A SNG Night

I am playing very few MTTs now.  My last one was on the 25th.  I will probably play nothing but SNGs in February.  They aren't exciting, they aren't what I'm studying to do, and there isn't much glory (or money) in being the best at a table of 9 players.  But it's a steady way to build a bankroll, assuming that I'm good at it.  And I am, the variance that clobbered me on the 26th notwithstanding.

I finished playing six of them earler this morning.  I played them one at a time, starting at 1818 yesterday and ending at 0216 today. I cashed in 3 of 6, one first and two thirds, which made up for what happened on the 26th (see previous entry.)

 I didn't do any multitabling last night and this morning because I wanted to concentrate on playing my best and making a profit.  My bankroll was about $65 a few days ago, now it's $72.58.  I want to get it back up over $100 before I even think about playing any more MTTs.

The number of players is growing on the Winning Poker Network, at least during prime time (nights, holidays and weekends.) I don't have to wait long for a SNG to fill up.  But there is a time managment issue with which I have to deal.

I thought that west coast players would keep things going well past midnight on a Saturday.  I was doing fine, playing one right after the other, and the longest I had to wait for a new one to start was 10 minutes, usually it was about five minutes.  But when I finished one at 0029 and registered for another one, it didn't start until 0113--a 44 minute wait.  That caught me completely by surprise, and raises some interesing time management issues.

I use the time between SNGs (or entire sessions, if I'm mutitabling) to go to the bathroom, get some pop and/or food, and be ready play again.  I don't want to get involved in anything else when I'll be playing again in a few minutes.  So that 44 minutes was lost time while I waited, expecting the table to fill soon.

I track my time by quarter hours for a reason--to keep myself both honest and dilligent about how I use my time.  It's very easy for me to get distracted by a bunch of different things, so if I'm not doing something for at least 10 minutes (most of a quarter hour) I don't count it.  I don't want to be jumping back and forth doing something like 5 minutes with flash cards, then 5 minutes with recordkeeping.  I know myself well enough to guard against that.

So, since I don't know how much time I'll have between SNGs, from now on I'm going to use that down time to get something out of the way that is not poker-related, such as checking my E-mail or Facebook.  If the times between SNGs are short, I'll count all of my play as a single session and put it down as 4.25 hours, or whatever is the case.  If the waits between SNGs get longer, I'll just keep working on non-poker things until it's time to play again, and my next session will be logged on my spreadsheet as starting at whatever is the nearest quarter hour.

I know that reading someone's poker blog and so much of it being about process is boring to some of you, so let me quote Dusty Schmidt in his book, Treat Your Poker Like A Business:

"Being process-oriented is a trait possessed by every successful poker player, businessperson or athlete I've ever met.  Bottom line:  If you put in quality time, money will follow."

I couldn't have said it better.

From Where Did All These Good Microstakes Players Come?

I ended the day playing SNGs.  The last one ended at 11:43 P.M. (about an hour ago.)  I understand variance, but last night was rough.  I believe that I played some of my best poker in a long time, with nothing to show for it, and that's very frustrating

A SNG often finishes in an hour or less.  But the last three were pitched battles with a lot of very good players.  Many of you probably know that a SNG is one-table tournament that pays the top 3 places.  This is how I did in those 3 SNGs:

93 minutes, finished 3rd of 9.
63 minutes, finished 4th of 9.
97 minutes, finished 4th of 9.

Where did these people come from?  Usually at this level, after more than an hour someone gets impatient and starts making mistakes.  All three SNGs had 5 players left after an hour.

How can there be that many good players at $1 SNGs?  Pre-Black Friday I made money playing $10 SNGs, and almost all of the guys and girls last night were at least as good as that competition.  Maybe all of Doyle Brunson's grandchildren got on line at the same time and ganged up on me.

I did make one serious mistake.  I was so caught up in both the battle at the tables and on getting used to playing more tables, that I forgot to take notes on all of the good players that I faced.  I will try not to repeat that mistake in the future.

Walking in a Winter Wonderland

New thing that I learned:  Polar bear cubs are born with no sense of sight.

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I haven't really been walking.  Mostly I've been shoveling snow.

This week has been all about snow and cold.  I've still played poker, and I'm still about even for the month.  But snow shoveling has been the daily priority.

