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).