My Bankroll Problem

There are two main things to know about my poker bankrolls (live and online):

1.  My goal is to have at least 100 buy-ins for every tournament that I play.

2.  I started my bankrolls from nothing.

The idea was to build both my live and online bankrolls up to 100 buy-ins, then build them further so that I could move up to the next level.  I'm at 68 buy-ins for the highest online tournaments that I'm playing.  I'm down to 4 buy-ins for live tournaments.

An astute reader of this blog is thinking, "Wait a minute Clif, you said you should drop down a level before your bankroll gets small, then build it back up."  Yes, I should have done that, but I can't.  There are no lower levels.

There are two places that I know of where I can play live tournaments, one close to my home and one in the nearby city of Grand Rapids.  The tournament line-ups are nearly identical, in fact, they are identical on Friday and Saturday, offering one $50 tournament each of those two nights.

I am a caregiver, on alternate weeks, on duty either Sunday through Wednesday, or Sunday through Thursday.  I allow myself a day to catch up on my sleep before playing live, so the only nights that I can play live tournaments are some Fridays and most Saturdays.  That's it.  I play one of those $50 tournaments, or I don't play that week.  The $20-$40 tournaments only run on days that I can't play.

I always tell my wife that there is usually more than one solution to a problem, and that is true in this case.  Some of those solutions are:

1.  Play live less often.  My wife and I get a weekly stipend for helping with my mother-in-law, and I have been using 20% of that money to prop up my live bankroll, 20% for my poker expense account, and 10% for adding to my online bankroll. If I keep doing that and play only once every other week, that money can keep my bankroll propped up as long as my losing streak continues.

2.  I can change those distribution percentages.  I don't have any wiggle room with the expense account, because I have to buy a new printer.  But I could stop adding to the online bankroll for a while and bump the live bankroll distribution up to 30%.

3.  I can modify my playing style for a while.  I hate to do it, but there have been times when I (correctly) played to win the tournament when I could have easily coasted and won a few buy-ins, instead of going for the $1,000 first prize (20 buy-ins).  If I get in a situation where I'm vey low on chips I might consider hanging on to those chips if it gets me into the money, or if I've already cashed, I might be satified to coast one place higher before I'm out of chips.  Desperate times call for desperate measures.

I hate all of those options.  #1 is bad, because most months I am in fact able to play only three times in a month because of family or other obligations.  Johnathan Little says that it takes 100 live tournaments to be good at it, which is really scary when I'm playing 3 times a month.

#2 is bad, because I already have 68 online buy-ins on Americas Cardroom or in cash, and I would love to push forward and get that up to 100, then start building for the next level.  I'm doing fairly well in those tournaments, and I expect to get up to 100 buy-ins before too long.  I don't really want to slow that process.

#3 is bad, because tournament poker sucess is about a few big cashes, not a lot of small ones.  Most of the money is at the final table, and most of the final table money goes to the top three places.  #3 might save my bankroll and let me hang on until things turn aournd, but it will considerably lengthen the time it takes to get to 100 buy-ins.

Unless I get a decent live cash soon, it will probably be some combination of those bad options.  I'm only going to play in Grand Rapids once this month, which will free up a little money and time for me to do other poker-related things and try to finally get this thing off the ground.

Taking Your Job Too Seriously

With playing poker, as with any other job, there are people that take their job seriously.  But there is a point at which you take your job a little too seriously.  Someone posted the following on 2+2:

I guess it's no surprise that poker room people are possibly the most callous people on earth, but I was a little shocked at these events.

I'm walking into the room as I approach the brush stand*, there is a loud noise. A guy next to the cage just collapsed and hit the half wall on the way down. He is completely motionless and I thought it was a good chance he just dropped dead.

The brush looks at me and says what game. I say, "Use the mic and call for a doctor." He acted embarrassed at having to do so calling for a doctor in the room. 

The in house paramedics arrive about 2 minutes later and the guy has still not moved an inch. I see the paramedic lumbering down the hall and I have walked faster crossing a street while a car is waiting for me to cross.

Meanwhile, I look up and every game in the room is still dealing new hands. The guy finally comes to, thankfully. But it was just wierd.

*aka registration desk.  I had to Google the term, which was more difficult than I expected.  It has multiple meanings, depending on the context.  Adding the word "poker" as a search term didn't nail it down because "brush stand" can mean the stand holding a fireplace poker.)

Poker Math--An Example

I have talked a lot about the importance of math in poker decisions.  The math can be fairly simple (if I call that bet, how many chips will I have left?)  On the other extreme, there is a section of Harrington on Holdem where the author uses seven pages of math to solve a poker problem.

