POKER HOURS
Administrative 1.50
Study 2.75
Play 28.00
----------
TOTAL HOURS 37.25
I goofed off last week, and I'm not happy about it. We had some storms and the internet wasn't very reliable for a couple days. I played one tournament where, according to Holdem Manager, I played for 1.2 minutes before I lost the internet.
So, I got disgusted, decided not to waste any more money, and didn't play for 2 days. That was probably a good decision, but instead of studying or working on something poker related, I didn't do much of anything those two days. If I had used that time more wisely, I would have easily put in more than 40 hours. I can't let that happen again.
PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/24 $58.43
Ending bankroll, 10/30 $71.56
-------------------
+$13.13
It's nice to see my bankroll going up toward one of my two magic numbers, $114, which will allow me to play $2.20 MTTs. I've been looking at the lineup quite a bit. There are a lot of tournaments with a good, or at least reasonable stucture, enough so that, combined with the $1.10 MTTS, there will be one available with a good structure every 2 hours or so.
Not only will this give me more options, but I won't have to be on an early daytime schedule. As a natural night person who hopes to play live tournaments (which happen mostly at night) soon, getting up around noon makes a lot more sense.
There still is the problem of getting up for church in the morning, especially since, as I mentioned in an earlier post, the tournaments with the weakest fields run on Saturday night. (Many players have checked their databases and reported that Saturday, especially late at night, is their most profitable time to play.)
I'm going to schedule my time to go to church twice a month. I'm not sure yet if I'll change my schedule for those times, or whether I'll just play all night and go to church tired. I'll probably have to experiment with that for a while and see what works best.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Results for week of 10/17/-10/23
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 9.50
Play 27.25
----------
TOTAL HOURS 39.50
I'm very happy with my hours this week. It would have been nice to hit 40, but I spent most of Saturday with my grandchildren, so it just wasn't possible to come through at the end.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/17 $45.04
Ending bankroll, 10-23 $58.43
-----------
+$13.39
A lot of things happened this week that kept me from playing the $1.10 MTTs with a good structure. There are only 4 of them, at 0600, 0700, 1100 and 1720. Since we were getting the grandchildren dropped off Saturday in the morning, 0600 and 0700 MTTs might not be done before the kids came over. We got them at around 1100, and had them until around 1800, which knocks out the last two MTTS.
That kind of thing happened more than once during the week, and I wound up playing a bunch of turbo SNGs. I decided that if I at least broke even in those financially, while picking up a chunk of PokerStars Frequent Player Points (more about that in a future post) then it was a worthwhile endeavor.
There are two really big numbers that I'm looking at, that I think about every single day. The first is $114, which is the bankroll that I need to move up to $2.20 tournaments. Once the entry fee doubles, so do the prize pools, and I'm ready to get some of that money. At that point, the financial contribution I can make should start to be noticable, and still give me a little room to continue to build my bankroll.
The second bankroll milestone will be at $238. That was mybankroll high point, in June of 2008, before I had to decimate my bankroll to pay bills bills. It's hard to believe that more that a year later I haven't got back there. But if I stick to my consolidated bankroll strategy, it will never happen again.
With a $238 bankroll, I should be easily able to generate enough to make a difference in the family finances, while still keeping enough behind to grow my bankroll more quickly.
$238 is the number that haunts me every day, when I get up and once again have to face being able to play only $1 tournaments. When I get there again and keep on going, it will be my biggest day as a poker player. On that day, I will know for certain that I will never again be in the position that I am now.
Administrative 2.75
Study 9.50
Play 27.25
----------
TOTAL HOURS 39.50
I'm very happy with my hours this week. It would have been nice to hit 40, but I spent most of Saturday with my grandchildren, so it just wasn't possible to come through at the end.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 10/17 $45.04
Ending bankroll, 10-23 $58.43
-----------
+$13.39
A lot of things happened this week that kept me from playing the $1.10 MTTs with a good structure. There are only 4 of them, at 0600, 0700, 1100 and 1720. Since we were getting the grandchildren dropped off Saturday in the morning, 0600 and 0700 MTTs might not be done before the kids came over. We got them at around 1100, and had them until around 1800, which knocks out the last two MTTS.
