HOURS
Administrative 2.00
Study 3.00
Play 31.75
-------
Total Hours 36.75
I guess it was unrealistic to expect to get 40 hours in on the week that included Christmas, so in general I'm reasonably happy with my hours.
Administrative is whatever it takes to keep my records up to date, and that's going to vary from week to week. Sometimes I daily update the spreadsheet with my hours, and other times I will wait and then update several days to catch up.
That depends partly on how the large MTTs go. If I give myself a block of time to play large tournaments and I'm knocked out early, then I can use some of that time either to play small tournaments, or to catch up on the administrative work.
I'm happy with the play hours. I always want to get a minimum of 30 hours a week playing time.
I am not at all happy with my study time. I haven't been working on the memorization flash cards much lately. And whatever I'm studying, my hours should never be less than 10% of my time,. One of my long-term goals is to have studying be 25% of my time. For some of the top players, it's 50%. Next year I will be tracking my study hours by the month, to make sure it's always at least 10% of my time.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Beginning bankroll, 12/19 $49.08
Ending bankroll, 12/25 $54.40
---------
Profit +$5.32
What a wild week! I was up more than $20 at one point, then I finished on the 24th and 25th by cashing in only 2 of the last 12 tournaments. Since about half of those 12 tournaments were just one or two tables (which meant that I had to only be in the top 1/3 or 1/4 of the field to cash), that's a very poor way to end the week.
But poker can be like that. To be a poker player you have to have a strong stomach to ride that roller coaster, and you have to understand what the word random really means. If a coin flip is random, most people thing that if you flip a coin 20 times, you will get approximately 10 heads and 10 tails. That could happen, but you could also get 3 heads and 7 tails, or 10 heads and 0 tails.
There is a luck factor (in math terms, statistical varience) in poker. Sometimes you will get great cards, and sometimes bad cards. Sometimes your opponent is playing his "A game" and sometimes he isn't. So poker "luck", like the coin flip, is about the long-term (in mathspeak, a large enough sample size). Just like if you flop a coin a thousand times the results should be fairly close to half heads and half tails, poker luck evens out over time as well, and the runs of good cards and bad cards eventually cancel each other out.
As few hands as I play compared to some players who play 24 or more tables at a time, what happens to me over the course of a week is not a large enough sample size to measure anything. That's why next year I'm going to track my results in larger increments, possibly going by my last 30, 60, and 90 days along with the weekly update.
So, my big start and bad finish last week, given the small sample size, could have been about me, it could have been about luck, or it could have been a combination of both. I do think that I have been pressing a little bit the last couple days. The big time for poker players is between Christmas and New Years Day, with a lot of online players off work and on their computers. I think that I was trying a little too hard to make something big happen. My results have been frustrating, and I'm falling into the trap of tying to turn it around quickly.
That's a pretty stupid thing to do, especiallly since in one of my recent posts a fellow member of the 2+2 forums mentioned that just two large tournament cashes were a large percentage of his profits for the year. I have to stop thinking like a SNG player who steadily grinds small but consistent profits every week. I need to fully commit to the ups and downs of being a multitable tournament specialist, which over the course of a year will make poker a much more profitable enterprise.
Saturday, December 25, 2010
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
12/23/2010 Entering a tournament late
A few days ago someone asked about this on the twoplustwo.com poker forums. In my post, M is the number of times that the dealer button can go around the table such that the player would still have chips left if he did not play a hand. Q is a relationship to the average chip stack in the tournament--a Q of 1.0 is an average chip stack.
The question is in red, my response is in blue.
inspired by the thread above, i wanted to question if it is good to wait for the last possible moment to late register in a tournament, as you will have lesser players to survive. The downside is of course, that most maniacs and fishes have already given their chips away.
in an extreme case scenario for instance if it were possible to register anytime you would want to buyin after the bubble.
Re: buying in late in tournaments
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the MTTs that I play on PokerStars (10-15 minute blinds), I've noticed that as a rough measurement, I have to double my stack every hour in order to keep up with the average chip stack, at least for the first couple hours. To put in another way, if the tournament starts with 1,500-chip stacks, by the first break I should have ~3,000 chips to have a Q of 1.
So, if I would have to have 3,000 chips to start level 2, I would need 6K to start level 3, and 12K to start level 4. Given that reality, I almost never start more than 1 blind level late. I'm just too far behind in the chip accumlation race, and it doesn't make sense for me to be playing catch-up 4 or 5 levels into the tournament.
The other issue is how limiting it can be to start a tournament with a relatively small M. Being in that position seriously lowers your fold equity, and more specifically, the possiblity of facing a big move (even all-in) from you won't be very scary from the perpsective of someone who has acculated 3X your stack while you were waiting to join the tournament.
If you join a tournament an hour late, you're bringing to knife to a gunfight.
The question is in red, my response is in blue.
inspired by the thread above, i wanted to question if it is good to wait for the last possible moment to late register in a tournament, as you will have lesser players to survive. The downside is of course, that most maniacs and fishes have already given their chips away.
in an extreme case scenario for instance if it were possible to register anytime you would want to buyin after the bubble.
Re: buying in late in tournaments
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In the MTTs that I play on PokerStars (10-15 minute blinds), I've noticed that as a rough measurement, I have to double my stack every hour in order to keep up with the average chip stack, at least for the first couple hours. To put in another way, if the tournament starts with 1,500-chip stacks, by the first break I should have ~3,000 chips to have a Q of 1.
So, if I would have to have 3,000 chips to start level 2, I would need 6K to start level 3, and 12K to start level 4. Given that reality, I almost never start more than 1 blind level late. I'm just too far behind in the chip accumlation race, and it doesn't make sense for me to be playing catch-up 4 or 5 levels into the tournament.
The other issue is how limiting it can be to start a tournament with a relatively small M. Being in that position seriously lowers your fold equity, and more specifically, the possiblity of facing a big move (even all-in) from you won't be very scary from the perpsective of someone who has acculated 3X your stack while you were waiting to join the tournament.
If you join a tournament an hour late, you're bringing to knife to a gunfight.
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
12/21/2010 Results for week of 12/12-12/18
HOURS
Administrative 1.00
Study 4.00
Play 36.50
--------
Total Hours 41.50
Not bad. I put in over 40 hours and spent more than 10% of my time studying. That's right where I want to be.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Beginning bankroll, 12/5 $47.95
Ending bankroll, 12/11 $50.18
--------
+$2.23
Not a big week (or month or year) but that's kind of how the year has gone. I'll have more about that to say at the end of the year. I'll just say that I'm confident that next year there is going to be a big breakthrough.
I haven't been posting very regularly, and that's one of the things that I plan to change in 2011.
Administrative 1.00
Study 4.00
Play 36.50
--------
Total Hours 41.50
Not bad. I put in over 40 hours and spent more than 10% of my time studying. That's right where I want to be.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Beginning bankroll, 12/5 $47.95
Ending bankroll, 12/11 $50.18
--------
+$2.23
Not a big week (or month or year) but that's kind of how the year has gone. I'll have more about that to say at the end of the year. I'll just say that I'm confident that next year there is going to be a big breakthrough.
I haven't been posting very regularly, and that's one of the things that I plan to change in 2011.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
12/2/2010--Making money playing large multitable tournaments
Sometimes you know something, but things happen that make you, or those around you, doubt what you know to be true. That has been the case with my switching my specialty to large MTTs (multitable) tournaments. Large, in my case, means generally between 1,000 and 8,000 players.
I have not been getting the large cashes to make it viable, in other words, I'm not making any money. But that's the nature of the beast. In my former specialty, SNGs (sit 'n goes, usually a one-table tournament of 9 or 10 players) you make money by getting a lot of small cashes to add up. With MTTs, you have a few very but very large cashes (even large $1 tournaments can have a first place prize of $1,000 or more) that can make your month or your year, with long breakeven periods or dry spells in between.
I know this. I know it's normal. I also know that good MTT players make a lot more money over the course of a year than good SNG players (the exceptions are some SNG players that can play 12, 24 or more simultaneous tables).. Even so, when it's not going well, it's easy to loose confidence in your plan, and your playing.
I had a discussion on the twoplustwo.com poker forums with someone, a former SNG specialist who had made the switch, and he has gone through exactly the same things. It's nice to know that in fact nothing is wrong, and that what I'm going through is completely normal.
Here are parts of that discussion:
Poker Clif
Posts: 2,430
Profitability of deepstacked tournaments
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi. I am a former SNG specialist (14% ROI at $10) who is converting to MTTs as my specialty. I was very tight, even for a SNG/DON player, so I'm back in the micros while I get comfortable playing a lot more hands.
[Some questions about specific tournament types]All comments are appreciated.
Sinking Ship
Posts: 844 Re: profitability of deepstack tournaments
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A while back I made a similar transition from mid-stake turbo SNGs to mid/high-stake MTTs. I've calculated that my hourly would be less than 1/5 of what it was when I grinded SNG's IF I omitted 2 big scores, which ultimately boosted my hourly above what it was previously.
Basically, the variance can be a gift and a curse. I also have not put in nearly as much volume in MTTs (even when measured in time spent playing), so my results are relatively unreliable.
Additionally, SNGs (especially turbos) where very much a mechanical undertaking for me. I find MTTs, deepstacked or turbos or not, to be more enjoyable and to have more subtleties, and to thus be more challenging (not having a fixed amount of chips at the table [as in a SNG] is one of the fundamental changes).
As far as your returns go, only you can predict with any accuracy. I'd say to just start playing and, if after a sufficiently large sample, you find your hourly is significantly less, then it is what it is. Just remember that 1 or 2 big scores (and by big score I don't mean taking down the 1Mil Garauntee, I mean placing top 3 in a few of your own stake MTTs) can drastically change your ROI and hourly.
Poker Clif
Posts: 2,430
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for your response. Yeah, I'm definitely waiting for that big score. I'm getting in the top 5% of large fields (over 2,000 players) more than 10% of the time--which usually means playing for 4 hours and winnning 2 or 3 buy-ins. I'm not playing enough tables right now that my sample size is going to mean anything for quite a while, so I understand exactly what you mean about the big scores.
I remember a post by Pzhon, where he recounted a day where he played 19 MTTs and didn't cash. He cashed in his 20th and final tournament--which gave him a profit of almost exactly zero for the day.
I have not been getting the large cashes to make it viable, in other words, I'm not making any money. But that's the nature of the beast. In my former specialty, SNGs (sit 'n goes, usually a one-table tournament of 9 or 10 players) you make money by getting a lot of small cashes to add up. With MTTs, you have a few very but very large cashes (even large $1 tournaments can have a first place prize of $1,000 or more) that can make your month or your year, with long breakeven periods or dry spells in between.
I know this. I know it's normal. I also know that good MTT players make a lot more money over the course of a year than good SNG players (the exceptions are some SNG players that can play 12, 24 or more simultaneous tables).. Even so, when it's not going well, it's easy to loose confidence in your plan, and your playing.
I had a discussion on the twoplustwo.com poker forums with someone, a former SNG specialist who had made the switch, and he has gone through exactly the same things. It's nice to know that in fact nothing is wrong, and that what I'm going through is completely normal.
Here are parts of that discussion:
Poker Clif
Posts: 2,430
Profitability of deepstacked tournaments
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi. I am a former SNG specialist (14% ROI at $10) who is converting to MTTs as my specialty. I was very tight, even for a SNG/DON player, so I'm back in the micros while I get comfortable playing a lot more hands.
[Some questions about specific tournament types]All comments are appreciated.
Sinking Ship
Posts: 844 Re: profitability of deepstack tournaments
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A while back I made a similar transition from mid-stake turbo SNGs to mid/high-stake MTTs. I've calculated that my hourly would be less than 1/5 of what it was when I grinded SNG's IF I omitted 2 big scores, which ultimately boosted my hourly above what it was previously.
Basically, the variance can be a gift and a curse. I also have not put in nearly as much volume in MTTs (even when measured in time spent playing), so my results are relatively unreliable.
Additionally, SNGs (especially turbos) where very much a mechanical undertaking for me. I find MTTs, deepstacked or turbos or not, to be more enjoyable and to have more subtleties, and to thus be more challenging (not having a fixed amount of chips at the table [as in a SNG] is one of the fundamental changes).
As far as your returns go, only you can predict with any accuracy. I'd say to just start playing and, if after a sufficiently large sample, you find your hourly is significantly less, then it is what it is. Just remember that 1 or 2 big scores (and by big score I don't mean taking down the 1Mil Garauntee, I mean placing top 3 in a few of your own stake MTTs) can drastically change your ROI and hourly.
Poker Clif
Posts: 2,430
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thanks for your response. Yeah, I'm definitely waiting for that big score. I'm getting in the top 5% of large fields (over 2,000 players) more than 10% of the time--which usually means playing for 4 hours and winnning 2 or 3 buy-ins. I'm not playing enough tables right now that my sample size is going to mean anything for quite a while, so I understand exactly what you mean about the big scores.
I remember a post by Pzhon, where he recounted a day where he played 19 MTTs and didn't cash. He cashed in his 20th and final tournament--which gave him a profit of almost exactly zero for the day.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
12/1/2010--Results for week of 11/21/--11/27
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Beginning bankroll, 11/21 $66.32
Ending bankroll, 11/27 $54.57
---------
-$11.75
I lost some money this week, but those things happen. I lost a lot of tournaments with the best hands, but I played well, and I'm learning a lot. The money isn't even my biggest concern right now.
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.00
Study 7.50
Playing 22.75
---------------
Total hours 32.25
I've been thinking a lot about what I can change next year. I have found a lot of things I can do better, primarily organizing my records and my time, and I want to implement that next year. But the more I think about it, especially managing my time, the more frustrated I get. I can't get control of my hours and scheduling.
My hours have been getting better, but they are not consistent. The week before this I had 39.5. For the week being reported, I was down. As I type this it's Wednesday morning, and at the end of Tuesday I already have 21 hours for this week.
I can't decide whether consistency is important or not, but I'm coming to the conclusion that it's not. It will always be true to an extent that as someone who works at home and set his own hours, I will always be the one that has to adjust. I can't say that I can't adjust because "I have to work", because everyone knows better.
I had pretty much settled into the idea of going to church half the time. I want to go to church, but I want to be able to play at night, and eventually, to play the "Sunday Majors", the big online tournaments that start on Sunday afternoon. So going to church half the time seemed like a reasonable compromise. A lot of people have to work Sundays, and I've done it in many different jobs. So, I told my wife that this was the plan.
The way that I plan to work that out will mean that two weeks a month, the weeks that I was going to church, I would be on my morning schedule, I would get up early for two weeks,and I would be locked into that schedule. I would get up for church on Sunday morning. And I would get up early the rest of the week.
For now, there are some early tournaments that I would like to target, so I will be mostly on the early schedule. But as soon as I have the bankroll to move up to $2 and $3 tournaments, there are a lot more good tournament options throughout the day, and I will want to be playing more at night, at least part of the time.
So, my idea is that for two weeks I would be on the late schedule. I would not go to church, and I would take advantage of being able to play all night, especially on Saturday, when more people are playing and the online games are better. And once I start playing live again (which only happens on afternoons and evenings) I will be avalible for live tournaments those two weeks as well.
But now that's changed. We will be taking our grandchildren to church with us starting in January, and surprise!--I have to adjust again. Evidently I have to be there every time the girls are (and be on the early schedule), and I did NOT know that that was part of the plan. I can be on my late schedule only the one week a month when my wife works weekends,when the girls will not be going to church with us.
That's a problem. If I'm only on the late schedule for one week (which would mean getting up sometime around noon), since it takes a few day to adjust, that's not very practical. And since the best-attended live tournaments start on Saturday night can go past midnight, playing those will be a problem as well. I do not want to "wing it" here. I want a plan in place for the way I am going to do things in 2011.
Somehow I have to come up with a plan, and make it stick that, short of a genuine emergency, it's not changing. I like to have some flexibility--that's a major benefit of being your own boss. But it's becoming clear that if I'm too flexible, I'm going to get "rolled". I really need to come up with a solution to this.
So I'll be starting off the new year with no idea how I'm going to work my schedule out. And for someone with ADD, who cam struggle with both dilligence and with keeping things straight, that is definitely not good. When I don't have a plan, things don't go well. When I "wing it", very bad things happen. I absolutely have to have a plan and some structure.
