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
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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.

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Poker Profit or Loss
-$13.15   online tournaments
     0.00   bonus
     1.78    rakeback
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-$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.

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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.