That kind of thing happened more than once during the week, and I wound up playing a bunch of turbo SNGs. I decided that if I at least broke even in those financially, while picking up a chunk of PokerStars Frequent Player Points (more about that in a future post) then it was a worthwhile endeavor.
There are two really big numbers that I'm looking at, that I think about every single day. The first is $114, which is the bankroll that I need to move up to $2.20 tournaments. Once the entry fee doubles, so do the prize pools, and I'm ready to get some of that money. At that point, the financial contribution I can make should start to be noticable, and still give me a little room to continue to build my bankroll.
The second bankroll milestone will be at $238. That was mybankroll high point, in June of 2008, before I had to decimate my bankroll to pay bills bills. It's hard to believe that more that a year later I haven't got back there. But if I stick to my consolidated bankroll strategy, it will never happen again.
With a $238 bankroll, I should be easily able to generate enough to make a difference in the family finances, while still keeping enough behind to grow my bankroll more quickly.
$238 is the number that haunts me every day, when I get up and once again have to face being able to play only $1 tournaments. When I get there again and keep on going, it will be my biggest day as a poker player. On that day, I will know for certain that I will never again be in the position that I am now.
Wednesday, October 20, 2010
Results for week of 10/10-10/16
I forget to do this earlier. I was looking at my results so far for this week, then realized that I never posted last week's results. So here they are:
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 4.50
Playing 25.50
------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.50
PROFIT AND LOSS
10/10 starting bankroll 35.28
10/16 ending bankroll 45.04
----------------
+$9.76
Everything went fairly well. It was an uneventful week. Nothing dramatic, just a fairly study grind toward a profitable week. I'm still having a lot of fairly deep runs in large MTTs, most of which have been just out of the money, or very small cashes, which this week included:
212 of 3,879
32 of 1,000
33 of 1,000
954 of 9,088
190 of 3,996
I'm not sure if my not quite breaking through for a big cash yet is due to luck (statistical variance) or if there is something I could change that would get me over the hump. Without a sample size of at least 100 of these in a month (so that the way I play hasn't changed much during the sample period), it's impossible to tell. Actually, 100 MTTs isn't any kind of a scientific sample size, but I think that it would give me a decent, unscientific feel of what's going on.
I think that I need to open up my game a bit more, and take just a few more risks, but I'm not sure what form that should take. It could be bluffing a little more, but the standard poker wisdom is to never bluff against someone in the micro (<$5) tournaments. Fancy plays are pointless when a micro player mostly looks at his cards, decides whether he has a good hand or a bad hand, and acts accordingly.
I think I'll just start working on the other possibilites, maybe concentrating on one possible improvement each day. I think that one big possibility is tartgeing indivual players.
I do some of that of course, but that has mainly involved trapping maniacs by letting them lead the betting, and just coming along for the ride with my monster hand. But the tables have been breaking more slowly recently, and it's not uncommon for me to be at the same table with several other players for 75 hands. I think that working on getting good reads on more players might be just enough to start putting me in line for some big cashes.
I can think of some other tweaks as well, but along with working on those, I'm going to give it some more thought. I have a feeling that I'm missing something, that there is something I'm not doing, or that I could do a lot better. There are a couple poker books that I would like to read through again, maybe that will shake something loose in my head.
