I had a plan in 2007, and it worked. Mostly.

And because of that, I’m scrapping a similar plan for 2008.

Confused yet?

The plan I’m talking about was how I was to finance my poker play for an entire year.

After taking up the game seriously midway through 2005 and going through 2006 without much of a course of action, I sat down with my buddy Alex late in 2006 and decided to hash out a way to keep track of not only how well I was playing, but how well I was managing the money I was using to play.

I established myself a bankroll, which anyone involved in poker knows is an essential piece of the puzzle.

I gave myself a set amount of money at the beginning of 2007 that, if I somehow used it all up, that was the end of poker for me.

That money also was to be used ONLY for poker, meaning every penny I won would go right back into the bankroll, and I’d never use non-poker money to play the game.

Well, in terms of performance, I fared very well with this plan. I finished 2007 ahead for the year, despite doing horribly in cash games and only so-so online. I can thank a few big live tournament cashes for keeping me in the black.

But when I sat down to tally up the final numbers for the year, my bank was actually substantially below where it should have been based on how I fared.

The reason: despite all my efforts to separate “poker money” from “life money,” there were just too many times when I allowed the former to be used for the latter.

How did this happen? Simple. It was a matter of not being disciplined.

Say I went to the casino with $300 and walked out with $413 after finishing up a little. Rather than deposit the entire $413 back into my bankroll I would convince myself that I only needed to put $400 in there and keep the other $13 for walking-around money.

But a little here, a little there started to add up. So did times when I’d not follow through with my intentions to always redeposit right after playing and instead end up using that cash the next day on something else because I didn’t want to use a debit card when I had the cash on me.

Of course, it could have been worse, and I could have ended up using money for rent or car payments to play cards, but I learned a long time ago that you should only gamble with money you can afford to lose.

But in a weird way, the fact that I kept allowing myself to use poker money for things other than poker told me I probably put too much into my bankroll. In hindsight, if I’d started myself out on a smaller bankroll I might have had to play lower-limit cash games and tournaments, but then at least I would have that extra money to use for the daily spending of life.

So, when approaching 2008 I had to decide whether to go with a smaller bankroll or scrap it altogether, and I chose to drop bankrolling myself.

Now, when I play I am playing with the approach that — although not very scientific — seemed to work well enough in 2005 and 2006: I will spend a little here and there, when my budget allows me to do so, and it will be almost exclusively online, where you can more easily play at very cheap prices.

As far as playing live, though, I will be severely cutting back on that, usually only playing live when I’ve done well enough online to cash out some.

So, that being said, if you see me — not my avatar — at a poker table, know that I’m having a good month!

That’s all for now, poker lovers — BJP