Today's Live Tournament

I get to play today at The Big Game Room.  Last week I got a small cash, and I'm hoping to do even better tomorrow.  I should be excited about it, but I'm not.

I didn't want to write this post.  I'm just doing it because I think I should post more than once a week.

Poker is my job, and that's all it is.  A very part-time job, but just a job.  Then fun has gone out of it.  It just hit me that for the first time this year, I'm going to play live poker, and I'm not even excited about it.  It's just something that I have to do.

It's become a grind, not just to play poker, but to manage everything else so that I can even play poker.  Half of my time, usually 3-5 days a week, I'm tied up with my eldercare situation.  The fate of the Michigan charity rooms could be decided soon, either by the courts or the Michigan House of Representatives, but I don't know when, or by whom.

One of the local dealers is looking for a casino job.  He thinks that the owner might get tired of the uncertainty and just close the room.  So here I am, always fighting to manage my ADD, with nothing under my control.  To properly manage my ADD, I need a plan.  I need a structure.  I need to impose organization and discipline.

To that end, about a week ago I decided to once again have a target for my studying, setting it at 20 hours a week. But since I am not home half of the time, there are always things waiting to be done.  One of those things, again due to outside forces, has recently become more urgent, and boom, my schedule and goals are blown up again.

I will play poker tomorrow, and I hope it goes well.  I don't even know what the priorities are any more.  If I hit the studying hard, I can't really apply and practice the things I learn playing a very few hours a week.  If I don't study and practice, I don't get better--but I can barely manage to either study or play, let alone do both.

I'm not depressed, it's more like I'm resigned.  I"m good at objectively analyzing a situaiton.  I'm in an almost impossible spot, with no choice but to keep going, so that's what I'll do.  I'll keep going, with no plan, knowing that if I come up with a one, it probably won't last a week.  That is a very, very bad situation for someone with ADD.

I want to make this work, for me, and for my family.  I"ll keep trying.  I just don't see how I can make anything happen in 2014.  As I see it, the best-case scenario is that it doesn't get worse.  But if the charity rooms close, it will be much worse.

Scientific American and the Skill Game Argument

I have worked things out so that I can play live poker more often.  More about that in a future post.

In a Scientific American article, Jennifer Ouelette states that based on a study of 60 players and 300 hands of poker, poker is a game of luck, with skill having very little effect on the outcome.  Here is my response:


300 players and 60 hands of poker? This is really bad science, or at least bad math.

Evidently Scientific American hasn’t heard about one of the basics of statistics, sample size. Many people know, from hearing public opinion polls discussed on TV, that a poll has to include enough people to be an accurate estimation of the opinions of larger groups.  The same applies to poker.

On the twoplustwo.com poker forums, beginners will often submit some results and ask for an evaluation of their play. The answer is often quick and to the point, something like this:

“Small sample size. Come back when you’ve played at least 10,000 hands.”

60 players over 300 hands?  Meaningless.

Qualities of a Poker Pro

The title of this thread is also the title of a thread on the twoplustwo.com poker forums, where we have been discussing what qualities a player must have be a successful pro.  There seems to be general agreement that experience should be near the top of that list.  I disagree.

I posted the flollowing on 5/25/2014:

Experience matters only to a point. If you have been playing for 10 years, that experience doesn't matter much if you're not doing the right things.

Getting really good at something is hard. There is almost always grunt work to be done, and it isn't glamorous or fun. Yo-Yo Ma, one of the most famous classical musicians in the world (he has played at the White House and been a character on the Simpsons--how many cellists can say that?) has been known to spend six straight hours in his hotel room practicing scales.

What does that have to do with poker players? We have to do our grunt work. We have to memorize odds and outs. We have to know equities, and we can't estimate how much equity we have in a hand unless we can put villian on a range.

I do a lot of brute force memorization. For example, one pro says in his book that when he is playing deep, if the situation is right, he will open with 20% of his hands, including small pairs and suited connectors from every position.

So, I played around with PokerStove. I started with all pairs and suited connectors. Then I added high card combinations until I had 20% of possible hands. I broke that down by position, assuming that the weakest high card hands in that range would be played in the later positions. Then I put those ranges on 7 flash cards (positions 1-5, cutoff and small blind, and button) and I memorized them.

Now when I encounter a player like that (Normad Chad says that Daniel Negreanu has suited connectoritis) I will have a very good idea what his range looks like. Or I could use that range against certain tables or players, or just to change gears and keep everyone guessing.

Of course my way is not the only way. I work a lot with poker books. Others buy very few books and prefer to spend more time on coaching sites. But the truth is that there are lots of people out there that have played for ten years but didn't get better.

