As it says in one of my poker books, "What you do away from the table is important as what you do at the table." In this case, the issue is planning my time.
It sounds easy enough. Open your poker site, look at the list of tournaments, and decide what you want to play. Alas, for those of us who play on americascardroom.com, it's not that easy.
First, even though the software has filters, the list of tournaments is still hard to work with. I can't or won't play most of the tournaments on the list for various reasons. For example, many of them have unlimited rebuys. That means that whenever you want, you can keep spending more money to buy more chips.
They had a tournament like that a couple years ago at the World Series of Poker. One of the players took 13 rebuys, and the tournament was nicknamed the "buy-a-bracelet tournament." After an avalanche of criticism, the WSOP dropped it from their schedule.
So, the list of tournaments is unwieldy, but there is a bigger problem. Only the tournaments for the next few hours are listed. Sitting down at 10 A.M. and seeing a schedule that doesn't go past 2 P.M. isn't much help in planning my day (or night).
I decided to make my own schedule. The schedule doesn't change that much, that is, the list of tournaments on Wednesday is usually the same as it was a week ago. So I'm writing down all the tournaments that might be worth playing, with all the relevant information (day/time/buy-in/prize pool/starting chips) and I'm putting it all on a spreadsheet.
Soon, I'll have something to work with so that I can plan my day. And I won't have to look for something, anything, that I can play. I can concentrate on the ones that give me the best chance to make money, and use other time for whatever else I need to do, from poker study to mowing the lawn.
Not only will that help me, but my wife will know what my schedule is. It's frustrating for both of us that I can't do any advance plannning. And of course, having ADD and being unable, due to outside factors, to plan and be organized, is not a good situation. I'm glad that it will be fixed soon.
Tuesday, July 31, 2012
Monday, July 30, 2012
Results for 7/22-28: My most extreme one-week variance ever
I have definitely seen the good and the bad of variance this week. I lost a of bunch of money early in the week, putting my bankroll, which has been steadily shrinking all month, under $100. Then I won back all of the week's losses, plus more, in my last two tournaments of the week.
--------------------
Poker Profit or Loss, 7/22-7/28
$20.61 tournaments
1.44 rakeback
1.00 bonus
--------
$23.05
Current bankrool: $173.04
My weekly profit might not look like a lot, but at one point in the week I was down more than $50. Then this happened in my last two tournaments:
7/28, 90 players, $5.50 entry fee, cashed 4th of 90 for $38.25 (net $32.75).
7/29, 90 players, $13 entry fee, cashed 4th of 64 for $72.96 (net $59.96).
That turned everything around. Depending on what happens in a couple tournaments tonight, I might wind up positive for the month.
Tournaments like that are what make all the bad days worth it. There are some tournaments with very large prize pools ($2,500 or more) that I can't play right now because we are having the grandchilren over as much as we can. But once we finally say goodbye to them, I can take my shots at going deep in a tournaments with more than 700 players, and take a run at a first prize in the neighborhood of $900, instead of the typical $100 first prize that I've been playing for lately.
--------------------
Getting in shape
This is the only bad news in today's post. I actually gained 0.2 pounds, going from 185.8 to 186.0. I guess that's what happens when the day before the weigh-in, you go to a birthday party at Red Lobster. After all, I couldn't turn down the free crabcake appetizers.
I got a good 3/4 mile run in today. For the first time in a while I felt like I was actually running, instead of just fighting my way through it, so I know that I'm on the right track, so to speak.
--------------------
Poker Hours, 7/22-7/28
14.75 tournaments
6.00 study
1.50 administrative
-------
22.25
Exactly the same total hours as last week. When I can put in more than 20 hours in any of the next few weeks, I can live with that. What I'm really excited about is that for the first time ever, I spent more than 1/4 of my time (27%) studying. That's a big deal, because the players that study the most are usually the ones that make the money.
I recently watched a World Poker Tour episode where Andrew Roble was at the final table, and one of his poker friends described his studying as "fanatical", and said, "he's always working on the math."
http://www.bluffmagazine.com/players/andrew-robl/24186/player-profile
--------------------
--------------------
Poker Profit or Loss, 7/22-7/28
$20.61 tournaments
1.44 rakeback
1.00 bonus
--------
$23.05
Current bankrool: $173.04
My weekly profit might not look like a lot, but at one point in the week I was down more than $50. Then this happened in my last two tournaments:
7/28, 90 players, $5.50 entry fee, cashed 4th of 90 for $38.25 (net $32.75).
7/29, 90 players, $13 entry fee, cashed 4th of 64 for $72.96 (net $59.96).
That turned everything around. Depending on what happens in a couple tournaments tonight, I might wind up positive for the month.
Tournaments like that are what make all the bad days worth it. There are some tournaments with very large prize pools ($2,500 or more) that I can't play right now because we are having the grandchilren over as much as we can. But once we finally say goodbye to them, I can take my shots at going deep in a tournaments with more than 700 players, and take a run at a first prize in the neighborhood of $900, instead of the typical $100 first prize that I've been playing for lately.
--------------------
Getting in shape
This is the only bad news in today's post. I actually gained 0.2 pounds, going from 185.8 to 186.0. I guess that's what happens when the day before the weigh-in, you go to a birthday party at Red Lobster. After all, I couldn't turn down the free crabcake appetizers.
I got a good 3/4 mile run in today. For the first time in a while I felt like I was actually running, instead of just fighting my way through it, so I know that I'm on the right track, so to speak.
