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.