Happy New Year everyone. I want to thank those of you who have visited my website, and I hope you continue to find some of the material worthwhile in 2006. Also, I hope you all have a healthy, safe and profitable year.

Many of you are curious about what sort of results to expect, and I thought I would share some statistics from last year with you. Overall, I had a very good year, with my best hourly rate. I did not play as much as in some years, totaling only 719 hours of live play, with 604 at 30-60. Actually, I lost overall in the non-30-60 hours (for example, I dropped $1600 on a poker cruise — my first losing cruise), but I did manage to win over $80/hr at 30-60. I still think I can do better, and I am aiming for $90/hr this year. I had no other game with more than 16 hours in it.

In 30-60, I had 142 sessions, with an average of 4.25 hours/session (my stamina is down for medical reasons and I play fewer hours per sitting than I used to). My hours per win and hours per loss were nearly identical (4.29 to 4.19) which means I am not staying longer when I am stuck…I just leave when the time comes.

I had two losing months this year (I have never had more than one before) and they were consecutive months. My standard deviation for 2005 30-60 was $665/hr, which is very high, but my coefficient of variation was 0.12 which is excellent (for me, anyway). My worst single day was a $2890 loss, while my best single day was a $4460 win. Longest winning streak was 10 sessions; longest losing streak was 3. My win rate on weekends continues to dominate my win rate on weekdays as it has my whole 5-year pro career, but it was a bit closer than previous years.

I actually run my fiscal year from July 1 to June 30, as I officially told myself I was a professional on July 1, 2001, so I do not close the books (except for tax purposes) on December 31. But it seemed like a good time to give you some insights into my data.

I cannot recommend strongly enough that you keep good records. You need to know what you are doing and where you are to understand where and how you need to improve. If you aren’t doing this yet, make it a resolution. I use StatKing, which you can purchase and download here (I get no compensation for this product). Alternatively, you can use the Poker Analyst at Cardplayer.com. I have not seen it as I do not like the idea of keeping my stats on-line at someone else’s site, but I hear it works fine.