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.