This isn't as simple as you might think. We just don't sit down at the table, real or virtual, and start playing. It's more complicated than that.
Think of it this way. How do you go to college? First, you have to pick a major, or at least, what you're interested in. But what class or classes do you take, and on what basis do you choose? When it meets? Who the professor is? Whether it's a day or night class?
And what about a class that's not in a classroom? Colleges have classroom settings, online courses, correspondence courses, or even classes that are a combination of one or more of these.
You get the idea.
Poker is the same. There are lots of options. Do you want to play cash games, where you buy chips and play until you're broke, the table breaks, or you quit?. Or do you want to play tournaments, where the strategic elements are different, the tournament goes until someone wins, and the top 10% or so of finishers divide the prize pool?
Say you pick tournaments. Do you want to play against a few people, hundreds, or thousands? Live or online? Do you want a fast structure, or a slow one? Do you want to play No Limit Hold 'em, or one of the many other poker variants (Limit Hold 'em, Pot Limit Ohama, Razz, Stud, Draw Poker, and others)? There are even mixed games, where the game being played changes with every new orbit of the table.
There are also variants of the variants. No Limit Hold 'em (NLHE) can be played with a double or nothing prize structure where at a table of 10 players, the first 5 who are knocked out get nothing, play stops, and the remaining 5 each get roughly twice their buy-in.
NLHE satellites are also popular. Winning a satellite is a popular way to win a spot in an expensive tournament. In satellites, the top X% of players get a spot in the bigger tournaments.There are even satellites to satellites, where a player might win a satellite to a bigger satellite, keep moving up to bigger satellites, and win a free spot to a $10,000 buy-in tournament at the World Series of Poker with a relatively small investment. Accountant Chris Moneymaker won over a million dollars at the World Series of Poker Main event, which was a $10,000 buy-in tournament. It cost him $200.
There is one more thing that poker players have to consider. You can actually win money by the act of playing itself. Like brick-and-mortar casinos, most online poker sites have VIP reward systems. If you play a lot, there are a lot of different ways to profit. On americascardroom.com, I am playing for VIP bonuses that I can exchange for cash, free tournament entries, or merchandise. I am also playing for an initial deposit bonus, which means that after a certain amount of play, the amount of my initial $50 rental deposit is given back to me in increments, $1 at a time (my next tournament will be worth an extra $1), as I put in a certain amount of play at a certain level.
Some players play so much that they find it more profitable to play a lot than to worry about how much they win at the tables. There is a German player who has played 100 tables at a time! This was documented by a member of the PokerStars staff who went to his house and watched him play. He barely broke even at the tables, but he got some big bonuses for his VIP level. An Italian player was the first to win a Porsche, in addition to what he actually won at the tables, for his PokerStars VIP play.
So it's not as simple as just sitting down to play. I specialize in certain types of tournaments, and I usually know what I'm looking for. Even so, when I play online I check the tournament line-up every time I sit down, to see whether there is anything new.
Friday, March 30, 2012
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
I have FPS
I have FPS, and I diagnosed it myself.. Yes, even though I know better, I have become a victim of every poker's enemy, Fancy Play Syndrome.
I am always working on things, studying, and trying new things at the table. One of the weaknesses of my game is that I don't play a lot of hands in multitable tournaments. The problem with that is that a solid pro, for example, would notice that I'm only playing TT+, AKs AQo+ from early position, and the pro would just fold everything except the top half of my range, only playing with something like QQ+, AKs. Not only do I need to play more hands, but I need to be less predictable.
So, I've been working on that, for example calling with more hands that play well in multiway pots, and bluffing from early position with suited connectors as a randomized semibluff.
There is nothing wrong with that except that for the last few days I haven't been playing MTTs, I've been playing 1-table SNGs. SNGs reward tight play, so much so that in a micro SNG against overagressive players, you can play very few hands and cash--and I know that. I've cashed in SNGs when I've folded more than 30 hands in a row! (Not an optimal strategy, but it works at some tables.)
So I've been outsmarting myself, thinking about playing more hands and about randomly semibluffing, when most or all of the player at my table wouldn't know the difference anyway, plus it's exactly the wrong strategy for SNGs. I can't believe that I fell victim to FPS, but I'm glad that I finally figured it out.
I am always working on things, studying, and trying new things at the table. One of the weaknesses of my game is that I don't play a lot of hands in multitable tournaments. The problem with that is that a solid pro, for example, would notice that I'm only playing TT+, AKs AQo+ from early position, and the pro would just fold everything except the top half of my range, only playing with something like QQ+, AKs. Not only do I need to play more hands, but I need to be less predictable.
