#13 This one is hard to write

Online bankroll January 1, 2010--$147.33
Online bankroll February 1, 2010--$156.39
Online bankroll March 1, 2010--$122.40

Results for February, -$24.93.
Results year-to-date, -$33.99.

When I'm down for the year after two months, it's obviously time to take a hard look at this situation, and figure out what went wrong. A future post will be about what I can do to fix it.

The biggest problem is that I'm just not playing enough. When I'm on the daytime schedule it's especially difficult. Playing mostly late at night, I didn't seem to have a much trouble playing 35 or more hours a week. Now I'm struggling to get 20 hours in.

February was unusual, in that I was ill for more than a week. I wasn't deathly ill, and frankly, there have been other jobs for which, in the same situation, I would have just gone to work.

Poker is different. With a "regular" job (unless perhaps you are in something like commissioned sales), you can go to work, be a little off, and still get paid. In poker, if you get distracted and misplay one hand, that can cost you a tournament. If you don't being your "A game" all the time, it can cost you.

Other than that special circumstance, I have taken a hard look at things, and this is how I see it.

1. Playing less has made me subject to statitical variance. By that I mean that poker is about winning over time. In poker, a short losing streak (a few buy-ins or a thousand hands) means nothing. It is often said in the twoplustwo.com poker forums that results over a smaple size of less than 10,000 hands are statitically meaningless.

So, it could be that my results, especially for February, are not at all a reflection of how well, or how poorly, I've been playing. I should be moving into my home office soon, probably this week, so not playing in the living room will definitely help me to play more hands. Still, there are things other than how many hours I'm playing that need to be addressed.

2. Playing during the day is much more difficult. When I was getting 35-40 hours of playing time a week, a lot of those hours were between midnight and 6 A.M. I've been on my daytime schedule, or "church schedule", for about a week and it's going to be much harder to get the hours in until I switch back, probably around April 1. Also, the choices are fewer. There is a large multitable tournament at my buy-in level about once an hour bewtween 5 P.M. and midnight (PokerStars/Eastern US time). Today there was ONE such tournament available between 7 and 11 A.M.)

Players in the twoplustwo.com poker forums are always told that if they are thinking about playing poker full-time, they better be ready to explain to their families that they have to work nights and weekends, because that's where the money is.

Some of the daytime busyness I can control, and some of it, I can't. At 4 A.M., there isn't much going on. At 4 P.M., the world doesn't stop so that I can play poker.

3. My game selection hasn't been good. When I'm not getting the hours in, whether it's a short day or a short week, that limits the tournamnets in which I can play. The tournaments with the "slower" structures, that is, the tournaments where the blinds (forced bets that you must make every nine or so tournament hands) don't go up as quickly, are much better suited to my playing style.

Tournaments with a slower structure tend to have bigger fields and take a lot longer. Basically, if I have less than three hours to play, I have to find something else.

Also, when I have only a few hours to play at a time, I'm pressing to fill the time. When I have a choice between two tournaments, I'll take the one that is about to start, rather than waiting 10 minutes for the one where the structure is slightly better for me. When I only have two or three hours to play, I don't want to "waste time". But when I'm trying to build a bankroll, "wasting time" is better than wasting money, and there are other ways that I can use that time.

4. I've let my study and administrative time slip. I've been so focused on getting the hours in that I have badly neglected administrative and study time. I haven't been posting to my Work Hours spreadsheet, after all, I know I'm not getting the playing hours in, so why work on the spreadsheets and have those numbers stare me in the face. Poor me.

It is true that many of the things that affect my playing time, such as the daytime interruptions, affect study and administrative time as well. On the other hand, when I only have a couple hours free, rather than looking for a tournament (any tournament, whether I have an edge or not*) I could have used that time working on a few of the test problems in Harrington on Holdem, Volume 3.

Well, I've identified the problems. Next time, the solutions.

*One could argue that it's sometimes OK to play breakeven poker, especially when the player can earn enough PokerStars Frequent Player Points to get rewards such as poker books or free entry to online tournaments.

Working poker VIP programs is a complicated subject which can be both situational (am I close to having enough points this month to move up to a higher VIP level?) and player-dependent. Let's just say that it will be a long time before I can do this with my points:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBIa2JIx2TE