41 Days of Poker--A Quick Tournament Exit

I played a tournament tonight (the same structure as the one that I cashed on Sunday) and it didn't go well.

I don't think that I made many mistakes and I'm starting to get a feel for playing a lot of speculative hands.  I'm always working on adding hands, on the theory (pretty well accepted) that one should play as many hands as they can play well.  I still have a lot of work to do.  I need to add more king- queen- and jack-high hands to my range, but that's a project for a later date.

Last night (Thursday) I was dealt a lot of suited connectors and semi-connectors such as 65s and T8s. Almost every time I flopped a promising draw that didn't go anywhere.  I missed flushes or straights on the river quite a few times.

I flopped well but couldn't get anything from it.  Non-speculative hands didn't work out very well either.  The only broadway hand that I saw was AJo, and I don't remember getting dealt any pairs until my last hand of the tournament.  Shortly after the AJ hand I limped with T9.  I  flopped middle pair (nines), bet it and got five callers, making my chance of my pair holding up close to zero.  Nothing was working and I rode the nonstop variance train out of the tournament.

I wasn't getting good cards in general, the speculative hands went nowhere, and missing all of those draws to eight or more outs depleted my stack rather quickly over the first hour.

I ended my tournament by playing two big hands against one of the top players in the area.  On the first hand I flopped two small pairs on a very wet board and I made a large bet to price out straight draws.  She had flopped the straight and I lost a lot of chips on that hand. My last hand I was dealt aces, she made a large bet and I called.  After a disconnected 9xx flop she made another big bet, making the pot size more than 1/3 of my stack, and I shoved.  She showed pocket nines, giving her a set, she had me covered, and I was done for the night.

I had thought about shoving my aces preflop, but that seemed excessive when the pot was not very large, maybe 10% of my stack. I didn't think the math was right for a shove, but my instincts were to go all in.  I went with the math, it didn't work out for me, and I was done for the night.

Since I only won a few buy-ins on Sunday I have to be really careful about my tournament choices.  The tournament that I played tonight and on Sunday has the best structure for the way I play and I'll pick my spots and not play anything but that one for now.  I will play it in my city on Sundays, but not any more on Thursdays, when the field, and therefore the prize pool is much smaller.  I will either play once a week, or go out of town to play the Wednesday tournament there.

My 41 days of poker certainly isn't turning out the way I had hoped.  In two weeks I go back to taking care of my mother-in-law two days a week.  That's not a lot of time, but the schedule is always changing, and family communication has been a real problem.  I just want to know what the plan is, but it seems to be all about on manipulative family member who always gets here way.

That said I've been using what free time I have left to do some good studying.  I've gone through several coaching videos and worked on my flash cards.  I spent some time running different scenarios on the Equilab equity calculator yesterday and in general I've done some good work on my game.

I'm getting a good idea of what my strengths and weaknesses are, I play better in tournaments with larger fields.  I can play my speculative hands early when effective stacks are high and win some big pots at a full table.  And more players means that play goes longer and final table stacks will be shorter.  A lot of otherwise good charity room players don't understand when it's time for shove or fold poker, and I have an advantage there.

41 Days of Poker

The last two weeks have been eventful, to say the least.  Too much happened to explain every point, so I'll just list what happened and elaborate in future posts:

The downswing was relentless, and as I burned though most of my poker money, I started mixing in some online play.

Online is going very well, when Americas Cardroom doesn't stall or crash.  Playing $1 to $3 tournaments, I increased the $47 that was sitting on the site to $147.  I don't want to rely very heavily  on online poker, for several reasons I will detail in a future post.

I finally blew though all of my poker funds.  My wife gave me $60 out of the family budget, and Sunday 10/18 in my local poker room I took 4th place out of 62 and got myself a few buy-ins.  I will be playing the same tournament, which runs twice a week in two miles from my house, tomorrow (Thursday.)

That isn't the first time type that I had to fight through a big downswing.  Downswings (the mathematical term is  "negative variance are unavoidable in any game with significant variance--math doesn't lie. When I first started playing poker I put $50 on an online site, played about even (mostly $1 tournaments) for a while, then finally lost it all after three months.  I gave it another try with another $50 and before long I cashed a $3 tournament, coming in 7th of 4,200 players for $384.  I'll just have to make an equally good comeback with live poker.