So, I've been working on that, for example calling with more hands that play well in multiway pots, and bluffing from early position with suited connectors as a randomized semibluff.
There is nothing wrong with that except that for the last few days I haven't been playing MTTs, I've been playing 1-table SNGs. SNGs reward tight play, so much so that in a micro SNG against overagressive players, you can play very few hands and cash--and I know that. I've cashed in SNGs when I've folded more than 30 hands in a row! (Not an optimal strategy, but it works at some tables.)
So I've been outsmarting myself, thinking about playing more hands and about randomly semibluffing, when most or all of the player at my table wouldn't know the difference anyway, plus it's exactly the wrong strategy for SNGs. I can't believe that I fell victim to FPS, but I'm glad that I finally figured it out.
Monday, March 26, 2012
I went to church
I went to church yesterday. I managed to get 5 hours of sleep (from 3-8 A.M) and made it to church, able to comprehend what was going on. Since then I got a bunch of sleep, probably about 12 hours out of the last 24, and I feel great! I guess you don't really know how sleep-deprived you were, until you aren't, and feel much better.
Now I'm ready to go, and I'm typing this while I'm waiting for a SNG to fill up. Next Sunday I won't be going to church. My wife has to work one Sunday a month, and when that happens, I usually stay home and work as well. So I don't really have to adjust my schedule for anything or anything this week. I can play when I want and sleep when I want, and it should be a much more productive week.
Now I'm ready to go, and I'm typing this while I'm waiting for a SNG to fill up. Next Sunday I won't be going to church. My wife has to work one Sunday a month, and when that happens, I usually stay home and work as well. So I don't really have to adjust my schedule for anything or anything this week. I can play when I want and sleep when I want, and it should be a much more productive week.
Saturday, March 24, 2012
Results for week March 18-24
Net from poker tournaments for the week, -$9.93
Net for the month, +$8.49
An old problem is back, and post Black Friday, it's a bigger problem that it was before That problem is Saturday night poker vs. Sunday morning church.
Saturday night is the most active time for both live and online poker. And in the new environment where online options are limited, players are few and tournament fields are small, it's almost mandatory that I play Saturday night. In fact, since California is a hotbed of poker which contains 15% of the U.S. population, I need to be playing when it's Saturday night in California, which is early Sunday morning in my time zone.
Last Sunday I played late Saturday night and into Sunday morning. I didn't want to miss church this week (later today), so I've been shorting myself on sleep, trying to force myself onto a daytime schedule so that I can go to church and actually learn something from the sermon. But the result of that was that I've played a grand total of two poker tournaments in the last four days. It's after 2 A.M. Sunday, I'm typing this, and it will probably be at least another hour before I can get to sleep.
Of course, I could have played poker. I'm typing this and doing other administrative tasks, after all.. But as I've said before, poker isn't like most jobs, where you can show up tired and still work. Well, you can, but if I do that with poker not only will I not get paid, I"ll probably lose money. Poker is supposed to be my full-time job, and I got in only 15.5 hours this week. Pathetic.
So, I didn't do well the first two days of the week, then I just shut it down and cut back on my sleep to force myself onto that Sunday schedule. It didn't work.. I'm a natural night owl, and I need to play pokwer. I also need to go to church.
\
Life was a lot simpler when there were church services both Sunday morning and Sunday night.
Net for the month, +$8.49
An old problem is back, and post Black Friday, it's a bigger problem that it was before That problem is Saturday night poker vs. Sunday morning church.
Saturday night is the most active time for both live and online poker. And in the new environment where online options are limited, players are few and tournament fields are small, it's almost mandatory that I play Saturday night. In fact, since California is a hotbed of poker which contains 15% of the U.S. population, I need to be playing when it's Saturday night in California, which is early Sunday morning in my time zone.
Last Sunday I played late Saturday night and into Sunday morning. I didn't want to miss church this week (later today), so I've been shorting myself on sleep, trying to force myself onto a daytime schedule so that I can go to church and actually learn something from the sermon. But the result of that was that I've played a grand total of two poker tournaments in the last four days. It's after 2 A.M. Sunday, I'm typing this, and it will probably be at least another hour before I can get to sleep.
Of course, I could have played poker. I'm typing this and doing other administrative tasks, after all.. But as I've said before, poker isn't like most jobs, where you can show up tired and still work. Well, you can, but if I do that with poker not only will I not get paid, I"ll probably lose money. Poker is supposed to be my full-time job, and I got in only 15.5 hours this week. Pathetic.