I live in Michigan, just a few miles from Lake Michigan.  They could change the city name to Lake Effect and it would be appropriate.  A couple days ago I got up, turned on the Weather Channel, and the temperature was 3 degrees Fahrenheit with a wind chill of -3F.  That's been about an average day this week.  It was a little warmer yesterday, but every day for the last five or so, I've put on several layers of clothes and shoved snow.  Then I get up the next day, it's still cold, and the places that I shoveled are filled in.  We also do some shoveling for my mother-in-law and a sick neighbor, so that's a fair amount of shoveling.

If you follow this blog you know that I sometimes struggle to keep control of my schedule.  But when nature weighs in, that's something I can't control, so I just do what I have to do.  When I hear all the talk about global warming (or is it "climate change" now?), I think about weeks like this one.

We humans think that we have a big effect on the climate, but the truth is that no matter what we do, one act of God can, in just a few minutes, change our lives.  A 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland grounded planes all over Europe for several weeks.  Volcanologists believe that sooner or later there will be another eruption in Iceland which will make the last one look like child's play,*

*http://www.futurepundit.com/archives/008648.html

It's War! On the 2+2 Poker Forums?

In my opinion, the performance of the Americas Cardroom software just gets worse and worse.  Some in the twoplustwo.com poker forums don't agree, so now we have complaints about the complaints.  Again, I will use a different color for each person to avoid confusion:

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My stomach hurt, its cold outside... oh wait this is the America Cardroom Help Desk thread. I thought it was the bitch about every little thing thread because thats all some of you are doing.

The majority of these peoples complaints have merit and this is clearly the thread to put them in.

I on the other hand think that the majority do not have merit. I think alot of the complaints stem from a ****ty connection, ****ty computer, or just plain stupid people in general.....thats just my opinion though.

lol you think this many people having issues with the software disconnecting/freezing while all other sites/browsers are working properly is just a coincidence? Is it a ****ty connection, ****ty computer, and stupid people causing sitngos to not launch also after they fill? Are these things also the cause of the add-on in tournaments consistently not working for many people? You are obviously entitled to your opinion but in order to have that opinion you sure are doing a great job of ignoring the fact that the software has many many issues and it is pretty damn unlikely that all these people are causing the problem on their end.

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So now we're not only jumping all over Americas Cardroom, we're at war with each other.  Here is what I posted after reading the above.  It was addressed to the poster in purple, immediately above this paragraph:

As one of the chief complainers, I've thought some more about this, and I completely agree.  Here's why:

1. Many of the people in these forums are highly intelligent. If you accept David Sklansky's estimate that the average IQ in a Las Vegas poker room is 125, I submit that many of people on these forums, some of whom STUDY poker for 20 hours a week on top of their playing time, are smarter than that 125 IQ poker room average. People who are very smart, and experts in their field, are usually worth listening to.

PokerStars actually has a players committee, and they regularly make changes based on player input. Even more important, players on these forums have uncovered major cheating scandals on at least three poker sites, and one of those players was interviewed on the CBS show 60 Minutes.

Sure, there are some whiners on here, but there are also some very smart and credible people who know what they are talking about.

2. Many of us have experience playing on multiple sites. There are players on these forums who played online poker during the years 2006 and earlier, when players could engage in "bonus whoring", jumping from site to site depending on which site was offering the best bonuses and deals that month. When you've played on 4, 6, or 10 different sites, you have a pretty good idea who's doing it right and who isn't.

3. Many of us don't just complain, we also offer constructive criticism or suggestions. For example, I suggested that the major problems should be a prority before things like better promotions, bigger cards, table themes, etc. I further suggested starting with problems that affect the integrity of the game, such as a player being forced to sit out while his blinds are stolen, or a player checking the bubble for automatic rebuys and add-ons, and not receiving them.

Think about those two issues for a minute. Would you pay money to be in a chess tournament where they might randomly take one of your pawns off the board? Would you pay money to play in the US Scrabble championship (yes, there is real money on the line, first place is $20K) if you might not get the same number of tiles as your opponent?*

I doubt that many people would, but problems of that magnitude are happening every day on Americas Cardroom/Winning Poker Network, it shouldn't be happening, and we should absolutely speak up.

