Results for October 21-27

Poker Profit or Loss
$1.20   tournaments
  0.71   rakeback
  1.00   bonus
-------
$2.91   TOTAL PROFIT

Another breakeven week--not much else to say.  I was about even both in SNGs and in the few MTTs that I played.  My bankroll has been hovering arond $100 for a week or so. At the end of the week it was $97.46.


---------------


Work Hours
20.25   tournaments
  8.50   study
  1.50   administrative
-------
30.25  TOTAL HOURS


I felt lost last week.  Using strict bankroll management, there really aren't many MTTs that I can play.  Between midnight and 4 P.M. there are none.  What SNGs there are take a long time to fill up, sometimes half an hour or more.  As I write this it's 6:44 P.M.  I was knocked out of the 4 P.M. MTT, now I'm filling time until the next one, which starts at 8 P.M.  After I finish this, it's time for flash cards--what fun!

I see two options:

1. Go back to waking up at noon (or later) every day.
2. Do all of my study and admin work in the morning.

I could study while I wait for a SNG to fill up.  The problem there is that I don't want to get deeply involved in a study topic when I don't know whether I will be playing in 5 minutes or 35.  Also, having a large block of study-only time would be a major challenge to my feeble attention span, but it's something I might try.

I am naturally a night person, and poker is a nights-and-weekends game.  Doing all of my studying in the morning is not an ideal solution.  When I play my favorite tournament, which goes off at 8 P.M. twice a week, I will be playing well past midnight when I go deep.

I"m starting to think that I will never be in control of my time to the extent that I thought I would.  I'm not one of those 18-year olds with no responsibilities who can play 100 SNGs a day, grinding a bankroll in his parent's basement.  I keep getting mad at myself for not getting in 40+ hours, and my wife always says something like: You couldn't help it because event A happened, then we had to go to location B to do something, etc.

Yesterday I was watching a video made by a $150-an-hour poker coach (I got his advice free during a 30-day free trial of a coaching site.)  He opined that the most important things for a tournament player are first, good bankroll management, and second, volume (getting in as many tournaments as possible.)  He referred to putting in volume as "outrunning variance."  I like that term--it's clever, descriptive, and mathematically accurate.

I'm much more diciplined and organized than in the bad old days before my ADD was diagnosed, though I can still do much better.  I'm spending a lot more time on study.  Every month I feel like I'm a better player than the month before.  The only area where I'm not making any progress is volume.  One way or another, I need to make it happen.