I had even decided to get a different kind of calendar for 2011 (again, this has been discussed) the kind that has a line for all 24 hours of the day. Then I could really plan out blocks of time, know exactly when I was playing/studying/recordkeeping, and I could tell people that short of a genuine emergency, I was not available at those times.
I keep remembering the 2+2 admonitions to new players, where they are told over and over that poker is a nights-and-weekends business, and that your family must to be able to deal with that or it won't work. I've told people that!.
The closer it gets to January 1st, when I want to have a lot of things in place and better organized, the more frustrated I get about my losing control of my time and my plans.
Beginning bankroll, 11/21 $66.32
Ending bankroll, 11/27 $54.57
---------
-$11.75
I lost some money this week, but those things happen. I lost a lot of tournaments with the best hands, but I played well, and I'm learning a lot. The money isn't even my biggest concern right now.
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.00
Study 7.50
Playing 22.75
---------------
Total hours 32.25
I've been thinking a lot about what I can change next year. I have found a lot of things I can do better, primarily organizing my records and my time, and I want to implement that next year. But the more I think about it, especially managing my time, the more frustrated I get. I can't get control of my hours and scheduling.
My hours have been getting better, but they are not consistent. The week before this I had 39.5. For the week being reported, I was down. As I type this it's Wednesday morning, and at the end of Tuesday I already have 21 hours for this week.
I can't decide whether consistency is important or not, but I'm coming to the conclusion that it's not. It will always be true to an extent that as someone who works at home and set his own hours, I will always be the one that has to adjust. I can't say that I can't adjust because "I have to work", because everyone knows better.
I had pretty much settled into the idea of going to church half the time. I want to go to church, but I want to be able to play at night, and eventually, to play the "Sunday Majors", the big online tournaments that start on Sunday afternoon. So going to church half the time seemed like a reasonable compromise. A lot of people have to work Sundays, and I've done it in many different jobs. So, I told my wife that this was the plan.
The way that I plan to work that out will mean that two weeks a month, the weeks that I was going to church, I would be on my morning schedule, I would get up early for two weeks,and I would be locked into that schedule. I would get up for church on Sunday morning. And I would get up early the rest of the week.
For now, there are some early tournaments that I would like to target, so I will be mostly on the early schedule. But as soon as I have the bankroll to move up to $2 and $3 tournaments, there are a lot more good tournament options throughout the day, and I will want to be playing more at night, at least part of the time.
So, my idea is that for two weeks I would be on the late schedule. I would not go to church, and I would take advantage of being able to play all night, especially on Saturday, when more people are playing and the online games are better. And once I start playing live again (which only happens on afternoons and evenings) I will be avalible for live tournaments those two weeks as well.
But now that's changed. We will be taking our grandchildren to church with us starting in January, and surprise!--I have to adjust again. Evidently I have to be there every time the girls are (and be on the early schedule), and I did NOT know that that was part of the plan. I can be on my late schedule only the one week a month when my wife works weekends,when the girls will not be going to church with us.
That's a problem. If I'm only on the late schedule for one week (which would mean getting up sometime around noon), since it takes a few day to adjust, that's not very practical. And since the best-attended live tournaments start on Saturday night can go past midnight, playing those will be a problem as well. I do not want to "wing it" here. I want a plan in place for the way I am going to do things in 2011.
Somehow I have to come up with a plan, and make it stick that, short of a genuine emergency, it's not changing. I like to have some flexibility--that's a major benefit of being your own boss. But it's becoming clear that if I'm too flexible, I'm going to get "rolled". I really need to come up with a solution to this.
So I'll be starting off the new year with no idea how I'm going to work my schedule out. And for someone with ADD, who cam struggle with both dilligence and with keeping things straight, that is definitely not good. When I don't have a plan, things don't go well. When I "wing it", very bad things happen. I absolutely have to have a plan and some structure.
I had even decided to get a different kind of calendar for 2011 (again, this has been discussed) the kind that has a line for all 24 hours of the day. Then I could really plan out blocks of time, know exactly when I was playing/studying/recordkeeping, and I could tell people that short of a genuine emergency, I was not available at those times.
I keep remembering the 2+2 admonitions to new players, where they are told over and over that poker is a nights-and-weekends business, and that your family must to be able to deal with that or it won't work. I've told people that!.
The closer it gets to January 1st, when I want to have a lot of things in place and better organized, the more frustrated I get about my losing control of my time and my plans.
Friday, November 19, 2010
11/19/2010--Update, an "aha" moment
It's been a couple weeks since I've posted. As for poker, it's been unremarkable. A couple weeks ago I put 51 hours in, and that's a very encouraging development. I'll be changing a few things next year, and one of those will be to have my spreadsheet track things by the month.
I can look at my paperwork and spreadsheets and get that data easily enough, but I would like to be able to track, and graph, both my hours and my bankroll by the week and the month. I guess that means that I'll finally have to break down and learn how to post images on this blog, so that I can put my graphs up.
There has been one big development. My grandchildren are now back with his son and his wife, which will make things much better for everyone. I won't feel the obligation to take the kids for a certain amount of time each week, and I can do it when it's convenient for me and/or my wife.
Now, the "aha" moment. It's been bothering me that I can't seem to break through. I"m not making any money, but I'm not really losing money either. Even the best online players are going to have long breakeven sessions, and that's all I thought it was. But as it lasted longer and longer, I've had the feeling that something more is going on. My work habits are getting better (it's taken some time to get used to being my own boss.) And I know that I'm learning a lot in my study time--and that's the key.
I responded to a 2+2 post today regarding one of the newer poker books, The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition, edited by Michael Craig. While I was proofreading the post, I had my "aha moment."
The reason that I'm not making any money is that I'm learning so many new things, things that I have to do differently in very large tournaments, that it's taking me a while time to assimilate everything into my game, so that I can reach the point where I can profitably use my new skills.
Although I am very intelligent, I am also a step-by-step, plodding type of learner, and I shouldn't be surprised that it's taken me a while to learn so many new things and use them productively when I play. I grasp new concepts very quickly. I learn and apply details much more slowly.
As I am more comfortable with play suited to the structure of large tournaments, I know that it's only a matter or time, probably a very short time, before I have a breakthrough. My wife certainly hopes that it happens sooner rather than later!
Here is the post from 2+2, followed by my response:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Everyone,
Sorry to be posting this because I'm sure it's already been covered, just couldn't find the thread.
What do you guys think of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide for MTT play? I'am a disciple of the Harrington On Holdem series but a lot of fellow players say that it's too "old school" and the play is way too tight for "todays" game.
I looked over Bloch's pre-flop opening hands chart and it just seems really loose especially in EP. Bleeding chips especially at a loose table? I like some of what Ferguson said about betting but not sure I totally agree with NEVER calling pre-flop. Is the ALWAYS raising an open limper and ALWAYS re-raising an open raise really the optimal way to go?
Thanks for all your imputs,
Sam
-----------------------------
I am, and have been for a while, going through the process of adding more starting hands (both calling and raising) to my game.
Two of the first poker authors that I read were Harrington and Hellmuth. And I decided pretty early to specialize in normal speed STTs. This was about 3 years ago, when STTs did not have antes, and I could sometimes fold my way into the top 3. So you can imagine how tight I was. From the button I would only play JJ+, AT+. Later, I started playing DONs as well. As you can imagine, that didn't exactly loosen up my game.
While this was going on, I would occasionally play an MTT, mostly for variety and because it was more fun. Recently I decided to switch my specialty to MTTs, because I think I can make more profit per hour in the long run. I figured out pretty quickly that I needed to open up my game.
I didn't know how to get comfortable playing more hands, so I decided to just jump in and do it. I looked for starting hand charts that were looser than how I played (but not too wild--baby steps.) I did this a little bit at a time--adding just a few hands, trying one idea in a poker book that I had not tried before, and gradually I got comfortable playing more and more hands.
I have not yet played as loose as the Andy Bloch recommendations, but eventually I would like to get comfortable with playing that many hands. Even if I didn't stick with the Bloch system as my default plan, it would be nice to have it as "another gear." It's not unusual for me to play 100 hands or more against someone in an online MTT before the table breaks, so if I don't vary my play, I'm going to get exploited by good players.
One of the things that has helped me is rereading Harrington talking about the Zone System (in HOH2). Just the idea of starting to play more hands with an M under 20 really helped me open up, and I"m now much less afraid to play more hands against a full table. To give one example, instead of playing JJ+, AT+ from the button, my default now TT+, Ax from the cutoff or button, at least until I see how the players on my left react.
In answer to your question about never calling preflop, once your M is under 20, Harrington says,
"The pre-flop criteria that I described in Volume 1 should be adjusted downward a bit, so that you will raise or call with a few more hands than before." (HOH2, p.133)
I can look at my paperwork and spreadsheets and get that data easily enough, but I would like to be able to track, and graph, both my hours and my bankroll by the week and the month. I guess that means that I'll finally have to break down and learn how to post images on this blog, so that I can put my graphs up.
There has been one big development. My grandchildren are now back with his son and his wife, which will make things much better for everyone. I won't feel the obligation to take the kids for a certain amount of time each week, and I can do it when it's convenient for me and/or my wife.
Now, the "aha" moment. It's been bothering me that I can't seem to break through. I"m not making any money, but I'm not really losing money either. Even the best online players are going to have long breakeven sessions, and that's all I thought it was. But as it lasted longer and longer, I've had the feeling that something more is going on. My work habits are getting better (it's taken some time to get used to being my own boss.) And I know that I'm learning a lot in my study time--and that's the key.
I responded to a 2+2 post today regarding one of the newer poker books, The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition, edited by Michael Craig. While I was proofreading the post, I had my "aha moment."
The reason that I'm not making any money is that I'm learning so many new things, things that I have to do differently in very large tournaments, that it's taking me a while time to assimilate everything into my game, so that I can reach the point where I can profitably use my new skills.
Although I am very intelligent, I am also a step-by-step, plodding type of learner, and I shouldn't be surprised that it's taken me a while to learn so many new things and use them productively when I play. I grasp new concepts very quickly. I learn and apply details much more slowly.
As I am more comfortable with play suited to the structure of large tournaments, I know that it's only a matter or time, probably a very short time, before I have a breakthrough. My wife certainly hopes that it happens sooner rather than later!
Here is the post from 2+2, followed by my response:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello Everyone,
Sorry to be posting this because I'm sure it's already been covered, just couldn't find the thread.
What do you guys think of the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide for MTT play? I'am a disciple of the Harrington On Holdem series but a lot of fellow players say that it's too "old school" and the play is way too tight for "todays" game.
I looked over Bloch's pre-flop opening hands chart and it just seems really loose especially in EP. Bleeding chips especially at a loose table? I like some of what Ferguson said about betting but not sure I totally agree with NEVER calling pre-flop. Is the ALWAYS raising an open limper and ALWAYS re-raising an open raise really the optimal way to go?
Thanks for all your imputs,
Sam
-----------------------------
I am, and have been for a while, going through the process of adding more starting hands (both calling and raising) to my game.
Two of the first poker authors that I read were Harrington and Hellmuth. And I decided pretty early to specialize in normal speed STTs. This was about 3 years ago, when STTs did not have antes, and I could sometimes fold my way into the top 3. So you can imagine how tight I was. From the button I would only play JJ+, AT+. Later, I started playing DONs as well. As you can imagine, that didn't exactly loosen up my game.
While this was going on, I would occasionally play an MTT, mostly for variety and because it was more fun. Recently I decided to switch my specialty to MTTs, because I think I can make more profit per hour in the long run. I figured out pretty quickly that I needed to open up my game.
I didn't know how to get comfortable playing more hands, so I decided to just jump in and do it. I looked for starting hand charts that were looser than how I played (but not too wild--baby steps.) I did this a little bit at a time--adding just a few hands, trying one idea in a poker book that I had not tried before, and gradually I got comfortable playing more and more hands.
I have not yet played as loose as the Andy Bloch recommendations, but eventually I would like to get comfortable with playing that many hands. Even if I didn't stick with the Bloch system as my default plan, it would be nice to have it as "another gear." It's not unusual for me to play 100 hands or more against someone in an online MTT before the table breaks, so if I don't vary my play, I'm going to get exploited by good players.
One of the things that has helped me is rereading Harrington talking about the Zone System (in HOH2). Just the idea of starting to play more hands with an M under 20 really helped me open up, and I"m now much less afraid to play more hands against a full table. To give one example, instead of playing JJ+, AT+ from the button, my default now TT+, Ax from the cutoff or button, at least until I see how the players on my left react.
In answer to your question about never calling preflop, once your M is under 20, Harrington says,
"The pre-flop criteria that I described in Volume 1 should be adjusted downward a bit, so that you will raise or call with a few more hands than before." (HOH2, p.133)
Sunday, October 31, 2010
10/31-2010--Results for week of 10/24-10/30
POKER HOURS
Administrative 1.50
Study 2.75
Play 28.00
----------
TOTAL HOURS 37.25
I goofed off last week, and I'm not happy about it. We had some storms and the internet wasn't very reliable for a couple days. I played one tournament where, according to Holdem Manager, I played for 1.2 minutes before I lost the internet.
So, I got disgusted, decided not to waste any more money, and didn't play for 2 days. That was probably a good decision, but instead of studying or working on something poker related, I didn't do much of anything those two days. If I had used that time more wisely, I would have easily put in more than 40 hours. I can't let that happen again.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/24 $58.43
Ending bankroll, 10/30 $71.56
-------------------
+$13.13
It's nice to see my bankroll going up toward one of my two magic numbers, $114, which will allow me to play $2.20 MTTs. I've been looking at the lineup quite a bit. There are a lot of tournaments with a good, or at least reasonable stucture, enough so that, combined with the $1.10 MTTS, there will be one available with a good structure every 2 hours or so.
Not only will this give me more options, but I won't have to be on an early daytime schedule. As a natural night person who hopes to play live tournaments (which happen mostly at night) soon, getting up around noon makes a lot more sense.
There still is the problem of getting up for church in the morning, especially since, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the tournaments with the weakest fields run on Saturday night. (Many players have checked their databases and reported that Saturday, especially late at night, is their most profitable time to play.)
I'm going to schedule my time to go to church twice a month. I'm not sure yet if I'll change my schedule for those times, or whether I'll just play all night and go to church tired. I'll probably have to experiment with that for a while and see what works best.
Administrative 1.50
Study 2.75
Play 28.00
----------
TOTAL HOURS 37.25
I goofed off last week, and I'm not happy about it. We had some storms and the internet wasn't very reliable for a couple days. I played one tournament where, according to Holdem Manager, I played for 1.2 minutes before I lost the internet.
So, I got disgusted, decided not to waste any more money, and didn't play for 2 days. That was probably a good decision, but instead of studying or working on something poker related, I didn't do much of anything those two days. If I had used that time more wisely, I would have easily put in more than 40 hours. I can't let that happen again.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/24 $58.43
Ending bankroll, 10/30 $71.56
-------------------
+$13.13
It's nice to see my bankroll going up toward one of my two magic numbers, $114, which will allow me to play $2.20 MTTs. I've been looking at the lineup quite a bit. There are a lot of tournaments with a good, or at least reasonable stucture, enough so that, combined with the $1.10 MTTS, there will be one available with a good structure every 2 hours or so.
Not only will this give me more options, but I won't have to be on an early daytime schedule. As a natural night person who hopes to play live tournaments (which happen mostly at night) soon, getting up around noon makes a lot more sense.
There still is the problem of getting up for church in the morning, especially since, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the tournaments with the weakest fields run on Saturday night. (Many players have checked their databases and reported that Saturday, especially late at night, is their most profitable time to play.)
I'm going to schedule my time to go to church twice a month. I'm not sure yet if I'll change my schedule for those times, or whether I'll just play all night and go to church tired. I'll probably have to experiment with that for a while and see what works best.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Results for week of 10/17/-10/23
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 9.50
Play 27.25
----------
TOTAL HOURS 39.50
I'm very happy with my hours this week. It would have been nice to hit 40, but I spent most of Saturday with my grandchildren, so it just wasn't possible to come through at the end.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/17 $45.04
Ending bankroll, 10-23 $58.43
-----------
+$13.39
A lot of things happened this week that kept me from playing the $1.10 MTTs with a good structure. There are only 4 of them, at 0600, 0700, 1100 and 1720. Since we were getting the grandchildren dropped off Saturday in the morning, 0600 and 0700 MTTs might not be done before the kids came over. We got them at around 1100, and had them until around 1800, which knocks out the last two MTTS.