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 4.50
Playing 25.50
------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.50
PROFIT AND LOSS
10/10 starting bankroll 35.28
10/16 ending bankroll 45.04
----------------
+$9.76
Everything went fairly well. It was an uneventful week. Nothing dramatic, just a fairly study grind toward a profitable week. I'm still having a lot of fairly deep runs in large MTTs, most of which have been just out of the money, or very small cashes, which this week included:
212 of 3,879
32 of 1,000
33 of 1,000
954 of 9,088
190 of 3,996
I'm not sure if my not quite breaking through for a big cash yet is due to luck (statistical variance) or if there is something I could change that would get me over the hump. Without a sample size of at least 100 of these in a month (so that the way I play hasn't changed much during the sample period), it's impossible to tell. Actually, 100 MTTs isn't any kind of a scientific sample size, but I think that it would give me a decent, unscientific feel of what's going on.
I think that I need to open up my game a bit more, and take just a few more risks, but I'm not sure what form that should take. It could be bluffing a little more, but the standard poker wisdom is to never bluff against someone in the micro (<$5) tournaments. Fancy plays are pointless when a micro player mostly looks at his cards, decides whether he has a good hand or a bad hand, and acts accordingly.
I think I'll just start working on the other possibilites, maybe concentrating on one possible improvement each day. I think that one big possibility is tartgeing indivual players.
I do some of that of course, but that has mainly involved trapping maniacs by letting them lead the betting, and just coming along for the ride with my monster hand. But the tables have been breaking more slowly recently, and it's not uncommon for me to be at the same table with several other players for 75 hands. I think that working on getting good reads on more players might be just enough to start putting me in line for some big cashes.
I can think of some other tweaks as well, but along with working on those, I'm going to give it some more thought. I have a feeling that I'm missing something, that there is something I'm not doing, or that I could do a lot better. There are a couple poker books that I would like to read through again, maybe that will shake something loose in my head.
Friday, October 15, 2010
10/15/2010--I hate memorization!
There are a lot of things to learn about poker. In fact, with poker, as with any other field, the body of knowledge is always growing, and is for practical purposes infinite.
Assuming (incorrectly) that I could learn everything there is to know about No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments, there are all kinds of poker variants out there. There are even players that specialize in what are called "mixed-game" tournaments, which involve alternating as many as eight different poker games as part of the same tournament. For example, a typical eight-game format, according to Wikipedia, is alternating orbits of: fixed limit 2-7 Triple Draw, fixed limit Texas hold 'em, fixed limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, fixed limit Seven-card stud, fixed limit Seven-card stud Eight or better, no limit Texas hold 'em and pot limit Omaha.
I know little or nothing about most of those games except for NLHE, with the exception that I played about 100 hands of fixed-limit hold 'em when I was so new I didn't realize that it was a different game at first (I couldn't figure why everyone was making such small bets!)
There are many other options out there: heads-up games (where you are playing one other person, just as you would in chess or checkers), cash games, more poker variants, and variants of the variants.
And then there is game theory, which is a branch of mathematics taught at the college level. Some of the top turning pros who are mathematically inclined and well-educated (some are PhDs) use game theory in their poker playing. My knowledge and use of game theory is very limited. I've read things about game theory, and I found a Harvard game theory class online and looked at a video of two of the lectures. I don't have the math background to actually take a course.
So, there is always more to learn, but something I've neglected, and that I really need to work on, is basic memorization. I'm scared of it. I'm terrible at it. It takes me a very long time. My son would say "it sucks." But it has to be done.
Everyone who plays decently knows about odds and outs. The idea is pretty basic. If you know how many cards are out there that can improve you to a winning hand, and you compare that to the size of the bet you want to make, you can figure out mathematically if it's the right play.
But you don't really have to do any math! All you have to do is memorize a chart. If you know that with one card to come, your odds of making your hand are 4.11 to 1 against, then there has to be enough money in the pot that if you hit your card, you will win more than 4.11 times the amount that you bet. Over time, this will make you money.
There lots of other basic tables that go beyond simple odds and outs, which very few players at the lower-to-intermediate levels bother to memorize (if they even know that such information exists). In a sense, it's free money. If I know something my opponent doesn't know, over time that is a significant mathematical (and financial) advantage.
