Happy New Year to all of you

I wish you all a happy new year and may the poker gods be kind to you (as long as you're not at my table of course).

Hope you all had a good time at X-mas. I had visited my family and the family of my girlfriend and we had a wonderful time. My girlfriend gave me a big surprise with her christmas present. You may remember that she doesn't like poker at all and isn't happy about me playing poker. But here present was a very nice high quality poker set! And she also told me that I should teach her how to play poker. I don't think she will ever go out to a tournament with me but it's nice to see that she has some more interest in what I do than she had before.

So what are my plans for 2008? I will go to Vienna on the first weekend in January and play the Deep Stack tournament at the Concord Card Casino.

I'm now 90% sure that I won't make it to Lotusphere this year. That means that I won't make it to Tunica or the Bahamas too. Instead I plan to play up to three tournaments during the "Poker Winter Challenge" in Seefeld, Austria. Additionally I'm still planing for the "European Deepstack Poker Championship" in Ireland in early February. I will decide this most probably after Seefeld and see if there are still seats available then. Next on my list are some of CAPT-Events (a new series in several austrian cities).

Of course I will try to qualify for a WSOP event and regardless of a qualification try to make it to Vegas during the WSOP for at least one week. Beside that I have several dates in my calendar wich are options. Those include several events in Austria and possible WSOPC locations.

Oh, and there's one event that I will try to make possible regardless of the actual date: The IPO (most probably in Dublin again)!

But the most important plan for 2008: Make money with poker, as much as possible!

Looking back, how was 2007 for me? Well, it could have been better. I had some serious downswings. My time in Vegas during the WSOP was mixed as I made it to the money several times in smaller events but missed cashes in the bigger events (Venetian, Binions). Of course the year had a nice ending with my 9th place in Bregenz (and a second entry into the Hendon Mob Database). And even the Poker Olymp II showed me that I'm on the right track (although I missed cashes there). Overall it was an interesting year but moneywise (including expenses) it could have been better. So there's room for improvement in 2008!

Another note: My computer problems are almost solved. I transferred my domain and my email is working again. Only my homepage isn't working correctly at the moment. But it's accessible at http://www.shadowbj21.com