That kind of thing happened more than once during the week, and I wound up playing a bunch of turbo SNGs. I decided that if I at least broke even in those financially, while picking up a chunk of PokerStars Frequent Player Points (more about that in a future post) then it was a worthwhile endeavor.
There are two really big numbers that I'm looking at, that I think about every single day. The first is $114, which is the bankroll that I need to move up to $2.20 tournaments. Once the entry fee doubles, so do the prize pools, and I'm ready to get some of that money. At that point, the financial contribution I can make should start to be noticable, and still give me a little room to continue to build my bankroll.
The second bankroll milestone will be at $238. That was mybankroll high point, in June of 2008, before I had to decimate my bankroll to pay bills bills. It's hard to believe that more that a year later I haven't got back there. But if I stick to my consolidated bankroll strategy, it will never happen again.
With a $238 bankroll, I should be easily able to generate enough to make a difference in the family finances, while still keeping enough behind to grow my bankroll more quickly.
$238 is the number that haunts me every day, when I get up and once again have to face being able to play only $1 tournaments. When I get there again and keep on going, it will be my biggest day as a poker player. On that day, I will know for certain that I will never again be in the position that I am now.
Administrative 2.75
Study 9.50
Play 27.25
----------
TOTAL HOURS 39.50
I'm very happy with my hours this week. It would have been nice to hit 40, but I spent most of Saturday with my grandchildren, so it just wasn't possible to come through at the end.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/17 $45.04
Ending bankroll, 10-23 $58.43
-----------
+$13.39
A lot of things happened this week that kept me from playing the $1.10 MTTs with a good structure. There are only 4 of them, at 0600, 0700, 1100 and 1720. Since we were getting the grandchildren dropped off Saturday in the morning, 0600 and 0700 MTTs might not be done before the kids came over. We got them at around 1100, and had them until around 1800, which knocks out the last two MTTS.
That kind of thing happened more than once during the week, and I wound up playing a bunch of turbo SNGs. I decided that if I at least broke even in those financially, while picking up a chunk of PokerStars Frequent Player Points (more about that in a future post) then it was a worthwhile endeavor.
There are two really big numbers that I'm looking at, that I think about every single day. The first is $114, which is the bankroll that I need to move up to $2.20 tournaments. Once the entry fee doubles, so do the prize pools, and I'm ready to get some of that money. At that point, the financial contribution I can make should start to be noticable, and still give me a little room to continue to build my bankroll.
The second bankroll milestone will be at $238. That was mybankroll high point, in June of 2008, before I had to decimate my bankroll to pay bills bills. It's hard to believe that more that a year later I haven't got back there. But if I stick to my consolidated bankroll strategy, it will never happen again.
With a $238 bankroll, I should be easily able to generate enough to make a difference in the family finances, while still keeping enough behind to grow my bankroll more quickly.
$238 is the number that haunts me every day, when I get up and once again have to face being able to play only $1 tournaments. When I get there again and keep on going, it will be my biggest day as a poker player. On that day, I will know for certain that I will never again be in the position that I am now.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Results for week of 10/10-10/16
I forget to do this earlier. I was looking at my results so far for this week, then realized that I never posted last week's results. So here they are:
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 4.50
Playing 25.50
------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.50
PROFIT AND LOSS
10/10 starting bankroll 35.28
10/16 ending bankroll 45.04
----------------
+$9.76
Everything went fairly well. It was an uneventful week. Nothing dramatic, just a fairly study grind toward a profitable week. I'm still having a lot of fairly deep runs in large MTTs, most of which have been just out of the money, or very small cashes, which this week included:
212 of 3,879
32 of 1,000
33 of 1,000
954 of 9,088
190 of 3,996
I'm not sure if my not quite breaking through for a big cash yet is due to luck (statistical variance) or if there is something I could change that would get me over the hump. Without a sample size of at least 100 of these in a month (so that the way I play hasn't changed much during the sample period), it's impossible to tell. Actually, 100 MTTs isn't any kind of a scientific sample size, but I think that it would give me a decent, unscientific feel of what's going on.
I think that I need to open up my game a bit more, and take just a few more risks, but I'm not sure what form that should take. It could be bluffing a little more, but the standard poker wisdom is to never bluff against someone in the micro (<$5) tournaments. Fancy plays are pointless when a micro player mostly looks at his cards, decides whether he has a good hand or a bad hand, and acts accordingly.
I think I'll just start working on the other possibilites, maybe concentrating on one possible improvement each day. I think that one big possibility is tartgeing indivual players.
I do some of that of course, but that has mainly involved trapping maniacs by letting them lead the betting, and just coming along for the ride with my monster hand. But the tables have been breaking more slowly recently, and it's not uncommon for me to be at the same table with several other players for 75 hands. I think that working on getting good reads on more players might be just enough to start putting me in line for some big cashes.
I can think of some other tweaks as well, but along with working on those, I'm going to give it some more thought. I have a feeling that I'm missing something, that there is something I'm not doing, or that I could do a lot better. There are a couple poker books that I would like to read through again, maybe that will shake something loose in my head.
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 4.50
Playing 25.50
------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.50
PROFIT AND LOSS
10/10 starting bankroll 35.28
10/16 ending bankroll 45.04
----------------
+$9.76
Everything went fairly well. It was an uneventful week. Nothing dramatic, just a fairly study grind toward a profitable week. I'm still having a lot of fairly deep runs in large MTTs, most of which have been just out of the money, or very small cashes, which this week included:
212 of 3,879
32 of 1,000
33 of 1,000
954 of 9,088
190 of 3,996
I'm not sure if my not quite breaking through for a big cash yet is due to luck (statistical variance) or if there is something I could change that would get me over the hump. Without a sample size of at least 100 of these in a month (so that the way I play hasn't changed much during the sample period), it's impossible to tell. Actually, 100 MTTs isn't any kind of a scientific sample size, but I think that it would give me a decent, unscientific feel of what's going on.
I think that I need to open up my game a bit more, and take just a few more risks, but I'm not sure what form that should take. It could be bluffing a little more, but the standard poker wisdom is to never bluff against someone in the micro (<$5) tournaments. Fancy plays are pointless when a micro player mostly looks at his cards, decides whether he has a good hand or a bad hand, and acts accordingly.
I think I'll just start working on the other possibilites, maybe concentrating on one possible improvement each day. I think that one big possibility is tartgeing indivual players.
I do some of that of course, but that has mainly involved trapping maniacs by letting them lead the betting, and just coming along for the ride with my monster hand. But the tables have been breaking more slowly recently, and it's not uncommon for me to be at the same table with several other players for 75 hands. I think that working on getting good reads on more players might be just enough to start putting me in line for some big cashes.
I can think of some other tweaks as well, but along with working on those, I'm going to give it some more thought. I have a feeling that I'm missing something, that there is something I'm not doing, or that I could do a lot better. There are a couple poker books that I would like to read through again, maybe that will shake something loose in my head.
Friday, October 15, 2010
10/15/2010--I hate memorization!
There are a lot of things to learn about poker. In fact, with poker, as with any other field, the body of knowledge is always growing, and is for practical purposes infinite.
Assuming (incorrectly) that I could learn everything there is to know about No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments, there are all kinds of poker variants out there. There are even players that specialize in what are called "mixed-game" tournaments, which involve alternating as many as eight different poker games as part of the same tournament. For example, a typical eight-game format, according to Wikipedia, is alternating orbits of: fixed limit 2-7 Triple Draw, fixed limit Texas hold 'em, fixed limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, fixed limit Seven-card stud, fixed limit Seven-card stud Eight or better, no limit Texas hold 'em and pot limit Omaha.
I know little or nothing about most of those games except for NLHE, with the exception that I played about 100 hands of fixed-limit hold 'em when I was so new I didn't realize that it was a different game at first (I couldn't figure why everyone was making such small bets!)
There are many other options out there: heads-up games (where you are playing one other person, just as you would in chess or checkers), cash games, more poker variants, and variants of the variants.
And then there is game theory, which is a branch of mathematics taught at the college level. Some of the top turning pros who are mathematically inclined and well-educated (some are PhDs) use game theory in their poker playing. My knowledge and use of game theory is very limited. I've read things about game theory, and I found a Harvard game theory class online and looked at a video of two of the lectures. I don't have the math background to actually take a course.
So, there is always more to learn, but something I've neglected, and that I really need to work on, is basic memorization. I'm scared of it. I'm terrible at it. It takes me a very long time. My son would say "it sucks." But it has to be done.
Everyone who plays decently knows about odds and outs. The idea is pretty basic. If you know how many cards are out there that can improve you to a winning hand, and you compare that to the size of the bet you want to make, you can figure out mathematically if it's the right play.
But you don't really have to do any math! All you have to do is memorize a chart. If you know that with one card to come, your odds of making your hand are 4.11 to 1 against, then there has to be enough money in the pot that if you hit your card, you will win more than 4.11 times the amount that you bet. Over time, this will make you money.
There lots of other basic tables that go beyond simple odds and outs, which very few players at the lower-to-intermediate levels bother to memorize (if they even know that such information exists). In a sense, it's free money. If I know something my opponent doesn't know, over time that is a significant mathematical (and financial) advantage.
Quick example: I know (either from observation or from tracking software) that my opponent is playing about 50% of his hands. I also know that the winning strategy is to play hands that are in the top half of his range. That means that if I'm playing my top 25% against his top 50%, I will win more than half the time, over time.
That's fine as far as it goes, but what are the top 50%, or top 25%, of hands? There's an app for that.* Well, not really, but there is a chart. It's on page 381 of Heads-Up No Limit Holdem, by Collin Moshman, and it's called, "Top N Percent of Starting Hands."
I haven't memorized that chart, but I need to. What good is knowing that I need to play the top 25% of those hands, if I don't know what they are? Well, here's the list:
Ace-seven offsuit+ (offsuit means not suited, and the plus means "or better", in this case, the lower card must be 7 or higher
Ace-two suited+
K9o+
K6s+
QTo (the "T" represents a ten)
Q8s+
J8s+
T8s+
That's it, in standard poker notation. If I'm against someone playing half of his hands, that list gives me exactly the hands I can play and be profitable. I don't have to do any math at the table. I don't even have to understand how the math works. I can play any suited ace. I fold any hand where the highest card is 9 or lower. Nothing to figure out, no guesswork.
If my opponent doesn't know that, or better yet, has no idea of the concept of playing against an opponent's range (the range of hands that he is likely to play in a given situation), then I have an advantage that untimately turns into money. But if I know the concept, but have to guess what cards are in the top 25%, I'm going to be a lot less successful. Knowlege is power, and memorized knowlege is hard to beat when my opponent doesn't have it. Humans know this instinctively, that's why kids like to play the game, "I know something you don't know."
So, I have to do it. I hate it. My brain is weird. I have a 99th percentile IQ. I have ADD. And I'm very, very bad at memorization--a college psychology professor gave me a memory test, and asked if I had ever abused drugs!
The answer to that question was no. I have never consumed an alcoholic beverage. I have never taken an illegal drug. I injest very little caffiene (no coffee at all).
Where someone else might be able to memorize that top 25% string of hands in 1 or 2 minutes, or at most, 5 minutes, it could take me 30-60 minutes of painstakingly adding one hand at a time, working my way up to knowing the full list. Multiply that by learning all of the hand ranges in intervals of, say, 5%, and we're talking about a lot of hours. If I was really meticulous and memorized at 1% intervals, I don't even want to think about how long that would take--but it's free money. I feel like Tevyeh in Fiddler on the Roof--on the other hand . . .
It's money that I can win from you, because I know something you don't know. And do I really want to work on this a bit at a time, over the course of a year or more? There are lots of very helpful charts and tables I could memorize that would benefit me greatly. My brain hurts just thinking about it, but I have to do something.
I guess it's time to make some flash cards and get to work.
*"There's an app for that" has recently become a trademarked phrase.
Assuming (incorrectly) that I could learn everything there is to know about No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments, there are all kinds of poker variants out there. There are even players that specialize in what are called "mixed-game" tournaments, which involve alternating as many as eight different poker games as part of the same tournament. For example, a typical eight-game format, according to Wikipedia, is alternating orbits of: fixed limit 2-7 Triple Draw, fixed limit Texas hold 'em, fixed limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, fixed limit Seven-card stud, fixed limit Seven-card stud Eight or better, no limit Texas hold 'em and pot limit Omaha.
I know little or nothing about most of those games except for NLHE, with the exception that I played about 100 hands of fixed-limit hold 'em when I was so new I didn't realize that it was a different game at first (I couldn't figure why everyone was making such small bets!)
There are many other options out there: heads-up games (where you are playing one other person, just as you would in chess or checkers), cash games, more poker variants, and variants of the variants.
And then there is game theory, which is a branch of mathematics taught at the college level. Some of the top turning pros who are mathematically inclined and well-educated (some are PhDs) use game theory in their poker playing. My knowledge and use of game theory is very limited. I've read things about game theory, and I found a Harvard game theory class online and looked at a video of two of the lectures. I don't have the math background to actually take a course.
So, there is always more to learn, but something I've neglected, and that I really need to work on, is basic memorization. I'm scared of it. I'm terrible at it. It takes me a very long time. My son would say "it sucks." But it has to be done.
Everyone who plays decently knows about odds and outs. The idea is pretty basic. If you know how many cards are out there that can improve you to a winning hand, and you compare that to the size of the bet you want to make, you can figure out mathematically if it's the right play.
But you don't really have to do any math! All you have to do is memorize a chart. If you know that with one card to come, your odds of making your hand are 4.11 to 1 against, then there has to be enough money in the pot that if you hit your card, you will win more than 4.11 times the amount that you bet. Over time, this will make you money.
There lots of other basic tables that go beyond simple odds and outs, which very few players at the lower-to-intermediate levels bother to memorize (if they even know that such information exists). In a sense, it's free money. If I know something my opponent doesn't know, over time that is a significant mathematical (and financial) advantage.
Quick example: I know (either from observation or from tracking software) that my opponent is playing about 50% of his hands. I also know that the winning strategy is to play hands that are in the top half of his range. That means that if I'm playing my top 25% against his top 50%, I will win more than half the time, over time.
That's fine as far as it goes, but what are the top 50%, or top 25%, of hands? There's an app for that.* Well, not really, but there is a chart. It's on page 381 of Heads-Up No Limit Holdem, by Collin Moshman, and it's called, "Top N Percent of Starting Hands."
I haven't memorized that chart, but I need to. What good is knowing that I need to play the top 25% of those hands, if I don't know what they are? Well, here's the list:
Ace-seven offsuit+ (offsuit means not suited, and the plus means "or better", in this case, the lower card must be 7 or higher
Ace-two suited+
K9o+
K6s+
QTo (the "T" represents a ten)
Q8s+
J8s+
T8s+
That's it, in standard poker notation. If I'm against someone playing half of his hands, that list gives me exactly the hands I can play and be profitable. I don't have to do any math at the table. I don't even have to understand how the math works. I can play any suited ace. I fold any hand where the highest card is 9 or lower. Nothing to figure out, no guesswork.
If my opponent doesn't know that, or better yet, has no idea of the concept of playing against an opponent's range (the range of hands that he is likely to play in a given situation), then I have an advantage that untimately turns into money. But if I know the concept, but have to guess what cards are in the top 25%, I'm going to be a lot less successful. Knowlege is power, and memorized knowlege is hard to beat when my opponent doesn't have it. Humans know this instinctively, that's why kids like to play the game, "I know something you don't know."
So, I have to do it. I hate it. My brain is weird. I have a 99th percentile IQ. I have ADD. And I'm very, very bad at memorization--a college psychology professor gave me a memory test, and asked if I had ever abused drugs!
The answer to that question was no. I have never consumed an alcoholic beverage. I have never taken an illegal drug. I injest very little caffiene (no coffee at all).
Where someone else might be able to memorize that top 25% string of hands in 1 or 2 minutes, or at most, 5 minutes, it could take me 30-60 minutes of painstakingly adding one hand at a time, working my way up to knowing the full list. Multiply that by learning all of the hand ranges in intervals of, say, 5%, and we're talking about a lot of hours. If I was really meticulous and memorized at 1% intervals, I don't even want to think about how long that would take--but it's free money. I feel like Tevyeh in Fiddler on the Roof--on the other hand . . .