A lot of the poker math nerds hang out in the Poker Theory thread on the twoplustwo.com poker forums.  I want to get better at my decisions late in tournaments, and I want to advance beyond a general understanding of the concepts, and really dig down, work the math,and study it deeply.

This is cutting-edge poker theory, in fact, the concept of Bubble Factor has only been around for a year or two as far as I know.  That makes it a timely topic for this post.  For those who want to know more there is a link at the end of this post.

Here is the question that I posted:

How are ICM and Bubble Factor related?  I'm starting to dig more deeply into the math of poker and I've never seriously studied either, though I've done some reading about Bubble Factor.

I would like to dig a little more into these concepts, but I don't quite understand how and if they are related to each other. From what I know they both seem to be about considering tournament and prize pool structures when considering a bet, for example, the bubble factor would obviously be very high if you're in a satellite that pays the top ten the same amount, 15 players are left and you're in third place.

Are they two ways of saying the same thing? Is one more important than the other in different situations?

Here is the best response that I received:

The bubble factor (BF) is Prize $ lost if you lose the hand / Prize $ gained if you win. It uses ICM theory to get these values. It is easy to show that it is always greater than 1.0. 

Assume an all-in bet of B when the pot odds are P. Then in a cash game the required equity is B/(B+P). Dividing numerator and denominator by B, you have 

eq_chip >= 1 / (1+Pot Odds).

For a tournament, your winnings -- the chips in the pot, translate to P/BF dollars in prize money, the metric you’re really interested in. Substituting this for P leads to the needed equity under ICM of

eq_icm >= 1/(1+Pot Odds/BF)

Example:
With a pot sized all-in bet of 10, the pot is increased to 20 and your pot odds are 2 to 1; you need 33% chip equity for +cEV in a cash game. For a tournament, if your bubble factor was 1.4, you need for +$EV

eq_icm = 1/(1+2/1.4) = 41.2%.

A reasonable question to ask is why do you need more equity in a tournament; everyone has the same issue? The answer is that EV is relative; you should always be comparing against alternatives. Here, for an all in bet the alternative is folding. In a cash game folding has zero cEV when the baseline stack size is that at the decision point. However, for a tournament, folding ALWAYS has positive $EV. Therefore calling requires a higher portion of the pot to do better than folding, which translates to higher required equity.

http://dokearney.blogspot.com/2009/05/theory-posticmbubble-factor-part-2.html

My Live Mechanics Are Improving

I played a live tournament last night.  No cash again, 23rd of 57.  The good news is that I'm starting to see some improvement in my live tournament mechanics.  I spent a lot more time trying to keep track of the exact pot size, both when I was in the pot and when I wasn't. I'm not good at it, but I'm better than I was a month ago.  Only once did I fold my big blind when I could have checked.  Just a couple months ago I would get confused, lose track of play and make that unnecessary fold five times a night.

I'm improving in another area, but as is often the case when trying to master something, I keep finding more and more things that I need to work on.  I picked up reads on a couple players on my left that were contesting my raises almost every time.  They obviously were just trying to push me off my hands, often while not having strong hands themselves.

I probably should have picked up on what those two players were up to sooner than I did, and more important, after playing for an hour I should have some sort of read on almost everyone at my table, not just two players.

I'm not even close to keeping exact track of the pot size every time, so that will continue to be my main focus for a while, but I will try to generate better reads of my opponents as well.  I have no doubt that once I am able to play full-time, a lot of things that I'm struggling with will start to fall into place.

Trying To Get Something Done

I'm with my mother-in-law today.  I'm usually too tired to play or study at  night after she goes to bed, so I decided to make the most of the time when I'm with her in the living room during the day.  It didn't work.

Even though she was reading the paper most of the time that I was working in the living room,  I couldn't concentrate.  I can't even do something as simple as update my poker records and files with the TV on and directly in my line of sight.  I knew if I kept trying to do it, I would just mess it up.  I have ADD, and I have to accept my limitations.

What is harder to accept is that I'm going to be here 3-4 days of the week and sleep a lot the day I get home--and I'll acomplish nothing poker-related during that time.  I can't continue like this.

I remember listening to radio talk show host Bruce Williams.  He is a self-made millionaire, and one of his callers needed some help with his time management.  Williams said that at one time he was a full-time college student, worked full-time, and still had time for his wife and children.  The incredulous caller wanted to know how he did it.

Williams replied with a question--"Do you watch TV?"  The caller said that he did.  Williams said, "I didn't.  For a year."  Long silence from the caller.  He wasn't happy.  