Playing for ten years isn't the same as doing the work required to be great. Most of those ten year veterans don't run equities on Pokerstove, or review their hand histories, or learn what a 10% range looks like, or study tells, or sign up for a coaching site. The word for that is fish.

Michigan Charity Poker

On May 17th of this year, I wrote in response to an article in Poker News Daily about the legal battles surrounding charity poker.  There are many points of contention, but those against the charity room are bankrolled by the casinos in Michigan that don't want the competition.

On the other side are the owners, the players, and the charities.

The owners, who are running small businesses, would be squeezed by the new rules.  If rooms close, the players have fewer places to play live poker.  At one time, I lived more than 100 miles from the nearest casino that ran poker tournaments.  Now it's about 63 miles.  I live 8 miles from the local poker room.

The charities would be losers, because if charity rooms start closing, the the money stops flowing to the sponsoring charities.

The issue is currently in the state courts.

That's a quick summary of a complicated issue, so here's a link to the the article:

http://www.pokernewsdaily.com/new-charitable-gaming-rules-take-effect-in-michigan-for-now-25760/

And this is my response to the article:

I am a poker player, it is my job, and I want to know what right state or federal governments have to restrict my ability to make a living. There are already a sizable number of US players who have fled to other countries so that they can more easily play online. There is a Poker Refugee Center (yes, that’s the real name) in Canada.

What is the problem with poker? It’s not illegal. I’m not gambling against “the house.” I play tournaments against other players, I play an entry fee to play, and the players who finish highest win the money, with first place usually getting about 25% of the prize pool.

When I play chess tournaments, I pay an entry fee, I compete against other players, and the players who finish with the most points (one point for a win and half a point for a draw) win the money.

Please explain why poker is regulated so heavily and chess is not.

Poker is a legitimate profession. Professional Poker Player is a US Department of Labor job classification. To become a better player, I watch how my opponents play. I keep up with the latest poker theory through books and online forums. I make decisions based on probabiliy, statistics, and game theory.

So, what happened when I took a risk, become self-employed and tried to make a living playing poker? First, the US imposed banking regulations which made it very difficult to stay in the US market. It is so bad that even though my bank agreed that there is no legal problem, “we just don’t want to mess with it.” My bank, where my wife and I already have three accounts, will not let me open an account for my poker business, whether or not it is designated as a business account.

The current choices for online play are very poor, and the games don’t run often enough for many players to make a decent living. The proposed state regulations of charity poker will do the same thing. This is an attempt to regulate a legitimate business, which many players depend on for their living, out of the market.

Let me address just one of the ridiculous regulations.

Charity rooms will have to cut back from being open from 7 days to 4. Why? What other business is regulated that way? If your business had the usual fixed monthly costs (rent or property taxes, for example) and you were told that you could only open three days a week, how would you react? You might have to consider closing your doors. That is what the charities, the small business owners that run the charity poker rooms, and the players are all facing.

Don’t do this to me! Poker is my job. There isn’t much left for me online, and the charity room 10 miles from my house soon might not be a viable option.

I am in a family rotation to help take care or a 92-year-old relative. I can’t drive 100 miles to the nearest casino and stay for the weekend any time I feel like it. Even if I could, it would be much more expensive than my local poker room, where I can play any day of the week, I can bring my own food and drink, and the only costs I have are the tournament entry fee plus a few dollars for gas.

The proposed regulations need to be relaxed, as the state senate has already voted to do. I urge every member of the house to vote that way as well. Republicans are supposed to be pro-business. Now is the time to prove it.

Poker Always Loses

I got home today from a five-day stretch with my mother-in-law.   Every time that happens, I say, or at least think to myself, "I know I'm doing the right thing but . . . "

The "but" is that taking care of my mother-in-law changes everything, and it has gone on for much longer than I expected.  When this all started, she was 90 and had Alzheimers.  Now she's about to turn 92, and the only thing that has changed is that we are giving her full-time care rather than just checking on her and bringing her meals during the day.

I would like to be more dilligent about posting in my blog, and do it at least every other day, but when I sit down to write, I have no idea what to say.  How about this: "Third day with mother-in-law and I have studied poker for a total of two hours after she went to bed?"  I'm often too tired at night to do any serious studying, and anyway, I can't stay up very late because I have to be up whenever my mother-in-law is awake.

My wife and I had discussed this and agreed that I would play live at least once a week and fit that in on the days that I was home, but that hasn't worked out at all.  In the last two months I've played something like one online SNG, one online MTT and two live tournaments.