It's money that I can win from you, because I know something you don't know. And do I really want to work on this a bit at a time, over the course of a year or more? There are lots of very helpful charts and tables I could memorize that would benefit me greatly. My brain hurts just thinking about it, but I have to do something.
I guess it's time to make some flash cards and get to work.
*"There's an app for that" has recently become a trademarked phrase.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
10/13/2020--Results for week of 10/3-10/9
I don't really have any commentary, except to say that it was a messed-up week. I wasn't at all in control of my schedule because of family issues, my sleep patterns got messed up, and it was pretty much a lost week.
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 6.00
Playing 14.00
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 22.75
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
10/3 starting bankroll $44.08
10/9 ending bankroll $35.28
--------
-$8.80
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 6.00
Playing 14.00
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 22.75
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
10/3 starting bankroll $44.08
10/9 ending bankroll $35.28
--------
-$8.80
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
10/12/2010--Another encouraging deep run
PokerStars Tournament #318978132, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD
1000 players
Total Prize Pool: $1000.00
USD Tournament started 2010/10/12 17:20:00 ET
Dear Poker Clif,
You finished the tournament in 32nd place. A USD 4.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 61.32 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/
Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.
After a nothing week last week, and not having blocks of time to play very many MTTs, I've played a few so far this week, including a 9-hour session on Sunday the 10th. The tournament listed above was my first really deep run in the last week or so. It took 4 hours and 23 minutes before I was knocked out.
The final table for this tournament has a 9th place prize of $12 and a 1st place prize of $126. It would probably only take 2-3 MTT final tables a week to make a nice profit, and with a little more work, and a chance to play a more MTTs, I think that 2-3 final tables is very doable. Of course, depending on the size of the cash (I played an $1 MTT a couple days ago that had had a prize pool of just over $7,000) , even one final table a month could show a very nice profit.
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD
1000 players
Total Prize Pool: $1000.00
USD Tournament started 2010/10/12 17:20:00 ET
Dear Poker Clif,
You finished the tournament in 32nd place. A USD 4.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 61.32 tournament leader points in this tournament. For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/
Congratulations!
Thank you for participating.
After a nothing week last week, and not having blocks of time to play very many MTTs, I've played a few so far this week, including a 9-hour session on Sunday the 10th. The tournament listed above was my first really deep run in the last week or so. It took 4 hours and 23 minutes before I was knocked out.
The final table for this tournament has a 9th place prize of $12 and a 1st place prize of $126. It would probably only take 2-3 MTT final tables a week to make a nice profit, and with a little more work, and a chance to play a more MTTs, I think that 2-3 final tables is very doable. Of course, depending on the size of the cash (I played an $1 MTT a couple days ago that had had a prize pool of just over $7,000) , even one final table a month could show a very nice profit.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
10/8/2010--A totally disrupted week
The family situation has really been clobbering me lately, taking some of my time 3 of the last 7 days. I haven't played any tournaments of more than 90 players in the last few days, and it's very likely that this will be the first week in a while where I haven't been able to get in 30 hours. Fortunately for all concerned, the situation is starting to resolve, and November should go much better, and affect poker much less.
I took another look at the PokerStars tournament schedule over a 24-hour period. There are 4 daily tournaments of at least 1,000 players which have a decent structure for my playing style, and there is one that stands out. That tournament starts at 0600, and I think that I need to play it as often as possible, partly because of the structure, and partly because I can start my day early, and get in at least one good (for my playing style) MTT before anything happens to take me away from poker. But long-term, it's definitely not the schedule that I want to keep, once I'm playing high enough that I have more tournament options, because:
1. I am naturally a night person. I have worked every kind of shift imaginable--day shifts and night shifts, long shifts and short shifts, and various combinations of those. But for poker, getting up at noon (which is the schedule that poker pro Daniel Negreanu uses) seemed to work well for me.
2. Poker is a nights-and-weekends profession. There are more players online at night (US eastern time), and therefore more tournaments, weaker players and bigger prize pools. Most of the online "majors", such as the PokerStars 1/4 Million (that's the size of the prize pool), in which I played once, start on Sunday afternoon and can last as long as 12 hours.
3. Live poker happens mostly at night. Where I play live poker, the weekday tournaments start at 7 P.M. On weekends there are tournaments with both mid-afternoon and evening starts. The live tournament that I won ended around midnight--not exactly compatible with a day that starts at 6 A.M.
By next week I hope to be playing the $1.10 0600 MTT almost every day, but I hope that I don't have to do it for long.
I took another look at the PokerStars tournament schedule over a 24-hour period. There are 4 daily tournaments of at least 1,000 players which have a decent structure for my playing style, and there is one that stands out. That tournament starts at 0600, and I think that I need to play it as often as possible, partly because of the structure, and partly because I can start my day early, and get in at least one good (for my playing style) MTT before anything happens to take me away from poker. But long-term, it's definitely not the schedule that I want to keep, once I'm playing high enough that I have more tournament options, because:
1. I am naturally a night person. I have worked every kind of shift imaginable--day shifts and night shifts, long shifts and short shifts, and various combinations of those. But for poker, getting up at noon (which is the schedule that poker pro Daniel Negreanu uses) seemed to work well for me.
2. Poker is a nights-and-weekends profession. There are more players online at night (US eastern time), and therefore more tournaments, weaker players and bigger prize pools. Most of the online "majors", such as the PokerStars 1/4 Million (that's the size of the prize pool), in which I played once, start on Sunday afternoon and can last as long as 12 hours.
3. Live poker happens mostly at night. Where I play live poker, the weekday tournaments start at 7 P.M. On weekends there are tournaments with both mid-afternoon and evening starts. The live tournament that I won ended around midnight--not exactly compatible with a day that starts at 6 A.M.
By next week I hope to be playing the $1.10 0600 MTT almost every day, but I hope that I don't have to do it for long.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
10/4/2010--September results
SEPTEMBER 2010 WORK HOURS: 149.75
I need to do better in October. 2,000 hours is generally considered to be a normal work year in the United States*, so dividing 2,000 hours by 12 months, I should be getting in 166.67 hours per month.
Because of the current family situation, there will most definitely be times when it's hard to get in the hours. But overall, I see no reason why I can't average 40 hours per week.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/1: $54.14
Ending bankroll, 9/30: $45.63
-----------------------
Change in bankroll: -$8.51
Less 9/20, $10 deposit to PokerStars account
----------------------
-$18.51
Not good, but considering that at one point I was down more than $40 for the month, I'll take it. I'm not having any problem making enough in 1-3 table tournaments to keep playing the MTTs until I get a big cash.
The main thing that I have to keep in mind is that I can't let my bankroll drop significantly, for any reason, including withdrawls. Until I'm at $104 or so and can play $2 tournaments, I have very little room to navigate. I want to use at least 50% of what I win to keep building my bankroll, and since I have to escrow 30% of my winnings for estimated tax payments, that doesn't give me much wiggle room.
The point at which I can make a significant contribution to the family income while playing MTTs is probably somewhere between $5.50 and $11 tournaments, which would require bankrolls of $308 and $671 respectively. So the sooner I can build my bankroll, the better.
*Assuming that the average worker takes two weeks of vacation a year:
(50 work weeks) X (40 hours per week) = 2,000-hour work year.
I need to do better in October. 2,000 hours is generally considered to be a normal work year in the United States*, so dividing 2,000 hours by 12 months, I should be getting in 166.67 hours per month.
Because of the current family situation, there will most definitely be times when it's hard to get in the hours. But overall, I see no reason why I can't average 40 hours per week.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/1: $54.14
Ending bankroll, 9/30: $45.63
-----------------------
Change in bankroll: -$8.51
Less 9/20, $10 deposit to PokerStars account
----------------------
-$18.51
Not good, but considering that at one point I was down more than $40 for the month, I'll take it. I'm not having any problem making enough in 1-3 table tournaments to keep playing the MTTs until I get a big cash.
The main thing that I have to keep in mind is that I can't let my bankroll drop significantly, for any reason, including withdrawls. Until I'm at $104 or so and can play $2 tournaments, I have very little room to navigate. I want to use at least 50% of what I win to keep building my bankroll, and since I have to escrow 30% of my winnings for estimated tax payments, that doesn't give me much wiggle room.
The point at which I can make a significant contribution to the family income while playing MTTs is probably somewhere between $5.50 and $11 tournaments, which would require bankrolls of $308 and $671 respectively. So the sooner I can build my bankroll, the better.
*Assuming that the average worker takes two weeks of vacation a year:
(50 work weeks) X (40 hours per week) = 2,000-hour work year.
10/4/2010--Results for week of 9/26-10/2
HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 2.25
Playing 27.50
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.25
Once again I wind up at around 35 hours per week. Whether I play long or short sessions, whether I take a day off or work all 7 days, I always seem to wind up somewhere around that number. I've decided to start posting to my Poker Hours spreadsheet more often, so that I will be keeping closer track of my hours and know when I'm goofing off.
I thought about just trying to block out an 8-hour work day, so that I would be doing something poker related from, say 0600-1430, with a half-hour break for lunch. But that's not really practical, as an MTT can last 6 hours or longer.
Obviously, if I'm in the money deep into a tournament, I'm going to finish, however long it takes. Likewise, if I bust out of a tournament (or tournaments, if I'm playing more than one) when my wife is about to come home from work, it makes sense to stop, let her do what she needs to do on the computer, and start another session later if nothing else is going on that day.
There is one situation where setting aside a block of time might make sense. I have a few big study projects out there that I want to tackle. For example, Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments, Volume III: The Workbook, is a 187-question test covering the material in Volumes 1 and 2 of the Harrington on Hold 'em series.
I have read and studied the first two volumes, and I started to go through Volume 3. The answers are at the back of the book, and they consist of short essays on how to evaluate and play the different poker hands. I wanted to answer each question with a paragraph or two, so that I could not only check my answer, but compare my reasoning with Harrington's. The problem was that I worked at it little by little, 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there. By the time I was about 1/3 of the way through, my thought process and playing style had changed so much that my early answers didn't mean anything.
So, I need to restart Volume 3 at the beginning. With a long study project like this, it might make more sense to just block out several hours, or even a whole day, so that I could get the test done in a reasonably short time.
Administrative 2.50
Study 2.25
Playing 27.50
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.25
Once again I wind up at around 35 hours per week. Whether I play long or short sessions, whether I take a day off or work all 7 days, I always seem to wind up somewhere around that number. I've decided to start posting to my Poker Hours spreadsheet more often, so that I will be keeping closer track of my hours and know when I'm goofing off.
I thought about just trying to block out an 8-hour work day, so that I would be doing something poker related from, say 0600-1430, with a half-hour break for lunch. But that's not really practical, as an MTT can last 6 hours or longer.
Obviously, if I'm in the money deep into a tournament, I'm going to finish, however long it takes. Likewise, if I bust out of a tournament (or tournaments, if I'm playing more than one) when my wife is about to come home from work, it makes sense to stop, let her do what she needs to do on the computer, and start another session later if nothing else is going on that day.
There is one situation where setting aside a block of time might make sense. I have a few big study projects out there that I want to tackle. For example, Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments, Volume III: The Workbook, is a 187-question test covering the material in Volumes 1 and 2 of the Harrington on Hold 'em series.
I have read and studied the first two volumes, and I started to go through Volume 3. The answers are at the back of the book, and they consist of short essays on how to evaluate and play the different poker hands. I wanted to answer each question with a paragraph or two, so that I could not only check my answer, but compare my reasoning with Harrington's. The problem was that I worked at it little by little, 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there. By the time I was about 1/3 of the way through, my thought process and playing style had changed so much that my early answers didn't mean anything.
So, I need to restart Volume 3 at the beginning. With a long study project like this, it might make more sense to just block out several hours, or even a whole day, so that I could get the test done in a reasonably short time.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
9/30/2010--The MTT mindset
There is a highly-recommended book on poker psychology, which I have not yet read, entitled The Poker Mindset. That's where I got the idea for the title of this post.
I've played the $1.10, 1000-player MTT that runs at 1720 (PokerStars/U.S. Eastern time) the last two days. The 28th I came in 62nd for a cash of $2.20, and the 29th I was 35th for a cash of $4.00.
First place in that tournament is $180, and I didn't get close to that, but the back-to-back solid finishes are encouraging. To change from a SNG style to an MTT style, I had to reexamine everything: what percentage of my hands to play, how aggressive to be with those hands, when and how often to bluff, and several other aspects of my game. There is a huge difference in strategy between getting one of the three cashing spots in a 9-play SNG, and getting into the top 1% of a field with thousands of players. I needed an MTT mindset.
It's not just a difference in strategy, it's a whole different way of thinking, of approaching risktaking. SNGs were my original specialty partly because the idea of grinding it out with a whole bunch of small cashes with a fairly predictable win rate, best fits my personality.
Now, I'm specializing in MTTs, knowing that I will go many tournaments without much of an income, waiting for the occasional big score. A few months ago, "going for the big score" would have sounded to me like a degenerate gambler tyring to "get lucky".
Once I started out studying on the 2+2 poker forums, I understood pretty quickly that what the MTT players do is every bit as math-based as someone who grinds out an income playing 24 9-player SNGs at a time. The trick wasn't understanding the concept, it was executing it.
I was so averse to the relative high-variance strategy and increased aggression required to play MTTs that I actually had to come up with some hand selection charts, and follow them no matter how uncomfortable it felt, just to get myself used to doing what needed to be done. Without the charts "forcing" me to play a wider selection of hands, I don't think that I could have done it.
Once I started playing more hands, after a few weeks I could start to get a feel for how and why it worked. Again, I understood the concept, but reading about flying an airplane isn't the same as doing it.
Once I got comfortable with a different playing style, then I could start thinking more deeply. I have a long way to go on this, but now I'm starting to think past a list of hands that will be mathematically correct in most cases. Now I starting to be able to think about things like: What if this is a more agressive table than usual? What if it's a tight table? What if the players on my immediate left (the ones that act after I do) are different than the rest of the table--how does that affect how I manage hand selection and agression?
It's an exciting time in my poker development. I know now that I'm going to be a very good MTT player, it's just a matter of time, practice, and a little patience. And once I can get up to playing $2 and $3 tournaments (where of course the prize pools are 2 times and 3 times larger than in a $1 tournament of the same size), there are going to be some fun and lucrative times ahead as I build my bankroll and continue to play at higher levels.
I've played the $1.10, 1000-player MTT that runs at 1720 (PokerStars/U.S. Eastern time) the last two days. The 28th I came in 62nd for a cash of $2.20, and the 29th I was 35th for a cash of $4.00.
First place in that tournament is $180, and I didn't get close to that, but the back-to-back solid finishes are encouraging. To change from a SNG style to an MTT style, I had to reexamine everything: what percentage of my hands to play, how aggressive to be with those hands, when and how often to bluff, and several other aspects of my game. There is a huge difference in strategy between getting one of the three cashing spots in a 9-play SNG, and getting into the top 1% of a field with thousands of players. I needed an MTT mindset.
It's not just a difference in strategy, it's a whole different way of thinking, of approaching risktaking. SNGs were my original specialty partly because the idea of grinding it out with a whole bunch of small cashes with a fairly predictable win rate, best fits my personality.
Now, I'm specializing in MTTs, knowing that I will go many tournaments without much of an income, waiting for the occasional big score. A few months ago, "going for the big score" would have sounded to me like a degenerate gambler tyring to "get lucky".
Once I started out studying on the 2+2 poker forums, I understood pretty quickly that what the MTT players do is every bit as math-based as someone who grinds out an income playing 24 9-player SNGs at a time. The trick wasn't understanding the concept, it was executing it.
I was so averse to the relative high-variance strategy and increased aggression required to play MTTs that I actually had to come up with some hand selection charts, and follow them no matter how uncomfortable it felt, just to get myself used to doing what needed to be done. Without the charts "forcing" me to play a wider selection of hands, I don't think that I could have done it.
Once I started playing more hands, after a few weeks I could start to get a feel for how and why it worked. Again, I understood the concept, but reading about flying an airplane isn't the same as doing it.
Once I got comfortable with a different playing style, then I could start thinking more deeply. I have a long way to go on this, but now I'm starting to think past a list of hands that will be mathematically correct in most cases. Now I starting to be able to think about things like: What if this is a more agressive table than usual? What if it's a tight table? What if the players on my immediate left (the ones that act after I do) are different than the rest of the table--how does that affect how I manage hand selection and agression?