Quick example: I know (either from observation or from tracking software) that my opponent is playing about 50% of his hands. I also know that the winning strategy is to play hands that are in the top half of his range. That means that if I'm playing my top 25% against his top 50%, I will win more than half the time, over time.
That's fine as far as it goes, but what are the top 50%, or top 25%, of hands? There's an app for that.* Well, not really, but there is a chart. It's on page 381 of Heads-Up No Limit Holdem, by Collin Moshman, and it's called, "Top N Percent of Starting Hands."
I haven't memorized that chart, but I need to. What good is knowing that I need to play the top 25% of those hands, if I don't know what they are? Well, here's the list:
Ace-seven offsuit+ (offsuit means not suited, and the plus means "or better", in this case, the lower card must be 7 or higher
Ace-two suited+
K9o+
K6s+
QTo (the "T" represents a ten)
Q8s+
J8s+
T8s+
That's it, in standard poker notation. If I'm against someone playing half of his hands, that list gives me exactly the hands I can play and be profitable. I don't have to do any math at the table. I don't even have to understand how the math works. I can play any suited ace. I fold any hand where the highest card is 9 or lower. Nothing to figure out, no guesswork.
If my opponent doesn't know that, or better yet, has no idea of the concept of playing against an opponent's range (the range of hands that he is likely to play in a given situation), then I have an advantage that untimately turns into money. But if I know the concept, but have to guess what cards are in the top 25%, I'm going to be a lot less successful. Knowlege is power, and memorized knowlege is hard to beat when my opponent doesn't have it. Humans know this instinctively, that's why kids like to play the game, "I know something you don't know."
So, I have to do it. I hate it. My brain is weird. I have a 99th percentile IQ. I have ADD. And I'm very, very bad at memorization--a college psychology professor gave me a memory test, and asked if I had ever abused drugs!
The answer to that question was no. I have never consumed an alcoholic beverage. I have never taken an illegal drug. I injest very little caffiene (no coffee at all).
Where someone else might be able to memorize that top 25% string of hands in 1 or 2 minutes, or at most, 5 minutes, it could take me 30-60 minutes of painstakingly adding one hand at a time, working my way up to knowing the full list. Multiply that by learning all of the hand ranges in intervals of, say, 5%, and we're talking about a lot of hours. If I was really meticulous and memorized at 1% intervals, I don't even want to think about how long that would take--but it's free money. I feel like Tevyeh in Fiddler on the Roof--on the other hand . . .
It's money that I can win from you, because I know something you don't know. And do I really want to work on this a bit at a time, over the course of a year or more? There are lots of very helpful charts and tables I could memorize that would benefit me greatly. My brain hurts just thinking about it, but I have to do something.
I guess it's time to make some flash cards and get to work.
*"There's an app for that" has recently become a trademarked phrase.
Assuming (incorrectly) that I could learn everything there is to know about No-Limit Hold'em Tournaments, there are all kinds of poker variants out there. There are even players that specialize in what are called "mixed-game" tournaments, which involve alternating as many as eight different poker games as part of the same tournament. For example, a typical eight-game format, according to Wikipedia, is alternating orbits of: fixed limit 2-7 Triple Draw, fixed limit Texas hold 'em, fixed limit Omaha Hi-Lo, Razz, fixed limit Seven-card stud, fixed limit Seven-card stud Eight or better, no limit Texas hold 'em and pot limit Omaha.
I know little or nothing about most of those games except for NLHE, with the exception that I played about 100 hands of fixed-limit hold 'em when I was so new I didn't realize that it was a different game at first (I couldn't figure why everyone was making such small bets!)
There are many other options out there: heads-up games (where you are playing one other person, just as you would in chess or checkers), cash games, more poker variants, and variants of the variants.
And then there is game theory, which is a branch of mathematics taught at the college level. Some of the top turning pros who are mathematically inclined and well-educated (some are PhDs) use game theory in their poker playing. My knowledge and use of game theory is very limited. I've read things about game theory, and I found a Harvard game theory class online and looked at a video of two of the lectures. I don't have the math background to actually take a course.
