A farewell to a fair year.

Let's put a bow on 2025 from a poker club perspective.

May your new year hold the type of hope that you carry with you throughout 2026.

With the anticipation of a new year, are we putting the old one in the trophy case or the rubbish bin? Well, from the Freezeout Poker Club perspective, it’s definately one for the case albeit not the center of the top shelf.

• 2025 brought us many new, consistent, responsible players. Player recruitment is the lifeblood of any indefinitely continuous activity. Thank you for all of our recruiters out there including a special thanks to Joe Schwenk and Dave Paukovitz this year. I love getting record crowds on a Tuesday. What I love even more are the weeks where everyone paid on time. It makes paying the prize pool seamless and easy. So a special thank you to all of you who are with this program.

• We also brought our newsletter to Substack. While I try to give the same quality newsletter to our club as before, we now have a newsletter subscription base that extends beyond our players. I’m hopeful that adding content for others will - organically - help build our game while making connections beyond.

• We had a new player win the player of the year WSOP package. Congratulations again to Mr. Paukovitz for bagging the largest monetary package yet.

• Joe and Joey Schwenk played a Tag Team event at Firekeepers this year and the Father & Son team took it down. Congratulations to Team Schwenk.

On a personal note, the First Lady and I final tabled a tournament in San Antonio to start 2025 off right. It made it so much more fun having my best friend with which to to share that experience even though she got the first place money and I had to settle for 4th.

I was also able to play in my first seniors event at the WSOP and played some of my best poker, brought some cash back to my bankroll, and bounced a Poker Hall of Famer from the tournament to boot.

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After we cram our own personal last year where we feel it belongs, our focus should shift to the future and what we hope to claim as accomplishment in 2026. It seems to me that the best way to prepare is by setting goals for our poker year.

I would advise anyone who will listen to keep goals measureable. What I mean by this is don’t set a goal of winning a WSOP bracelet, winning our club Player of the Year, or making $5000. These goals - while worthy - are not good measuring sticks of personal improvement due to the nature of the high variance of tournament poker.

Examples of measureable goals would include: Play the Tuesday game 40 times next year, read 2 poker strategy books, or study NLH for an hour each week.

An example of a goal I accomplished over the past few years was writing in my journal every buyin, place, and prize for every tournament I enter. Not only does this keep me grounded when I feel like I am on a burst of wins, it also helps to boost my confidence when I am in the midst of a downswing. Being able to look back through the months and get a real picture on how well I am doing gives me the perspective that my memory simply can’t because of one bias or another.

My goals for 2026 include:

• Study for at least 2 hours each week

• Play our local live game when available and fresh enough

• Play in our Tuesday game 45 times

• Go to a regional nightly in Houston 5 times

• Go to a circuit event of any series

• Attend the WSOP.

• Write 25 of these newsletters.

Let me know what goals you plan on setting for you poker world in 2026 and lets see if we can hold each other accountable.

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