It's an exciting time in my poker development. I know now that I'm going to be a very good MTT player, it's just a matter of time, practice, and a little patience. And once I can get up to playing $2 and $3 tournaments (where of course the prize pools are 2 times and 3 times larger than in a $1 tournament of the same size), there are going to be some fun and lucrative times ahead as I build my bankroll and continue to play at higher levels.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
9/29/2010--The tyranny of the urgent
I'm still having some good runs in MTTs, well into the top 1% of the field, and I'm getting some small cashes. When I don't cash and the bankroll starts to drop, I shouldn't have a problem making a few bucks playing small SNGs to keep the bankroll from dropping too far. I think I'm going to play a lot of small SNGs (mostly STTs, single table tournaments) to keep the bankroll from falling below a certain point. I plan to grind it up to $50 playing SNGs, while still taking a few shots at the MTTs.
However, a few days ago I realized that I don't really have a plan for what happens when I get my next big cash. Let's say for purposes of discussion that I get a $500 cash. $500 is a nice round number, and is there is a $1.10 tournament currently running where 3rd place is $572, so it's not an unreasonable number.
There are a lot of important things that I could do with that money, and, as I'm not contributing much to the family income (I get a small monthly retirement check from the Michigan National Guard), I definitely need to do my share in paying the bills. The problem is that since things are tight for us right now, I risk the danger of falling victim to the tyranny of the urgent.
Tyranny of the Urgent is a brilliant essay written by Charles Hummel in 1967. It is still in print. Hummel says that we are so busy dealing with the "tyranny of the urgent", such as phone calls that we can't or won't ignore (if this was written in 2010, it might have been titled The Tyranny of the Tweet) , or the crisis of the moment at work or home, that we don't take the time to deal with the things that are important--and "urgent" and "important" aren't always the same thing.
That's kind of where I find myself. Paying our bills is urgent. Having food in the house is urgent. But is it really important?
Things are tight, but we're playing the rent. We haven't missed any meals. We are slowly but surely paying down some debt, with the goal of being debt-free and doing everything on a cash basis in the not-too-distant-future. On the other hand, there are things, such as auto maintainance, that we are putting off, and that needs to be addressed.
But one thing is certain. Unless I build my bankroll, and keep building it, I will never generate a decent income playing poker.
Not being able to play anything above $1 tournaments really puts me in a box. There are very few MTTs with a good structure. At higher limits, the choices are much better. Even the $2 level offers much better options than $1, and the higher you play the more (and better) choices there are available.
In addition, as with any business, poker has expenses. I need to keep current, and poker books aren't free. My subscription for Holdem Manager needs to be renewed once a year. Many of the players who have started at the bottom and climbed up to high levels quickly credit their success to online coaching sites, which is not an option when I'm trying to hang on until I get a big MTT cash.
There is another important consideration. I haven't played any live poker in several months. Many of the fields where I play are very weak, and if I played semiregularly, I think that my hourly expectation would actually be higher playing live. Of course, overall I would still make more money online, since live there are only a few live tournaments a week, and they are available only at night. Live tournament specialists don't have the ability to grind for 12 hours a day, but there are some online players that do that.
All that said, how should I divide up that $500 cash? Honestly, I don't know. But there are some things that I have decided:
1. Building my bankroll is the highest priority. With a bankroll of $114 I could starting playing $2 tournaments, and roughly every $55 added to my bankroll would move me up a dollar in buy-ins. So I think I would take $100 right off the top from that first big cash, leave it in my PokerStars account, and build my bankroll to get things going.
2. With my first big cash, I might take out enough to take two shots at live tournaments, which would take about $100, with the idea of building a seperate bankroll for live tournaments. The bottom run of live tournaments, usually around $30, is more expensive than online, but of course, the payouts are correspondingly larger. The minimum cash for a small $30 live tournament would be around $50).
3. Ultimately, I would like to budget, by percentages, based on my monthly income. I can't forget that when self-employed in the US, 30% should be set aside for estimated tax payments. And I don't want to be making any decisions based on the emotion of a family situation, or the excitement of a large cash. Managing an irregular income is difficult for a lot of people, so I want to have a plan before I have to make those decisions, partly to avoid the tyranny of the urgent.
So, once it's rolling, I do know that very few players are successful if they withdraw more than half of theit poker income (other than for saving or investing) so I definitely have to keep that in mind. I don't know what the percentages would be, but for now I would be allocating to something like the following categories (in no particular order):
taxes 30%
bankroll building
owner's capital (amount taken out of a business for owner's salary or other personal use)
family expenses
business/office supplies
live bankroll (until it becomes self-perpetuating)
poker books and magazines
subscriptions (only Holdem Manager for now)
Later, when things are rolling, I might add other categories, such as:
hardware and software
office furniture
more subscriptions, such as coaching sites
But for now, it's back to grinding the SNGs.
However, a few days ago I realized that I don't really have a plan for what happens when I get my next big cash. Let's say for purposes of discussion that I get a $500 cash. $500 is a nice round number, and is there is a $1.10 tournament currently running where 3rd place is $572, so it's not an unreasonable number.
There are a lot of important things that I could do with that money, and, as I'm not contributing much to the family income (I get a small monthly retirement check from the Michigan National Guard), I definitely need to do my share in paying the bills. The problem is that since things are tight for us right now, I risk the danger of falling victim to the tyranny of the urgent.
Tyranny of the Urgent is a brilliant essay written by Charles Hummel in 1967. It is still in print. Hummel says that we are so busy dealing with the "tyranny of the urgent", such as phone calls that we can't or won't ignore (if this was written in 2010, it might have been titled The Tyranny of the Tweet) , or the crisis of the moment at work or home, that we don't take the time to deal with the things that are important--and "urgent" and "important" aren't always the same thing.
That's kind of where I find myself. Paying our bills is urgent. Having food in the house is urgent. But is it really important?
Things are tight, but we're playing the rent. We haven't missed any meals. We are slowly but surely paying down some debt, with the goal of being debt-free and doing everything on a cash basis in the not-too-distant-future. On the other hand, there are things, such as auto maintainance, that we are putting off, and that needs to be addressed.
But one thing is certain. Unless I build my bankroll, and keep building it, I will never generate a decent income playing poker.
Not being able to play anything above $1 tournaments really puts me in a box. There are very few MTTs with a good structure. At higher limits, the choices are much better. Even the $2 level offers much better options than $1, and the higher you play the more (and better) choices there are available.
In addition, as with any business, poker has expenses. I need to keep current, and poker books aren't free. My subscription for Holdem Manager needs to be renewed once a year. Many of the players who have started at the bottom and climbed up to high levels quickly credit their success to online coaching sites, which is not an option when I'm trying to hang on until I get a big MTT cash.
There is another important consideration. I haven't played any live poker in several months. Many of the fields where I play are very weak, and if I played semiregularly, I think that my hourly expectation would actually be higher playing live. Of course, overall I would still make more money online, since live there are only a few live tournaments a week, and they are available only at night. Live tournament specialists don't have the ability to grind for 12 hours a day, but there are some online players that do that.
All that said, how should I divide up that $500 cash? Honestly, I don't know. But there are some things that I have decided:
1. Building my bankroll is the highest priority. With a bankroll of $114 I could starting playing $2 tournaments, and roughly every $55 added to my bankroll would move me up a dollar in buy-ins. So I think I would take $100 right off the top from that first big cash, leave it in my PokerStars account, and build my bankroll to get things going.
2. With my first big cash, I might take out enough to take two shots at live tournaments, which would take about $100, with the idea of building a seperate bankroll for live tournaments. The bottom run of live tournaments, usually around $30, is more expensive than online, but of course, the payouts are correspondingly larger. The minimum cash for a small $30 live tournament would be around $50).
3. Ultimately, I would like to budget, by percentages, based on my monthly income. I can't forget that when self-employed in the US, 30% should be set aside for estimated tax payments. And I don't want to be making any decisions based on the emotion of a family situation, or the excitement of a large cash. Managing an irregular income is difficult for a lot of people, so I want to have a plan before I have to make those decisions, partly to avoid the tyranny of the urgent.
So, once it's rolling, I do know that very few players are successful if they withdraw more than half of theit poker income (other than for saving or investing) so I definitely have to keep that in mind. I don't know what the percentages would be, but for now I would be allocating to something like the following categories (in no particular order):
taxes 30%
bankroll building
owner's capital (amount taken out of a business for owner's salary or other personal use)
family expenses
business/office supplies
live bankroll (until it becomes self-perpetuating)
poker books and magazines
subscriptions (only Holdem Manager for now)
Later, when things are rolling, I might add other categories, such as:
hardware and software
office furniture
more subscriptions, such as coaching sites
But for now, it's back to grinding the SNGs.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
9/26/2010--Results, week of 9/19-9/25
POKER HOURS, 9/19-9/25
Administrative, 3.00
Study, 7.25
Play, 21.00
---------------
TOTAL HOURS 31.25
This is odd. Even though I don't really keep track of my hours every day (that is, I don't post them to my spreadsheet every day) and even though I spent 6 hours with my grandchildren on Saturday, I still wound up just about where I do every week, at around 35 hours.
Somehow I seem to be unconsciously putting in around the same hours every week, no matter what is going on with the rest of my schedule. That means that my schedule isn't really affecting my work hours, and I can only conclude from that that there is no reason I can't work more than I do. So it's 40 hours or bust this week.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/19 $17.02
Ending bankroll (excluding deposit), 9/25 $26.28
---------
+$9.26
Deposit to PokerStars account, 9/20 $10.00
------------
Bankroll after deposit, $36.28
I had been thinking about doing the minimum $10 deposit to my PokerStars account for a while, and it had nothing to do with the size of my bankroll. When I made my last withdrawl, I found out that my E-check account with PokerStars was considered inactive, since it had been more than 6 months since I used that method to either deposit or withdraw. The only way to get my money was to wait for PokerStars to E-mail me a paper check, which takes about a week.
I decided that when I get my first big MTT payday, I want to have access to the money right away, rather than waiting for a week. So I made the minimum deposit, and now I can deposit or withdraw electronically. The transaction between my bank, the and PokerStars bank which holds player funds, is approved by PokerStars in about a minute.
The next thing is to figure out what I will do will the money when I get a big payday, and that will be the subject of my next post.
Administrative, 3.00
Study, 7.25
Play, 21.00
---------------
TOTAL HOURS 31.25
This is odd. Even though I don't really keep track of my hours every day (that is, I don't post them to my spreadsheet every day) and even though I spent 6 hours with my grandchildren on Saturday, I still wound up just about where I do every week, at around 35 hours.
Somehow I seem to be unconsciously putting in around the same hours every week, no matter what is going on with the rest of my schedule. That means that my schedule isn't really affecting my work hours, and I can only conclude from that that there is no reason I can't work more than I do. So it's 40 hours or bust this week.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/19 $17.02
Ending bankroll (excluding deposit), 9/25 $26.28
---------
+$9.26
Deposit to PokerStars account, 9/20 $10.00
------------
Bankroll after deposit, $36.28
I had been thinking about doing the minimum $10 deposit to my PokerStars account for a while, and it had nothing to do with the size of my bankroll. When I made my last withdrawl, I found out that my E-check account with PokerStars was considered inactive, since it had been more than 6 months since I used that method to either deposit or withdraw. The only way to get my money was to wait for PokerStars to E-mail me a paper check, which takes about a week.
I decided that when I get my first big MTT payday, I want to have access to the money right away, rather than waiting for a week. So I made the minimum deposit, and now I can deposit or withdraw electronically. The transaction between my bank, the and PokerStars bank which holds player funds, is approved by PokerStars in about a minute.
The next thing is to figure out what I will do will the money when I get a big payday, and that will be the subject of my next post.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
9/23/2010--A deep run
I had a very near miss on a big MTT cash today. I played from 1800-2153, 3 hours and 53 minutes, and finished 108 of 4,535 for a cash of $4.98. The hand that knocked me out was a hand where I bet, villian raised, I went all-in, and he called. It was my KQ against his K9, he got a 9 on the river, made a pair, and knocked me out. Three out of four times (74.928% according to PokerStove), I win that hand and I'm on my way to a nice cash.
If that card had been anything but one of the three remaining 9s in the deck, I would have won the hand and been well above the average chip count, with just over 100 players left. And once you get in the top 100, the payouts go up fast. The final table paid from $36 for 9th place to $714 for 1st.
There is no doubt that I'm on the right track. It felt very comfortable, and I can't think of more than a very few hands (maybe 5) that I could have played better, and none were serious mistakes.
The only thing that did occur to me was that if variance is such that I can easily have a downswing of 50 buy-ins, then I need to play enough MTTs that the long-term (the statistical point at which variance will start to even out) isn't all that long. Something like 75 MTTs a month would probably even out quite a few of the big monthly swings.
75 per month is not even close to attainable right now, because there aren't enough $1 MTTs with decent structures to allow me to play several in a day, let alone 2 or more at a time. Also, because of the family situation, there will be days where it's almost impossible to play an MTT.
For example, we will have the grandchilren for around 5 hours on Saturday. When reaching a final table can take 6 hours or more, the math on that doesn't work very well.
So, for now, I will keep plugging away on the STTs (single-table tournaments), grinding up my bankroll, and playing the MTTs when I can. When I can can play above the $1 level (where the tournament choices get progressively better as you move up), when we get a second computer, and when the family issues are resolved, each of those changes will allow me to play more MTTs.
I guess the bottom line is that I played well today, I gained some invaluable experience playing in the late stages of a very large tournament, and I added to my bankroll. All very good things for my career as a poker player.
If that card had been anything but one of the three remaining 9s in the deck, I would have won the hand and been well above the average chip count, with just over 100 players left. And once you get in the top 100, the payouts go up fast. The final table paid from $36 for 9th place to $714 for 1st.
There is no doubt that I'm on the right track. It felt very comfortable, and I can't think of more than a very few hands (maybe 5) that I could have played better, and none were serious mistakes.
The only thing that did occur to me was that if variance is such that I can easily have a downswing of 50 buy-ins, then I need to play enough MTTs that the long-term (the statistical point at which variance will start to even out) isn't all that long. Something like 75 MTTs a month would probably even out quite a few of the big monthly swings.
75 per month is not even close to attainable right now, because there aren't enough $1 MTTs with decent structures to allow me to play several in a day, let alone 2 or more at a time. Also, because of the family situation, there will be days where it's almost impossible to play an MTT.
For example, we will have the grandchilren for around 5 hours on Saturday. When reaching a final table can take 6 hours or more, the math on that doesn't work very well.
So, for now, I will keep plugging away on the STTs (single-table tournaments), grinding up my bankroll, and playing the MTTs when I can. When I can can play above the $1 level (where the tournament choices get progressively better as you move up), when we get a second computer, and when the family issues are resolved, each of those changes will allow me to play more MTTs.
I guess the bottom line is that I played well today, I gained some invaluable experience playing in the late stages of a very large tournament, and I added to my bankroll. All very good things for my career as a poker player.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
9/23/2010--Results for week 9/12/-9/18
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.00
Study 3.50
Playing 29.75
--------------
TOTAL HOURS 35.25
Not really much to say. I'm OK with those hours, but I won't be happy until I'm putting in at least 40 a week.
PROFIT AND LOSS
9/12 starting bankroll $52.32
9/18 ending bankroll $17.02
---------------
-$35.30
50 buy-in downswings are pretty normal in any kind of poker. But in MTTs, where very large fields = very large variance, they will be much more frequent.
Unfortunately, I'm making the switch to MTTs when I don't have 50 buy-ins to spare. But the good news is that there must have been an influx of new players into the 1-table SNGs, because they are very soft right now. This week I've played a few to grind my bankroll up a bit, and I've cashed in 7 of the last 10, so by the end of this week I should have something like 20 more buy-ins to play with, and be able to take some more shots at MTTs. I'm only playing one or two MTTs a day right now, concentrating on getting a little wiggle room in my bankroll.
The obvious question is that if I'm making money in these soft tournaments, why don't I just stick to that. The answer is that the payouts are rather small, and the people that make a living playing small SNGs play a lot of then, sometimes 24 or more at a time.
Even if I could build up to doing that, which I doubt, I would need either multiple monitors, or one very large monitor (30-inch or larger) with very high resolution.
