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.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
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.
Sunday, August 8, 2010
8/8/2010--Results for week of 8/1-8/7
HOURS
Administrative, 3.00
Study, 2.25
Play 19.50
-------------------
Total Hours, 24.75
I hardly played at all for 2 days because I was too tired. In fact, one day I quit 45 minutes into my second tournament. I was more tired that I thought I would be, and half an hour into late registration I could see that the tournament would be much larger than I anticipated (it wound up with 6,410 players) and I knew there was no way I would be thinking straight after several hours.
This is a week that got a away from me, one of those things that doesn't happen if you have to go somewhere and physically report for work. "Going to work" tired is different. In most cases, even if your performance is off, as long as you can stay awake, you still get paid.
Poker, of course, is not like that. If I had tried to finish that 6,410 player tournament I almost certainly would not have cashed (the entry fee is a sunk cost whether I play for one hour or four) and I would have wasted that time playing badly and just fighting to stay awake.
My schedule got a little wierd last week, once I was awakened by a noise outside after sleeping for about two hours (I'm a very sound sleeper, so it must have been very loud.) Unfortunately, I have the type of insomnia where I have a very difficult time getting to sleep, and there were other things going on that day, so it was a lost poker day.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll 8/1, $57.62
Ending bankroll, 8/7, $29.79
-$27.83
A little scary, but I think I have a strategy figured out now.
Most of the $1.10 MTTs have a horrible structure, and I need to skip them. I now have my tournament listtings set to show everything starting withing 24 hours, so I can pick out the ones with good structures for me, and skip the rest.
With the rest of my playing time, I'll go back to my old specialty, STTs (single table tournaments). I won't make a lot of money with those, because the entry fee, at 20%, is so high at the $1 level ($1 to the prize pool and 20 cents to PokerStars), but even with that entry fee I'm a proven winner at the level, so I'll make something, even if it's only a net 40 cents for my third place finishes. The STTs will keep me from sliding backward until I hit a good score in one of the few MTTs that I can spend my time on at this level.
One of the wierd things about online poker tournaments is that in a way, it gets easier at the higher levels. The competition is tougher, so in that sense it's not easier. But as you move up in levels there are many more choices. There are mixed games (tournaments for players that like to play several poker variants), a great range of tournament sizes and prize pools (including a few tournaments a year that last several days with top prizes of up to a million dollars), and tournaments as small as two players (called "heads-up" tournaments).
Paying attention to "tournament selection" (knowing what tournaments best fit your skills and playing style) can yield a lot more profit. Most of those choices aren't avalable at all playing $1 tournaments, so I have to carefully pick my few good choices and slog my way out of this mess. As I type this it's 4:10 A.M. and the next $1.10 MTT with a good structure starts at 6 A.M., so I'm filling the poker time with other things until then.
Administrative, 3.00
Study, 2.25
Play 19.50
-------------------
Total Hours, 24.75
I hardly played at all for 2 days because I was too tired. In fact, one day I quit 45 minutes into my second tournament. I was more tired that I thought I would be, and half an hour into late registration I could see that the tournament would be much larger than I anticipated (it wound up with 6,410 players) and I knew there was no way I would be thinking straight after several hours.
This is a week that got a away from me, one of those things that doesn't happen if you have to go somewhere and physically report for work. "Going to work" tired is different. In most cases, even if your performance is off, as long as you can stay awake, you still get paid.
Poker, of course, is not like that. If I had tried to finish that 6,410 player tournament I almost certainly would not have cashed (the entry fee is a sunk cost whether I play for one hour or four) and I would have wasted that time playing badly and just fighting to stay awake.
My schedule got a little wierd last week, once I was awakened by a noise outside after sleeping for about two hours (I'm a very sound sleeper, so it must have been very loud.) Unfortunately, I have the type of insomnia where I have a very difficult time getting to sleep, and there were other things going on that day, so it was a lost poker day.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll 8/1, $57.62
Ending bankroll, 8/7, $29.79
-$27.83
A little scary, but I think I have a strategy figured out now.
Most of the $1.10 MTTs have a horrible structure, and I need to skip them. I now have my tournament listtings set to show everything starting withing 24 hours, so I can pick out the ones with good structures for me, and skip the rest.
With the rest of my playing time, I'll go back to my old specialty, STTs (single table tournaments). I won't make a lot of money with those, because the entry fee, at 20%, is so high at the $1 level ($1 to the prize pool and 20 cents to PokerStars), but even with that entry fee I'm a proven winner at the level, so I'll make something, even if it's only a net 40 cents for my third place finishes. The STTs will keep me from sliding backward until I hit a good score in one of the few MTTs that I can spend my time on at this level.
One of the wierd things about online poker tournaments is that in a way, it gets easier at the higher levels. The competition is tougher, so in that sense it's not easier. But as you move up in levels there are many more choices. There are mixed games (tournaments for players that like to play several poker variants), a great range of tournament sizes and prize pools (including a few tournaments a year that last several days with top prizes of up to a million dollars), and tournaments as small as two players (called "heads-up" tournaments).