So, I didn't do well the first two days of the week, then I just shut it down and cut back on my sleep to force myself onto that Sunday schedule. It didn't work.. I'm a natural night owl, and I need to play pokwer. I also need to go to church.
\
Life was a lot simpler when there were church services both Sunday morning and Sunday night.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
I may never be a great live player
I don't think that I will ever play as well live as I do online, mainly because of my learning style and (dis)abilities.
If I read a post in the Poker Theory section of the twoplustwo.com poker forums, I get it right away. It doesn't matter that the person posting has a Ph.D. in math and plays poker at higher levels than I will ever see. I understand comcepts, theory, and big-picture issues quickly and easily, whether it's poker, foreign policy, economics, or anything else. My brain works like that.
However, I am very slow to memorize or nail down small details. When I took a collge Spanish course, I understood the rules and flow of Spanish grammar so easily, and spoke the languange so well, that my classmates assumed I was getting an "A" in the course. What my classmates didn't know was that I was having trouble with tests because I couldn't memorize the vocabularly as fast as it came as me.
I would get a B or C on a test because I couldn't name all of the things "alrededor la casa" (around the house). I couldn't remember the Spanish words for things like wall, ceiling, or couch, then we were on to another topic, like supermarket words, and I could never quite keep up. My brain works like that.
So, in my bit-by-bit plodding learning style, working on one piece of live tournament mechanics at a time, it would probably take me 2,000 hands to get comfortable with keeping track of the pot size, and able to think about something else at the same time. Then it would take another 2,000 hands to watch for live tells (memorizing the tells from Caro's Book of Poker Tells) while learning how to watch and read 1 or 2 players, then more--you get the idea.
I would guess that at the local charity rooms where I play I see about one tournament hand a minute, which is about 50 hands an hour given that there are 10-minute breaks between levels. Online, I can play a lot more hands, and I can try things and learn things much more quickly.
Online is roughly 2 hands per minute, but since a lot of my play is STTs , I"m often playing at short tables, in fact, in my last STT I was heads-up for about 20 minutes. So an estimate of 3 hands per minute isn't out of line.
In other words, I play 3 times as many hands per hour online versus live. But that's not all. I can theoretically go to a local live tournament 5 nights a week, but I go much less often than that for several reasons, including the bad structures of some of those tournaments. Plus, online STTs are available any time, 24/7. Since I can play online whenever I want* the maximum number of hands I play online vs. live is probablysomewhere between 5:1 and 10:1--and that's without multitabling online.
Given all that, plus the fact that I have almost no memory of previous hands (and can't use Holdem Manager at a live table), I will probably never progress any further than being one of the better local players in my city, which, given the small sample size of my live play, might not even make me a winning player.
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*Theoretically I can play online whenever I want, but since Black Friday there aren't any sites with good traffic. On the site where I play, at offpeak hours I might open an STT and wait 30 minutes for it to fill up. When that happens, I study or do admin work while I wait for the STT to start.
If I read a post in the Poker Theory section of the twoplustwo.com poker forums, I get it right away. It doesn't matter that the person posting has a Ph.D. in math and plays poker at higher levels than I will ever see. I understand comcepts, theory, and big-picture issues quickly and easily, whether it's poker, foreign policy, economics, or anything else. My brain works like that.
However, I am very slow to memorize or nail down small details. When I took a collge Spanish course, I understood the rules and flow of Spanish grammar so easily, and spoke the languange so well, that my classmates assumed I was getting an "A" in the course. What my classmates didn't know was that I was having trouble with tests because I couldn't memorize the vocabularly as fast as it came as me.
I would get a B or C on a test because I couldn't name all of the things "alrededor la casa" (around the house). I couldn't remember the Spanish words for things like wall, ceiling, or couch, then we were on to another topic, like supermarket words, and I could never quite keep up. My brain works like that.
So, in my bit-by-bit plodding learning style, working on one piece of live tournament mechanics at a time, it would probably take me 2,000 hands to get comfortable with keeping track of the pot size, and able to think about something else at the same time. Then it would take another 2,000 hands to watch for live tells (memorizing the tells from Caro's Book of Poker Tells) while learning how to watch and read 1 or 2 players, then more--you get the idea.
I would guess that at the local charity rooms where I play I see about one tournament hand a minute, which is about 50 hands an hour given that there are 10-minute breaks between levels. Online, I can play a lot more hands, and I can try things and learn things much more quickly.
Online is roughly 2 hands per minute, but since a lot of my play is STTs , I"m often playing at short tables, in fact, in my last STT I was heads-up for about 20 minutes. So an estimate of 3 hands per minute isn't out of line.