So for now, the long-term plan is still MTTs, but I have to concentrate on SNGs for a bit so that I can get my bankroll up enough to withstand the variance of playing the larger tournaments.
Administrative 2.00
Study 3.50
Playing 29.75
--------------
TOTAL HOURS 35.25
Not really much to say. I'm OK with those hours, but I won't be happy until I'm putting in at least 40 a week.
PROFIT AND LOSS
9/12 starting bankroll $52.32
9/18 ending bankroll $17.02
---------------
-$35.30
50 buy-in downswings are pretty normal in any kind of poker. But in MTTs, where very large fields = very large variance, they will be much more frequent.
Unfortunately, I'm making the switch to MTTs when I don't have 50 buy-ins to spare. But the good news is that there must have been an influx of new players into the 1-table SNGs, because they are very soft right now. This week I've played a few to grind my bankroll up a bit, and I've cashed in 7 of the last 10, so by the end of this week I should have something like 20 more buy-ins to play with, and be able to take some more shots at MTTs. I'm only playing one or two MTTs a day right now, concentrating on getting a little wiggle room in my bankroll.
The obvious question is that if I'm making money in these soft tournaments, why don't I just stick to that. The answer is that the payouts are rather small, and the people that make a living playing small SNGs play a lot of then, sometimes 24 or more at a time.
Even if I could build up to doing that, which I doubt, I would need either multiple monitors, or one very large monitor (30-inch or larger) with very high resolution.
So for now, the long-term plan is still MTTs, but I have to concentrate on SNGs for a bit so that I can get my bankroll up enough to withstand the variance of playing the larger tournaments.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
9/12/2010--Results, week of 9/5-9/11
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 7.50
Playing 26.00
--------------
36.00 hours
I'm happy with that number. We had the grandchildren for several hours this weekend, and to be honest, until I got caught up on my Poker Hours spreadsheet and sawtthe total, I wasn't sure that I hit 30. It was a very nice surprise.
Study hours are higher than usual because I got a new poker book, Heads-up No-Limit Hold 'em: Expert Advice for Winning Heads-Up Poker Matches, by Collin Moshman. Besides having written articles for poker publications and for the twoplustwo.com poker forums, Moshman has a degree in theoretical mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.
The book is very dense, with a couple concepts that are entirely new to me, and some concepts with which I am familiar are applied in ways that I hadn't considered.
I haven't finished my first read-through yet. I usually do a quick read of a new poker book, then go through it more slowly, sometimes stopping to work through the ideas in a particular session. But I've had the book for over a week and I'm only on page 129 (of 286), as some of it is so new (perhaps even a revolution in poker theory in one case) that I have to stop and think about what I'm reading and see if it's something I can understand, let alone apply it to my game.
This is one that I'll be reading and thinking about for quite a while. I'm getting new concepts much faster than I can absorb and apply them, but it's a good problem to have. As long as I'm studying and my opponents are not, it's a good use of my time.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/5, $49.24
Ending bankroll, 9/11 $52.32
--------------------------
+$3.08
I don't have much to say about those results. As I've said in earlier posts, I may not have a lot of big weeks. I hope to get 2 or 3 big cashes per month, but it may sometimes be less than that. Most of the tournaments that I play now are a thousand players or more, and the cashes will come much less frequently. If I'm at least staying even until those big scores come, I'm happy.
Administrative 2.50
Study 7.50
Playing 26.00
--------------
36.00 hours
I'm happy with that number. We had the grandchildren for several hours this weekend, and to be honest, until I got caught up on my Poker Hours spreadsheet and sawtthe total, I wasn't sure that I hit 30. It was a very nice surprise.
Study hours are higher than usual because I got a new poker book, Heads-up No-Limit Hold 'em: Expert Advice for Winning Heads-Up Poker Matches, by Collin Moshman. Besides having written articles for poker publications and for the twoplustwo.com poker forums, Moshman has a degree in theoretical mathematics from the California Institute of Technology.
The book is very dense, with a couple concepts that are entirely new to me, and some concepts with which I am familiar are applied in ways that I hadn't considered.
I haven't finished my first read-through yet. I usually do a quick read of a new poker book, then go through it more slowly, sometimes stopping to work through the ideas in a particular session. But I've had the book for over a week and I'm only on page 129 (of 286), as some of it is so new (perhaps even a revolution in poker theory in one case) that I have to stop and think about what I'm reading and see if it's something I can understand, let alone apply it to my game.
This is one that I'll be reading and thinking about for quite a while. I'm getting new concepts much faster than I can absorb and apply them, but it's a good problem to have. As long as I'm studying and my opponents are not, it's a good use of my time.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/5, $49.24
Ending bankroll, 9/11 $52.32
--------------------------
+$3.08
I don't have much to say about those results. As I've said in earlier posts, I may not have a lot of big weeks. I hope to get 2 or 3 big cashes per month, but it may sometimes be less than that. Most of the tournaments that I play now are a thousand players or more, and the cashes will come much less frequently. If I'm at least staying even until those big scores come, I'm happy.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
9/9/2010--Results for week of 8/29-9/4
Sorry about getting this done so late. I was out of town over the Labor Day weekend. I got caught up on most of my admin stuff today.
POKER HOURS, 8/29-9/4
Administrative, 3.25
Study, 4.00
Playing, 24.50
--------------
Total, 31.75
I seem to be stuck in a rut of getting around 30 hours a week. I hope I can do better than that, but with the current family situation (which involves custody and visitation of my grandchildren), it's going to be tricky.
Rather than being tied up for a certain amount of the week, it is, from my perspective, even worse. I will still get to see the girls, and I can supervise the visits of their parents (my son and his wife) while this mess is sorted out.
But the other grandparents have temporary custody, they control the day-to-day situation, and it is really important to my playing that the communication is good. I hope that it will be good. I need to know ahead of time what's going on.
We are taking the kids out tomorrow afternoon. We had discussed it earlier, and I just got the call a few minutes ago (around 7:30 P.M.) I was getting, as my wife would say, "freaked out."
I'm starting to have a lot of deep runs in MTTs. I haven't been in the big money, but I've been close, in or around the top 5% of the field. But the $1 MTTs with a good structure only go off a few times a day (there are 4 good ones that start between 6 A.M. and 5 P.M.) I can't get in a situation where I'm 3 hours into a tournament and looking at some serious money, and then the call comes to pick up the kids. I really need to know well ahead of the event. . I can probably take a shot at the 6 A.M. and/or 7 A.M. tournaments it I don't know what's going on that day, but the 11 A.M. and 5:20 P.M tournaments are out unless I know exactly what's going to happen.
I have as alternate possibilites the 90-player SNGs that go off several times per hour, as soon as one fills up. They have a decent structure--not as good as the large MTTs that I mentioned earlier, but not too bad. But even with just 90 players they can take 3 hours to finish. I cashed in one today (8th place) and it took 2 hours and 31 minutes. So my options are really limited, and there isn't much I can do about it if I lose control of my schedule.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, $63.12
Ending bankroll, $49.24
------------------------
-$13.88
That's not too surprising, and I'm not worried about it. That's the nature of very large tournaments: lots of mincashes or noncashes, with an occasional very large cash which makes up for the losses.
I've always played a mixture of different sizes and types of tournaments, but now that I'm concnetrating on MTTs I'm getting a much better picture of how they run. I feel like I'm getting better by the day, and I've had some fairly deep runs, which bodes well for the future. This month I've had some pretty solid finishes, which have given me enough small cashes to keep me even for the month while I wait for that big cash:
9/4, 53 of 3,847
9/5, out of town
9/6, out of town
9/7, 393 of 6,535
9/7, 212 of 3,784
9/8, 8 of 90
I'm definitely on the right track, knocking on the door just about every day. It should turn out OK if I can get some control of my schedule. I wish that someone else wasn't driving my schedule, but under the circumstances, there isn't much that I can do about it, at least for now.
POKER HOURS, 8/29-9/4
Administrative, 3.25
Study, 4.00
Playing, 24.50
--------------
Total, 31.75
I seem to be stuck in a rut of getting around 30 hours a week. I hope I can do better than that, but with the current family situation (which involves custody and visitation of my grandchildren), it's going to be tricky.
Rather than being tied up for a certain amount of the week, it is, from my perspective, even worse. I will still get to see the girls, and I can supervise the visits of their parents (my son and his wife) while this mess is sorted out.
But the other grandparents have temporary custody, they control the day-to-day situation, and it is really important to my playing that the communication is good. I hope that it will be good. I need to know ahead of time what's going on.
We are taking the kids out tomorrow afternoon. We had discussed it earlier, and I just got the call a few minutes ago (around 7:30 P.M.) I was getting, as my wife would say, "freaked out."
I'm starting to have a lot of deep runs in MTTs. I haven't been in the big money, but I've been close, in or around the top 5% of the field. But the $1 MTTs with a good structure only go off a few times a day (there are 4 good ones that start between 6 A.M. and 5 P.M.) I can't get in a situation where I'm 3 hours into a tournament and looking at some serious money, and then the call comes to pick up the kids. I really need to know well ahead of the event. . I can probably take a shot at the 6 A.M. and/or 7 A.M. tournaments it I don't know what's going on that day, but the 11 A.M. and 5:20 P.M tournaments are out unless I know exactly what's going to happen.
I have as alternate possibilites the 90-player SNGs that go off several times per hour, as soon as one fills up. They have a decent structure--not as good as the large MTTs that I mentioned earlier, but not too bad. But even with just 90 players they can take 3 hours to finish. I cashed in one today (8th place) and it took 2 hours and 31 minutes. So my options are really limited, and there isn't much I can do about it if I lose control of my schedule.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, $63.12
Ending bankroll, $49.24
------------------------
-$13.88
That's not too surprising, and I'm not worried about it. That's the nature of very large tournaments: lots of mincashes or noncashes, with an occasional very large cash which makes up for the losses.
I've always played a mixture of different sizes and types of tournaments, but now that I'm concnetrating on MTTs I'm getting a much better picture of how they run. I feel like I'm getting better by the day, and I've had some fairly deep runs, which bodes well for the future. This month I've had some pretty solid finishes, which have given me enough small cashes to keep me even for the month while I wait for that big cash:
9/4, 53 of 3,847
9/5, out of town
9/6, out of town
9/7, 393 of 6,535
9/7, 212 of 3,784
9/8, 8 of 90
I'm definitely on the right track, knocking on the door just about every day. It should turn out OK if I can get some control of my schedule. I wish that someone else wasn't driving my schedule, but under the circumstances, there isn't much that I can do about it, at least for now.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
9/4/2010--Deepest finish in a long time
I just finished a tournament, after playing for 4 hours and 41 minutes. I think it's the second longest I've ever played in an online tournament. There were 3,847 players, and I finished 53rd. Entry was $1.10 and I won $7.30. I would have preferred $606.67 for first place, but it shows that I'm definitely on the right track.
This month I had played 8 tournaments and not cashed in any of them until now. My cash today got me a good chunk of that money back. That's kind of a miniature version of what it's going to be like as an MTT spoecialist, only usually with more time between cashes, but the cash being worth 25, 50, or 200 buy-ins.
I learned a lot in that tournament, the kind of thing that you can only learn from experience, not from books. I got the feel of how people play in the top 100, and perhaps more important, what kind of stack you need to have to get some respect when you push all-in.
Once we were in the top 100, it seemed that few players wanted to challenge my all-ins (unless they had a top 5% hand) when I had a stack at least 50% of villian's stack. That is, they didn't want to risk losing half their stack to try to knock me out.
Of course this is a mistake. Any time you think you are in the top half of villian's range (that is, you are playing a hand that is ahead of at least 50% of the hands that he would be likely to play in this situation), you should go for it. If you're fighting for the big money, and you're not willing to risk all your chips with what you estimate as a 53% chance of winning, you're not going to see very many final tables.
If you're not willing to push small edges, you're playing the wrong game. You might as well pick up your toys and go home to mommy, wherever everything is warm and safe.
This month I had played 8 tournaments and not cashed in any of them until now. My cash today got me a good chunk of that money back. That's kind of a miniature version of what it's going to be like as an MTT spoecialist, only usually with more time between cashes, but the cash being worth 25, 50, or 200 buy-ins.
I learned a lot in that tournament, the kind of thing that you can only learn from experience, not from books. I got the feel of how people play in the top 100, and perhaps more important, what kind of stack you need to have to get some respect when you push all-in.
Once we were in the top 100, it seemed that few players wanted to challenge my all-ins (unless they had a top 5% hand) when I had a stack at least 50% of villian's stack. That is, they didn't want to risk losing half their stack to try to knock me out.
Of course this is a mistake. Any time you think you are in the top half of villian's range (that is, you are playing a hand that is ahead of at least 50% of the hands that he would be likely to play in this situation), you should go for it. If you're fighting for the big money, and you're not willing to risk all your chips with what you estimate as a 53% chance of winning, you're not going to see very many final tables.
If you're not willing to push small edges, you're playing the wrong game. You might as well pick up your toys and go home to mommy, wherever everything is warm and safe.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
9/1/2010--Week and month results, and a lot of changes
I'm not going to say much about my weekly or monthly results. Over the month I was about even, but there are so many big changes going on that they will get most of the comment in this post.
So many things are changing, both with the way I approach poker and with outside influences, that this post won't have a main topic, and there won't be any flowing narrative. I'll just list my results, followed by a paragraph on each issue. I'm sure I will address some of these issues in more detail in future posts.
HOURS, 8/21-8/28
Administrative 4.00
Study 2.50
Playing 23.75
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 30.25
PROFIT AND LOSS, 8/21-8/28
Starting bankroll $87.62
Ending bankroll $60.00
-----------------
-$27.62
PROFIT AND LOSS, 8/1-8/31
Starting bankroll $57.62
Ending bankroll $54.14
------------------
-$3.48
There are things going on in my extended family that could take up a lot of my time, and I have no idea how much. It could in some weeks be just a few hours, and in other weeks much more than that. How long the situation will go on is also undertermined, but certainly at least a few months. So as far as my poker playing, everything from actual hours spent, to tournament choices and planning, will be affected.
I am pretty much settled into my morning schedule now, and it will be necessary for a while, especially in dealing with the family issues. I woke up at 1000 yesterday, and was disappointed that I slept so late. My alarm was set for 0530 and I turned it off--I guess I'm not yet THAT commited to being a morning person. I have in general been getting up between 0700 and 0900, and I'm working on steadily making that even earlier.
I am playing a lot more MTTs and a lot fewer small tournaments. This means I will have a lot fewer cashes, and more losing weeks. But when I do cash, the average cash will be much larger. It is interesting to see if I am up or down for the week, but that number will become less and less meaningful, as one big cash in a tournament of 5,000+ players could make a good month all by itself. (One player on 2+2 who multitables MTTs reported that one day he played 20 of them. He did not cash in the first 19, but a cash in tourament #20 put him even for the day.)
I will still log my weekly hours, to keep myself honest and to help me keep my nose to the grindstone, so to speak. Having ADD means that imposing structure on a problem makes it much easier for me to perform well. But as far as balancing my hours between administrative, study, and playing time, again, only my monthly results will really have any relevance. I'm now playing mostly MTTs, and when I start a 5,000-player tournament I have no idea if I'll be playing for 5 minutes or 5 hours. That, coupled with the family issues, means that trying to balance my work hours over a time period as short as a week doesn't make much sense. I'll try to get in at least 30 hours a week, but that won't always be realistic--at least I don't think it will. Everything is in flux right now.
I'm pretty happy with the way the MTTs are going. I'm making the right plays most of the time, and I'm getting enough small cashes to keep me about even. I've had a lot of losing all-in hands (usually holding the best hand) where winning that hand would have moved me well up in the standings. When I get knocked out of a tournament holding a hand that was 75% to win before the community cards were dealt, it really doesn't matter, or, to put it in poker terms, getting upset about losing with the best hand is "results-oriented thinking". Poker isn't about short-term results, it's about making good decisions, knowing that it will pay off in the long run.
So many things are changing, both with the way I approach poker and with outside influences, that this post won't have a main topic, and there won't be any flowing narrative. I'll just list my results, followed by a paragraph on each issue. I'm sure I will address some of these issues in more detail in future posts.
