6/19/2010--Results for 6/6-6/12

POKER HOURS
Admin 0.75
Study 1.25
Play 28.75
TOTAL HOURS 30.75

I should have got this up a lot earlier, sorry about that. In fact, I finished it yesterday, but neglected to published it.

I can't say that I'm happy about my hours. I've cut my TV watching way back, but for some reason I just don't seem to be able to get the hours in. My next weekly report will probably be even worse, as I've already goofed off in the last couple days. I watched all of game 7 of the NBA playoffs, and the second half of the US vs. Slovenia World Cup game. Before that I had not watched a sporting event start-to-finish in at least a month (except for episodes of The Ultimate Fighter, but that's only one hour a week).

That's a lot of goofing off in less than 24 hours. I'll have to get more serious about putting in my poker time.

Of course, the study time is totally unacceptable. That's really almost more important than my playing. It's an investment in being a better player both now and in the future. That has to consistently be at least 10% of my time (for some of the top players, that number is 50%).

POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Beginning bankroll 6/6, $204.79
Ending bankroll, 6/12, $200.34
-$4.45

Those numbers may make it look like the last week was basically breakeven and uneventful, but it was anything but. I got beat up pretty badly for a few days, and was down to $156.00 at the end of 6/9. That rattled me (something that rarely happens when I play poker) and I lost a little more in other tournaments Then I turned things around and won most of it back the last three days.

I have been reading a lot on the 2+2 poker forums about what a good deal the 180-man tournaments are. I even printed out Sean Deeb's Beginner's Guide to the 180s and started carrying it around with me so I could look it over whenever I had a few minutes.

The 180s on PokerStars and other sites don't pay a lot of places, and the payouts are skewed even more heavily than usual to the top 3 finishers. First place gets 54 times the buy-in, a very unusual pay structure for a tournament that small.

This is exactly the type of structure that a good player likes to see. He doesn't want to waste time on the typical tournaments that pay 15-20% of the field, and pay a bunch of people 2-5 buy-in "almost winner" prizes. He wants to compete for the big bucks at the top.

In this case, we are talking about $4.40 tournaments, 180 players, paying 10% of the field, with 10th through 18th winning $10.64, and the top 3 spots paying $216.44, $144.00, and $85.68. I decided to sit down and play a bunch of them, 2 at a time. I played 9 in a row, and didn't cash in any. That little adventure cost me a quick $39.60.

I knew that $4.40 tournanets were right at the edge of my bankroll requirements, so I thought I better stop at that point, especially since my bankroll situation had, um, changed. But then I thought about it some more, and since I knew that big swings like that are normal in MTTs, I decided to do some math and figure out exactly what I was facing with these tournaments.

I set up a spreadsheet to do some "what if" scenarious. I ran one where my average cash was $20 (a reasonable if slightly conservative estimate, since $20 is near the bottom of the pay scale). With an average cash of $20, it turns out that I would have to cash 28 times out of 100 to break even.

I thought that I had had some bad luck in my 9-tournament losing streak. And even though cashing more than 1 time in 4 seemed daunting, on the other hand I really didn't think that my average cash would be less than $20. So the numbers didn't seem so bad.

Then I thought about it some more. If I'm going to cash 28 times out of 100, that means that there will be 72 times out of 100 where I don't cash. That's enough room for a lot of nasty losing steaks--which, of course, is the reason for having a bankroll in the first place, to weather those storms.

Given the downside risk and a bankroll of $200 (less than 50 $4.40 buy-ins), the math says that I should have stayed away from those for a while. I might take a shot at one from time to time as long as my bankroll is over $200, but I'm definitely not bankrolled to play those things on a regular basis.

Anyway, I abandoned the 180s for a while, played a bunch of 1-3 table, $1-3 tournaments, and broke won back a little over the next few days. Then in my last tournament of the week, starting on Saturday at 11:10 P.M., I played a $2.20 90-man tournament, took second place and cashed for $33.30, winding up almost even for the week!

Online poker can get monotonous sometimes. Last week, that was definitely not the case. Poker as a job is definitely not for the faint of heart.