Why did I waste all that time in DoNs?

Now I've found these 180 mans I can't believe I wasted all that time with actually playing those cursed DoNs. I still think they're fascinating to think about strategically, probably because I can get absolutely obsessed with detail and accuracy, and of course in DoNs there is usually a play which is demonstrably mathematically "correct", whereas in most other formats there are usually a number of different lines which could all be correct. That's a facet of deeper stacked poker which makes it simultaneously as interesting as DoNs, and yet less beautiful, less perfect: it can't actually be solved, only interpreted.

Anyway, I did play the DoNs, and I can't change the past, so there's no point regretting it. All I can do is to look forward and apply myself to this new challenge I've found in the 180 mans.

So, another day done, and starting to get the rewards. Made it through the $1k profit barrier in these today with my last game to finish; it was a 2nd worth $72, which took me to a cumulative profit of $1,020, not including FPP value. It only works out to a less than stellar $12.25 per hour at the moment. But I think that after nearly 1,200 games this month I'm starting to get the hang of these, starting to push better in the late mid-game and through the second last table to accumulate chips, and hopefully that will start to translate into making deep runs at FTs more often. I shipped another two today, with 2 more 2nds, and a 3rd, comprising a pretty good return for 119 games. Today's total profit came to about $240, which leaves me looking like this...

Played---------1194
ITM--------------168
FTs----------------82
Wins--------------13
Profit---- $1,020.36
ROI-------------38%

I also need to set myself some new challenges, so here goes.

1) Probably going to be harder than I thought a couple of weeks back, but retaining Gold this month would be nice. But it will be a hard slog to do this; it's about 150 games per day for the rest of the month, which is about 9 hours every day. If I miss out then so be it, I won't beat myself up about it.

2) Get on the 2/180 leaderboard. After just 3 weeks I already have about 1/3 of the total profit for 2010 of the player in 20th spot. Given that I'll miss about 12 days for my holiday to Italy, plus about another 12 days going all the cricket this summer, a few days in Denmark, plus the fact that they should probably win more money too, maybe I'll aim to overhaul them by end of August. I may review this goal by the end of the month.

3) Start cashing out money on a regular basis.

4) Get a big enough sample size of 2/180s to consider getting staked for the 12/180s. It's a real shame that the 7.70/180s hardly ever go off, they would have been a great stepping stone.