--------------------
Poker Hours, 7/22-7/28
14.75 tournaments
6.00 study
1.50 administrative
-------
22.25
Exactly the same total hours as last week. When I can put in more than 20 hours in any of the next few weeks, I can live with that. What I'm really excited about is that for the first time ever, I spent more than 1/4 of my time (27%) studying. That's a big deal, because the players that study the most are usually the ones that make the money.
I recently watched a World Poker Tour episode where Andrew Roble was at the final table, and one of his poker friends described his studying as "fanatical", and said, "he's always working on the math."
http://www.bluffmagazine.com/players/andrew-robl/24186/player-profile
--------------------
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
The death of SNGs on Americas Cardroom
A lot of players like to grind SNGs, either for the VIP benefits, or just because they don't want to be tied down for several hours with one tournament. Some players, especially beginners, get discouraged when they play for several hours and don't even get close to the money.
One-table SNGs, by far the most common SNGs, are a standard feature on any poker site. I warned ACR what would happen if they kept cutting back the SNG options, and I was right. It has to be costing them a lot of revenue. I have checked several times, with SNGs from $3 to $20, and literally no one was entering. Not one single table was open--not even on Friday night, prime time for online poker.
With every tournament that someone plays, including SNGs, the poker site gets about 10% off the top (called rake, or, by the old-school players, vigorish or vig.) A tournament that is listed as "$10 + $1" means that $10 goes to the prize pool and $1 goes to the site.
Americas Cardroom is missing out on a lot of revenue, and I'm baffled as to why ACR drove all those players away. The math is pretty simple. If Joe can play one $10 + $1 MTT in four hours, or four $10 + $1 SNGs in four hours, clearly the site should want Joe to play the SNGs. If I was an investor or executive with ACR, this situation would be enough for me to want the tournament director replaced.
One-table SNGs, by far the most common SNGs, are a standard feature on any poker site. I warned ACR what would happen if they kept cutting back the SNG options, and I was right. It has to be costing them a lot of revenue. I have checked several times, with SNGs from $3 to $20, and literally no one was entering. Not one single table was open--not even on Friday night, prime time for online poker.
With every tournament that someone plays, including SNGs, the poker site gets about 10% off the top (called rake, or, by the old-school players, vigorish or vig.) A tournament that is listed as "$10 + $1" means that $10 goes to the prize pool and $1 goes to the site.
Americas Cardroom is missing out on a lot of revenue, and I'm baffled as to why ACR drove all those players away. The math is pretty simple. If Joe can play one $10 + $1 MTT in four hours, or four $10 + $1 SNGs in four hours, clearly the site should want Joe to play the SNGs. If I was an investor or executive with ACR, this situation would be enough for me to want the tournament director replaced.
Monday, July 23, 2012
Results for July 15-21
It was an uneventful week, and pretty much what I expected. All MTTs and no SNGs. A few cashes, but not enough to make me positive for the week. I'm consistently going deep, and when I don't cash, I come close. In one tournament I went all-in and lost, going out in 10th place when the tournament played nine places. (See the next two paragraphs for more on that.)
There were two tournaments this week in which I could have played it safe and coasted into the money. If I had done that, I would have had a slightly winning week instead of a slightly losing one. Of course, coasting into the money doesn't pay off in the long run. The big money is always in the top three spots.
I looked up a tournament that finished earlier today. 12th place was $17. Third was $80, 2nd was $111, and 1st was $177. That pay schedule is a perfect example of why it is almost always wrong to play it safe and make sure you cash, then try to work your way up. In this example, one 1st place pays the same as ten 12th place cashes!
I'm still making a lot of mistakes while I get used to my new, looser playing style. I'm catching a lot of those mistakes, and I'm learning from all of the ones that I catch. Since it probably will be hard to get large blocks of tournament time in during the next few weeks, I'll be doing more studying, and I might review some of my tournaments on a replayer. A lot of players do that, but I never have. It might be worth trying, to see if can I learn enough to make it worth replacing other things in my study time.
I'm always finding something new that I need to learn, study, or memorize, and I'm learning what I don't know a lot faster than I'm getting through the study list that I already have.
---------------
Poker Profit or Loss
-$5.12 tournaments
1.00 rakeback
0.00 bonus
--------
-$4.12
As I mentioned in an earlier post, with SNGs dead, I will be playing fewer but longer tournaments. I'm now clearing less than a dollar a week of my bonus, so unless SNGs pick up, I have no chance of clearing the final $34 bonus dollars until sometime next year.
---------------
Getting in shape
This is definitely going to take a while. Today was my longest run in a while, at 0.7 miles. At that rate, I'm not going to lose much weight.
Sunday I was at 185.8, down from 186.2 the week before. I have to settle for baby steps I guess.
---------------
Poker Hours
16.25 play
4.25 study
1.75 administrative
-------
22.25
I'm very happy with those numbers. I didn't expect to get that much time in. And the distribution is what I'm always shooting for---tournaments taking most of my time, and study hours ranking second and taking at least 25% of my total time. Study wasn't quite 25% this week, but given the short hours, I'm not too upset about that. I'll keep closer track of my study hours this week.
---------------
There were two tournaments this week in which I could have played it safe and coasted into the money. If I had done that, I would have had a slightly winning week instead of a slightly losing one. Of course, coasting into the money doesn't pay off in the long run. The big money is always in the top three spots.
