This first entry will probably be quite long, by way of both introduction and apology to anyone who can be bothered to read it.

The business I worked for went into administration 2 weeks ago, meaing I have no job. I am a well qualified Finance Professional and it is likely to take me 2-3 months to find another job. In that time, and with the support of my wife, I am attempting to replicate my earnings from my previous job through poker.

I have had some decent results in the past, but I have always lacked discipline. In 2006 I won a good chunk of money on Paradise, before it stopped US accounts and all the volume left. Last year I chopped a $1m tournament on Party Poker for $115,000. For that reason, my family will not starve if I fail in my attempt, but obviously I would prefer to succeed.

I posted on P5s looking for advice on what tournaments to play - I live in Australia, and will only be playing the mornings here. I then started onto describing my schedule etc. This gave me the idea of writing a blog for a number of reasons:

- I feel it is slightly self indulgent to post progress on something like this in PD
- for anyone who is interested, it will be easier to find
- but most of all, I am hoping it will instil some additional discipline in my game selection if I am going to be honest here about how I am doing

I have a had a good week so far - I am up about $4k on MTTs on Party but - to my shame - I have dumped about $1k of that at PLO. (Honesty!). This is the type of behaviour I am hoping that writing an honest blog will stamp out!

So, the parameters of my doing this "professionally":
- Monday I take shots! I will probably spend around $500 - $600 in buy-ins, including the Bodog $100k and the Sunday Million.
- Tues - Sun: I will probably play about 4 days a week and will play all tournies on Party Poker with buy-ins $30 up starting between 7.30am and 10am Sydney time. I will try to supplement these with the odd other mid-stakes MTT or 180 man on Stars. I will look for smallish fields (<300 to keep variance down)
- I will only not play if I have a job interview (obviously I will try to arrange these for the afternoon), or a family committment.
- I will play max 3 tables at once; I struggle with more than that, particularly with 2 kids running around!
- my target is to win an average of $2k per week. Obviously not $2k every week, but I am aiming to average that over the period I do this (probably 10-12 weeks).

Of course if I somehow pull off another big score (and it would probably need to be $50k+), then I might do this for the rest of the year and see how it goes.

I am now going to play the $50 speed $4k GTD on party, by way of making up for the fact that I wont be playing again until Monday!

Will try to post updates here a few times a week...wish me luck!!!