So, there is always more to learn, but something I've neglected, and that I really need to work on, is basic memorization. I'm scared of it. I'm terrible at it. It takes me a very long time. My son would say "it sucks." But it has to be done.
Everyone who plays decently knows about odds and outs. The idea is pretty basic. If you know how many cards are out there that can improve you to a winning hand, and you compare that to the size of the bet you want to make, you can figure out mathematically if it's the right play.
But you don't really have to do any math! All you have to do is memorize a chart. If you know that with one card to come, your odds of making your hand are 4.11 to 1 against, then there has to be enough money in the pot that if you hit your card, you will win more than 4.11 times the amount that you bet. Over time, this will make you money.
There lots of other basic tables that go beyond simple odds and outs, which very few players at the lower-to-intermediate levels bother to memorize (if they even know that such information exists). In a sense, it's free money. If I know something my opponent doesn't know, over time that is a significant mathematical (and financial) advantage.
Quick example: I know (either from observation or from tracking software) that my opponent is playing about 50% of his hands. I also know that the winning strategy is to play hands that are in the top half of his range. That means that if I'm playing my top 25% against his top 50%, I will win more than half the time, over time.
That's fine as far as it goes, but what are the top 50%, or top 25%, of hands? There's an app for that.* Well, not really, but there is a chart. It's on page 381 of Heads-Up No Limit Holdem, by Collin Moshman, and it's called, "Top N Percent of Starting Hands."
I haven't memorized that chart, but I need to. What good is knowing that I need to play the top 25% of those hands, if I don't know what they are? Well, here's the list:
Ace-seven offsuit+ (offsuit means not suited, and the plus means "or better", in this case, the lower card must be 7 or higher
Ace-two suited+
K9o+
K6s+
QTo (the "T" represents a ten)
Q8s+
J8s+
T8s+
That's it, in standard poker notation. If I'm against someone playing half of his hands, that list gives me exactly the hands I can play and be profitable. I don't have to do any math at the table. I don't even have to understand how the math works. I can play any suited ace. I fold any hand where the highest card is 9 or lower. Nothing to figure out, no guesswork.
If my opponent doesn't know that, or better yet, has no idea of the concept of playing against an opponent's range (the range of hands that he is likely to play in a given situation), then I have an advantage that untimately turns into money. But if I know the concept, but have to guess what cards are in the top 25%, I'm going to be a lot less successful. Knowlege is power, and memorized knowlege is hard to beat when my opponent doesn't have it. Humans know this instinctively, that's why kids like to play the game, "I know something you don't know."
So, I have to do it. I hate it. My brain is weird. I have a 99th percentile IQ. I have ADD. And I'm very, very bad at memorization--a college psychology professor gave me a memory test, and asked if I had ever abused drugs!
The answer to that question was no. I have never consumed an alcoholic beverage. I have never taken an illegal drug. I injest very little caffiene (no coffee at all).
Where someone else might be able to memorize that top 25% string of hands in 1 or 2 minutes, or at most, 5 minutes, it could take me 30-60 minutes of painstakingly adding one hand at a time, working my way up to knowing the full list. Multiply that by learning all of the hand ranges in intervals of, say, 5%, and we're talking about a lot of hours. If I was really meticulous and memorized at 1% intervals, I don't even want to think about how long that would take--but it's free money. I feel like Tevyeh in Fiddler on the Roof--on the other hand . . .
It's money that I can win from you, because I know something you don't know. And do I really want to work on this a bit at a time, over the course of a year or more? There are lots of very helpful charts and tables I could memorize that would benefit me greatly. My brain hurts just thinking about it, but I have to do something.
I guess it's time to make some flash cards and get to work.
*"There's an app for that" has recently become a trademarked phrase.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
10/13/2020--Results for week of 10/3-10/9
I don't really have any commentary, except to say that it was a messed-up week. I wasn't at all in control of my schedule because of family issues, my sleep patterns got messed up, and it was pretty much a lost week.