I looked up a tournament that finished earlier today. 12th place was $17. Third was $80, 2nd was $111, and 1st was $177. That pay schedule is a perfect example of why it is almost always wrong to play it safe and make sure you cash, then try to work your way up. In this example, one 1st place pays the same as ten 12th place cashes!
I'm still making a lot of mistakes while I get used to my new, looser playing style. I'm catching a lot of those mistakes, and I'm learning from all of the ones that I catch. Since it probably will be hard to get large blocks of tournament time in during the next few weeks, I'll be doing more studying, and I might review some of my tournaments on a replayer. A lot of players do that, but I never have. It might be worth trying, to see if can I learn enough to make it worth replacing other things in my study time.
I'm always finding something new that I need to learn, study, or memorize, and I'm learning what I don't know a lot faster than I'm getting through the study list that I already have.
---------------
Poker Profit or Loss
-$5.12 tournaments
1.00 rakeback
0.00 bonus
--------
-$4.12
As I mentioned in an earlier post, with SNGs dead, I will be playing fewer but longer tournaments. I'm now clearing less than a dollar a week of my bonus, so unless SNGs pick up, I have no chance of clearing the final $34 bonus dollars until sometime next year.
---------------
Getting in shape
This is definitely going to take a while. Today was my longest run in a while, at 0.7 miles. At that rate, I'm not going to lose much weight.
Sunday I was at 185.8, down from 186.2 the week before. I have to settle for baby steps I guess.
---------------
Poker Hours
16.25 play
4.25 study
1.75 administrative
-------
22.25
I'm very happy with those numbers. I didn't expect to get that much time in. And the distribution is what I'm always shooting for---tournaments taking most of my time, and study hours ranking second and taking at least 25% of my total time. Study wasn't quite 25% this week, but given the short hours, I'm not too upset about that. I'll keep closer track of my study hours this week.
---------------
Tuesday, July 17, 2012
Results for week of July 8-14
I was really surprised that this was my first post in nine days. It's been pretty crazy, with a lot of family things happening.. Last week we had the grandchildren over twice, then we threw a going-away party for my Germany-bound son and army private, who will be stationed in Germany for three years, along with his wife and three children.
My son is now in Germany, with the rest of the family to follow sometime in the next month or so. We are having the girls overnight individually once more before they leave, and Wednesday night our guest will be four-year old Amya (pronounced uh-my-uh, for some reason.)
There will be a lot going on, and we expect to be doing a lot of babysitting in the next few weeks. What we didn't expect was for my soon-to-be-90-year-old mother-in-law to have major problems with her air conditioning for the last several days. I'll be over there today to wait with her for a new part, which we hope will finally fix the problem.
We are in the middle of a relentless heat wave that's gone on for about a month, and for many of those days we have had temperatures between 95F and 99--an incredible heat wave by Michigan standards. Several Michigan cities are forecasted to have highs over 100 today.
While all of this has been going on, not much poker has been played. And I have another problem. The site on which I play has been systematically shutting down the various options for one-table tournaments, to the point that I've waited 20 minutes or more at a table for nine or ten players, and the table did not fill up.
That means that I don't have anything to play between MTTs with a decent structure, or just when I don't have time to play for more than an hour or two. I've already written about how bad some of the MTT structures are on Americas Cardroom, and with the sit-n-goes all but dead, the pickings are very slim indeed.
Anyway, here is the result of having not much time to play, and not much to pick from when I tried:
Poker Hours, 7/8-7/14
4.50 online tournaments
2.25 study
2.00 administration
-----
8.75
I suppose that I could have got more study in there someplace, but I'm just worn out right now. A couple days ago I found two decent tournaments pretty close together. I took a nap between the first and second one, and slept for several more hours after tournament number two. The cats are getting really antsy--they don't think I'm playing with them enough, and they stalk me to get more attention. I feel so guilty when Vanessa comes in the office, drops a toy nears my chair, and cries for me to throw it so we can play fetch. A few hours ago both cats came in the office and started crying. That's never happened before.
I'm a very bad father.
-------------------.
Poker Profit or Loss
-$13.15 online tournaments
0.00 bonus
1.78 rakeback
---------
-$11.37
With the lack of playing time and tournament choices come other issues:
1. With SNGs not running, and fewer things to play in general, I'm not getting the VIP rewards (bonus and rakeback) for playing a lot.. I expect the rakeback number to be even lower next week.
2. Increased variance. Since I'm playing nothing but relatively larger tournaments, the variance is much greater. Even in profitable months, I'll probably have 2-3 losing weeks and one big winning week which more than makes up for the rest of that month.
Without the SNGs to lessen variance, my bankroll is going to swing all over the place. I could lose another $30 next week, and win $100 the next week. I could even go on a two-month downslide and then make it up with a $500 cash in one of the big weekend tournaments (there is one $5 tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $3,500.)
I'm not bankrolled for these kind of swings, but with the $1 and $3 SNGs gone, and most of the high variance MTTs going off at $5 or more, my options are very limited. I shouldn't even be thinking about doing what I'm doing with a bankroll of under $500, but that is, so to speak, the hand I've been dealt. To quote former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "You to to war with the army you have."
I'm shocked that it's taking me this long to build a decent bankroll, and it looks like it's not going to get any easier in the near future. But I'm not one ro run away from a challenge. My father is a musician, and when I started playing clarinet, he thought that I would never get anywhere with it (he didn't tell me that until much later.) In 10th grade I was in the number four band in my high school.
