Another year has come and gone in my world.  Overall, 2007 was probably the best year I’ve ever had, but there were a lot of highs and lows.  In this blog entry I’m going to give it very short shrift, but I will try to give you the general idea.  Also you will see a lot of close-ups of the upper half of my face.  Here goes.

January:  Inauspicious to say the least.  I go to the Bahamas and get slaughtered at poker.  I’m bored, so I proceed to get slaughtered at craps, too.  I come home annoyed.  I finish off the month by playing a few tournaments at the Borgata Winter Open and I don’t win a dime.  My momentum from late 2006 is officially gone. 

February:  I take trips to Vegas and Puerto Rico but neither one has much to do with poker.  When I do manage to play, I continue to hemorrhage money.  I’m not liking 2007 so far.

March:  I go to the WSOP Circuit at Caesar’s AC and to a Foxwoods WPT event.  And I get slaughtered.  Now more worried than annoyed, I’m starting to think that maybe I suck at poker, and I’m out of reasons for why I’m constantly losing, so I do what any rational person would do:  I decide that I won’t cut my hair until I have a five-figure payday.

By the end of the month, I look like this.

April:  I host a poker tutorial and meet John Starks.  Unfortunately, my poker results still resemble his shooting percentage in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals.  I decide to play a lot of online poker and have mixed results.  Nothing near five figures is happening.  2007 is a big washout so far.  Maybe this no-haircut thing wasn’t a great idea.  Now I look like this:

May:  I manage my first substantive cash of the year, but it amounts to peanuts compared to what any self-respecting poker pro should be making, and it ain’t five figures.  The WSOP is coming up soon, and I’ve been a dismal failure for five full months.  I start to experiment with my game, but the results remain the same.  By the end of May, it is time to head for Vegas for the WSOP, and I am bearing an eerie, uncanny, almost prescient resemblence to the bad guy in the yet-to-be released No Country For Old Men.  Oh dear.

June:  I decide that growing out a long, disgusting, greasy head of hair isn’t enough of a reminder of how much I suck, so I pronounce that June 2007 shall be the “month of reckoning.”  This ensures that I will jump out my window if the month ends without some kind of major score.  I guess it was just the kind of pressure I needed, because that was when it happened.  I final table a WSOP Event, come within a rivered two-outer of winning a bracelet, and I take home a quarter million dollars.  A week or two later, I tack on a second sizeable WSOP cash for good measure.  Poker is easy.  Now I look like this:

July:  Newly shorn, I do absolutely nothing in the WSOP Main Event.  Nevertheless, I’m feeling pretty self-satisfied and smug, so I take a long break from poker.

August:  I go to Turning Stone and play quite well, racking up a bunch of wins in multitable satellites, but I don’t do a whole lot in the preliminary or main events up there.  I’m still playing well, so I decide to make a nice online score as well.  Then football season arrives and I forget all about poker for several weeks while I nerd it up in preparation for my fantasy drafts.

September:  Borgata has another WPT Event.  I never win jack shit at Borgata.  Never ever.  I get slaughtered.

October:  Not much poker happens.  I watch football, go to Europe with Janeen and spend the last week of the month finally getting back to business at Foxwoods with mixed results. 

November:  I make my second big score of the year, finishing second in a preliminary event at the Foxwoods WPT.  What a country.  Man, poker is easy.  Now I look like this (I’m the guy on the left):

December:  Nothing good happens.  That’s okay, I’ve had a great year. 

Which brings us to 2008.  My poker goal for 2008 is pretty simple.  Just come close to replicating 2007.  That shouldn’t be a tough assignment, because poker is an easy game.