In my slow, step-by-step, plodding way, I continue to learn and improve.  I have improved a lot in two areas:

1. I'm getting out of trouble when I need to.   I've played several live hands lately where  I had a big hand, but realized it wasn't good enough and got out of trouble just in time.  In each case I had top pair or better, I folded at some point in the hand, and every time villian showed me a straight or better.

2. I'm getting a lot better at playing more hands.  I'm working at getting lot of speculative hands into the mix.  I'm doing well with that and I'm definitely confusing some opponents when I win pots with hands like 65s, 86s and 98o.

More detail to follow in future posts.

41 Days of Poker--It's harder than I expected.

I played another tournament today.  One of the rooms changed their schedule and I missed it somehow.  I got there and wound up playing a tournament that was a different structure and had a different starting stack than I expected, and I didn't adjust early enough.  I didn't cash.

I almost didn't make it to the tournament.  We have one car and my wife had to work about an hour longer than she expected.  When I arrive at a tournament at the last minute, it usually doesn't go well.  I need a few minutes to settle in and "get the lay of the land."  I wasn't prepared at all.  In hindsight, maybe I should have skipped the tournament today.  My wife wouldn't have felt rushed to get home, and I wouldn't have sat down to play unprepared for the change in structure.

That said, sometimes I wonder if I can tell the difference between an obstacle and an excuse any more.  This is a trial run for being a full-time poker player for the forseeable future. and I have to know that I can take it seriously and give it my best shot.  There have certainly been a lot of obstacles, but ultimately I either succeed or I don't.

41 Days of Poker--$50 Freezout

Happy birthday to me.  I turned 60 today, old enough to start getting my army retirement pay.

I played a live $50 freezeout yesterday.  I made some big mistakes on my last hand of the tournament.  Until then, I played really well.

I saw few good hands and didn't hit with any of my speculative hands.  By the beginning of the second hour of play I was hanging on with a pretty short stack.

Then I got aggressive in the right places, shoving often, and I watched my stack stay about the same size.  I didn't pick up very many chips on my all-ins because I shoved about ten times without getting a caller.

At the beginning of hour three my stack was getting really small and I was having to shove more and more often.  Before the big hand at the end, I had shoved between 15 and 20 hands and only been called once.  I wasn't picking up enough chips to keep up with the blinds and antes.  The players in my local poker room are aggressive early in tournaments and very tight when stacks get shorter.

Then it happened.  In the blinds (I don't remember which one) I limped holding 33.  Three players to the flop.  Then I complete messed it up.  The flop was something like 973r and I flopped a set.  I should have shoved right there.

I had shoved a bunch of times, no one had called me in a while and the table was getting antsy.  Then I made one of the worst mistakes in poker--falling in love with a hand.  I forgot about my shove or fold strategy and made big bets on the flop and turn.  One player called, we went to the river.  Runner runner straight for villian, and I was out of the tournament.

One could argue that I was way ahead mathematically and villian doesn't hit that straight very often.  That was indeed the case and negative variance has been hitting me in the head for several months. There is nothing I can do about that.  Even so,  I made so many mistakes in that one hand that I deserved to get knocked out:

1. I fell in love with a hand.  My strategy going into that hand was to play shove or fold poker. The table was so antsy that it was likely someone would call my next shove, but I got excited when I saw the set and I developed one of the most deadly of all poker maladies--Fancy Play Syndrome.

2. My bets were sized incorrectly.  As stated above, I went into the hand with a shove or fold strategy, but I lost my mind when I hit my set.  I didn't even think about bet sizing.  I bet way too much on both the flop and turn.  When we got to the river only a tiny fraction of the chips I had at the beginning of my hand were left.  Logically and mathematically, villian HAD to call.  He called with his gutshot and hit his straight.

3. I never saw the straight draw. I was so in love with my hand that I wasn't paying attention to the community cards.  When the hand played out I was waiting for the dealer to push the chips toward my stack.  In my mind, I had already won the hand and more than doubled up when I hit my set.

I have no excuse for my poor play and all the mistakes I made on that hand.  I have no excuse for not watching the board, because it's inexcusable.  I can't remember the last time I messed up a hand that badly.

My next live tournament will be on Tuesday, September 29, a $30 freezeout.  I will post my results Wednesday morning.

41 Days of Poker--Homefront issues

As much as I would like my life to be all about poker for a while, the world doesn't stop so that I can play poker.  There are always things on the homefront that need to be addressed.  In this case, we have car problems.

