Results for September 23-29

Playing big boy tournament poker involves some big swings, and I''m starting to get a taste of what that feels like.  It really hit me when I was reading my latest poker book, and the author said that when he books a flight to a city holding a week-long tournament, as they do on the World Poker Tour, he always gets a one-way flight.

The reason is that if he "busts out on the first day" (which happens often) he doesn't have to hang around, and he doesn't have to pay a large fee to get his ticket changed.  He just buys another one-way ticket home, or to the next tournament location.

When I read that, I realized that I wasn't completely committed to this new style of high-risk, high reward poker.  I was almost always making it through the first hour of an MTT, which means I wasn't taking enough risks.. I was opening up quite a bit, at least from my perspective, but it wasn't nearly enough. Since that style is where the money is, I have to do that, in fact, I've been doing it the last few days, and the swings are incredible.

On the 27th I started playing at 8 A.M.  I won three straight small tournaments, and by 3 P.M. I had a net profit of $85 for the day.  In the next 14 MTTs I cashed once, and I lost all of that $85 and more.  I wound up positive for the week, barely, but something has to change.

I've been playing all of the decent MTTs that I can find between about $3 and $20, because the choices aren't very good.  Clearly that's too risky, even if most my tournaments are on the low side of that range.  I need to stay on the low end of those buy-ins, and probably mix in more SNGs to further reduce variance.  And of course, there is always plenty to study when there is nothing good to play.

I feel myself getting better almost every day, and one of the reasons is that almost every day I'm realizing that I'm not very good at some aspect of poker, and it goes on the list to get studied and fixed.

I started with a $50 online deposit to Americas Cardroom.  My bankroll has never been much over $200.  That just doesn't work with my current situation.  I've dialed back my playing of tournaments over $5, but that's not going to be enough.  For now, I have to completely stop playing at that level.  I can't get better unless I'm willing to take more short-term risks for long-term gain, and I have to do that only in tournaments that are reasonably priced for my situation.

I'll be playing about half as many MTTs from now on, at least until I have a larger bankroll to deal with this variance.  It's weird and frustrating that getting better means that I have to play less, but for now, that's the way it has to be.  Of course, variance works both ways, and sooner or later I'll have a streak where the high finishes come in bunches, and the size of my bankroll won't be much of an issue.  I sure hope that it happens sooner rather than later.

This is already a long post, so I'll present the numbers with little commentary.

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Poker Profit or Loss
Tournaments     $11.20
Rakeback                0.70
Bonus                      1.00
                              --------
                             $12.90

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Work Hours
Tournaments     18.25
Study                     8.25
Asministrative     4.50
                             -------
                             31.00

I'm actually OK with those numbers.  My wife had some time off and took a four-day weekend, so we spent more time together than usual, which is certainly a good thing.  So 31 hours in that situaiton isn't bad at all.

Study was 26% of my work time, which is probably the highest it's ever been.  I'm very happy about that.  Since I'm going to have to cut back the MTTs, there shouldn't be a problem with spending at least 1/4 of my time studying every week.  I have a lot of holes in my game, and I'm eager to fix them.