That's right, we had four high school bands, and the bottom one was called the Activities Band. I was mortified. I wanted to play real music, concert music. We were mostly a pep band for sports. That was the only time I considered quitting band, and I came very close to doing it. I'm glad that I stuck with it, because my senior year I managed to claw my way up into the number one band, one of only three players ever at my school to make the top band after starting at the bottom.
Thirteen years later I joined an army band, as the fifth of seven chairs in the clarinet section. I retired as principal clarinet and clarinet section leader. I bring that same tenacity to poker, and there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that I'm going to make it very profitable.
----------------
I'll end with some good news. My Sunday weigh-in last week was 186.6, this week it was 186.2. That's not much of a loss, but it's my fourth straight week of losing, and I'll take that. Once I get my running cranked up a little bit, I expect to easily drop ten pounds a month.
My son is now in Germany, with the rest of the family to follow sometime in the next month or so. We are having the girls overnight individually once more before they leave, and Wednesday night our guest will be four-year old Amya (pronounced uh-my-uh, for some reason.)
There will be a lot going on, and we expect to be doing a lot of babysitting in the next few weeks. What we didn't expect was for my soon-to-be-90-year-old mother-in-law to have major problems with her air conditioning for the last several days. I'll be over there today to wait with her for a new part, which we hope will finally fix the problem.
We are in the middle of a relentless heat wave that's gone on for about a month, and for many of those days we have had temperatures between 95F and 99--an incredible heat wave by Michigan standards. Several Michigan cities are forecasted to have highs over 100 today.
While all of this has been going on, not much poker has been played. And I have another problem. The site on which I play has been systematically shutting down the various options for one-table tournaments, to the point that I've waited 20 minutes or more at a table for nine or ten players, and the table did not fill up.
That means that I don't have anything to play between MTTs with a decent structure, or just when I don't have time to play for more than an hour or two. I've already written about how bad some of the MTT structures are on Americas Cardroom, and with the sit-n-goes all but dead, the pickings are very slim indeed.
Anyway, here is the result of having not much time to play, and not much to pick from when I tried:
Poker Hours, 7/8-7/14
4.50 online tournaments
2.25 study
2.00 administration
-----
8.75
I suppose that I could have got more study in there someplace, but I'm just worn out right now. A couple days ago I found two decent tournaments pretty close together. I took a nap between the first and second one, and slept for several more hours after tournament number two. The cats are getting really antsy--they don't think I'm playing with them enough, and they stalk me to get more attention. I feel so guilty when Vanessa comes in the office, drops a toy nears my chair, and cries for me to throw it so we can play fetch. A few hours ago both cats came in the office and started crying. That's never happened before.
I'm a very bad father.
-------------------.
Poker Profit or Loss
-$13.15 online tournaments
0.00 bonus
1.78 rakeback
---------
-$11.37
With the lack of playing time and tournament choices come other issues:
1. With SNGs not running, and fewer things to play in general, I'm not getting the VIP rewards (bonus and rakeback) for playing a lot.. I expect the rakeback number to be even lower next week.
2. Increased variance. Since I'm playing nothing but relatively larger tournaments, the variance is much greater. Even in profitable months, I'll probably have 2-3 losing weeks and one big winning week which more than makes up for the rest of that month.
Without the SNGs to lessen variance, my bankroll is going to swing all over the place. I could lose another $30 next week, and win $100 the next week. I could even go on a two-month downslide and then make it up with a $500 cash in one of the big weekend tournaments (there is one $5 tournament with a guaranteed prize pool of $3,500.)
I'm not bankrolled for these kind of swings, but with the $1 and $3 SNGs gone, and most of the high variance MTTs going off at $5 or more, my options are very limited. I shouldn't even be thinking about doing what I'm doing with a bankroll of under $500, but that is, so to speak, the hand I've been dealt. To quote former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, "You to to war with the army you have."
I'm shocked that it's taking me this long to build a decent bankroll, and it looks like it's not going to get any easier in the near future. But I'm not one ro run away from a challenge. My father is a musician, and when I started playing clarinet, he thought that I would never get anywhere with it (he didn't tell me that until much later.) In 10th grade I was in the number four band in my high school.
That's right, we had four high school bands, and the bottom one was called the Activities Band. I was mortified. I wanted to play real music, concert music. We were mostly a pep band for sports. That was the only time I considered quitting band, and I came very close to doing it. I'm glad that I stuck with it, because my senior year I managed to claw my way up into the number one band, one of only three players ever at my school to make the top band after starting at the bottom.
Thirteen years later I joined an army band, as the fifth of seven chairs in the clarinet section. I retired as principal clarinet and clarinet section leader. I bring that same tenacity to poker, and there is not the slightest doubt in my mind that I'm going to make it very profitable.
----------------
I'll end with some good news. My Sunday weigh-in last week was 186.6, this week it was 186.2. That's not much of a loss, but it's my fourth straight week of losing, and I'll take that. Once I get my running cranked up a little bit, I expect to easily drop ten pounds a month.
Sunday, July 8, 2012
Results for week July 1-7
It was a hot week, and I'm not referring to my poker results. We had a heat wave that went on for two weeks, finally breaking today. Yesterday, it was 99 degress. In Michigan, near the Lake Michigan shore (where it's usually several degrees cooler than it is inland) 99 degrees is a very big deal.