My duties with my mother-in-law are a very big deal, but the truth is that it's gone way beyond that. I'm in a situation where nothing else that I do is important.  My time is not valuable, because I'm not making an income, therefore, I can be diverted to anything else but poker with impunity.  My wife has to drive 30 miles to another city for a meeting with her employer?  Not even a question. I want to drive eight miles to work, in my case, the local poker room?  That's probably OK, unless something changes--and something usually does.

Here's a current example.  I have not been able to play a live tournament so far this month.  I looked at the schedule a few days ago, and there were only four possible days that I could play: June 20, 21, 27 and 28.  I was trying to play four times a month, and this month I was already down to only four possible days that I could play.

At least one of those days is probably gone now, because a relative is coming into town, and she has a cute new baby, so that definitely wins.  Certainly no one in the family thought about asking if I had to work (play poker) before that this was set up.  Poker always loses and I've let it happen.  Everyone knows that.  If I can't play a lot and make a lot of money, then why bother?  (The answer, of course, is that I have to play regularly enough to build a bankroll large enough to make some real money.)

The car has to go to see the new baby, so I have to sit in that car and see the baby (or stay home, but certainly not go to a poker room!)  I'm not really making any money playing poker, and I don't have to show up to keep an employer happy, so what I want is irrelevant.  I don't generate an income, therefore my time is not valuable, therefore, my desire to play poker is, from an economics point of view, irrelevant.

No one asks when I want to play poker when the schedule is made.  I work around the duty schedule, and I was OK with that for a while.  But now I realize that I made a huge mistake.  Because I work my job around the duty schedule, that says to everyone involved that I can work around other things as well, because I don't have a "real job" (it's clear that my brother-in-law sees it that way), which means that poker always loses.

The schedule works around birthdays, anniversaries and other events, including the regular game night of another caregiver.  Never, ever, around poker.  I'm 58, and the clock is ticking.  I'm trying to make a living playing a game that takes years of study and practice to master, and I'm running out of time.

No one made an analysis that my need to play poker is irrelevant, but that is in fact the way it works.  If cute baby was coming into town and I had a decent chance of winning at least a thousand dollars in a poker tournament that day, the calculation would be very different.  Poker has, at least until now always been the lowest family priority.  Until I can turn playing poker into something, poker is nothing.

I can't post here about my poker playing, since I almost never play, so I'll probably start cross-posting some of the things I've said on the twoplustwo.com poker forums recently.  Yes, you read that correctly.  I advise other players and I don't even play.

Useless Knowledge?

I don't study poker as much as I should.  When I learn something new, I don't like to think that it's useless knowledge, even if it's something that I can only use once every two or three tournaments.  When I'm able to play more than 200 tournaments per year, either live or online, applying that bit of information can add up to real money.  At least that's the way it should work, but there are two problems.

One problem is that I don't play enough tournaments that a small improvement will matter over the course of a year.  That won't happen until I have control of my time and put in 50 or more hours per week.

The second problem is more immediate.  Since I don't have many chances (tournaments) to apply new things that I learn, trying to add new things to work on at the table is messing up my concentration, and therefore my play.

Poker has a lot of variables.  One of the most popular poker sayings is:  The answer to any poker question is, "It depends."

When I have to make a decision on how much to bet, it can depend on how many chips I have, the current tournament situation, how close I am to making the money, a tell I have picked up on someone, and many other factors.  I understand in general how all of that works, though I have a lot of work to do on some of the math in those situations.

Live poker tournaments have a lot of things that always need to be monitored, and that's the problem.  When I play online, there are numbers on the screen.  Playing live, if five players are in a hand, I have to keep track of all the bets and know how many chips are in the pot at all times.  I also need to keep track of everyone's stack size (how many chips they have), what percentage of hands they are playing, and how close the blinds (forced bets that increase thoughout the tournament) are to going up.

I can't keep track of all of the mechanics yet, and as I learn more and more things that I should be watching for, (for example, the motion a player uses to put chips in the pot can be a tell, especially if it's different that his usual motion), I get so overwhelmed trying to apply everything that I've learned. that in my last tournament, several times I didn't know it was my turn to play until the dealer told me.

If I was playing several tournaments a week, I would have more times to try out the new things I'm learning.   But for now, as counterintuitive at it seems, I have to forget some of the things I know.  If I'm not keeping track of another player well enough to know that his small stack size might force him to go all in on the next hand, then I have no business giving myself more things to think about, such as what kind of tells I should be watching for from other players at the table.

I was overwhelmed during my last tournament.  I managed to cash in third place, but I have to wonder if being confused during the last half hour cost me a chance at first place, which would have been about four times what I won.

