Last year I played in the Waitangi Weekend Deep Stack Tournament at the Sky City Casino after winning a couple of satellite events. I was hoping to play my way into this $1100 buy-in tournament again this year. However, the casino have changed the schedule so there are no longer any low buy-in 2-stage satellites to the main event. But there is a regular $80 tournament with multiple prizes of $550 each.  And there's also a $220 satellite to the main event. So I headed up to the casino in mid-January, hoping to win a prize in the first game, which would have given me me two shots at the Deep Stack Tournament. But it wasn't to be. I played for about 2 hours in a field of 43 players but got knocked out in 22nd place, having gone all-in with AQ and coming up against AK. That's poker.
   Getting into the Waitangi Weekend Tournament was the first of my goals for 2017. I have a few others for this year and hopefully I'll be able to actually achieve these ones. As it's mid-February already, I thought I'd better list them now:

   Try all available games. In my unending quest for the perfect game I have decided to try out all the available local live games (except the  NPPL craps-shoots) to see if I can find a good one to add to my poker schedule. There are a lot more pub games available now than there used to be and I intend to check them all out. I've already tried the Saturday game at Maverick's Bar, the Tuesday game at the F Bar and the Thursday game at Ye Olde Bailey. Each of these venues hold games on several days of the week and there are plenty of other pubs and clubs to try out. I figure that if I try one game per week then I might have tried them all by mid-winter. Then all I have to do is decide which one I want to play regularly.
   Promote the $50 game. The monthly $50 tournament at my local club has struggled along for a few months now. Each time we've had barely enough entrants to play a single table game. But I really like this tournament because it's the sort of game I want to play in. It's played on a Sunday afternoon at a very convenient location and the buy-in is just right. So I'm determined to do everything I can to make it work. I was able to persuade the organiser to make a few changes for the January event that I thought would make it more attractive. I also advertised it as much as I could. In the end we got 15 players; our best result yet. So I'm pushing the advertising for the upcoming game this weekend. Our organiser won't be able to play this time so it's going to be down to me to run the game on the day. Hopefully we'll get at least two tables and then I can continue working on making it an attractive game that lots of people want to participate in.
   Revive the Landmark game. I've really enjoyed playing in the Wednesday night re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. It is played at a convenient time and place for me and I've also had a lot of success playing in this game. But at the end of last year the game organiser announced that he didn't want to do it anymore. A couple of the regulars put their hands up and volunteered to take over but I haven't seen any action yet. I've been down to the Landmark a couple of times but no-one seems to know anything. I also met one of the volunteers on Friday but he was rather vague about what was happening. So I'm headed back to the pub on Wednesday in an effort to get some answers. Having found a game that ticks all the boxes, I don't want to lose it. I'm going to do everything I can to get this tournament running again, even if I have to run it myself.
   Play in optimal games. Once I've tried out all the available games I have to pick the one that I want to play on a regular basis. Assuming I can get the Wednesday game back, I'll be playing in two live tournaments a week; Wednesday and Friday nights. I'll also be playing in an online tourney once a week. My goal is to play in 4 poker games a week. As I'm also playing in the monthly Interclub tournament and the monthly $50 game, that leaves 2 games a month that I have to find. Once I've decided on my optimal 4th game, I'll start playing it twice a month. That's the plan anyway.
   Read Harrington, Volume 2. During the holidays I bought myself a Christmas present: Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 1. This is one of the titles on my list of the ten best poker books. I've been reading it over the last month or so and it's absolutely fascinating. I particularly like the 'problems' section at the end of each chapter where you get to test yourself on what you've learned. So I'll be ordering volume 2 soon and working my way through it.
   Play in Sky City Cashies. I would very much like to have a go at the ring games at the Auckland Casino. The problem is, they're a bit too expensive for my bankroll. I don't want to play in a cash game that costs more than 5 percent of my bankroll. Last year I figured that, with the blinds at $2/$4, if I bought in for 50 big blinds it would cost me $200. This meant that I'd have to come close to doubling my bankroll to be able to afford it. I thought that might be possible, but then I discovered this year that the blinds had gone up to $2/$5. That put the Sky City cashies further out of reach. But  I learned recently that there is now a lower level 'turbo' game available. This game has blinds of  $2/$3 and a 15 second time limit on all action. I've spoken to a couple of people who've played in this game and they both say that the time clock is not really a problem. So I only have to increase my bankroll by about 30 %, something that is definitely achievable. So I'll be keeping one eye on my poker bankroll and if I can hit that magic number then I'll be headed up to Sky City to try my hand at the turbo ring game.

   Looking back at my previous posts, I see that it's five years since I set myself some goals for the year. That time I failed to achieve the last two. This time around I'm reasonably confident that I can tick off all of these goals. I'm certainly going to give it my best shot.