In other words, I play 3 times as many hands per hour online versus live. But that's not all. I can theoretically go to a local live tournament 5 nights a week, but I go much less often than that for several reasons, including the bad structures of some of those tournaments. Plus, online STTs are available any time, 24/7. Since I can play online whenever I want* the maximum number of hands I play online vs. live is probablysomewhere between 5:1 and 10:1--and that's without multitabling online.
Given all that, plus the fact that I have almost no memory of previous hands (and can't use Holdem Manager at a live table), I will probably never progress any further than being one of the better local players in my city, which, given the small sample size of my live play, might not even make me a winning player.
------------------------------
*Theoretically I can play online whenever I want, but since Black Friday there aren't any sites with good traffic. On the site where I play, at offpeak hours I might open an STT and wait 30 minutes for it to fill up. When that happens, I study or do admin work while I wait for the STT to start.
Monday, March 19, 2012
I told some people today that poker is going well
I told some people today that poker is going well. Many of them will probably look at my blog, see that last week I made about $20, and think that I've lost my mind.
It's been hard starting over. When I was killing the $10 sit-'n-goes on PokerStars (14% ROI) and doing well at the multitable tournaments as well (7th of 3,200 in a $3.30, for a cash of $384) I was wondering how long it would take until I was bankrolled to play even higher. But after Black Friday (April 15, 2011, when the three biggest poker sites, including PokerStars, were shut down), I was really floundering, trying to keep interested in studying when there weren't many good online options, and even wondering if I should try to get a "real job".
Add to that that I live over 100 miles from the nearest casino (most of which don't run many tournaments anyway), and that the local charity rooms only have tournaments a few nights a week, and I was kind of lost.
Now, finally, some semidecent online options are available. I started with a $50 deposit, playing $1 and $2 sit'n-goes (one-table tournaments) on americascardroom.com on February 1. On March 1 my poker bankroll was over $100, and if all goes well it will be somewhere between $150 and $200 on April 1. At that point.I'll have enough of a bankroll to start playing both higher (more money) and larger (more players) tournaments on a regular basis.
I'm not sure how long it will take me to be bankrolled for $10 tournaments again. But the difference now is that I'll probably blow right through that level and keep going. I'm a much better player, mostly because of the time I've spent studying. I've increased my study goal from 10% of my poker time to 25%. My time is much more structured. and I spent a lot of time with flash cards, memorizing some of the math that I need to know to be able to make quick decisions at the table. (If you are at a table with 4 other players and you don't know how likely it is that if you have an ace, it's the only ace at the table, you're at a big disadvantage against players who know those things.)
Now things are going well. All I have to do is do the work and stay focused, and the rest will fall into place.
It's been hard starting over. When I was killing the $10 sit-'n-goes on PokerStars (14% ROI) and doing well at the multitable tournaments as well (7th of 3,200 in a $3.30, for a cash of $384) I was wondering how long it would take until I was bankrolled to play even higher. But after Black Friday (April 15, 2011, when the three biggest poker sites, including PokerStars, were shut down), I was really floundering, trying to keep interested in studying when there weren't many good online options, and even wondering if I should try to get a "real job".
Add to that that I live over 100 miles from the nearest casino (most of which don't run many tournaments anyway), and that the local charity rooms only have tournaments a few nights a week, and I was kind of lost.
Now, finally, some semidecent online options are available. I started with a $50 deposit, playing $1 and $2 sit'n-goes (one-table tournaments) on americascardroom.com on February 1. On March 1 my poker bankroll was over $100, and if all goes well it will be somewhere between $150 and $200 on April 1. At that point.I'll have enough of a bankroll to start playing both higher (more money) and larger (more players) tournaments on a regular basis.
I'm not sure how long it will take me to be bankrolled for $10 tournaments again. But the difference now is that I'll probably blow right through that level and keep going. I'm a much better player, mostly because of the time I've spent studying. I've increased my study goal from 10% of my poker time to 25%. My time is much more structured. and I spent a lot of time with flash cards, memorizing some of the math that I need to know to be able to make quick decisions at the table. (If you are at a table with 4 other players and you don't know how likely it is that if you have an ace, it's the only ace at the table, you're at a big disadvantage against players who know those things.)
Now things are going well. All I have to do is do the work and stay focused, and the rest will fall into place.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Results for week of 3/11-3/18
As is often true of poker, it has been a roller coaster ride. The week before I was down, barely, at -74¢. Last week, I went on a big winning streak. At one point I was up more than $50 for the week, and I had tripled my bankroll in less than 1 1/2 months. But I came back to earth. The last three days of the week were pretty rough, but it was still a decent week.
