.  But anyway, this journal is gonna be mostly about me and my goals, so let me go ahead and tell a bit about myself:

Who I am in poker

I am a former HUSNG grinder who has recently moved on to PLO cash games.  There was a period of time where I would play both HUSNG and PLO, but these days I play PLO exclusively.  

To be honest, I was doing decently in HUSNG before moving on to PLO - below is my graph for the first 8 months of playing HUSNG last year, and 85%+ of my games were against regulars, mostly at $50-200s.

So that's 46k from HUSNG, and including some online/live cash game profits, I have made 85-90k last year.  But well, I kinda got sick of the game format and the shallow(er) stack sizes, as well as the fact that you have to go all-in like 1000 times a day.  It just didn't seem like a format where I could create a huge edge; rather, it seemed like a game where you keep making lots of marginally good decisions that pile up over a large sample size.  Meh, I was sort of done with it.  

On the other hand, this 4-card game called Omaha has always sounded fun, so I gave it a shot, and pretty much never came back to HUSNG.

Who I am in life

Besides poker, I am a grad student in a PhD programme.  I am in the 5th year now, and am planning on doing the dissertation later this year and earn a PhD, if everything goes well.  Luckily enough, my research is all theory/simulations and zero lab works, which has allowed me to play lots of poker so far.  

Right now, my plan is to play poker full-time right after I graduate.  Logically though, that means I have to graduate first ;)  And this fine balance between work and poker is something that I always have been struggling with.  But hopefully I can do well in both.

My other hobbies are boxing, music and travelling, which I have been doing for anywhere between 5 to 24 years.  I also picked up indoor rock climbing and weight training recently, and these are a lot of fun too!  Slightly off topic, but I have been donating 10% of my income (no matter where it comes from) to people in need since 2001.

Alright, so that's moi, and I hope I didn't bore you with this wall of text.  Now, what do I want to achieve in this year?  After all, that's why I decided to write this post, right..

What are my goals in 2014?

I will keep this one simple.  I have three goals in this year.

a) Get a PhD and become a doctor

b) Stay healthy and maintain good relationships, be happy with life!

c) Move up to 5/10 PLO and settle there

In this thread I will mainly focus on my progress in c), because the other two will bore you to death.  Oh well, maybe b) won't be all that boring, so I wouldn't mind posting something about it occasionally.  But I promise I won't say much about my PhD work.  Man, I just wanna get done with it!

Where am I now?

I am playing 50 and 100 PLO these days, hoping to move up to 100 PLO exclusively, and then to 200 PLO and beyond.  My main volume comes from 6-max, but I occasionally play HU cash as well because I find it more fun/profitable (and higher variance too, haha), and also due to my HUSNG background.  

I am fairly new to the game and still making lots of mistakes.  But I am learning a lot at the same time, mostly from watching vids, talking to other RIO members, and reviewing my own game.  I really enjoy the learning process, and hopefully my game keeps improving over time.

I can't put in too much volume while I am in the grad school, but I am aiming for 45k-ish hands every month, give or take a few.  With the bb/100 I have now, I would expect I can move up to a higher limit every 1 or 2 months, but this is something I don't have any control over.  So instead, I'll just focus on playing well and move up (or down, sometimes) according to my BRM.  I don't have a very strict one, but it looks like this:

- Play with 50+ BI's at a certain level, no matter what

- Take 10 BI shots and play at two stakes

- At 2/4 and beyond, play with ~100 BI instead of just 50

I guess that's all I have to say for now.  Thanks a lot for reading, and I will try to update this thread once or twice a week, intermittently.