12 days since my last post

It is often said that poker bloggers stop posting when they are losing.  I've definitely done a lot of losing in the last couple weeks.  But the main reason I haven't posted is that I've barely been playing,  Besides all the schedule disruptions, I was put in an untenable position as far as my poker playing, once the Americas Cardroom SNGs collapsed.

When the SNGs disappeared, my bankroll instantly became inadaquate.  My strategy had been to play a misxture of SNGs and MTTs.  With no SNGs to balance variance, the least expensive MTTs were too expensive for my bankroll.  One should never play only MTTs without at least 100 buy-ins. Since the least expensive MTT is $6, I shouldn't have played at all without a bankroll of $600 or more.  A couple weeks ago I considered not playing and instead concentrating on studying, but I had no idea when or if the SNGs would be back, so I wasn't sure that waiting would make a difference.  I decided to keep playing.

Then, the question was what to play.  The cheapest tournaments?  The ones in which I would have the best chance or at least cashing?  The ones with the biggest prize pools, so that the risk of playing outside my bankroll would be balanced by the possible reward of a very large cash?

There was no correct answer.  I did all of the above, depending on my mood that day.  I had a few tournaments with very small cashes, and a lot of tournaments where I just missed, for example, several tournaments of around 100 players when I missed cashing by 5 spots or less.  Missing 20 times in a row isn't a big deal when working with 100 or more buy-ins.  That's the point of having an adaquate bankroll.  But with my tiny bankroll,  even going 0 for 3 was a huge hit.  I finally shut it down.

Meanwhile the craziness in my personal life continues.  At one point we didn't have a car. My car was recently totaled in an accident, and now my wife's is in the shop.  I had to rent a car for a couple days so that my wife can get to work.  Everything is getting more and more complicated, with no end in sight.

I have jury duty next week.  Since my wife has to drive to work, and the courthouse is only two miles away, I'll probably walk.  It will be quicker than getting back and forth on busses that run only once an hour.  Either way I'll have little control over my schedule, not knowing when or if I'll be assigned to a trial that day.

The good news is that Americas Cardroom finally got some SNGs back up, so I once again have something that I can afford to play.  It's going to take some time to dig out of this mess, and I still don't know from day to day what kind of time I will have to work on that.  The SNG situation isn't great, as I sometimes have to wait 15 to 30 minutes for mine to start.  But it's better than nothing, and I can do other things while I'm waiting.