We have a room air conditioner that can usually keep the house cool if we keep the basement door closed. The air conditioner slowly lost the battle, with the inside temperature going up a little bit every day, and winding up at 80 degrees.
Eighty isn't all that hot, in fact, we don't usually turn on the air conditioner if it's under 85. But most of the time I played or studied I had the office door closed, so it was definitely hot it there, even for someone that loves warm weather. My concentration should be a lot better this week than it was last week.
That said, a ton of family stuff will be happening in the next few weeks as my son and his family prepare to move to Germany, so last week will probably be my only 40-hour week this month.
Poker Hours
28.00 tournaments
4.25 study
7.75 administrative
-------
40.00
I keep trying for 30 hours of playing and 10 hours of study, but administrative time is crowding some of that out. Every day I am reconciling my numbers from various places, including the Americas Cardroom cashier page and my spreadsheet, to make sure everything is in balance, which makes things a lot easier if I have to track down an error. But that means that I'm taking time to do data entry every day, instead of just once a week, and that takes a lot more time.
I find it more efficient to do one thing, whether it's playing, studying, or adminstration, for a block of time before switching to something else. But now that I'm doing admin work every day, I find myself switching tasks to do something different for 10 or 15 minutes, and that's not an effiecient way to do things. That's part of what chewing up my time, having to look at different papers, spreadsheets, etc.
I always have to be mindful of the implications of having ADD. Switching tasks is always a good reason to get a drink or for some other reason leave the office, and once I open the office door, anything is a potential distraction--the TV, my wife, a cat, or noise from outside. The longer my butt is in my chair without a break, and the longer I stick to one thing while I'm in that chair, the more efficient I am.
I said in a previous entry that I need to get myself back in shape, and the heat wave really proved that. If I was still the 140-pound guy who thought nothing of going for a run with the temperature in the low 90s, I would have handled the last week a lot better, and I'm dealing with that problem. I'm losing weight every week, and in the next couple days I'll be getting a new pair of running shows. But even without running, I've been working on my weight and weighing myself every Sunday morning:
191.3 pounds 6/17
188.8 6/24
188.3 7/1
186.6 7/8
Poker Profit or Loss
-$12.80 tournaments
2.21 rakeback
2.00 bonus
---------
-$8.59
The last couple weeks I've been losing money in MTTs and winning most of it back in one-table SNGs. That's not very surprising. MTTs are much higher variance, with the usual pattern being a very few large cashes, with a lot of not cashing or mincashing.
So, until I have a proper bankroll where I could go 20 times in a row without cashing without it being a big deal, I have to balance my playing and learning a new MTT style with grinding the SNGs to make a small but fairly reliable amount each month.
Almost every time that I play, I come across another implication of my new playing style, and I have to give some thought to reacting differently to a certain situation that I used to. And even within a tournament the swings get interesting.
The ups and down to my chip stack when I play my new, looser style will take a lot of getting used to. Yesterday I played an 83-player tournament. In the first 5 minutes I won a big pot, more than doubled my stack, and I was in the top ten. I steadily lost chips after that, playing a lot of hands and not winning any pots, and I was back to my orignial stack at the 1-hour break.
During the second hour, with the posted cashouts showing 15 players getting paid, I was in the top 15, the bottom 10, and just about everywhere else. Right after the second break I went out in 13th place for the minimum cash, which was about $2 more than my entry fee.
There isn't any other sport or competition like that. You don't gain an overwhelming advantage with one chess move, and you can't make a great play and get a 30-point touchdown in football. Huge variance is a fact of life in tournament poker, and I have to have the long-term perspective, and the bankroll, to handle it.
We have a room air conditioner that can usually keep the house cool if we keep the basement door closed. The air conditioner slowly lost the battle, with the inside temperature going up a little bit every day, and winding up at 80 degrees.
Eighty isn't all that hot, in fact, we don't usually turn on the air conditioner if it's under 85. But most of the time I played or studied I had the office door closed, so it was definitely hot it there, even for someone that loves warm weather. My concentration should be a lot better this week than it was last week.
That said, a ton of family stuff will be happening in the next few weeks as my son and his family prepare to move to Germany, so last week will probably be my only 40-hour week this month.
Poker Hours
28.00 tournaments
4.25 study
7.75 administrative
-------
40.00
I keep trying for 30 hours of playing and 10 hours of study, but administrative time is crowding some of that out. Every day I am reconciling my numbers from various places, including the Americas Cardroom cashier page and my spreadsheet, to make sure everything is in balance, which makes things a lot easier if I have to track down an error. But that means that I'm taking time to do data entry every day, instead of just once a week, and that takes a lot more time.
I find it more efficient to do one thing, whether it's playing, studying, or adminstration, for a block of time before switching to something else. But now that I'm doing admin work every day, I find myself switching tasks to do something different for 10 or 15 minutes, and that's not an effiecient way to do things. That's part of what chewing up my time, having to look at different papers, spreadsheets, etc.
I always have to be mindful of the implications of having ADD. Switching tasks is always a good reason to get a drink or for some other reason leave the office, and once I open the office door, anything is a potential distraction--the TV, my wife, a cat, or noise from outside. The longer my butt is in my chair without a break, and the longer I stick to one thing while I'm in that chair, the more efficient I am.