HOURS, 8/21-8/28
Administrative 4.00
Study 2.50
Playing 23.75
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 30.25
PROFIT AND LOSS, 8/21-8/28
Starting bankroll $87.62
Ending bankroll $60.00
-----------------
-$27.62
PROFIT AND LOSS, 8/1-8/31
Starting bankroll $57.62
Ending bankroll $54.14
------------------
-$3.48
There are things going on in my extended family that could take up a lot of my time, and I have no idea how much. It could in some weeks be just a few hours, and in other weeks much more than that. How long the situation will go on is also undertermined, but certainly at least a few months. So as far as my poker playing, everything from actual hours spent, to tournament choices and planning, will be affected.
I am pretty much settled into my morning schedule now, and it will be necessary for a while, especially in dealing with the family issues. I woke up at 1000 yesterday, and was disappointed that I slept so late. My alarm was set for 0530 and I turned it off--I guess I'm not yet THAT commited to being a morning person. I have in general been getting up between 0700 and 0900, and I'm working on steadily making that even earlier.
I am playing a lot more MTTs and a lot fewer small tournaments. This means I will have a lot fewer cashes, and more losing weeks. But when I do cash, the average cash will be much larger. It is interesting to see if I am up or down for the week, but that number will become less and less meaningful, as one big cash in a tournament of 5,000+ players could make a good month all by itself. (One player on 2+2 who multitables MTTs reported that one day he played 20 of them. He did not cash in the first 19, but a cash in tourament #20 put him even for the day.)
I will still log my weekly hours, to keep myself honest and to help me keep my nose to the grindstone, so to speak. Having ADD means that imposing structure on a problem makes it much easier for me to perform well. But as far as balancing my hours between administrative, study, and playing time, again, only my monthly results will really have any relevance. I'm now playing mostly MTTs, and when I start a 5,000-player tournament I have no idea if I'll be playing for 5 minutes or 5 hours. That, coupled with the family issues, means that trying to balance my work hours over a time period as short as a week doesn't make much sense. I'll try to get in at least 30 hours a week, but that won't always be realistic--at least I don't think it will. Everything is in flux right now.
I'm pretty happy with the way the MTTs are going. I'm making the right plays most of the time, and I'm getting enough small cashes to keep me about even. I've had a lot of losing all-in hands (usually holding the best hand) where winning that hand would have moved me well up in the standings. When I get knocked out of a tournament holding a hand that was 75% to win before the community cards were dealt, it really doesn't matter, or, to put it in poker terms, getting upset about losing with the best hand is "results-oriented thinking". Poker isn't about short-term results, it's about making good decisions, knowing that it will pay off in the long run.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
8/26/2010--Time management
I'm constantly learning things about how best to manage my time. When I started out, I knew that I wanted to get my time in, and that to be honest with myself (and to have a record) I planned to track all of my time by category (administrative, study, and playing) in 15 minute intervals. That was fine as far as it went.
Beyond that, I didn't really have a plan. I would play for a while, study for a while, keep up with my admin work, and just generally keep an eye on my hours, and it would all work out. I'm finding out that it's not that simple. The main reason for that is my study time.
I always thought that studying was just something I would just work in around my playing time . After all, I can read a poker book anytime and anywhere, 15 minutes at a time, or an hour at a time. But some study doesn't work that way.
Not all study is something as straightforward as reading a poker book, or using flash cards to memorize odds and outs in different situations. Some of it is complicated, and it reminds me of my computer science classes in the 1980s. It takes deep thought, and understanding the flow of what's going on to get on top of the problem--not something that can be done in a spare 15 minutes.
The blue text that follows is from a section on how to approach analyzing a hand, and is taken from The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition, edited by Michael Crane, pages 145-146. You don't have to read and understand the whole thing, the point is that there is a lot more that goes into hand analysis than, "I play good cards and he plays crap, so until I have a reason to think otherwise, I probably have a better hand than he does." Here is a portion of the example analysis:
This is how I make that kind of estimate during a hand. There are four cards that beat me and he has two shots to hit them--his two hole cards. If he is playing a random hand, he might have a 20 percent chance to beat me. If it is raised, it is pretty unlikely he has a hand with a jack. Maybe he has a 12 percent chance of having a three or a jack. You also have to add in the chance that he has A-A, K-K, or Q-Q. If he raised in early position and you think he is raising about 15 percent of the time, 10 percent of his raises are with these three hands. Boost the 12 percent to 14 percent.
If the flop was A-3-3 and I had a pocket pair, I have to worry about three aces and two threes. Now he has two shots at five cards (instead of four) and if he raised, the chances of him having an ace are much greater than random. These are very rough approximations but I don't need any better than that.
Understanding and solving a problem in this manner very much reminds me of writing the code for a computer program. To write code I had to understand the big picture and fit all the details into that picture: what numbers to add, what to do with the totals, what to print out and how, and how the computer should handle out-of-range entries by users (entering someone's age as 175, for example). I had to completely understand each part, and how it all fit into the big picture, or nothing would work.
Regarding the example in blue, I don't think like that. I understand the big picture. I know that a player's actions tell a lot about what kind of hand he has, and I can do a decent job of putting most players on a range of hands that they might be playing.
What I don't do is go that kind of detail, examining all of the possible options and assigning them weighted probabilities, as in the Full Tilt example. I know that good players do that, and I know I should. I've decided that it's one of the things I want to tackle soon.
This completely changes my approach to study. It isn't something I can do 15 or 30 minutes at a time. I have to look at this example and really understand how the author of this chapter is thinking. Just as with coding a computer program, I'll have to break the problem into component parts, then put it all together.
I'll probably get a deck of cards out and go through it, step by step, until I understand the method of the author's analysis. I'll have to work through the math on paper, to make sure I understand how he came up with the probabilites, and/or memorize those probabilites so that I can do it at the table. Both of those parts of the task, learning the method and understanding the math, will take several sessions of a half-hour of more before I really start to get it.
Then I'll probably pick one of my hand histories and make sure I can do the process from beginning to end, probably at least partially still on paper. The next step will be to keep working on it until it's fast enough, and natural enough, to do in real time at the poker table, where online I will have about 15 seconds to make a decision.
All of this will take intense concentration and nearly absolute quiet. I have ADD, and that level of immersion in a task isn't possible for me if a TV is on, the phone is ringing, and other things are going on.
When I take this study project on, I will need blocks of time when I can deeply concentrate. If that means wearing earplugs, going someplace quiet, or only working on this at certain times, then that's what I'll have to do. In a situation like this, playing will have to work around my study hours, unlike the usual situation when it's the other way around.
The bottom line is that I'll have to be much more flexible about how I spend my time. There might be weeks when I spend more time studying than playing. Then, to make up for my lack of playing time, there will be other weeks when I study very little and spend almost all of my time playing. The amount of administrative time that I need is pretty constant at around 2-3 hours a week, so that won't change very much.
Sometimes playing poker is mostly about, well, playing poker. But other times, it's about being self-employed, and finding a better way to manage my time and my business.
Beyond that, I didn't really have a plan. I would play for a while, study for a while, keep up with my admin work, and just generally keep an eye on my hours, and it would all work out. I'm finding out that it's not that simple. The main reason for that is my study time.
I always thought that studying was just something I would just work in around my playing time . After all, I can read a poker book anytime and anywhere, 15 minutes at a time, or an hour at a time. But some study doesn't work that way.
Not all study is something as straightforward as reading a poker book, or using flash cards to memorize odds and outs in different situations. Some of it is complicated, and it reminds me of my computer science classes in the 1980s. It takes deep thought, and understanding the flow of what's going on to get on top of the problem--not something that can be done in a spare 15 minutes.
The blue text that follows is from a section on how to approach analyzing a hand, and is taken from The Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition, edited by Michael Crane, pages 145-146. You don't have to read and understand the whole thing, the point is that there is a lot more that goes into hand analysis than, "I play good cards and he plays crap, so until I have a reason to think otherwise, I probably have a better hand than he does." Here is a portion of the example analysis:
This is how I make that kind of estimate during a hand. There are four cards that beat me and he has two shots to hit them--his two hole cards. If he is playing a random hand, he might have a 20 percent chance to beat me. If it is raised, it is pretty unlikely he has a hand with a jack. Maybe he has a 12 percent chance of having a three or a jack. You also have to add in the chance that he has A-A, K-K, or Q-Q. If he raised in early position and you think he is raising about 15 percent of the time, 10 percent of his raises are with these three hands. Boost the 12 percent to 14 percent.
If the flop was A-3-3 and I had a pocket pair, I have to worry about three aces and two threes. Now he has two shots at five cards (instead of four) and if he raised, the chances of him having an ace are much greater than random. These are very rough approximations but I don't need any better than that.
Understanding and solving a problem in this manner very much reminds me of writing the code for a computer program. To write code I had to understand the big picture and fit all the details into that picture: what numbers to add, what to do with the totals, what to print out and how, and how the computer should handle out-of-range entries by users (entering someone's age as 175, for example). I had to completely understand each part, and how it all fit into the big picture, or nothing would work.
Regarding the example in blue, I don't think like that. I understand the big picture. I know that a player's actions tell a lot about what kind of hand he has, and I can do a decent job of putting most players on a range of hands that they might be playing.
What I don't do is go that kind of detail, examining all of the possible options and assigning them weighted probabilities, as in the Full Tilt example. I know that good players do that, and I know I should. I've decided that it's one of the things I want to tackle soon.
This completely changes my approach to study. It isn't something I can do 15 or 30 minutes at a time. I have to look at this example and really understand how the author of this chapter is thinking. Just as with coding a computer program, I'll have to break the problem into component parts, then put it all together.
I'll probably get a deck of cards out and go through it, step by step, until I understand the method of the author's analysis. I'll have to work through the math on paper, to make sure I understand how he came up with the probabilites, and/or memorize those probabilites so that I can do it at the table. Both of those parts of the task, learning the method and understanding the math, will take several sessions of a half-hour of more before I really start to get it.
Then I'll probably pick one of my hand histories and make sure I can do the process from beginning to end, probably at least partially still on paper. The next step will be to keep working on it until it's fast enough, and natural enough, to do in real time at the poker table, where online I will have about 15 seconds to make a decision.
All of this will take intense concentration and nearly absolute quiet. I have ADD, and that level of immersion in a task isn't possible for me if a TV is on, the phone is ringing, and other things are going on.
When I take this study project on, I will need blocks of time when I can deeply concentrate. If that means wearing earplugs, going someplace quiet, or only working on this at certain times, then that's what I'll have to do. In a situation like this, playing will have to work around my study hours, unlike the usual situation when it's the other way around.
The bottom line is that I'll have to be much more flexible about how I spend my time. There might be weeks when I spend more time studying than playing. Then, to make up for my lack of playing time, there will be other weeks when I study very little and spend almost all of my time playing. The amount of administrative time that I need is pretty constant at around 2-3 hours a week, so that won't change very much.
Sometimes playing poker is mostly about, well, playing poker. But other times, it's about being self-employed, and finding a better way to manage my time and my business.
Monday, August 23, 2010
8/23/2010--Results for week of 8/15-8/21
HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 5.75
Play 27.25
-----------
TOTAL HOURS 37.25
PROFIT AND LOSS (Week)
Beginning bankroll, 8/15 $82.73
Ending bankroll, 8/21 $77.92
-$4.81
Given what was going on, I'm actually very happy (relieved might be a better word) with those results, both the hours and the money. I spent the week shifting my work hours, so that I could prepare to get up earlier and play the $1 tournaments that have large fields a good structure. Those tournaments only go off three times daily, at 0600, 0700, and 1100.
To get on my new schedule, I got up roughly an hour earlier every day. The problem is that my body didn't want to make that change, and most of the week I didn't go to bed until sometime between 0400 and 0800. At one point I played some poker, got 4 hours sleep, set my alarm to get up an hour earlier than the day before (which allowed me two hours sleep), got up, and played poker again.
I'm amazed that I got in as many hours as I did, and lost as little money as I did, while spending much of the week either struggling to stay awake, or trying to fall asleep. But eventually it worked. I woke up at 6 A.M today after a decent night's sleep, got some breakfast, and played in the 7 A.M. $1 MTT. I got a small cash out of it, finishing 203 of 2,964. (An MTT usually pays roughly the top 10% of the field.)
This is definitely not a permanent situation. In general, poker is a nights and weekends job. In fact, the hours for live tournaments where I live run from around 1500 to 0000. But for now, to find the $1 online tournaments with large fields and good structures, I have to become a morning person.
Administrative 2.50
Study 5.75
Play 27.25
-----------
TOTAL HOURS 37.25
PROFIT AND LOSS (Week)
Beginning bankroll, 8/15 $82.73
Ending bankroll, 8/21 $77.92
-$4.81
Given what was going on, I'm actually very happy (relieved might be a better word) with those results, both the hours and the money. I spent the week shifting my work hours, so that I could prepare to get up earlier and play the $1 tournaments that have large fields a good structure. Those tournaments only go off three times daily, at 0600, 0700, and 1100.
To get on my new schedule, I got up roughly an hour earlier every day. The problem is that my body didn't want to make that change, and most of the week I didn't go to bed until sometime between 0400 and 0800. At one point I played some poker, got 4 hours sleep, set my alarm to get up an hour earlier than the day before (which allowed me two hours sleep), got up, and played poker again.
I'm amazed that I got in as many hours as I did, and lost as little money as I did, while spending much of the week either struggling to stay awake, or trying to fall asleep. But eventually it worked. I woke up at 6 A.M today after a decent night's sleep, got some breakfast, and played in the 7 A.M. $1 MTT. I got a small cash out of it, finishing 203 of 2,964. (An MTT usually pays roughly the top 10% of the field.)
This is definitely not a permanent situation. In general, poker is a nights and weekends job. In fact, the hours for live tournaments where I live run from around 1500 to 0000. But for now, to find the $1 online tournaments with large fields and good structures, I have to become a morning person.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
8/20/2010--Is Poker Immoral? #2
This was in response to a 2+2 post, which suggested that either Christianity or the Bible taught that poker, as a form of gambling, is immoral:
I have read the Bible cover-to-cover three times, and I have read some portions many more times than that. I have taught Bible studies as well, for ages from middle school to adults.
IMO, you can paint anything that you don't like as coveting, greed, poor stewardship, or not "redeeming the time" (a biblical term that refers to wasting time that could better be used in spiritual pursuits). The usual refutation is simple enough, something like, "Well then, is watching a baseball game a sinful waste of time? Is spending money to see a game in person poor stewardship? If both of those are true, then is that not true of any type of recreation?
For the serious poker player, the discussion is different. The arguments are about things like greed, addiction, and coveting (though I'm not quite sure how coverting got in this discussion, as I don't believe it applies at all). Again, let's compare poker to other secular pursuits.
If I decide I want to become a SNE* and grind 60 hours a week and make piles of money, is that greed? If so, how it is worse than having no life for 10 years so I can do nothing but work and study to become a brain surgeon and make piles of money? Is that surgeon-to-be not every bit as greedy as the SNE poker player? Greed is about what's in your heart, not about how you spend your time. I started playing poker to take care of my family when other options were closed to me (car accident, employer closing, and too many other things to detail here).
Coveting? What am I coveting, money? Again, no moreso than the brain surgeon, or than Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard to write computer operating systems because he saw the future and wanted to cash in.
The only places that I know of where the Bible speaks to gambling is when it mentions "games of chance" or "casting lots". Poker is no more a game of chance than bridge or many other competitive card games. As for the addiction issue, I have to say that I do have a problem with casinos.
Until I started playing poker, I had never done anything that could be called gambling--no bingo, no lottery tickets, nothing.** I don't do prop bets or bad-beat jackpots. Once I started playing poker, I decided to find a casino and see what it was like.
I had a very hard time finding the poker room. The casino was really about one thing--slot machines. They dominated everything else that was going on in the building. The slot machines took up at least 100X more space than the poker room (which was really just a few tables in an open area).
Clearly, slot machines are games of chance. They involve no skill. Much of the money that goes into them comes, I'm sure, from people that are poor (the same people that buy most of the lottery tickets), people that are addicted, or stupid people. If you feed coins into one of those machines for more than a few minutes, you're either addicted, or stupid, or both.
Bottom line, I don't see any valid biblical reason to consider poker any more immoral than any other recreational activity, or than any other work activity. I actually ran this by my pastor, and after considerable discussion, he agreed that from a biblical perspective I was correct.