My wife and I live very frugally as we work toward putting ourselves in a great position when we retire.  Part of that frugal lifestyle is not having made a car payment for more than ten years.  We pay cash for used cars and keep them for a long time.  We currently have just one car, a 1998 Chevrolet Cavalier, and it won't last much longer.  Our mechanic told us that he wouldn't keep the car for more than six months because the bottom of the car is going to rust out sooner rather than later.

We have been agressively paying down some debt, making more than the minimum payments.  As one one debt gets payed off, the money freed up goes toward the remaining debts.  We might have to change course for a while and divert some of those extra payments to our savings account to pay cash for another used car.

So in the next few months we'll have to do something about another car, but that's wasn't the immediate problem.  I killed a big part of day dealing with the car a couple days ago and I didn't get much poker time in.

I got to sleep at about 0300, then I had to wake up and  my wife to work at 0530.  I unsuccessfully tried to take a nap before taking the care to Firestone at 0900.  I spent at hour at Firestone before I got the verdict, then I had to pick up my wife from work at 1430.

That pretty much ended my poker day before it started,  I asked Firestone to turn off the television in the waiting area, and since I was the only customer at the time they agreed.  I had my Kindle with me, so I got a little study time in going through Secrets of Profession Poker, Volume 2.

When I got home, I took a short nap before picking my wife from work, but I was too tried to concentrate on poker after that.  The studying and the administrative work that I had lined up didn't get done.

I don't work five-day weeks.  I don't take days off.  I try to spend at least a little time on poker every day, even if it's only for a couple hours,  That approach should make it easier to rack up my hours every week.

Tomorrow my loving and very romantic wife will expect me to go out for dinner tomorrow for my 60th birthday.  Being the frugal person that she is, she found a downtown restaurant.that she wants to try that gives free birthday dinners.  How can I turn that down?

This partial week got disrupted, but my first full Sunday through Saturday week starts two days from now.  I'll do my best to make sure that I put every one of my 50 work hours to good use.

41 Days--Filling The Time With Administrative Tasks

I came home tonight and I don't have to go back for a while.  Tomorrow I start my 41 days without having to be a live-in caregiver.  I'm usually a thoughtful, methodical person.  I ponder and analyze my situation and decide what to do next.  I'm even-tempered and don't get rattled or excited easily.  Being even-tempered is a very good thing for a poker player.

I'm not even-tempered right now.  I'm more excited than I've been in a long time.  I finally have some time to concentrate on poker, to study and learn, and to see what I can do when I can finally do my job!

I wish that I could play a live tournament tomorrow, but I'll probably have to wait a day or two, which is OK because I need to study as well.

I said in my previous post that I want to work 50 hours a week, with at least 25 hours playing and at least 15 hours of studying.  That leaves ten hours unaccounted for.

Some of those extra hours could be filled by going deep in a few tournaments.  I want to play three or four times a week, and if I played four times and went deep in all four, that could account for more than 25 hours.  I also could do some extra studying.

Right now however, I need to put in some serious administrative time. I am way behind in my recordkeeping.  I have a lot of data entry to do and I need to upgrade my systems.  I need to build a database that keeps track of everything.  I want to be able to find numbers on everything: buy-ins, add-ons, dealer tips and other tournament expenses.

I also need to upgrade my system for keeping track of other poker expenses such as software, office supplies and poker books.  I need to track my live and online bankrolls, and many other things.  I'm debating whether this should all go in one giant database that I can sort for what I want, or if aspects of my business should just be quantified by simple spreadsheets, which is mostly what I am doing now..

There is one thing that I need to do first before building a database.  I have to learn how.  I'm very comfortable designing and using spreadsheetbeing but I haven't built a database in years.  I need to invest some time in studying Open Office to get familiar with how their database works.

I cerrtainly won't have a problem finding things to do in the next few weeks.  I just have to be disciplined, not let the ADD monster get the best of me, and put in the time to get it done.

During the next 41 days I will track my playing, studying and administrative time and I will post it in this blog, to keep myself on track and to be accountable to my readers and followers.

41 Days--Filling the Time With Study

I plan to devote 50 hours a week to poker during those 41 days.  I've been thinking about how to spend that time. When I am no longer needed as a caregiver for my mother-in-law, poker will be my 50-hours-a-week career. Little or none of it will be spent playing online..  The online options are so bad that I won't be doing much of that until I have the time and money to get a lot of things straightened out online.

