Every year I usually do this, and make some ridiculous goals for the next year that I never accomplish. So this year I'll keep it simple: my goal is to play winning Poker, and only play when it is enjoyable. There, simple enough, and I might even accomplish it. :)

2008 was a busy year, so I'll take it month by month.

Jan/Feb: these months run together, because until Feb. 15, I was still in the hell that was my job. I played a little bit on the weekends here and there, and tilted off like $1400 online and live. Once I was finished with work, I took the rest of the month off to rebuild the pieces of my life.

March: this was my single biggest winning month of the year. I won a nice heap playing $1/$3 NL and $4/$8 limit in the live games. I made up the deficit from the first two months and got back on track. Finished the month up $1500.

April: here, my live results started to taper off, variance kicked in, and I lost a small amount. I think at this point I started playing online again, and it didn't go as well as before. Down $82.

May: Play here was almost entirely online, and I just couldn't get anything going. The HORSE games got tougher, and I never made any tournament scores, not that I played that many. Down $123.

June: I had a really bad run at the beginning of the month and a few terrible live sessions. About midway through the month, I took up PLO and began studying the game much more deeply. I beat the $25 PLO games for about 20 buy-ins, recuperating some of my losses. Still down about $400 for the month, but it could have been worse.

July: this was a decent month, as I moved from the $25 PLO games to the $50 PLO games, got some decent FPP's, and improved my overall game. However, I also took a trip to Vegas that was less than successful. However, it was the first winning month that I had since March. Up about $500.

August: PLO continued, slightly less successful than before. By this time, my thoughts had begun to shift toward grad school, and by the time I moved near the end of the month, I was not playing much Poker. Up $220.

Sept/Oct/Nov: these months involved very little play. I lost a little bit online, but cashed out pretty quickly to concentrate on my studies. I think I played maybe two weekends in October and two weekends in November before beginning my final projects. I crushed the live games, though. Up almost $1000 over the course of these three months.

December: after my projects were complete, I redeposited online, but with so many new things in my life, ie grad school and lasertag, Poker just didn't seem to have the centrality or intensity from before. I played live once (today in fact) and broke about even after being down for about 3 hours. Lost a small amount, down about $50.

Overall for the year: +$1081.

I would have done much better if I could have stuck to Hold'em and PLO. Between those two games, I was up about $2300. That tells you how badly I did in the other games. Hopefully that won't affect your readings of the guides I wrote in the non-Hold'em section. ;)

This was my worst year since I started playing seriously from a financial standpoint, but I've still never had a winning year, and given the ups and downs in my life during 2008, I guess I'm not too displeased with it. I'm much happier now.

I've accepted the fact that I will probably continue to be a winning low limit player, but likely not much more than that. Maybe I'll move up to playing as high as $5/$10 NL. But I don't think I'll ever go "pro" like I once thought. Nor do I necessarily want to. I am happy pursuing my studies, training in higher education, and playing to make a little extra money on the side for fun.

So my goal for 2009 is just to have fun playing Poker and to have another winning year. Nothing bogus about moving up, playing in the WSOP, or winning five figures online.

Congrats to Ciso for a great MTT year, and to Kingetje for absolutely crushing the cash games. Congrats to everyone else who had a winning year as well, and best of luck to all of us in 2009!