The year after I got married.

[ajspiano]

I got married last year. Starwars day (May the 4th). Between the responsibilities that that entails and growing my business that I run with my wife I have 2 significant goals moving forward this year - both are shooting a pretty high and require more time than I have available but whatever, I like big supposedly unattainable goals. And like all goals of whatever size, they can be broken into attainable pieces.

Item 1. -

Be able to play Rachmaninoff's 3rd Piano concerto.

For anyone who doesn't know, the rach three is arguably the pinnacle of the classical piano repertoire so far as the technical ability required. It's also a densely textured piece with many layers so requires the performer to know it inside out, and at roughly 40 minutes in length it is a significant test of a pianists mental and physical stamina.
I've been toying with it for some time already, and the below video shows some of what I can already manage to get through, if a bit rough around the edges.

Some of the first movement from after the opening theme.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfgssRsKvpk

Item 2.-

Get really good at poker.

I like poker, and I do know a bit about it - enough that I was able to grind out $2500 of profit playing microstakes about a decade ago. But that was at some of the most consistently soft games I've ever seen, almost around the days of party poker being a free for all where whoever played tightest preflop got the money in the end. I actually played mostly 5/10c on a site called "poker champs" with 50bb buy ins and it was easy to say the least.

As time marched on I cashed out and spent up, $2500 was a LOT of money to me since I was only 16 at the time. Since then I've tried a few time to get back into poker but discovered that I kind of suck when the stacks are deeper (too many hero calls) and when faced with any table where you can't stack off with TPTK. Hmm. And by "suck" I mean I'm a break even to mild loser over the long term across stakes ranging from 10NL to 100NL - without any significant deviation in results from level to level, but then I've also never really had a large enough set of hand histories to be able to accurately assess that anyway so who knows.

I don't think I'm going to get better unless I relearn from the ground up, so I guess that means playing at 2NL for a while and doing a good amount of study.

I know that my main immediate concerns at poker are going to be having the discipline to act on what I know to be a good decision and to get past being to results orientated and prone to tilt. The learning side of things will obviously take some work, but that doesn't bother me. I have all the confidence in the world that I can learn such things.

I haven't played cards since 2011, so a memory refresher is always good. After I post this I'm going to get my head around a basic preflop strategy for 2NL based on the article by renton in the BC. I'll get on to more complex matters in the near future. One step at a time.

I plan to write a bit about poker, a bit about piano and a bit about life in general here. Hopefully things go well for the next few chapters.