Given that we only have one car and that my local poker room is only open four days a week, those days that I can't play will leave me with a lot of free time in those 50-hour weeks. Much of that time will be used to study.  I read online forums and poker books, I use flash cards to memorize certain poker situations. I study, and talk to, other players.  I pick one thing to work on every time I play live--it might be looking for tells, or putting a player on a range, or something else, but I practice or study something every time that I play.  I watch coaching videos produced by some of the best players in the world.

There are some areas where I'm still very weak or haven't studied very deeply, and those areas can now get some attention.  I've really slacked off on the flash cards and I will put in more time on those.  I want to review my pots odds numbers and add some more.  For example, I want to make sure that I know my pot odds to hit the turn, hit the river, and to hit either the turn or the river (I have not worked at all on that last one.)  I should also know how most hands rank against a random hand.

I haven't worked much on equities, and I will be using the pokerlab.com Equity Trainer to become familiar with more situations.  I've messed around with equities a little bit, for example, I might check how TT stands up against different ranges, but that barely scratches the surface.  The Equity Trainer has quizzes for situations like "Big blind defense vs. MP2 [middle position 2] open-raise."  I have done no studying on how position affects equity, so that will be something new to work on.

Many of these areas are too big to tackle in a little over a month, but I can at least start to get comfortable with more study ideas and techniques.  There is always be more to learn.  Some of the most successful pros study 20 hours a week.

For now I would like to keep a balance of at least 25 hours a week playing and at least 15 hours a week studying, because I really need the playing time to practice and learn at the table and build my bankroll.  That adds up to 40 hours.  I'll talk about my plans for the other ten hours in my next post.

Today's Tournament Confusion

I was ready to play a $50 freezeout at my local charity poker room today.  In fact, I got there almost an hour early.  No one was ready to take my $50 or to stamp my entry slip that I would give to the dealer.  Neither the charity representatives nor the poker staff was ready to do anything.

When I showed up, it was like they had never done this before (the room is open four days a week.)  This was more than a little surprising because when I play in the city of Grand Rapids, 30 miles down the road, they are set up to register players three hours before the start of a tournament.

It took about 10 minutes before they were ready to take my money, and I found out that it was an entirely different type of tournament than I expected.  It was not a freezeout, in fact, there were up to four add-ons available..  I was pretty certain that Thursday had been freeze out tournaments for a long time, and I was told that I was wrong.

The Big Game Room has not updated their web site in six months and there is nothing I can find in writing that tells anything about the tournaments, so I have no way of knowing if I remembered things correctly or not.

More important, as things stand I can walk into the room at any time and find out that something has been changed without warning.  There are no web site updates, nothing is posted in the room, no announcements are made, nothing.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I recently found that the room was closed for a week when I went to play and saw a paper at the door stating that the bowling alley was closed for maintenance.  Contrast that with three of the Grand Rapids rooms (all have the same owner), whose site was updated twice during the week of September 6.

I didn't cash.  I was at perhaps my toughest live table to date.  Six of my eight opponents were final table regulars.  I was happy to have about the same chip stack an hour in as I did when I started.  Eventually an opponent went all-in preflop and he had me covered,  I had trouble putting him on a range and finally decided that it was big pairs and AK (thought I wasn't sure about the AK.)

I called with QQ, he showed KK and that was that.  After I got knocked out I asked him if AK would be in his range in that situation, and he said that he would never call off in that spot with AK.  My read was off, but his answering my questions was a very big deal,

The way he was talking, I'm almost certain that his range was aces and kings.  I didn't really expect him to answer my questions, but some players can't resist talking about poker at the table.  Knowing that his range to shove with an M around 50 is that tight, and that he is prepared to shove that early, I'll be better equipped to play against him the next time.

41 Days

One of the three caregivers for my mother-in-law said that she was burned out and she took a month off.  After that, it was decided that the other two caregivers would each be given a month off.  My month off is the month of October.  The September schedule has me off from September 23-30, so I will have a total of 41 consecutive days off from my caregiver duties.

That presents me with a lot of interesting choices and decisions.  I have to consider my bankroll.  I have been able to put some money in to keep it level while I go through my downswing, but that was playing once a week.  I will now have to choose my spots carefully.

Playing every day is not an option,  We have one car and most of the time I won't be able to get it for an afternoon tournament out-of-town and the local room is only open four days a week..  Also, I'm behind on my administrative work and I want to get my records straightened out well before the end of the year.

