Results for September 16-22

Work Hours, 9-16-9/22
Tournaments     13.25
Study                   10.50
Administrative    6.25
                             -------
                             30.00


Thirty hours is better than last week, and better than any week in more than a month. The study hours are up, and that's important. Nevertheless, I keep failing to get my 40 hours, no doubt at least partly due to my natural, ADD-fueled tendency toward disorganization and laziness.  But I've isloated another problem.

Now that we are a one-car family and my wife drives to work, it's harder for me to control my own time.  I can't just jump in the car when I want to take care of something.  I have to wait until my wife and the car are home.  What usually happens is that when we have some things to take care of, we go together to take care of them.

Form the standpoint of family efficiency, doing it that way makes sense.  We can knock off a list of things that have to be done (go shopping, visit my parents or her mother, pick up perscriptions, etc.)  One trip, north to south, then back.

The trouble is that for my purpose, which is to plan and control my schedule, based partly on the Americas Cardroom tournament schedule, it doesn't work at all.  I could do one task, for example, go to the local Walgreen's, and be almost certain that I would be back in time for that tournament that starts in an hour.

With a long list of things to do, things are more unpredictable, and at least one thing on the list is probably going to take longer than expected, for example, the grocery store or the drug store might be busier than we expected.  If I have a two-hour window and visiting my parents is last on the list, I can't walk in and announce that we have we have 12 minutes to talk.  But if we skip that last item on the list, then we've defeated the purpose of the venture, which was to take care of all of our errands in one trip.

I'm getting really discouraged that I have so little control over my time and schedule, and there seem to be no easy answers.  The only thing I can come up with is that I try to put in days of 12 hours or more in the early part of the week, on the assumption that something will go wrong later in the week.  This isn't an ideal solution, since good tournament selection strategy says that I should be doing most of my playing on the weekend.  But I have to get those hours in somehow.

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Profit or Loss, 9/16-9/22
Tournaments   -$47.07
Rakeback                1.82
Bonus                      1.00
                            ---------
                           -$44.25


I would like to be profitable every week, but I know that's not going to happen.  Johnathan Little said in his second book that he has gone 40 straight tournaments without cashing.  I certainly understand that that could, and at some point probably will, happen to me, but the end of my bankroll would come well before then, thus, the urgency to grow that bankroll to $500 as quickly as possible.

I was successful in getting my study hours up, but at the expense of playing only nine tournaments, getting small cashes in three.  It will take me a while to get the right balance between play and study.  I'm was hoping to finish the month up at least $100.  I'm still up $80, so I have a decent shot at doing that.