I'm very resistant to making that decision.  I guess that shows where my priorities are.  There are a lot of TV shows that I really like watching, but if I'm serious about poker, my choice is obvious. I have to be able to play enough, study enough, and keep my records straight, whatever it takes.

Things I'm learning About myself

It continues to be difficult to accomplish much while I'm taking care of my mother-in-law three or four days a week, then coming home and spending much of the next day catching up on my sleep.  I managed to play one live tournament each of the last two weeks.  I'm not making any money, but some of the signs are promising.  I'm going deeper and getting better, but I'm spending a lot of buy-ins doing in doing it.  I need to keep reminding myself that Jonathan Little, a two-time World Poker Tour Player of the Year, talks about how difficult the adjustment from online to live poker can be.  He states that it takes at least 100 live tournaments to fully adjust to the differences.  I guess I can't expect to improve a lot when I've only played live about 40 times in 2014.

As a musician, I continue to discover ways that music and poker are similar. To be a successful musician you have to study and learn the fundamentals of music, but you also need to practice and perform. Poker is no different.

How a poker player should divide his time between playing and studying is a hotly debated topic.  Some pros state that studying should be about 20% of poker time, while others say it should be as high as 50%.  I don't have the numbers in front of me, but the study component of my time this year is way over 50%.  I just don't play enough to make any money at it, or to apply the things that I'm practicing and learning.  When I subtract my expenses from my winnings, I'll almost certainly show a small net loss this year.  My job really isn't poker, it's taking care of my mother-in-law, and it's the right thing to do.  I am fortunate that my wife makes enough to keep us going until we get through this difficult time for our family.

That said, studying is of necessity my main focus while I continue to learn a lot about the live game, my opponents, and my strengths and weaknesses.  I'm now playing tournaments in two different cities.  The players in those cities have very different skills and playing styles. Learning to adapt on the fly to whatever is happening at my table will prove very useful in the long run.

There are three important things that I have learned about myself and my play:

1.  I need to get better at keeping track of the pot size.  I can do a pretty good job of looking at the chips in the pot, estimating the total, and deciding how that affects my decisions.  But I need to do better than that.  Every time someone puts chips in the pot, I should be able to add that in my head and know that the pot size is $13,275 (or whatever the number is.)  Then I can much more accurately calculate the odds that the pot is offering, and make much better decisions.

2.  I need to pay attention even when I'm not in a hand.  I should be using that time to practice a variety of skills.  As stated above, I need to get better at keeping track of pot size.  When I'm not playing, every time someone makes a bet, I should add the amount to the total pot size number in my head.

When I watch the World Poker Tour on television, I know that the players at the final table can do that.  I need to be able to do that.  As I work on paying constant attention to the pot size, I will find myself increasingly able to do the same thing when playing a hand.

Once keeping track of the pot size becomes automatic I can work on other things when I'm not in a hand, for example, I could choose a player and see if I can pick up any tells.  Does Joe used different motions to put chips in the pot with a strong hand than with a weak one?  Does Joan suddenly sit up and pay attention when a card that helps her hits the board?  When I can do that with one player, I can increase the degree of difficulty and watch more players, and again, I will find myself increasingly able to do those things when I'm in a hand.

3.  I have to get more comfortable with taking big risks at the table. There were several times in my tournament tonight that the poker books would say I should have made a certain play, and I know I should have made that play, but I played it safe.

I have to keep reminding myself, over and over and over, that one tournament doesn't matter.  It's OK to make a play when I know that it is very likely to get me knocked out of a tournament, in fact, it's necessary.  I'm playing to make money over a year, not on one night.  A play might not work several times in a row, and get me knocked out of a bunch of tournaments.  But the odds I'm being offered by the pot might be telling me that the few times that I do win a similar hand, the amount of money added to my stack will give me a good shot at going very deep in that tournament.  Winning just one big tournament can, depending on the size of the prize pool, add 5 or 25 or 100 buy-ins to a poker bankroll.  The entry fee for my most recent out-of-town tournament was $50.  First place money was $1,000.

The counterintuitive truth is that poker isn't about how often you cash, it's about total profit over a year or more.  Sometimes 50% or more of annual profit can come from just a few very large cashes.  One player stated on the twoplustwo.com poker forums that during the previous year, more than 50% of his profit came from just 2 large cashes.

That is so counterintuitive that I continue to struggle with the concept.  Of course I should try to cash every time.  I'm want to go out and play poker, and come home with money.  That's what it's all about, right?

No, that's not right.  Math doesn't lie.  Poker is all about the math, and if that math keeps saying that I have to risk being knocked out of tournaments early, I better start listening.