I need to get online poker set up as a good option, but that will have to wait.  I really need a computer strictly for poker to make that work the way that I want it too.  But not now. Win or lose, during those 41 days there be no distribution of poker funds between my different poker accounts. Protecting and building my live bankroll will be my main task for every one of those 41 days, and to that end I will be working at least 50 hours every week.

I feel a lot of pressure right now.  I have been helping take care of my mother-in-law in one way or another for several years now.  Before I was a half-time caregiver we brought her meals and did other things for her.  Poker had to take second place.  I will have 41 days to study, practice, get my records in order and build my bankroll.  I want to hit the ground running when I can finally play full-time.  I'm about to turn 60.  The clock is ticking.

I can't control statistical variance, but when those 41 days are over, I have to at least know that I did everything possible to make some good things happen.

Another 30-minute Tournament

Well, I can say one thing about the evolution of my poker strategy.  I'm definitely not the cautious, timid player who played too few hands and tried to hang on for the final table.  Once again, a big hand in the first hour knocked me out.

I was dealt AK and the flop was AKJ.  No cards came that hit a straight draw and myself and another player wound up all-in on the river, where my top two pair lost to villian's set of jacks.  I'm more than a little concerned about my bankroll.  That was the only tournament I played while not on caregiver duty, in line with my previous discussion about babying my bankroll.  Dropping $60 on a weekend is a lot less scary that dropping $120.

Next week there are two days that I can play, and it will be in either Grand Rapids for $45 or in Muskegon for $50.  When you figure in the gas, the costs are about the same.  The most important thing is that playing just one tournament a week and keeping the cost down will keep my bankroll alive until I can get back on the winning track again.

On September 23 everything changes and I will have a lot more chances to play and some interesting choices to make.  More on that in my next post.

My 30-minute Tournament

I played a tournament at Northway Lanes this afternoon.  It didn't last long.

It was pretty uneventful for abut half an hour.  I flopped top two  pair on an AKJ flop, meaning I probably had the best hand but someone could have a straight draw.  Ten on the turn, making it likely that someone had a straight or was drawing for one. Check check on the turn, then I bet enough on the river to price out draws.

Player to my right went all in and I thought for about a minute.  I decided  that he was bluffing and I called.  The river was a queen, giving villian the straight, knocking me down from about 49,000 chips to 6,000.  Two hands later, I shoved QJs and was knocked out of the tournament.  After the big hand, villian said that he knew I bet enough to chase out a draw--but he misread his hand, and thought that he already had the straight!

So, I made the mathematically correct play by betting enough to chase draws away.  Villian then made the wrong play by calling because he misread his hand.  I called because I thought he was bluffing.  It' wasn't a bluff, because he thought he had the best hand.  I was out of the tournament when the queen came on the river.  Strange things happen in poker, and it was the first time in quite a while that I was out in the first hour.

As Doyle Brunson says on the commercials, that's poker folks!

Sorting Through the Options

Since I don't have much of a bankroll to work with,I'm exploring all of my options to keep my skills up and get my practice in.  While I'm doing this, the poker landscape is constantly changing.  It would only take a few cashes to give me a little breathing room, but until that happens, here are what seem to be my options, in no particular order:

1. Play less often.  I have a little free money to goose my bankroll each week, so if I only play a couple tournaments a week, my bankroll won't decrease,

Drawback--World Poker Tour Player of the Year Johnathan Little states that it takes playing 100 live tournaments just to get good at the mechanics.  The fewer tournaments I play, the longer it takes me to get those mechanics nailed down.

2. Play less expensive tournaments.  Instead of playing $50 tournaments I could play other tournaments out-of-town for half that price.

Drawback--Cheaper tournaments tend to have fewer starting chips, less deep play, and in general poorer structures.  All of my play and study in 2015 has been about being a winner in deepstacked tournaments.  I've ov erhauled everything, adjusting how many hands and which hands I play in different situations..  I eventually want to get better at all types of structures and tournaments, but I know my learning style, and I work best mastering one aspect of a problem or challenge before I move on to the next one.  Also, deepstacked tournaments will always be the tournaments that I play the most, because that's where the real money is.

3. Move some of my play to online.  I have enough money in my online bankroll to play tournaments at micro to low stakes with no problem..

Drawback--I'm not set up for playing regularly online now.  I would need to change and update some software and probably get a poker-only computer.

