Getting in shape

I said a while ago that I was going to get in shape, but doing that got shoved way down the priority list.  To put in another way, I'm fat and lazy.  I weigh almost 50 pounds more than I did on my 30th birthday.

My energy level is way down.  I sleep a lot, and even when I'm awake, I'm often tired.  My wife reminded me that when I'm forcing myself onto a daytime schedule, I'm always tired, and she's right.  But even factoring that in, I would get a lot more done if I was the old Clif who weighed 140 pounds and ran a marathon.

I planned to get some hours in yesterday (Friday) but instead, we went out for our anniversay dinner (33 years), then I took a long nap--not exactly romantic.  I finally started playing at 2301.  This can't go on, and getting in shape needs to be my #1 priority, even above playing.

The math is both simple and undeniable.  If I spend an hour a day running or otherwise working out, I'll have more energy, I'll be more alert when I play, and I'll probably sleep at least 10 hours less per week (which of course will give me more time to play poker.)

So, I'm fat, tired and lazy.  That's the bad news.  The good news is that I'm getting closer to that bankroll magic number of $165, which will let me move up and play some $3.30 SNGs and start making money a lot faster.  My bankroll is now $124.05.

I might still play some $1.65s even when I move up.  One reason would be to keep busy, playing at least two SNGs at a time, even if the $3.30s aren't running.  The other reason is that I've taken a lot of notes on some of the players in the $1.65s.  I probably should start making a list of the weak players for whom I have good notes, and keep them in the mix for a while.

Working 25 Hours a Week

This post was almost done, but I had to completely rewrite it.  I was way too optimistic about how much poker I would be able to play this week.

In my 4/11 post I said that given the realities of my situation, especially my part in the family rotation to help take care of my mother-in-law, my goal of getting at least 40 hours of poker play or study every week was unrealistic, and that the new goal would be 105 hours a month.  (105 hours is an average of 25 hours per week times 4.2 weeks per month.)

I thought that, given the situation, I had set some realistic goals.  I knew that there would be times when I could not work 25 hours in a week, but I thought there might be other weeks when I can get 30, so overall it seemed doable.  I started today with only 5.5 hours this week, but I already spent 3 days with my mother-in-law, so I thought that the last part of the week would be mostly available.  I played some SNGs already today, and Saturday looks completely open for poker, so I hope I can get at least 20 hours in this week.

I thought I had a chance to get at least 25 hours in this week, but new things have been added to my schedule just in the last hour.  For example, I have to leave a one-hour window open for my son to call from Germany tomorrow.  The longest SNG that I have played this year was about 100 minutes, which means that I have to stop playing more than 1 1/2 hours before that 1-hour phone call window.

I could use that "down time" before the phone call to study, but the plan (it almost seems ridiculous to use that word) was to deemphasize study for a bit, so that I could play more, get my bankroll up to $165, be bankrolled to play $3.30 SNG, and make money a lot faster.

There is just no getting around it.  When you "go to work," you're there to work, and nothing else.  When I'm at home, I'm always going to be Available Guy.  For the first time, I really understand why many novelists and other writers go to a cabin in the woods to do their writing.

I have read the books of some poker players who have a written play and study schedule and stick to it, while working at home.  I have no idea how they do that.

Poker Hours update for April 2013

As stated in my previous post, I've changed my goal from 40 hours per week to a more realistic 105 hours per month.  I just updated my records, and I'm a little behind that, but not too much. With half the month gone I'm at 47.75 hours.  I'll have to make sure that I hit it hard when I have the chance.

I'm pretty much on a daytime schedule now.  The plan this week to be out in the morning to help my mother-in-law three or four mornings this week, then go to church on Sunday.  The times I'm up in the morning and free to play poker and there isn't much running, I'll have to be sure that I jump on that time right away and do some studying or admin work.  I would love to concentrate on playing, but weekday mornings are not exactly prime time, especially Tuesdays, including today.

I've done some studying and admin work today, while I've been trying to get a regular-speed SNG running, at either $1.65 or $3.30, for the last two hours..  It looks like I'm going to have to give that up and play some turbos, which seem to be running pretty regularly.  I'm not as good at turbos, but I can probably at least break even at the tables, and pick up a few cents in bonus and rakeback for my trouble.

It's even possible that if I play a lot of turbos, I might get a better feel for them and start playing them better.  I might even modify my opening hands to adapt. I'll just have to see how it goes.

Realistic Goals and Outcomes

It might be a while before I can reasonably expect to get in 40 hours a week of poker playing and studying.  I have much room for improvement as far as time management, but I need to set some kind of goal now.  Here's how I see it:

1. 25 hours per week is a realistic goal for now.  I thought about a goal of 30 hours a week, but since family has to be the priority, I need to be realistic and set a goal that I have a reasonable chance of reaching.  25 hours every week might not be possible, but I think that I can average that much.  Since an average month is 4.2 weeks long, my new time goal is 25(4.2) = 105 hours per month.

2. After careful analysis of my situation, I'm temporarily dropping my goal of spending at least 25% of my poker time studying.

My current bankroll is $111.70.  I'm playing $1.65 SNGs.  I should have a bankroll of at least 50 buy-ins to play SNGs, and my bankroll is 67 buy-ins, so I'm fine there.  But as I thought about it, the next step up in SNGs is $3.30, and if I was playing at that level I would have 33 buy-ins--only 17 short of the 50 that I need.