Paying attention to "tournament selection" (knowing what tournaments best fit your skills and playing style) can yield a lot more profit. Most of those choices aren't avalable at all playing $1 tournaments, so I have to carefully pick my few good choices and slog my way out of this mess. As I type this it's 4:10 A.M. and the next $1.10 MTT with a good structure starts at 6 A.M., so I'm filling the poker time with other things until then.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Results, week of 7/25-7/31
HOURS
Administrative, 2.00
Study, 3.75
Play, 41.50
-------------
Total Hours, 47.25
I'm pretty happy about this, things are definitely going in the right direction. One of things that I've finally figured out is that I do better in a few long sessions than in a lot of short ones. As I have ADD and I'm supposed to have trouble staying focused, this would seem counterintuitive. But the truth is that it's like running--once I actually start doing it, I enjoy it, and it's not a chore. But it's easy for me to get distracted: I watch a news story on TV, get a drink, check my E-mail, and generally mess around, and before I know it an hour has gone by. So fewer but longer poker sessions seems to be the way to go.
I recently had a nine-hour session, probably my longest online session this year. I might be close to reaching one of my goals, which is to at least occasionally put in a 60-hour week.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Staring bankroll, 7/25, $116.22
Ending bankroll, 7/31, $57.62
-$58.60
This looks like a disaster, and that's what I thought at first. I knew that I had come just short of the money in a lot of tournaments. I looked at my Holdem Manager graphs, and noticed that my usual cashing rate in tournaments, about 20%, had dropped way down. I thought for a minute, and that I got it--that's what's supposed to happen!
I've been trying to convert from being a SNG player (one or just a few tables) to a multi-table tournament player, who playes tournaments with thosands of players. And that's what I'm doing--I've finally internalized that mentality. I am now a fearless, risk-taking, high-variance player who understanda that most of the money is at the final table, and especially in the top 3 places.
I'm now play like Dr. Chris Ferguson (doctorate in computer science with an emphasis on artifical intelligence), who went an entire year on the World Poker Tour, playing tournaments with entry fees of $10,000 and only cashed 3 times--but they were all final tables, 6-or 7-figure cashes!
I'm going out just before the money, because in a way, that's what I'm supposed to do. When everyone else is playing it safe and hoaring their chips so that they can be sure of cashing, I'm supposed to respond to the timidity of those timid players by trying to push them around, put them in tough situations, and generally make them give up and give me their chips.
That's the good news, and it absolutely will pay off. Intellectually I've known that I needed to play that way for a long time. But for someone like me--methodocal, plodding, tortoise rather than hare, step-by-step--whatever you call my personality, it was the opposite of an MTT personality. But now I'm there.
Of course, the problem is that I'm running out of money. So until I have a lot more leeway with my bankroll, I'm going to have to take some time away from my MTT playing and mix in a lot of SNG low-variance playing to at least keep my bankroll from going any lower until I hit a big score in an MTT.
It's wierd. I had a financially horrible week, but at the same time I've arrived, at least in my mindset and playing style, as a multi-table tournament player. Now all I have to do is turn that mindset into some action, and pretty darn soon.
Administrative, 2.00
Study, 3.75
Play, 41.50
-------------
Total Hours, 47.25
I'm pretty happy about this, things are definitely going in the right direction. One of things that I've finally figured out is that I do better in a few long sessions than in a lot of short ones. As I have ADD and I'm supposed to have trouble staying focused, this would seem counterintuitive. But the truth is that it's like running--once I actually start doing it, I enjoy it, and it's not a chore. But it's easy for me to get distracted: I watch a news story on TV, get a drink, check my E-mail, and generally mess around, and before I know it an hour has gone by. So fewer but longer poker sessions seems to be the way to go.
I recently had a nine-hour session, probably my longest online session this year. I might be close to reaching one of my goals, which is to at least occasionally put in a 60-hour week.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Staring bankroll, 7/25, $116.22
Ending bankroll, 7/31, $57.62
-$58.60
This looks like a disaster, and that's what I thought at first. I knew that I had come just short of the money in a lot of tournaments. I looked at my Holdem Manager graphs, and noticed that my usual cashing rate in tournaments, about 20%, had dropped way down. I thought for a minute, and that I got it--that's what's supposed to happen!
I've been trying to convert from being a SNG player (one or just a few tables) to a multi-table tournament player, who playes tournaments with thosands of players. And that's what I'm doing--I've finally internalized that mentality. I am now a fearless, risk-taking, high-variance player who understanda that most of the money is at the final table, and especially in the top 3 places.
I'm now play like Dr. Chris Ferguson (doctorate in computer science with an emphasis on artifical intelligence), who went an entire year on the World Poker Tour, playing tournaments with entry fees of $10,000 and only cashed 3 times--but they were all final tables, 6-or 7-figure cashes!
I'm going out just before the money, because in a way, that's what I'm supposed to do. When everyone else is playing it safe and hoaring their chips so that they can be sure of cashing, I'm supposed to respond to the timidity of those timid players by trying to push them around, put them in tough situations, and generally make them give up and give me their chips.
That's the good news, and it absolutely will pay off. Intellectually I've known that I needed to play that way for a long time. But for someone like me--methodocal, plodding, tortoise rather than hare, step-by-step--whatever you call my personality, it was the opposite of an MTT personality. But now I'm there.
Of course, the problem is that I'm running out of money. So until I have a lot more leeway with my bankroll, I'm going to have to take some time away from my MTT playing and mix in a lot of SNG low-variance playing to at least keep my bankroll from going any lower until I hit a big score in an MTT.
It's wierd. I had a financially horrible week, but at the same time I've arrived, at least in my mindset and playing style, as a multi-table tournament player. Now all I have to do is turn that mindset into some action, and pretty darn soon.
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