$18.16 profit from poker tournaments
1.00 bonus
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$19.16 total profit for the week
The bankroll is still growing, from a $50.05 deposit on 2/1 to the current amount, $138.50. If I get my bankroll over $150 by the end of the month (and keep it there), I will have tripled it in 2 months, and that would be a very good start.
$18.16 profit from poker tournaments
1.00 bonus
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$19.16 total profit for the week
The bankroll is still growing, from a $50.05 deposit on 2/1 to the current amount, $138.50. If I get my bankroll over $150 by the end of the month (and keep it there), I will have tripled it in 2 months, and that would be a very good start.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
Results, Week of 3/4-3-/10
Until I started this post, I wasn't aware that it had been a week since my last post. I'm trying to put one out almost every day. One more thing about which I have to be more disciplined.
It was a breakeven week across the board. A few dollars down in MTTs, a few dollars up in SNGs. To give this blog a little variety, I'm gonig to from time to time break my results down a little. Some numbers for the week:
I played 23 tournaments. Most were 1-table (9-player) SNGs where the top 3 players cash. The rest were MTTs with between 108 and 116 players. For that tournament size, places 10-12 get the minimum cash, then the prizes increase for every place starting with 9th.
SNGs +6.72
MTTs -3.49
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$3.23 Weekly profit
My study is going well. I'm doing more memory work with the flash cards, which is definitely a chore for me. And using the numbers is becoming more automatic. More than ever before, I'm integrating more variables into my decisions, for example:
How good is my hand?
What is the likely range of my opponent's hands?
Am I getting the pot odds to play on this street?
If so, but I don't help my hand, will I have the odds on the next street?
Knowing that those things are important, and it becoming automatic to think about them, are two different things, On my current site I have 10 seconds to make a betting decision, and that can only happen if those flash cards are committed to memory. If I have to think about things like what kind of pot odds I need to continue when there are 7 cards that will help my hand, or how my hand does against a random hand, I won't have time to make the right decision. I have to know the numbers so that I can make good decisions.
It was a breakeven week across the board. A few dollars down in MTTs, a few dollars up in SNGs. To give this blog a little variety, I'm gonig to from time to time break my results down a little. Some numbers for the week:
I played 23 tournaments. Most were 1-table (9-player) SNGs where the top 3 players cash. The rest were MTTs with between 108 and 116 players. For that tournament size, places 10-12 get the minimum cash, then the prizes increase for every place starting with 9th.
SNGs +6.72
MTTs -3.49
--------------
$3.23 Weekly profit
My study is going well. I'm doing more memory work with the flash cards, which is definitely a chore for me. And using the numbers is becoming more automatic. More than ever before, I'm integrating more variables into my decisions, for example:
How good is my hand?
What is the likely range of my opponent's hands?
Am I getting the pot odds to play on this street?
If so, but I don't help my hand, will I have the odds on the next street?
Knowing that those things are important, and it becoming automatic to think about them, are two different things, On my current site I have 10 seconds to make a betting decision, and that can only happen if those flash cards are committed to memory. If I have to think about things like what kind of pot odds I need to continue when there are 7 cards that will help my hand, or how my hand does against a random hand, I won't have time to make the right decision. I have to know the numbers so that I can make good decisions.
Wednesday, March 7, 2012
Results for Week 2/26 to 3/3--Profit and Loss.
Most of this has been accounted for in my February results.
45.67 profit or loss from online tournaments
1.00 deposit bonus cleared
. 59 rakeback
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$46.26 Total weekly profit
I'll talk about rakeback and bonus in a future thread. The gist of it is that poker sites, like brick and mortar casinos, reward their regular players. You could compare it to a VIP club, or frequent flyer miles.
If every week could be like that one, I would be all set. Most of my profit for February comes from the first part of that week. But that's not how poker works. My first three weeks in February were all breakeven or slight losers. That's the life of a tournament player, and as I grow my bankroll and get more choice of what tournaments to play, I'll be playing a more against large fields, where the cashes are larger but happen less often.
My goal every year is to never have a losing month. Given what I said above, that might sound a little strange. But if I get enough volume in, over the month variance will even out at least a little bit, and I have a shot at making money every month.
45.67 profit or loss from online tournaments
1.00 deposit bonus cleared
. 59 rakeback
--------
$46.26 Total weekly profit
I'll talk about rakeback and bonus in a future thread. The gist of it is that poker sites, like brick and mortar casinos, reward their regular players. You could compare it to a VIP club, or frequent flyer miles.