If I temporarily cut down on studying and concentrate on playing, and if I run reasonably well, I could have the bankroll to play $3.30 SNGs in about a month.  When that happens, almost everything doubles.  Every time that I cashed in a SNG, I would be making almost twice as much profit as I was before.

Playing $3.30 SNGs:

If I cashed in third place, my profit would double from $1.05 to $2.10.
Second place cash, profit would go from $2.40 to $4.80.
First place cash, profit would go from $5.10 to $10.20.
Bonus would double, from about 2 cents per SNG to about 4 cents.
Rakeback would double, from 4.5 cents per SNG to 9 cents.

I said that almost everything will double, because my win rate will go down a bit when I move up to $3.30s, at least until I get some information on the regulars and figure out what adjustments I need to make, the most important of which is the percentage of my hands that I play.

I don't think that the ROI (return on investment) drop will be big. I estimate that my ROI will go down from about 13% at $1.65 to about 10% at $3.30, at least until I get used to the new level.

So, with a $1.65 SNG and a 13% ROI, I make 21.45 cents per SNG.
With a $3.30 SNG and a 10% ROI, I make 33 cents per SNG.


Adding it all up:

For each $1.65 SNG
Profit based on 13% ROI          0.2145
Bonus                                           0.02
Rakeback                                     0.045
                                                    --------
                                                     0.2795 ~ 28 cents per SNG

For each $3.30 SNG
Profit based on 10% ROI          0.33
Bonus                                           0.04
Rakeback                                     0.09
                                                   --------
                                                      0.46 = 46 cents per SNG


The medium-term goal is to have at least 100 buy-ins to play MTTs at the $5.50 level, which is the least expensive MTT on Americas Cardroom.  100(5.50) = $550.  When I move up from $1.65s to $3.30s, and if I play 50 SNGs a week (a realistic goal of 10 per day, playing 2 at a time, for 5 days) my expected profit per week should be 50(0.46) = $23.  With 4.2 weeks in a month, that's a profit of  4.2(23) = $96.60 per month.

So playing 50 SNGs a week, my profit should average around $100 a month, which means that I would be fully bankrolled to give MTTs a go sometime this fall.  I think that all of my numbers are both realistic and attainable, but there are other ways that this could play out:

1. If the $3.30 SNGs go well, I might move up to $5.50s as soon as I have the proper SNG bankroll of 50(5.50) = $275.

2. Americas Cardroom could start offering MTTs as low as $1.  If that happened, I would be bankrolled to play them right now.  I think that is unlikely this year, though it has been mentioned by players and the site as a possibility.

3. I could decide to stick with SNGs for a while.  If it's going well I night keep grinding away at them for a while, perhaps working on playing more than 2 tables at a time and giving myself a little extra in my bankroll.  A bankroll of 100 buy-ins is, in my opinion, the absolute minimum needed to play MTTs.

4. We could wind up moving some time this year.  This is quite likely, and as we want to do it on the cheap, I will do most of the packing and moving of small items by myself--especially if we move right next door, which is one of the two most likely options.  In the long run this will improve our situation and save us a lot of money, but in the short run it could cut my poker time way back for as much as a month, given that not only would we be moving, but we would be also having a yard sale to get rid of some things (which might happen this year whether we in fact move or not.)

I'll close by saying that I didn't run the above numbers until I typed this post.  To the two or three people who might take the time to go though all of this, including the math, thanks for your help.  Putting this in writing, in a form that you can go through and understand, has helped me to think the situation through, including some of the alternative scenarios that I had not thought about until now.

Results for March, 2013

It's been more than a week since my last post, and I apologize.  As with many of my ADD weakness, in this case, letting things slide, I've come up with a fix.  As usual, that fix involves imposing structure on myself.

There are certain sites or pages that I always open when I get online.  For example, I always open several Open Office spreadsheets, including Poker Hours and Comprehensive Poker Worksheet, as a reminder to keep those things up to date after I play poker.  I've added a new one, Blog Ideas.

Now, as part of my regular routine when I first get on my computer that day, Blog Ideas will be open, not only to remind me to make regular entries, but also to put things down that I might want to blog about, before I forget my brilliant idea of the moment.

There is no excuse for my not posting almost every day.  Even if I don't have anything new to say (which would be very unusual for me) I post on the 2+2 poker forums nearly every day, so I can crosspost one of those posts on here.

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

I have been trying, so far without success, to post a Holdem Manager graph of my results.  I'm not sure why I can't make it work, but I'll keep trying to figure it out.  Since I don't like my thinking to be too short-term, looking at a graph of the last 60 or 90 days (or more) helps me to see the big picture of how I'm doing.  I hope sometime soon to be able to do the same on here.

Last month went fairly well, considering that I've given up on being able to get my 40 hours a week in under the present circumstances.  My first full week was 48 hours, and the others were between 20 and 25 hours.  More about that in a future post.  But I made some money last month.  As often seems to happen, the month had a rough strart but ended well:

   Dates            Profit or Loss
  3/1-3/2                 7.53
  3/3-3/9             -10.94
3/10-3/16            -14.19
3/17/3/23             19.07
3/24-3/30            17.80
    3/31                     1.20
                            --------
                            $22.54

Month ending bankroll: $108.02