I said in a previous entry that I need to get myself back in shape, and the heat wave really proved that. If I was still the 140-pound guy who thought nothing of going for a run with the temperature in the low 90s, I would have handled the last week a lot better, and I'm dealing with that problem. I'm losing weight every week, and in the next couple days I'll be getting a new pair of running shows. But even without running, I've been working on my weight and weighing myself every Sunday morning:
191.3 pounds 6/17
188.8 6/24
188.3 7/1
186.6 7/8
Poker Profit or Loss
-$12.80 tournaments
2.21 rakeback
2.00 bonus
---------
-$8.59
The last couple weeks I've been losing money in MTTs and winning most of it back in one-table SNGs. That's not very surprising. MTTs are much higher variance, with the usual pattern being a very few large cashes, with a lot of not cashing or mincashing.
So, until I have a proper bankroll where I could go 20 times in a row without cashing without it being a big deal, I have to balance my playing and learning a new MTT style with grinding the SNGs to make a small but fairly reliable amount each month.
Almost every time that I play, I come across another implication of my new playing style, and I have to give some thought to reacting differently to a certain situation that I used to. And even within a tournament the swings get interesting.
The ups and down to my chip stack when I play my new, looser style will take a lot of getting used to. Yesterday I played an 83-player tournament. In the first 5 minutes I won a big pot, more than doubled my stack, and I was in the top ten. I steadily lost chips after that, playing a lot of hands and not winning any pots, and I was back to my orignial stack at the 1-hour break.
During the second hour, with the posted cashouts showing 15 players getting paid, I was in the top 15, the bottom 10, and just about everywhere else. Right after the second break I went out in 13th place for the minimum cash, which was about $2 more than my entry fee.
There isn't any other sport or competition like that. You don't gain an overwhelming advantage with one chess move, and you can't make a great play and get a 30-point touchdown in football. Huge variance is a fact of life in tournament poker, and I have to have the long-term perspective, and the bankroll, to handle it.
Saturday, July 7, 2012
Nothing very exciting the last few days.
Sometime I marvel at how people don't understand the implications of their ideas. I watched a time-lapse video of earth and space, taken from the International Space Station, which I have seen pass overhead twice this year. I went down to the comments, and someone said, of the videos of earth, that all of that light pollution was a terrible waste.
This was my response:
Yes, we need to reexamine all the silly reasons that we use to justify needing so much light, for example, so that we can be productive day or night, or so bears/snakes/other animals don't sneak up on us in the dark. Getting rid of all that light pollution will make life better, like it was in the good old days of A.D. 1700.
------------------------
The last few days have been pretty uneventful. After playing and not cashing in a bunch of MTTs on Monday and Tuesday, I've been grinding the DONs (double-or-nothing SNGs) for most of the week, with pretty good success, putting me about even for the week. I'm going to spend a lot of my time today starting my fourth reading of Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, by Johnathan Little.
I need to start working more on playing the number of hands that Little suggests, and from the places and in the situations that he suggests. Usually when I read a book and then try to incorporate the author's suggestions into my game, I try to do it almost exactly as the author suggests.
After I've done that for a while, I can see how it works in the games I play, and how comfortable I am with everything. Then I can make any necessary adjustments for my skill set, abilities and situation. In this case, the changes are so big, and there are so many things to remember when playing a certain set of hands (my table image, villian's range of hands, tournament situation and stack sizes, to name a a few) that I'm going to have to chart it.
So I'm going to do a fairly fast readthrough, not really studying this time. I just want to find all of those hand lists and charts, write it all down, make it into a few cheat sheets, and type it all up so that I can refer to it while I play.
I'm not sure how long all that will take, because I'm not even sure how long the book is. One of the disconcerting things about using a Kindle is that some of the books don't have page numbers. When I push a button and it says something like "Location 2076 of 3214," all that tells me is that I am almost 2/3 of the way through the book, however long it is.
It's 2:53 P.M. now, and I was going to play a small MTT at 4 P.M., and a large one at 8 P.M. I'm going to reexamine the structures of those tournaments, and I might drop one or both of them so that I can put in some more time digging the information out of the book.
This was my response:
Yes, we need to reexamine all the silly reasons that we use to justify needing so much light, for example, so that we can be productive day or night, or so bears/snakes/other animals don't sneak up on us in the dark. Getting rid of all that light pollution will make life better, like it was in the good old days of A.D. 1700.
------------------------
The last few days have been pretty uneventful. After playing and not cashing in a bunch of MTTs on Monday and Tuesday, I've been grinding the DONs (double-or-nothing SNGs) for most of the week, with pretty good success, putting me about even for the week. I'm going to spend a lot of my time today starting my fourth reading of Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, by Johnathan Little.
I need to start working more on playing the number of hands that Little suggests, and from the places and in the situations that he suggests. Usually when I read a book and then try to incorporate the author's suggestions into my game, I try to do it almost exactly as the author suggests.
After I've done that for a while, I can see how it works in the games I play, and how comfortable I am with everything. Then I can make any necessary adjustments for my skill set, abilities and situation. In this case, the changes are so big, and there are so many things to remember when playing a certain set of hands (my table image, villian's range of hands, tournament situation and stack sizes, to name a a few) that I'm going to have to chart it.
So I'm going to do a fairly fast readthrough, not really studying this time. I just want to find all of those hand lists and charts, write it all down, make it into a few cheat sheets, and type it all up so that I can refer to it while I play.