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 6.00
Playing 14.00
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 22.75
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
10/3 starting bankroll $44.08
10/9 ending bankroll $35.28
--------
-$8.80
POKER HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 6.00
Playing 14.00
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 22.75
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
10/3 starting bankroll $44.08
10/9 ending bankroll $35.28
--------
-$8.80
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
10/12/2010--Another encouraging deep run
PokerStars Tournament #318978132, No Limit Hold'em
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD
1000 players
Total Prize Pool: $1000.00
USD Tournament started 2010/10/12 17:20:00 ET
Dear Poker Clif,
You finished the tournament in 32nd place. A USD 4.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 61.32 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.
After a nothing week last week, and not having blocks of time to play very many MTTs, I've played a few so far this week, including a 9-hour session on Sunday the 10th. The tournament listed above was my first really deep run in the last week or so. It took 4 hours and 23 minutes before I was knocked out.
The final table for this tournament has a 9th place prize of $12 and a 1st place prize of $126. It would probably only take 2-3 MTT final tables a week to make a nice profit, and with a little more work, and a chance to play a more MTTs, I think that 2-3 final tables is very doable. Of course, depending on the size of the cash (I played an $1 MTT a couple days ago that had had a prize pool of just over $7,000) , even one final table a month could show a very nice profit.
Buy-In: $1.00/$0.10 USD
1000 players
Total Prize Pool: $1000.00
USD Tournament started 2010/10/12 17:20:00 ET
Dear Poker Clif,
You finished the tournament in 32nd place. A USD 4.00 award has been credited to your Real Money account.You earned 61.32 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.
After a nothing week last week, and not having blocks of time to play very many MTTs, I've played a few so far this week, including a 9-hour session on Sunday the 10th. The tournament listed above was my first really deep run in the last week or so. It took 4 hours and 23 minutes before I was knocked out.
The final table for this tournament has a 9th place prize of $12 and a 1st place prize of $126. It would probably only take 2-3 MTT final tables a week to make a nice profit, and with a little more work, and a chance to play a more MTTs, I think that 2-3 final tables is very doable. Of course, depending on the size of the cash (I played an $1 MTT a couple days ago that had had a prize pool of just over $7,000) , even one final table a month could show a very nice profit.
Thursday, October 7, 2010
10/8/2010--A totally disrupted week
The family situation has really been clobbering me lately, taking some of my time 3 of the last 7 days. I haven't played any tournaments of more than 90 players in the last few days, and it's very likely that this will be the first week in a while where I haven't been able to get in 30 hours. Fortunately for all concerned, the situation is starting to resolve, and November should go much better, and affect poker much less.
I took another look at the PokerStars tournament schedule over a 24-hour period. There are 4 daily tournaments of at least 1,000 players which have a decent structure for my playing style, and there is one that stands out. That tournament starts at 0600, and I think that I need to play it as often as possible, partly because of the structure, and partly because I can start my day early, and get in at least one good (for my playing style) MTT before anything happens to take me away from poker. But long-term, it's definitely not the schedule that I want to keep, once I'm playing high enough that I have more tournament options, because:
1. I am naturally a night person. I have worked every kind of shift imaginable--day shifts and night shifts, long shifts and short shifts, and various combinations of those. But for poker, getting up at noon (which is the schedule that poker pro Daniel Negreanu uses) seemed to work well for me.
2. Poker is a nights-and-weekends profession. There are more players online at night (US eastern time), and therefore more tournaments, weaker players and bigger prize pools. Most of the online "majors", such as the PokerStars 1/4 Million (that's the size of the prize pool), in which I played once, start on Sunday afternoon and can last as long as 12 hours.
3. Live poker happens mostly at night. Where I play live poker, the weekday tournaments start at 7 P.M. On weekends there are tournaments with both mid-afternoon and evening starts. The live tournament that I won ended around midnight--not exactly compatible with a day that starts at 6 A.M.