If every week could be like that one, I would be all set. Most of my profit for February comes from the first part of that week. But that's not how poker works. My first three weeks in February were all breakeven or slight losers. That's the life of a tournament player, and as I grow my bankroll and get more choice of what tournaments to play, I'll be playing a more against large fields, where the cashes are larger but happen less often.
My goal every year is to never have a losing month. Given what I said above, that might sound a little strange. But if I get enough volume in, over the month variance will even out at least a little bit, and I have a shot at making money every month.
Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Results for week of 2/26 to 3/3--Work Hours
POKER HOURS
Administrative 6.25
Study 8.50
Play 20.00
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34.75
That's the most time that I've put in in one week so far this year, so I'm pretty happy with it.
I'm slowly but surely arranging things so that I can get my hours in. My goals haven't changed--30 hours a week playing, 10 hours for study, and whatever time I need for administative tasks, for a minimum of 40 hours every week.
I've occasionally been doing other things besides poker on the side, so that I can put a little money into the business (mostly for office supplies) without touching my bankroll But that's over now. My wife's been bugging me to concentrate on poker so that it can really take off. I'm finally taking her advice, and I'm excited about that.
As the saying goes, poker is a volume game, meaning that to make money, and more specifically, to make the "long run" come sooner so that variance evens out, you have to put in the time. Poker isn't the lottery. When you buy a ticket you wait for your ship to come in, even though you're more likely to die during a one-mile drive than you are to win the lottery. Poker is a job, and like most jobs, those who do the hard work are the ones most likely to be rewarded, which goes back to one of my favorite sayings:
"I know a lot of millionaries. I don't know anyone who got rich working 40 hours a week."--Dave Ramsey.
I've put in more adminstrative hours than I expected, but that's because I've complety overhauled my recordkeeping, based around what I call my Comprehensive Poker Spreadsheet (PCS). On this worksheet I can see all of my results by the week, month or year, all the way down to every individual online or live tournament.
The CPS also includes sections for live tournaments, other poker income (such as bonus and rakeback), as well as tracking my business expenses, online bankroll, and live bankroll. Many of those sections feed into other sections, while some parts of the worksheet stand alone, so the design was complicated. I'm still tweaking it, but it's close to doing what I want it to do. And should they inquire, the IRS will love my recorkeeping. They deal with bad recordkeeping all the time. I know of one farmer who threw all his receipts for corn sales during the year in a big paper bag. When I was working for my uncle's accounting firm, I was the one that totaled all of those receipts.
I have one interesting problem with managing my time. I work best when I work on one thing at a time. For example, playing tournaments for a few hours, then studying for at least an hour, or solving an administrative problem with my CPS. But that's not possible for now.
Americas Cardroom is growing quickly. Just a month ago, the number of players online in the evening topped out at around 3,000 players, now it's over 8,000--but that's still only one or two large MTTs on PokerStars! There still aren't a lot of good game choices in the off-peak hours, so I often wind up doing something like studying flash cards or doing admin work for 20 minutes while I wait for a tournament to start.
My apreadsheet work is complicated, and I like to spend the time to think about a problems and immerse myself in it, so that I can juggle all thing things I'm trying to do, and make it work. But when I'm waiting for a tournament to fill up I don't want to get involved in any non-poker activiites, because it would be too easy to get distraced. So, I stay in the office and study, do administrative work, or try to find something else useful that I can do in short periods of time.
I wind up studying for 10 minutes, playing a SNG or a longer tournament, then 15 minutes of administrative work, then back to another tournament. That's not how I work best, but for now, it's the best that I can do.
There is a solution--playing across multiple sites, specifically, by adding a Euro-facing site (mostly European players, and possibly denominated in Euros) and play tournaments that run during American off-peak hours. Those Americans players that haven't left the country are doing that. But I'm not going to do that until I win enough on Americas Cardroom to allow me to move some of that money to a Euro site without drawing down my ACR bankroll too much.
There is usually a fee charged for each withdrawl from a poker site, for example, a withdrawl from Americans Cardroom onto a debit card carries a $3 fee, so obviously it would be best to make just one withdrawl to get money to put on a Euro site. And in general, withdrawing from a site no more than once a month is the way to go.
Administrative 6.25
Study 8.50
Play 20.00
--------
34.75
That's the most time that I've put in in one week so far this year, so I'm pretty happy with it.
I'm slowly but surely arranging things so that I can get my hours in. My goals haven't changed--30 hours a week playing, 10 hours for study, and whatever time I need for administative tasks, for a minimum of 40 hours every week.