Also, online tournament choices are horrible right now.  The times when I could play on PokerStars and find a good tournament any hour of the day are long gone.  Right now I know what my poker schedule is (being prepared to play until at least midnight) and what my caregiver schedule is (being up by 0900 every day.)  Making the schedule switches while playing whatever online tournament I could find, whenever I could find it. would make a wreck of my already difficult sleep schedule.  A few days ago I was so tired that I slept 14 hours straight, woke up to go to the bathroom and I was still tired.

So, the choices aren't easy, but that's not the real problem.  The real problem is that I'm a family caregiver 3-4 days a week while I'm trying to get poker going.  No one in the family thought that we would be doing it for two years, and in fact, the person I was splitting the main caregiver duties has been looking for excuses to get time off and generally bail on her duties.  She found someone to sub for her (which is happening very frequently now.)  I'm in a really awful spot now.  Because I'm doing the right thing, I'm the live-in caregiver 50% of the time, with two other people splitting the caregiving doing 25% each.  I'm doing the right thing taking care of my mother-in-law, but I'm being taken advantage of and I can't do my job (poker).  I'm not sure what to do.  I don't know if there is anything that I can do.

Possibly The Best I've Played So Far

I played again last night.  It was about as well as I've ever played.  For one of the very rare times, I can't think of a one major mistake that I made.  We were close to the final table of 10 players and I got knocked out in 11th place.  Someone raised and I went all in with AT (ace-ten) preflop and the raiser showed AJ.

I didn't cash.  I had a run of about two months when I was cashing fairly regularly, now I've gone that long without cashing.

Of course I don't play very many times during a month, so the effect of statistical variance, positive or negative, can be pretty strong over such a small sample size.  Big cashing streaks can be followed by long losing streaks.  That's what a bankroll is for, to weather the storms of statistical variance.  I will at some point have to get my bankroll up to at least 100 buy-ins ($5,000) before I don't have to worry about being slapped in the face by variance.

I've been trying to, whenever possible, play two live tournaments during the days that I'm home.  Now my bankroll is getting smaller, and I'm going to have to dial it back.  My bankroll will be gone quickly if I keep dropping $100 every week.  Until I start cashing again, I have to play live less often and devote my extra money to building up my poker accounts.

I will devote some of that free time to studying, especially working with my flash cards.  There are always things that I can work on.  More about that in future posts.

Big News

The 2+2 poker forums now have a West Michigan thread!. I didn't do it, someone else with the same idea started one on July 23. This is a big deal, and I hope that it really takes off and gives the players a little more control of their situation,

The Poker Landscape is Still Crazy

A lot has happened in the last month.  I should be posting at least once a week, but the situation can get so strange that I don't know what to say, or if anything that I post will be outdated as soon as I post it.

The latest is that my local poker room has decided that they are no longer going to have a web site.  The explanation that I got is that the state of Michigan is taking such a big cut from the charity room profits is that they can't afford a web site.  Also, the second room at Pope's Pub is not yet up and running, even though the web site of the Michigan Gaming Control Board showed them being licensed a month ago.

This is about more than a web site.  There is no information at all.  No announcements during a tournament.  No flyers. Nothing posted in the room.  I just play a tournament and assume that next week there will be a tournament at the same place on the same day at the same time next week.  I have been going to the various locations run by The Big Game Room for a few years, and from time to time I am surprised when I go there and find the room closed.  The last time was about a month ago--the bowling alley was closed for maintenance and no one thought it was important that the players know that.

On the twoplustwo.com poker forums, there is a regional thread for the Detroit area.  http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/200/regional-communities/detroit-737949/

The players talk to each other about the poker room options and ask things like:

How many players are usually in that tournament?
How is the traffic to drive there?
Do the tournaments have a good structure?
Is the room comfortable and a fun place to play?
What is the food like there?
Is there a schedule of blinds and antes?

In short, the Detroit players gather information and anaylze it.  We're poker players, that's what we do.  Even though, as far as I know, every Detroit area poker room has a web site (what business doesn't in 2015?) the players always want to know more, and they critique everything.  If a dealer is rude on Tuesday night, a post will go up on the Detroit thread, often in real time.

Every room has strong and weak points.  One of the rooms in Grand Rapids (about 30 miles from my home) was so poorly lit that I had to take my sunglasses off to tell the difference between a club and a spade with the cards inches from my face..  At another Grand Rapids room the food is bad and expensive (especially the $9 chicken sandwich.)  I can certainly be surprised, but at least before I play in Grand Rapids I can check the web sites and know what tournaments are running when, and something about the tournament structures.

