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
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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.