I've occasionally been doing other things besides poker on the side, so that I can put a little money into the business (mostly for office supplies) without touching my bankroll But that's over now. My wife's been bugging me to concentrate on poker so that it can really take off. I'm finally taking her advice, and I'm excited about that.
As the saying goes, poker is a volume game, meaning that to make money, and more specifically, to make the "long run" come sooner so that variance evens out, you have to put in the time. Poker isn't the lottery. When you buy a ticket you wait for your ship to come in, even though you're more likely to die during a one-mile drive than you are to win the lottery. Poker is a job, and like most jobs, those who do the hard work are the ones most likely to be rewarded, which goes back to one of my favorite sayings:
"I know a lot of millionaries. I don't know anyone who got rich working 40 hours a week."--Dave Ramsey.
I've put in more adminstrative hours than I expected, but that's because I've complety overhauled my recordkeeping, based around what I call my Comprehensive Poker Spreadsheet (PCS). On this worksheet I can see all of my results by the week, month or year, all the way down to every individual online or live tournament.
The CPS also includes sections for live tournaments, other poker income (such as bonus and rakeback), as well as tracking my business expenses, online bankroll, and live bankroll. Many of those sections feed into other sections, while some parts of the worksheet stand alone, so the design was complicated. I'm still tweaking it, but it's close to doing what I want it to do. And should they inquire, the IRS will love my recorkeeping. They deal with bad recordkeeping all the time. I know of one farmer who threw all his receipts for corn sales during the year in a big paper bag. When I was working for my uncle's accounting firm, I was the one that totaled all of those receipts.
I have one interesting problem with managing my time. I work best when I work on one thing at a time. For example, playing tournaments for a few hours, then studying for at least an hour, or solving an administrative problem with my CPS. But that's not possible for now.
Americas Cardroom is growing quickly. Just a month ago, the number of players online in the evening topped out at around 3,000 players, now it's over 8,000--but that's still only one or two large MTTs on PokerStars! There still aren't a lot of good game choices in the off-peak hours, so I often wind up doing something like studying flash cards or doing admin work for 20 minutes while I wait for a tournament to start.
My apreadsheet work is complicated, and I like to spend the time to think about a problems and immerse myself in it, so that I can juggle all thing things I'm trying to do, and make it work. But when I'm waiting for a tournament to fill up I don't want to get involved in any non-poker activiites, because it would be too easy to get distraced. So, I stay in the office and study, do administrative work, or try to find something else useful that I can do in short periods of time.
I wind up studying for 10 minutes, playing a SNG or a longer tournament, then 15 minutes of administrative work, then back to another tournament. That's not how I work best, but for now, it's the best that I can do.
There is a solution--playing across multiple sites, specifically, by adding a Euro-facing site (mostly European players, and possibly denominated in Euros) and play tournaments that run during American off-peak hours. Those Americans players that haven't left the country are doing that. But I'm not going to do that until I win enough on Americas Cardroom to allow me to move some of that money to a Euro site without drawing down my ACR bankroll too much.
There is usually a fee charged for each withdrawl from a poker site, for example, a withdrawl from Americans Cardroom onto a debit card carries a $3 fee, so obviously it would be best to make just one withdrawl to get money to put on a Euro site. And in general, withdrawing from a site no more than once a month is the way to go.
Saturday, March 3, 2012
It's all about the bankroll
As mentioned in my previous post, I'm not playing poker to make money so that I can spend it, at least not yet. Without a poker bankroll, I can't do anything, just as someone who has to drive to work every day can't do it without gasoline. That should be intuitively obvious. After all, if I win $500 playing poker, then take it all out and spend it, what am I going to do? The answer is start over,playing more $1 or $2 tournaments--or quit.
If I keep most of that money in my bankroll, it's an investment. Not an investment like a savings account or mutual fund, where I can get interest and make more money. In my case, as my bankroll grows, I can play higher stakes, and make more money.
Many of the poker pros who play in $10,000 (or higher) televised tournaments don't do this. They actually borrow money so that they can play. There are various ways that players do this, and it goes by various names, for example, "getting staked" or "selling pieces" of yourself. In the poker world, many players buy pieces of other poker players, usually without a written agreement.
Ocassionaly a player will wind up selling more than 100% of himself, and there is a minor scandal in the poker community until everyone is paid what they are owed. Of course, if someone operated this way in just about any other business (professional poker players, under US tax law, are self-employed business owners) there would be investigations, lawsuits ,arrests, and generally all kinds of legal mayhem.