The Detroit players communicate about everything and the room owners know it.  They demand information that west Michigan players can never get, because we have no organized way of communicating.

I didn't really want to take this on, but I have petitioned 2+2 for a West Michigan regional thread.  Something has to change.  These rooms have to know that they are competing for our dollars, and for that to happen, the players in West Michigan have to be able to communicate.

The poker landscape is changing--again.

I don't usually post twice in one day, but sometimes something is so weird and remarkable that it has to be documented.

I have posted often about the trouble that I have getting information, and the problems with state of Michigan regulation of charity poker rooms.  The situation has changed again, and it's a new wrinkle.

The state doesn't provide much information about the tournaments.  It just gives the city and address of the room.  I don't always know if the room runs tournaments, since some rooms only deal cash games.

My local room used to be called The Big Game Room,  The company still operates under that name. They had a standalone poker room in an area strip mall.  Then the state regulations changed so that a charity room could not be open in one location more than four days a week. The Big Game Room, as well as poker operations in other cities, offered games in more than one location so that they could be legally open seven days a week.

A couple months later, one of the local rooms closed, so in my city we only have live tournaments four days a week.  Two weeks ago, the state of Michigan list of charity poker licenses showed  a second room open in a local bar. After some investigating, I found out that this was a new second location for The Big Game Room.  Nothing on the the web site of the bar or The Big Game Room mentioned any of this, in fact, The Big Game Room web site has not been updated in a long time and they still advertise poker in the room that has been closed for more than two months.

So, more investigating, and a few minutes ago The Big Game Room told me that yes, they are going to have an operation in the bar that I asked about, but not until August.  I told the dealer (I recognized his voice) that according to the state web site, they are offering poker in that bar each of the next three days.  He told me that the state has it wrong--the poker room won't be open until August, and he had "no idea" why the state would think otherwise.

This is all very strange.  The state web site only lists poker rooms that have been licensed to offer poker, and each day requires a separate license.  So the state says they have granted three licenses for The Big Game Room to operate this week, and TBGR says that they know nothing about it.

This is a big deal because I depend on these charity rooms.  I live more than 100 miles from the nearest casino that offers poker tournaments.

The poker landscape in Michigan is so weird that I don't even know who to believe in a situation like this.  There is so much wrong with this situation that I barely know how to start, but I'll give it a try.

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Why are the charity poker rooms so heavily regulated?  What gives the state of Michigan the right to tell a privately owned business how many days a week they can be open in the same location?

Why is the state of Michigan granting licenses one day at a time?  Typical government ineffieciency--if a room is open three or four days a week, why not just grant one license which covers those days? I'm guessing that it's a money grab, with every daily license requiring a fee.

Why has The Big Game Room gone for months without updating their website?  I played a tournament there today.  Why was there no written information and no announcement of the new site made?

Why would the state issue licenses for this week if The Big Game Room did not apply for those licenses?

None of it makes any sense.

Little progress in the last two weeks.

I planned to play two live tournaments the week of July 19-25.  Some weeks I don't get to play one, so I wanted to get an extra one "in the bank" to make up for the ones that I would miss out on later in the month.  I was too tired to play either tournament.  Very frustrating, but I know that I made the right decision both times.  Playing tired would be a terrible mistake.  I have enough trouble staying focused as it is.

This week I took another shot and failed to cash both yesterday and today.  Frustrating, but that's going to happen.  If in every tournament I'm doing my best to make good decisions, practicing whatever I'm working on during that tournament (in this case, keeping track of the pot size.) and I realize what mistakes I need to fix, I can't ask more or myself than that.

Pot size has been my focus for the last 10 tournaments or so.  There are a lot of other things that I need to work on, such as watching for tells and putting players on a range--but I also know my learning style, and I learn best when I work on one small piece of the puzzle, really get that down, than move on to the next thing.

I can't just get a little better at keeping track of the pot size.  It has to become automatic  Only then can I add another piece to the puzzle.  When I work that way, I will become better at that one thing than most of the players at my table.  Then I can work on the next piece, for example, watching the player on my left for tells.  Once I can do that I can gradually add more players until I can pick up tells from most of the players at my table.