By next week I hope to be playing the $1.10 0600 MTT almost every day, but I hope that I don't have to do it for long.
I took another look at the PokerStars tournament schedule over a 24-hour period. There are 4 daily tournaments of at least 1,000 players which have a decent structure for my playing style, and there is one that stands out. That tournament starts at 0600, and I think that I need to play it as often as possible, partly because of the structure, and partly because I can start my day early, and get in at least one good (for my playing style) MTT before anything happens to take me away from poker. But long-term, it's definitely not the schedule that I want to keep, once I'm playing high enough that I have more tournament options, because:
1. I am naturally a night person. I have worked every kind of shift imaginable--day shifts and night shifts, long shifts and short shifts, and various combinations of those. But for poker, getting up at noon (which is the schedule that poker pro Daniel Negreanu uses) seemed to work well for me.
2. Poker is a nights-and-weekends profession. There are more players online at night (US eastern time), and therefore more tournaments, weaker players and bigger prize pools. Most of the online "majors", such as the PokerStars 1/4 Million (that's the size of the prize pool), in which I played once, start on Sunday afternoon and can last as long as 12 hours.
3. Live poker happens mostly at night. Where I play live poker, the weekday tournaments start at 7 P.M. On weekends there are tournaments with both mid-afternoon and evening starts. The live tournament that I won ended around midnight--not exactly compatible with a day that starts at 6 A.M.
By next week I hope to be playing the $1.10 0600 MTT almost every day, but I hope that I don't have to do it for long.
Sunday, October 3, 2010
10/4/2010--September results
SEPTEMBER 2010 WORK HOURS: 149.75
I need to do better in October. 2,000 hours is generally considered to be a normal work year in the United States*, so dividing 2,000 hours by 12 months, I should be getting in 166.67 hours per month.
Because of the current family situation, there will most definitely be times when it's hard to get in the hours. But overall, I see no reason why I can't average 40 hours per week.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/1: $54.14
Ending bankroll, 9/30: $45.63
-----------------------
Change in bankroll: -$8.51
Less 9/20, $10 deposit to PokerStars account
----------------------
-$18.51
Not good, but considering that at one point I was down more than $40 for the month, I'll take it. I'm not having any problem making enough in 1-3 table tournaments to keep playing the MTTs until I get a big cash.
The main thing that I have to keep in mind is that I can't let my bankroll drop significantly, for any reason, including withdrawls. Until I'm at $104 or so and can play $2 tournaments, I have very little room to navigate. I want to use at least 50% of what I win to keep building my bankroll, and since I have to escrow 30% of my winnings for estimated tax payments, that doesn't give me much wiggle room.
The point at which I can make a significant contribution to the family income while playing MTTs is probably somewhere between $5.50 and $11 tournaments, which would require bankrolls of $308 and $671 respectively. So the sooner I can build my bankroll, the better.
*Assuming that the average worker takes two weeks of vacation a year:
(50 work weeks) X (40 hours per week) = 2,000-hour work year.
I need to do better in October. 2,000 hours is generally considered to be a normal work year in the United States*, so dividing 2,000 hours by 12 months, I should be getting in 166.67 hours per month.
Because of the current family situation, there will most definitely be times when it's hard to get in the hours. But overall, I see no reason why I can't average 40 hours per week.
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Starting bankroll, 9/1: $54.14
Ending bankroll, 9/30: $45.63
-----------------------
Change in bankroll: -$8.51
Less 9/20, $10 deposit to PokerStars account
----------------------
-$18.51
Not good, but considering that at one point I was down more than $40 for the month, I'll take it. I'm not having any problem making enough in 1-3 table tournaments to keep playing the MTTs until I get a big cash.
The main thing that I have to keep in mind is that I can't let my bankroll drop significantly, for any reason, including withdrawls. Until I'm at $104 or so and can play $2 tournaments, I have very little room to navigate. I want to use at least 50% of what I win to keep building my bankroll, and since I have to escrow 30% of my winnings for estimated tax payments, that doesn't give me much wiggle room.