But it won't break my heart if we don't get the casino that is being proposed where I live. There are already places in town where I can play tournaments for buy-ins up to $100 (assuming I was bankrolled for that, which I am not).***
------------------------------
*Supernova Elite, the highest VIP level on PokerStars. The value of reaching this level is around $160,000, over and above any money actually won at the tables.
**After I posted this on 2+2, I realized that it was not entirely correct. I played poker for money once, with my high school track team on the team bus on the way home from a competition (I won about $20). Also, I had my mother buy me a lottery ticket, as a collector's item, the first time my (US) state ran a lottery.
***Using my consolidated bankroll management formula, to play $100 tournaments I would need a bankroll of 150 buy-ins, or $15,000. There are players who would want 200 or more buy-ins to play at that level, but those are players that play MTTs almost exclusively. I play a lot of smaller tournaments as well, so my standard deviation, and therefore my mathematical variance and risk of ruin, are all much less than someone who only plays tournaments with very large fields.
I have read the Bible cover-to-cover three times, and I have read some portions many more times than that. I have taught Bible studies as well, for ages from middle school to adults.
IMO, you can paint anything that you don't like as coveting, greed, poor stewardship, or not "redeeming the time" (a biblical term that refers to wasting time that could better be used in spiritual pursuits). The usual refutation is simple enough, something like, "Well then, is watching a baseball game a sinful waste of time? Is spending money to see a game in person poor stewardship? If both of those are true, then is that not true of any type of recreation?
For the serious poker player, the discussion is different. The arguments are about things like greed, addiction, and coveting (though I'm not quite sure how coverting got in this discussion, as I don't believe it applies at all). Again, let's compare poker to other secular pursuits.
If I decide I want to become a SNE* and grind 60 hours a week and make piles of money, is that greed? If so, how it is worse than having no life for 10 years so I can do nothing but work and study to become a brain surgeon and make piles of money? Is that surgeon-to-be not every bit as greedy as the SNE poker player? Greed is about what's in your heart, not about how you spend your time. I started playing poker to take care of my family when other options were closed to me (car accident, employer closing, and too many other things to detail here).
Coveting? What am I coveting, money? Again, no moreso than the brain surgeon, or than Bill Gates, who dropped out of Harvard to write computer operating systems because he saw the future and wanted to cash in.
The only places that I know of where the Bible speaks to gambling is when it mentions "games of chance" or "casting lots". Poker is no more a game of chance than bridge or many other competitive card games. As for the addiction issue, I have to say that I do have a problem with casinos.
Until I started playing poker, I had never done anything that could be called gambling--no bingo, no lottery tickets, nothing.** I don't do prop bets or bad-beat jackpots. Once I started playing poker, I decided to find a casino and see what it was like.
I had a very hard time finding the poker room. The casino was really about one thing--slot machines. They dominated everything else that was going on in the building. The slot machines took up at least 100X more space than the poker room (which was really just a few tables in an open area).
Clearly, slot machines are games of chance. They involve no skill. Much of the money that goes into them comes, I'm sure, from people that are poor (the same people that buy most of the lottery tickets), people that are addicted, or stupid people. If you feed coins into one of those machines for more than a few minutes, you're either addicted, or stupid, or both.
Bottom line, I don't see any valid biblical reason to consider poker any more immoral than any other recreational activity, or than any other work activity. I actually ran this by my pastor, and after considerable discussion, he agreed that from a biblical perspective I was correct.
But it won't break my heart if we don't get the casino that is being proposed where I live. There are already places in town where I can play tournaments for buy-ins up to $100 (assuming I was bankrolled for that, which I am not).***
------------------------------
*Supernova Elite, the highest VIP level on PokerStars. The value of reaching this level is around $160,000, over and above any money actually won at the tables.
**After I posted this on 2+2, I realized that it was not entirely correct. I played poker for money once, with my high school track team on the team bus on the way home from a competition (I won about $20). Also, I had my mother buy me a lottery ticket, as a collector's item, the first time my (US) state ran a lottery.
***Using my consolidated bankroll management formula, to play $100 tournaments I would need a bankroll of 150 buy-ins, or $15,000. There are players who would want 200 or more buy-ins to play at that level, but those are players that play MTTs almost exclusively. I play a lot of smaller tournaments as well, so my standard deviation, and therefore my mathematical variance and risk of ruin, are all much less than someone who only plays tournaments with very large fields.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
8/18/2010--Is poker immoral? (1 of 2)
Nothing much happening with my poker bankroll this week. I'm in a very weird breakeven stretch where my bankroll has barely moved. I've played around 20 tournaments this week, ranging from 9 players to 6,424. I started the week at $82.73, and now I'm at $87.62. Those are also the low and high numbers for the week so far.
----------------------
The main topic of this post, and the next, will concern a debate in the twoplustwo.com poker fourms about the morality of poker. It seems odd to me that someone would bother to play poker, as well as post in a poker forum, if they thought it was immoral. But I suppose that people make all kinds of compromises for money.
The post that follows was my general answer to the question, "Is poker immoral?" Tomorrow's post will be longer, and is my response to a specific topic which came up in the thread--Does is say in the Bible that poker is immoral?
------------------------
Re: Is playing poker immoral?
Here is how I deal with the morality question:
I run in 5K and 10K races. I pay an entry fee, and the best runners win cash prizes.
I play chess tournaments. I pay an entry fee, and the players with the most points after a few matches (1 point for a win and 0.5 points for a draw) win cash prizes.
I play poker tournaments. I pay an entry fee, and the players that last the longest win cash prizes.
Why is there a morality issue involved in poker, but not in running or playing chess?
----------------------
The main topic of this post, and the next, will concern a debate in the twoplustwo.com poker fourms about the morality of poker. It seems odd to me that someone would bother to play poker, as well as post in a poker forum, if they thought it was immoral. But I suppose that people make all kinds of compromises for money.
The post that follows was my general answer to the question, "Is poker immoral?" Tomorrow's post will be longer, and is my response to a specific topic which came up in the thread--Does is say in the Bible that poker is immoral?
------------------------
Re: Is playing poker immoral?
Here is how I deal with the morality question:
I run in 5K and 10K races. I pay an entry fee, and the best runners win cash prizes.
I play chess tournaments. I pay an entry fee, and the players with the most points after a few matches (1 point for a win and 0.5 points for a draw) win cash prizes.
I play poker tournaments. I pay an entry fee, and the players that last the longest win cash prizes.
Why is there a morality issue involved in poker, but not in running or playing chess?
Monday, August 16, 2010
8/16/2010--Why large tournament fields can be frustrating
Here are the results of my play in a very large tournament (over 6,000 players). I played for 2 hours and 39 minutes, finished ahead of 5,851 other players, and cashed--for a net win of 89 cents! First place was $990.
PokerStars Tournament #326010341
No Limit Hold'em Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD ($1 goes to the prize poll, 10 cents to PokerStars.)
6424 playersTotal Prize Pool: $6424.00 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/16 11:00:00 ET
Dear Poker Clif,
You finished the tournament in 573rd place. A USD 1.99 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 36.73 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/
Congratulations!Thank you for participating
PokerStars Tournament #326010341
No Limit Hold'em Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD ($1 goes to the prize poll, 10 cents to PokerStars.)
6424 playersTotal Prize Pool: $6424.00 USD
Tournament started 2010/08/16 11:00:00 ET
Dear Poker Clif,
You finished the tournament in 573rd place. A USD 1.99 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 36.73 tournament leader points in this tournament.
For information about our tournament leader board, see our web site at http://www.pokerstars.com/poker/tournaments/leader-board/
Congratulations!Thank you for participating
Sunday, August 15, 2010
8/15/2010--Results for week 8/8-8/14
WORK HOURS
Administrative, 2.00
Study, 1.75
Play, 23.75
----------------
TOTAL HOURS, 27.50
I'm not thrilled with those hours, but there were things going on that week. My wife is president of the neighborhood association, and we got invovled (and still are involved) with an issue that went before the city planning commission that week. Plus, I was generally dragging, and seemed to be tired all the time.
I still think that I could have done a lot better, and I'll have to be more focused this week. After all, my wife managed to put in her 40 hours at her job and still deal with the city issue.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll 8/8, $29.79
Ending bankroll 8/14, $83.73
+$53.94
That's more like it!
I had to spend most of my frequent player points to do it, but at 220 FPPs each, I played 5 satellites to the Sunday 1/4 Million tournament, won 4 tickets, and cashed them out for $11 each, which was most of my profit for the week.
I'm down to about 50 FPPs, so I can't pull that rabbit out of my hat for a while. But at least now I have some breathing room. Under my consolidated bankroll management rules, I need a bankroll of $114.40 to play $2.20 tournaments, so that goal is in sight.
Except for the satellite wins, nothing dramatic happened during the week. I won 4 of 5 satellites, I was up a little in the other tournaments that I played, and now I'm back in the game.
Administrative, 2.00
Study, 1.75
Play, 23.75
----------------
TOTAL HOURS, 27.50
I'm not thrilled with those hours, but there were things going on that week. My wife is president of the neighborhood association, and we got invovled (and still are involved) with an issue that went before the city planning commission that week. Plus, I was generally dragging, and seemed to be tired all the time.
I still think that I could have done a lot better, and I'll have to be more focused this week. After all, my wife managed to put in her 40 hours at her job and still deal with the city issue.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll 8/8, $29.79
Ending bankroll 8/14, $83.73
+$53.94
That's more like it!
I had to spend most of my frequent player points to do it, but at 220 FPPs each, I played 5 satellites to the Sunday 1/4 Million tournament, won 4 tickets, and cashed them out for $11 each, which was most of my profit for the week.
I'm down to about 50 FPPs, so I can't pull that rabbit out of my hat for a while. But at least now I have some breathing room. Under my consolidated bankroll management rules, I need a bankroll of $114.40 to play $2.20 tournaments, so that goal is in sight.
Except for the satellite wins, nothing dramatic happened during the week. I won 4 of 5 satellites, I was up a little in the other tournaments that I played, and now I'm back in the game.
Thursday, August 12, 2010
8/13/2010--Time to change my schedule
I mentioned in an earlier post that I was going to check a 24-hour period and see when the $1 MTTs with a good stucture were going off. After doing that, I decided that I'm going to have to start playing (and getting up) earlier in the day, at least for a while.
The conventional poker wisdom is that the best time to play online is evening (in the United States), US holidays and weekends. That's because the biggest group of players comes from the United States. When the US players aren't working or in class (18 is the minimum age to play online) there are more players, which means more tournaments are running (with bigger prize pools) and there are more options for those who, like me, care about table/tournament selection.
The other reason is that there are more weak players during those hours. A lot of U.S. pros do much of their playing during the day, especially parents whose kids are in school at that time. But at night and on weekends, the amateurs come out to play.
The two best times to play are Saturday nights, or during college vacations. On December 31, 2008, player traffic briefly overwhelmed the PokerStars servers.
But since I'm limited to $1 MTTs, I have to play when they are available. I can still find some good games nights and weekends, but if I really want to concentrate on MTTs, which can take 6 hours or more to finish (my longest so far was 5 hours and 53 minutes, finishing 5th out of 2,200 players), I have to play when they are available, and that's during the day.
Here is the daily schedule of when the $1.10s go off, and whether the structure is a good fit for my playing style:
0600 yes
0700 yes
1100 yes
1220 yes
1720 yes
1800 no
1900 no
2100 no
I generally get up around noon, which gives me one or two shots at it. I don't want to stumble out of bed and eat at the desk while I'm half awake for a 1220 tournaments, so really I have to be up in the morning. The earlier I'm up, the more chances I'll have.
For example, if I play at 6 or 7 A.M., by 1100 I'll either be knocked out of the early tournament, or I will have cashed. If I've cashed (it usually takes about 3 hours to get "in the money") and I'm still still playing, of course I'll stick with that tournament, and what follows won't really matter. When I finally get knocked out, I'll look at the schedule again and decide if I want to get in another long one. If not, then I'll play a SNG, study, or use my time some other way.
For now, I'm setting my alarm a little earlier every day. It's not going to be any fun. I'm naturally a night person, I've worked second or third shift at least as much as first, and when I don't set any alarms I fall into my natural pattern and I wake up at noon or a little later. But for a while, I'll have to be a morning person. When my bankroll gets bigger (and it's going very well so far this week) I'll have more options.
Until then, I'm a morning person. I won't like it and neither will my cats, who like coming in the office at night and watching me play poker (or in Vanessa's case, eating my papers).
The conventional poker wisdom is that the best time to play online is evening (in the United States), US holidays and weekends. That's because the biggest group of players comes from the United States. When the US players aren't working or in class (18 is the minimum age to play online) there are more players, which means more tournaments are running (with bigger prize pools) and there are more options for those who, like me, care about table/tournament selection.
The other reason is that there are more weak players during those hours. A lot of U.S. pros do much of their playing during the day, especially parents whose kids are in school at that time. But at night and on weekends, the amateurs come out to play.
The two best times to play are Saturday nights, or during college vacations. On December 31, 2008, player traffic briefly overwhelmed the PokerStars servers.
But since I'm limited to $1 MTTs, I have to play when they are available. I can still find some good games nights and weekends, but if I really want to concentrate on MTTs, which can take 6 hours or more to finish (my longest so far was 5 hours and 53 minutes, finishing 5th out of 2,200 players), I have to play when they are available, and that's during the day.
Here is the daily schedule of when the $1.10s go off, and whether the structure is a good fit for my playing style:
0600 yes
0700 yes
1100 yes
1220 yes
1720 yes
1800 no
1900 no
2100 no
I generally get up around noon, which gives me one or two shots at it. I don't want to stumble out of bed and eat at the desk while I'm half awake for a 1220 tournaments, so really I have to be up in the morning. The earlier I'm up, the more chances I'll have.
For example, if I play at 6 or 7 A.M., by 1100 I'll either be knocked out of the early tournament, or I will have cashed. If I've cashed (it usually takes about 3 hours to get "in the money") and I'm still still playing, of course I'll stick with that tournament, and what follows won't really matter. When I finally get knocked out, I'll look at the schedule again and decide if I want to get in another long one. If not, then I'll play a SNG, study, or use my time some other way.
For now, I'm setting my alarm a little earlier every day. It's not going to be any fun. I'm naturally a night person, I've worked second or third shift at least as much as first, and when I don't set any alarms I fall into my natural pattern and I wake up at noon or a little later. But for a while, I'll have to be a morning person. When my bankroll gets bigger (and it's going very well so far this week) I'll have more options.
Until then, I'm a morning person. I won't like it and neither will my cats, who like coming in the office at night and watching me play poker (or in Vanessa's case, eating my papers).
Monday, August 9, 2010
8/10/2010--The cat ate my homework
I use a worksheet (an actual piece of paper) while I'm playing. I write down my raw information, a line for everything I do. If I make a deposit or withdrawl, that's an entry. If I buy a poker book, that's an entry. Every tournament, or study session, or administrative session is an entry. Later, all of the information is entered on different Open Office spreadsheets which track my profit and loss, work hours, bankroll status, and expenses.
I had one side of the page filled, and I turned over my August 2010 worksheet so I could write down this administrative session (this blog entry and whatever other administrative things I do in the next half-hour or so). But there is nowhere to enter the date--because our kitten (just turned one year old) will not be ignored.
She will do whatever she has to do to get my attention--knaw on whichever of my appendages is handy, slap me, knock my pen off the desk, or in this case, eat my paperwork. I grabbed the paper before she got it off the desk, but the top part of the date column is missing.
An ignored kitten can be very naughty when trying to get attention. You would think that little Vanessa Rousso (the namesake of the Two Plus Two Pokercast 2010 player of the year) would have a little more respect for what I'm doing. But when a kitten needs to play, nothing else matters.
I had one side of the page filled, and I turned over my August 2010 worksheet so I could write down this administrative session (this blog entry and whatever other administrative things I do in the next half-hour or so). But there is nowhere to enter the date--because our kitten (just turned one year old) will not be ignored.
She will do whatever she has to do to get my attention--knaw on whichever of my appendages is handy, slap me, knock my pen off the desk, or in this case, eat my paperwork. I grabbed the paper before she got it off the desk, but the top part of the date column is missing.
An ignored kitten can be very naughty when trying to get attention. You would think that little Vanessa Rousso (the namesake of the Two Plus Two Pokercast 2010 player of the year) would have a little more respect for what I'm doing. But when a kitten needs to play, nothing else matters.
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