I'm not sure how long all that will take, because I'm not even sure how long the book is. One of the disconcerting things about using a Kindle is that some of the books don't have page numbers. When I push a button and it says something like "Location 2076 of 3214," all that tells me is that I am almost 2/3 of the way through the book, however long it is.
It's 2:53 P.M. now, and I was going to play a small MTT at 4 P.M., and a large one at 8 P.M. I'm going to reexamine the structures of those tournaments, and I might drop one or both of them so that I can put in some more time digging the information out of the book.
Tuesday, July 3, 2012
Results for June 2012
I don't have anything new to say about what happened in June, so let's get right to it.
Profit or loss in June, 2012
$16.75 6/1-6/2 (partial week)
63.66 6/3-6/9
-43.88 6-10-6/16
9.64 6/17-6/23
3.84 6/24-6/30
--------
$50.01
I'm having trouble getting my hours in, I'm getting tired way too easily, I'm not studying nearly enough, and I badly messed up a few tournaments at the end of the month. It should have been a lot better, but I'll take it.
Profit or loss in June, 2012
$16.75 6/1-6/2 (partial week)
63.66 6/3-6/9
-43.88 6-10-6/16
9.64 6/17-6/23
3.84 6/24-6/30
--------
$50.01
I'm having trouble getting my hours in, I'm getting tired way too easily, I'm not studying nearly enough, and I badly messed up a few tournaments at the end of the month. It should have been a lot better, but I'll take it.
Monday, July 2, 2012
Results for week 6/24-6/30, and no more fat Clif
I apologize for the length of this post. A lot is going on, and I'm making a lot of changes to put myself in a better position to grow a bankroll and generate a regular income from poker. Today there seems to be a lot to talk about.
Last week I messed up some tournaments at the end because I just got too tired. I'm overweight (almost 50 pounds more than I was at age 30) out of shape, and I tire easily. I used to be really good at handling heat, in fact, it was nothing for me to go out and run a few miles when it was sunny and 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now I can barely play several hours of poker when it's hot--we are in the middle of a heat wave, with highs between 88 and 90 expected the rest of the week, and I don't benefit from the air conditioing when I close the office door. I messed up a few tournaments, which cost me at least $15 (the entry fees that went down the drain when I was close to cashing) plus whatever I might have won if I had played deeper into the tournaments.
I know that I'm 56 years old, but people older than I run marathons. I ran a marathon, and I would like to do it again, maybe eventually aiming for a qualifying time to get in the Boston Marathon. Being out of shape is costing me money, and I'm not going to let that happen any more.
I'm now weighing myself weekly. I was 191.3 pounds two weeks ago, 188.8 last week, and 188.3 this week. That doesn't sound like much, but I've been in shape, and I know what I have to do to get back in shape. I can lose two pounds a week if I work at it. Right now I'm only dieting, but I'll get back to running and working out, and those pounds should start falling off.
Because my wretched physical condition is directly affecting my income, I will be posting my weight loss results and other relevant information from time to time. Now, enough about fat Clif, and on to the numbers.
Work Hours 6/24-6/30
15.25 tournaments
3.25 study
7.25 administrative
-------
25.75
I can always work harder. I constantly battle the effects of ADD. It's just so easy to get up from my desk and get a drink, get distraced by the TV or something else, and lose an hour or two. I'm always on guard, and I don't do that kind of thing nearly as often as I once did, but I must always be vigilant.
But as far as the 50 hours a week I would like to get, I think I'll have to aim for 40, and that might be a stretch. There were some questions about passports, but I now know that my son and his family will all be in Germany around the end of the month, and my son will be stationed there with the army for three years. Spending time with my son, his wife, and our grandchildren will of course be a priority. I'll aim for 40 hours a week this month, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't make it.
I'm still very concerned about my study time, and that has to be fixed. I'm going to block out a few hours tomorrow, before I play a hand of poker, to read and study Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, by Johnathan Little. It's definitely helping me in multitable tournaments, and a complete change in how I approach poker is well underway.
Even so, the content is so dense that I regularly find myself in certain tournament situations, and thinking, "What was it that he said to do in this spot?" It's a lot to remember, and some of it I'll really have to sit down and think about. I'm about halfway through my third reading, but it's basically a poker textbook that I need to read and study over and over before I can understand and apply all of it.
By the way, that's only SOPTP volume 1. Volume 2 is out, and the author is gathering material for volume 3.
Poker Profit or Loss, 6/24-6/30
$1.70 tournaments
2.14 rakeback
0.00 bonus
-------
$3.84
I didn't get my hours in, I messed up several tournaments, and those things are reflected in my results. I didn't clear any of my bonus because I didn't play enough. Rakeback numbers come out on Wednesday, and that amount will probably be less than $2, for the same reason.
Still, even though this week was a mess, the results for the month, which I will post tomorrow, are a lot more encouraging. For the one partial week plus the four full weeks in June, I made money in four of the five. So I'm not overly discouraged about last week numbers, except that I know it's partly due to letting myself get fat, tried, and out of shape. That will be fixed.
Last week I messed up some tournaments at the end because I just got too tired. I'm overweight (almost 50 pounds more than I was at age 30) out of shape, and I tire easily. I used to be really good at handling heat, in fact, it was nothing for me to go out and run a few miles when it was sunny and 90 degrees Fahrenheit.