The point at which I can make a significant contribution to the family income while playing MTTs is probably somewhere between $5.50 and $11 tournaments, which would require bankrolls of $308 and $671 respectively. So the sooner I can build my bankroll, the better.
*Assuming that the average worker takes two weeks of vacation a year:
(50 work weeks) X (40 hours per week) = 2,000-hour work year.
10/4/2010--Results for week of 9/26-10/2
HOURS
Administrative 2.50
Study 2.25
Playing 27.50
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.25
Once again I wind up at around 35 hours per week. Whether I play long or short sessions, whether I take a day off or work all 7 days, I always seem to wind up somewhere around that number. I've decided to start posting to my Poker Hours spreadsheet more often, so that I will be keeping closer track of my hours and know when I'm goofing off.
I thought about just trying to block out an 8-hour work day, so that I would be doing something poker related from, say 0600-1430, with a half-hour break for lunch. But that's not really practical, as an MTT can last 6 hours or longer.
Obviously, if I'm in the money deep into a tournament, I'm going to finish, however long it takes. Likewise, if I bust out of a tournament (or tournaments, if I'm playing more than one) when my wife is about to come home from work, it makes sense to stop, let her do what she needs to do on the computer, and start another session later if nothing else is going on that day.
There is one situation where setting aside a block of time might make sense. I have a few big study projects out there that I want to tackle. For example, Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments, Volume III: The Workbook, is a 187-question test covering the material in Volumes 1 and 2 of the Harrington on Hold 'em series.
I have read and studied the first two volumes, and I started to go through Volume 3. The answers are at the back of the book, and they consist of short essays on how to evaluate and play the different poker hands. I wanted to answer each question with a paragraph or two, so that I could not only check my answer, but compare my reasoning with Harrington's. The problem was that I worked at it little by little, 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there. By the time I was about 1/3 of the way through, my thought process and playing style had changed so much that my early answers didn't mean anything.
So, I need to restart Volume 3 at the beginning. With a long study project like this, it might make more sense to just block out several hours, or even a whole day, so that I could get the test done in a reasonably short time.
Administrative 2.50
Study 2.25
Playing 27.50
-------------
TOTAL HOURS 32.25
Once again I wind up at around 35 hours per week. Whether I play long or short sessions, whether I take a day off or work all 7 days, I always seem to wind up somewhere around that number. I've decided to start posting to my Poker Hours spreadsheet more often, so that I will be keeping closer track of my hours and know when I'm goofing off.
I thought about just trying to block out an 8-hour work day, so that I would be doing something poker related from, say 0600-1430, with a half-hour break for lunch. But that's not really practical, as an MTT can last 6 hours or longer.
Obviously, if I'm in the money deep into a tournament, I'm going to finish, however long it takes. Likewise, if I bust out of a tournament (or tournaments, if I'm playing more than one) when my wife is about to come home from work, it makes sense to stop, let her do what she needs to do on the computer, and start another session later if nothing else is going on that day.
There is one situation where setting aside a block of time might make sense. I have a few big study projects out there that I want to tackle. For example, Harrington on Hold 'em: Expert Strategy for No-Limit Tournaments, Volume III: The Workbook, is a 187-question test covering the material in Volumes 1 and 2 of the Harrington on Hold 'em series.
I have read and studied the first two volumes, and I started to go through Volume 3. The answers are at the back of the book, and they consist of short essays on how to evaluate and play the different poker hands. I wanted to answer each question with a paragraph or two, so that I could not only check my answer, but compare my reasoning with Harrington's. The problem was that I worked at it little by little, 15 minutes here and 30 minutes there. By the time I was about 1/3 of the way through, my thought process and playing style had changed so much that my early answers didn't mean anything.
So, I need to restart Volume 3 at the beginning. With a long study project like this, it might make more sense to just block out several hours, or even a whole day, so that I could get the test done in a reasonably short time.
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