Managing My Money and My Time

I have been working on a written business plan on and off for the last three months.  I'm not happy with the way poker has been going.  Mainly because it hasn't going anywhere.  I can barely play at all.

I've been trying to play about one live tournament a week.  That was going OK for a while, but I finally played tonight, after being too tired for tournaments the previous three weeks. I wanted to play, but I knew that I was too tired to start at 7 P.M. and still be making intelligent decisions at midnight.  Also, I'm getting very little exercise, and I can feel the difference.  I'm fat, tired and sluggish.

When I'm with my mother-in-law, I sit, all the time.  She watches TV, and she wants someone with her.  If I'm not in the room with her, she comes looking for me, something thinking that I left her alone.  I'm a physically active person.  When I'm at home, even when I'm watching TV, I often get up and do something during the commercials.  That upsets my mother-in-law, and she usually asks something like "why are you running around like that?" When I watch TV at home, it's usually a show that I'm watching on demand, very late at night when I'm too tired to do anything else.  I have a list of TV shows that I follow, and that's what I do late at night when I'm too tired to play poker or study, but not tired enough to sleep.

When I'm with my mother-in-law, it's not physical, but it's intense.  I have to be up whenever she's up.  She tries to walk out of the house to get the paper or for some other reason, and that's not safe.  I only sleep when she sleeps and the door is locked and chained.  If I can't get to sleep shortly after she does, there is rarely a time that I can catch up on my sleep.  So I'm getting little exercise and not enough sleep.  My first day or two at home is all about catching up on sleep.

When I get home to play a live poker tournament, I'm often too tired to do it.  My ability to do anything (run, study, play poker) is very limited.  This isn't a complaint, as I had a pretty good idea what I was signing up for.  But dealing with the reality is different than simply knowing that it will be hard.  I had to come to terms with that reality and decide what to do it about it.  I'm examining everything that I do, including how I spend my time and money.  Here are two changes that I made:

1.  I subscribed to a poker coaching site.  It's a bargain at $10 a month, and there are over 700 coaching videos covering a variety of specific topics.  Some are hand-by-hand playback of a tournament with expert commentary about each hand.  I will even have a chance to participate in live webinars where I can ask questions or even post a hand for expert analysis during the webinar.

The beauty of this is that I can do this anytime, anywhere, and I don't need a big block of time.  If my mother-in-law gets engrossed in something on television or in the newspaper, I'm going to try to watch a video using headphones. When I think she's asleep I can watch, and if I hear her moving around I can pause the video and finish it later.  I can watch at home when the games are dead on Americas Cardroom.

2.  I decided to work with the live bankroll that I have for now. I let my pride get in the way on this one, and it's time to change course. I put $50 online to start on Americas Cardroom, and I've been messing around with $1 and $3 online tournaments because following strict bankroll management, that's all I'm able to play.  I worked my way up on PokerStars, starting out playing at $1, then $5, then $10, growing my bankroll for a few months before I moved up to a new level, and that was mostly playing part-time.  I should be able to do it again on Americas Cardroom right?

Theoretically, yes.  Practically, no.  The availability of both SNGs and MTTs on Americas Cardroom is very limited, and the hours that I can play are limited as well.  Given my situation and the state of online poker, I realize now that it could take me a year or more to do what I did on PokerStars in a few months.  If I add to my online bankroll, that would allow me to play at higher levels.  If I can play at different levels, that doubles or triples the opportunities to play, it would allow me to play multiple tables at least occasionally, and I can make money a lot faster.

My wife and I get a stipend for helping with my mother-in-law, and I've been putting some of that money toward poker, including building a small bankroll for live poker.  That prority changes starting today.  The best use of that money is to build up my online bankroll instead.  Then, though I have precious few hours that I can play, when I am able to play I will have more options, and I can make much better use of the time that I have.