Now I can barely play several hours of poker when it's hot--we are in the middle of a heat wave, with highs between 88 and 90 expected the rest of the week, and I don't benefit from the air conditioing when I close the office door. I messed up a few tournaments, which cost me at least $15 (the entry fees that went down the drain when I was close to cashing) plus whatever I might have won if I had played deeper into the tournaments.
I know that I'm 56 years old, but people older than I run marathons. I ran a marathon, and I would like to do it again, maybe eventually aiming for a qualifying time to get in the Boston Marathon. Being out of shape is costing me money, and I'm not going to let that happen any more.
I'm now weighing myself weekly. I was 191.3 pounds two weeks ago, 188.8 last week, and 188.3 this week. That doesn't sound like much, but I've been in shape, and I know what I have to do to get back in shape. I can lose two pounds a week if I work at it. Right now I'm only dieting, but I'll get back to running and working out, and those pounds should start falling off.
Because my wretched physical condition is directly affecting my income, I will be posting my weight loss results and other relevant information from time to time. Now, enough about fat Clif, and on to the numbers.
Work Hours 6/24-6/30
15.25 tournaments
3.25 study
7.25 administrative
-------
25.75
I can always work harder. I constantly battle the effects of ADD. It's just so easy to get up from my desk and get a drink, get distraced by the TV or something else, and lose an hour or two. I'm always on guard, and I don't do that kind of thing nearly as often as I once did, but I must always be vigilant.
But as far as the 50 hours a week I would like to get, I think I'll have to aim for 40, and that might be a stretch. There were some questions about passports, but I now know that my son and his family will all be in Germany around the end of the month, and my son will be stationed there with the army for three years. Spending time with my son, his wife, and our grandchildren will of course be a priority. I'll aim for 40 hours a week this month, but I'm not going to beat myself up if I don't make it.
I'm still very concerned about my study time, and that has to be fixed. I'm going to block out a few hours tomorrow, before I play a hand of poker, to read and study Secrets of Professional Tournament Poker, by Johnathan Little. It's definitely helping me in multitable tournaments, and a complete change in how I approach poker is well underway.
Even so, the content is so dense that I regularly find myself in certain tournament situations, and thinking, "What was it that he said to do in this spot?" It's a lot to remember, and some of it I'll really have to sit down and think about. I'm about halfway through my third reading, but it's basically a poker textbook that I need to read and study over and over before I can understand and apply all of it.
By the way, that's only SOPTP volume 1. Volume 2 is out, and the author is gathering material for volume 3.
Poker Profit or Loss, 6/24-6/30
$1.70 tournaments
2.14 rakeback
0.00 bonus
-------
$3.84
I didn't get my hours in, I messed up several tournaments, and those things are reflected in my results. I didn't clear any of my bonus because I didn't play enough. Rakeback numbers come out on Wednesday, and that amount will probably be less than $2, for the same reason.
Still, even though this week was a mess, the results for the month, which I will post tomorrow, are a lot more encouraging. For the one partial week plus the four full weeks in June, I made money in four of the five. So I'm not overly discouraged about last week numbers, except that I know it's partly due to letting myself get fat, tried, and out of shape. That will be fixed.
Sunday, July 1, 2012
My work schedule
I'm didn't get the 50 hours that I wanted to work last week. I didn't even get 40. I try to be dilligent. I stopped following a lot of TV shows that I really like. The shows that I still watch, I usually catch on demand, when I'm too tired to play any more without spewing money. But last week I forgot that, among other things, one of my granddaughters (age 5) would be staying with us overnight. She was here with us, for over 24 hours, a few days ago.
I'm always surprised at how hard it is to protect my time. I had this crazy idea that my time would be my own, and that I could work whenever I wanted--40, 50, or even 60 hours a week. So far it's not working out that way at all.
When you have a job outside the home, with regular hours, the situation is different. We picked up my granddaughter after my wife got off work, and my wife took the next day off as a paid vacation day. It doesn't work that way for me.
There could be a lot of things going on that will cut into my poker time in the near future. We plan to have each of our other two granddaughters here overnight in the next couple weeks, and have them all together once. My youngest son is in the army, and his family will be moving to Germany in July.
There is also a possibility that we might be moving very soon. It's a local move, and we know where we are moving. We just don't know when, because we don't know when the owners will be vacating the house, other than sometime this year but as soon as possible.
It seems that the more I try to get control of my time, the less control I in fact have. When I don't get my time in, there always seems to be a good reason, but at some point reasons become excuses. I have to find a way to make those 50 hour weeks happen.
I'm always surprised at how hard it is to protect my time. I had this crazy idea that my time would be my own, and that I could work whenever I wanted--40, 50, or even 60 hours a week. So far it's not working out that way at all.
When you have a job outside the home, with regular hours, the situation is different. We picked up my granddaughter after my wife got off work, and my wife took the next day off as a paid vacation day. It doesn't work that way for me.
There could be a lot of things going on that will cut into my poker time in the near future. We plan to have each of our other two granddaughters here overnight in the next couple weeks, and have them all together once. My youngest son is in the army, and his family will be moving to Germany in July.
There is also a possibility that we might be moving very soon. It's a local move, and we know where we are moving. We just don't know when, because we don't know when the owners will be vacating the house, other than sometime this year but as soon as possible.
It seems that the more I try to get control of my time, the less control I in fact have. When I don't get my time in, there always seems to be a good reason, but at some point reasons become excuses. I have to find a way to make those 50 hour weeks happen.
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