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*Scrabble players take that stuff pretty seriously. In the world championships a letter G tile was missing, and a player demanded that his opponent be strip searched:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...pionships.html

Americas Cardroom Got Me Again

I have been selective about playing multitable tournaments, I've been playing a lot more SNGs, and my bankroll hasn't changed much.  One thing definitely hasn't changed--Americas Cardroom still has a lot of issues.  Someone on the 2+2 forums wrote that we should all stop whining, and I, along with some other players, strongly stated why our complaints were completely valid.  I might post some of that next time.

ACR found a new way to get me.  On 1/11 I played a $13 tournament, I didn't cash, and ACR shows my loss for that tournament as $26.  It was a reentry tournament, and I think that what happened is this:

When I "busted out" of the tournament, a window popped up asking if I wanted to reenter.  If I remember correctly, I didn't answer yes or no.  I'm guessing that you have to opt-out of the reentry, otherwise you automatically get it.  I just closed the table, and it seems that my new chips, which I never intended to pay for, were sitting there for everyone else at the table to fight over.

I'm going to write to ACR about this, but since a replayer only shows what happens in a hand, I have no way to prove that it happened that way, so I'm not expecting much, considering the site that I'm dealing with. Caveat emptor for anyone playing on this site.

By the way, here is what happend to my bankroll balance:

On 1/10, it was $113.51
Today, 1/18, it is $96.16

If I had the $13 back it would be $109.16, close to breaking even over the last eight days.

A Good Start in 2013

It's been way too long since I last posted.  I've been doing a lot of administrative work getting my business in shape for 2013.  I've been tinkering with everything, and I still am.  I've improved my recordkeeping system quite a bit.  I've completely redone many of my spreadsheets and made some other changes, and it should work well, make everything a lot easier, and yield better information.

2012 didn't go well at all, in fact, over the year I lost money, ending with a bankroll of just $9.49.  I never stopped believing I could be good at this, and I kept reminding myself that during his first year on the World Poker Tour, Johnathan Little lost $150,000.  The next year he was up over a million.

2012 was very discouraging emotionally, but intellectually I knew that it wasn't indicative of where I really was with my playing and studying.  After a year like that, my wife hasn't given up on me (which was my biggest fear) so I'm not about to give up on myself.

I know enough to not get too excited about short-term results, good or bad, but I've definitely started off with a bang this year.  My bankroll, which at the beginning of the year was $9.49, is now $113.31.

Some of my good results are partly due to because decisions I've made after considering the problems with Americas Cardroom tournaments.  In my previous two posts I highlighted some of the those issues, and it's not getting any better.  A few days ago someone on the twoplustwo.com poker forums wrote, "Every time you try to fix something, it just gets worse."

Given my situation, with no bankroll and poor tournament choices, I had to make a big change in my strategy.

The one thing on the site that is a little better is the availability of
one-table sit-n-go tournaments.  For most of the day there are enough SNG players that I can sign up for one and it will fill up and start within 5 minutes.  That's still nothing like when I played on PokerStars and a SNG could fill up in a minute or less, but by post-Black Friday* standards, it's a big improvement.

The new strategy was to play mostly the $1 SNGs, both to reduce variance (the smaller the tournament field, the lower the variance), and to use my winnings to take shots at MTTs until I got a good cash or two and rejuvinated my bankroll.

There was one more component to this strategy.  Since the ACR tournaments are so messed up, I was going to only choose the few with a really good structure, which in practice meant playing a multi-table tournament no more than once a day, and only if I was making enough playing SNGs to pay to enter that tournament.  Of course, being an MTT specialist and playing only one tournament per day isn't exactly the path to a big income, but for now, it's a workable strategy for building a bankroll while I wait and hope that ACR will somehow get it's act together.

Bankroll building isn't important just for it's own sake, though it is absolutely necessary. The higher you play, the more tournament options and structures are available.  $10 tournaments have better tournament structures and options than $5 tournaments, and at $20 it's better than $10.  The goal is to make money, keep building your bankroll, move up to higher buy-ins, play in better tournaments, and make more money.

For now, I'm back at it with a small bankroll, but I'm in much better shape than I was just ten days ago.  Down, but definitely not out.

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*http://www.cardplayer.com/poker-news/13127-black-friday-the-day-that-changed-online-poker