I've been thinking about this post for a few days, and I just found out today that a few weeks ago, Gavin Smith, a Canadian professional poker player, said that he is broke. At one time Smith was the World Poker Tour Player of the Year, and his total winnings, as estimated by the twoplustwo.com Pokercast, are about $5 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Smith_(poker_player)
http://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/pokercast.php?pokercast=200
To his credit, Smith is not going to borrow money to keep playing. He could easily do that, as he has a lot of friends in the close-knit community of touring poker pros. Instead, he's planning his comeback the right way. He's getting on the casino waiting lists for the very low-level cash games, and he plans to work his way back to the top.
I'm going to do it the right way. The right way is the mathematically sound way, to make your statistical risk of ruin as low as possible, usually 2% or less. In practical terms, this means investing less than two percent of your bankroll in any one poker tournament, or to put it another way, a tournamnents should not cost more than 2% of a player's bankroll. That's why 50 buy-ins are considered the mimimum bankroll for SNGs.
For larger tournaments, with field sizes in the hundreds or thousands, there is a lot more statistical variiance (cashes will be much larger, but happen much less often), so that 100 or more MTT buy-ins are necessary to play safely as a pro.
The main reason that I'm still messing around with $1 tournaments in 2012 is that I didn't practice proper bankroll managemen. That's terribly ironic, and humiliating, because in the 2+2 Beginers Forum, I tell playes over and over that correct bankroll management is the most important thing that that a poker player can do to give himself a chance at success.
I was pretty good about sticking with a level that I could afford. But I treated my bankroll as cash for emergencies. It may have seemed necessary at the time, but it's no different that if we stopped buying gasoline, even though my wife has to drive to work every day. I told myself that I was taking poker seriously, but obviously I wasn't, and I'll never make that mistake again.
I know what I have to do. My wife undertands the importance of my bankroll, and she's with me on this. 2012 is going to be the year when I finally start turning poker into a real income.
If I keep most of that money in my bankroll, it's an investment. Not an investment like a savings account or mutual fund, where I can get interest and make more money. In my case, as my bankroll grows, I can play higher stakes, and make more money.
Many of the poker pros who play in $10,000 (or higher) televised tournaments don't do this. They actually borrow money so that they can play. There are various ways that players do this, and it goes by various names, for example, "getting staked" or "selling pieces" of yourself. In the poker world, many players buy pieces of other poker players, usually without a written agreement.
Ocassionaly a player will wind up selling more than 100% of himself, and there is a minor scandal in the poker community until everyone is paid what they are owed. Of course, if someone operated this way in just about any other business (professional poker players, under US tax law, are self-employed business owners) there would be investigations, lawsuits ,arrests, and generally all kinds of legal mayhem.
I've been thinking about this post for a few days, and I just found out today that a few weeks ago, Gavin Smith, a Canadian professional poker player, said that he is broke. At one time Smith was the World Poker Tour Player of the Year, and his total winnings, as estimated by the twoplustwo.com Pokercast, are about $5 million.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gavin_Smith_(poker_player)
http://pokercast.twoplustwo.com/pokercast.php?pokercast=200
To his credit, Smith is not going to borrow money to keep playing. He could easily do that, as he has a lot of friends in the close-knit community of touring poker pros. Instead, he's planning his comeback the right way. He's getting on the casino waiting lists for the very low-level cash games, and he plans to work his way back to the top.
I'm going to do it the right way. The right way is the mathematically sound way, to make your statistical risk of ruin as low as possible, usually 2% or less. In practical terms, this means investing less than two percent of your bankroll in any one poker tournament, or to put it another way, a tournamnents should not cost more than 2% of a player's bankroll. That's why 50 buy-ins are considered the mimimum bankroll for SNGs.
For larger tournaments, with field sizes in the hundreds or thousands, there is a lot more statistical variiance (cashes will be much larger, but happen much less often), so that 100 or more MTT buy-ins are necessary to play safely as a pro.
The main reason that I'm still messing around with $1 tournaments in 2012 is that I didn't practice proper bankroll managemen. That's terribly ironic, and humiliating, because in the 2+2 Beginers Forum, I tell playes over and over that correct bankroll management is the most important thing that that a poker player can do to give himself a chance at success.
I was pretty good about sticking with a level that I could afford. But I treated my bankroll as cash for emergencies. It may have seemed necessary at the time, but it's no different that if we stopped buying gasoline, even though my wife has to drive to work every day. I told myself that I was taking poker seriously, but obviously I wasn't, and I'll never make that mistake again.
I know what I have to do. My wife undertands the importance of my bankroll, and she's with me on this. 2012 is going to be the year when I finally start turning poker into a real income.
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