In my next tournament I have to keep it simple and concentrate on the mechanics.  Once I can keep up with the mechanics, I can add something small, like watching one or two players for tells.  I have to dumb it down--and that's really hard to accept.  I'm 58 years old.  I don't have 20 years to wait before I start making serious money.

Chaos is Winning

I have only been making about one blog entry a month.  I should do it more often, but I never know what to say.  Poker is a mess, almost everything in my life is out of control, and there seems to be nothing that I can do about it.

There are a lot of things that are going on that, by themselves, might not be a big deal.  But putting everything together, along with the fact that I have ADD, I'm quickly losing my grip.

I am helping to take care of my mother-in-law, who is 91 and has Alzeiheimer's.  I never hesitated when asked to do it, because she's family, and that's what family does.  My wife can't do it, and her brother can't do it, because they have what non-poker players like to call "real jobs" where they have to be on site during certain hours. What started out as checking on my mother-in-law during the day for a few months turned into living with with her full-time three or four days a week. The care that we thought would be necessary for a few months has turned into 15 months.

On the home front, my wife and I decided to make some sacrifices to get all of our debts paid off.  We were already paying extra on some of our debts, and we paid off and closed a credit card account recently.  A few months ago, we decided to get even more aggressive, squeeze the budget even harder, and add an extra $200 a month to paying down our debt.

Again, that was a good idea and the right thing to do.  But when a teenager ran a red light and totaled my car, we didn't have the cash to replace it with another used car, and we decided years ago that we would never have another car payment.  So, I am now without transportation.

The bottom line is that I don't have the wherewithal (time, money, transportation or control of my schedule) to hold everything together.

When I play live poker (about three times a month) I try to present a conservative image, then I play against type by being loose and agressive at the tables.  I go as far as to keep my hair cut short and shine my shoes before every live tournament.  At least that was the plan.  I played last night, without the haircut, because I didn't have the time or transportation to go to a barber.  Except for when I'm playing a live tournament, my wife has control of the car 90% of the time, because she needs it for work, and I do most of my work at home.  Sometimes I can't get the car for days, and that's what happened this time.

When I do some planning, for poker or anything else, it means nothing, because the things I need to do at home pile up, or I'm so tired from my several days with my mother-in-law that I spend half of my first day at home catching up on my sleep.

It's hard for me to be organized as it is, and it's getting way out of control.  I still haven't switched everything over to the Windows 8 computer.  My wife and I agreed on a day when I would do that (June 1st), and the whole day just got blown away by something else.  It had to be taken care of that day, it was for my wife's work and she's the one with an income, so goodbye Windows 8 day.

Charles E. Hummel wrote a short book entitled Tyranny of the Urgent.  He talks about how many of us allow the urgent to prevent us from doing the important. That's exactly what's happening to me.  I mowed the lawn a few days ago when my wife reminded me that we could get fined if our grass was too long--and boom, the tyranny of the urgent blew away my joke of a schedule once again.  (To be honest, I've been pretty lax in my scheduling lately, as there seems to be no point to it.)

Today we are going to the grocery store and the bank and taking care of some other errands.  I will probably get that haircut, at least two weeks later than I wanted to.  At 5 P.M. I start with my mother-in-law again.  I will be there for three days, home for two, then back for another three.

So tomorrow, and several days after, are blown away.  My poker recordkeeping is a mess.  My planning is a joke.  My records are close to the point where updating and fixing them will become urgent, or I'll never catch up and my income tax records won't pass any type of audit.  I can't plan anything, because I don't know when I will get the car, or when I will have six free hours at home when I can play an online tournament, or when I can block out two hours to watch and study a poker coaching video.  To think that I will really be able to devote a full day to changing everything over to Windows 8 seems a cruel joke.

I wish that I could just say that I will devote several hours to my records on Tuesday, and devote Friday to switching everything to the new Windows 8 computer and external hard drive.  But any plans that I make are a sand castle, just waiting to be knocked down when the tides change.

Worst of all, I'm dealing with this while at the same time dealing with ADD.  One of the things I decided early  in my poker decision-making is that I had to impose order on chaos.  I needed short-term and long term plans.  I needed goals.  I needed the right mix of poker play and study. I can't "wing it."  A couple months ago I developed a written business plan--but I haven't kept it updated as fast as cicumstances have changed--another failure.

Chaos is winning.

I'm winging it most of the time now.  My tendency toward disorganization, instead of being managed by a schedule, is being swamped by chaos and uncertainty.  I need to control this, but I have no control over anything.  I feel like every day, I'm bringing a knife a to a gunfight.