My learning style is methodical.  Some would call it slow, even plodding, and that would be a fair assessment--but I know what works for me. When I am able to play four or five tournaments a week (I have to have time for study and other things) I will learn and practice more in a week than I am doing now in a month.  Then things should really take off.

Until then, I have to stay focused at playing my best and learning what I can.  Poker is a game of small edges, and I have to keep that in mind every single day.  Having an edge on just one player can be the difference between cashing and not cashing, or between a small cash and winning a tournament.  I have to keep that in mind every single day.

Another change in my situation.

I have talked about how I got myself in my current situation, which makes it very difficult to play poker (see posts on February 26 and June 20.) Now there is a new development, which once again leaves me in an awkward situation.

As mentioned in earlier posts, there are four of us who are directly involved in my mother's care. Two of us, my sister-in-law and I, are live-in caregivers who split up the week, staying there full-time three to four days a week. My wife and my brother-in-law have full-time jobs which require them to be there at regular times, and when they are not working they do other takes like home maintenance, playing her bills, and handing her medical issues.

That was the setup, which I made the mistake of agreeing to, putting poker on hold.  The four of us would work at this until my mother-in-law died or someone in our group of four just couldn't do it any more.

Well, someone has cracked, and that family member found a replacement from outside the family (some of us were not involved in that decision) to be her on-call substutute.   She has been offered to me as a subsitute as well.  I know next to nothing about this person, and I have never communicated with her in any way.

So, now my situation is even weirder.  When I committed to this arrangement, I knew that I was 100 percent in.  Once I take something on, I don't quit.  I had one job where I worked lots of overtime and sometimes all three shifts in a week, and I missed only three scheduled work days in 12 years.  I knew there was no way I was going to be the one to pull the plug on the arrangement to take care of my mother-in-law, I would keep going until someone else quit.

So what do I do now?  I made a commitment to be with my mother-in-law on all of my scheduled days.  I don't feel right about asking a sub to take some of those days--and, since this person was sprung on me, I don't even know how much she is willing or able to do (she is 75.)  If I do all of my scheduled days (taking away from my real job, poker) am I doing the right thing, or am I a sucker?

What a mess.  This weekend I was going to so something I rarely am able to do--play live poker tournaments two days in a row.  I didn't play today.  I was too tired.  I won't waste a $50 buy-in if I'm too tired to play.

I will play tomorrow.  I hope.

Chess players, poker players and drug dealers

In a 2+2 forum post about chess vs. poker, the discussion was about things like which was harder, whether a great poker could be a great chess player and vice-versa, and which skills were needed for each game.

One person said that whether your occupation is chess player, poker player or drug dealer, you have to study and work hard to be successful at your profession.  That got me thinking about what would happen if a drug dealer thought like a poker player:

Studying is fine, but it has to be applied:

If I make a drug sale on the corner, I get x dollars, but if I go to jail, I will not only lose the ability to make money, it will cost me money in fines, legal fees, etc. I estimate the chance that I will be arrested for any one transaction at about 0.5%, so . . .

How am I doing this?

I said in a recent post that I'm good at analyzing my strengths and weakness.  What's happened in the past week is giving me pause.

My caregiver duty schedule was changed, at the request of my sister-in-law, who is the other primary caregiver for my mother-in-law.  She wanted to do something with some friends, and the days she wanted me to cover lined up perfectly for me able to play poker every day of the week (I wound up missing one day.)

The continuity of playing almost every day helped me a lot.  It's hard to stay focused and have my mind in the right place when I'm constantly jumping in and out of poker mode.  There are weeks where I'm not even home for more than three days, and one of them is often lost to catching up on my sleep.

The other factor that makes it tough for me to stay in poker mode is the difference in caregiving and poker schedules.  As a caregiver, I have to be up in the morning to make breakfast.  As a poker player, I want to sleep so that I'm ready for tournaments that start at 6 P.M. and sometimes go past midnight.

The thing that I'm confused by is how well I'm doing.  In the live tournaments that I've played in the last week, I had a $310 cash ($230 net after expenses) and two tournaments where I missed cashing by one or two spots.  I made the final table almost every time.

I know that I'm getting better, this isn't just short-term variance.  People regard me differently.  I'm getting a lot more respect, and even a little fear from time to time.  But it doesn't make sense.

I know the background of some of the regulars that I play against in my main poker room.  One worked with a poker coach/backer every day for a year.  The coach was paid with a percentage of her winnings.  Other players have played on the Heartland Poker Tour, or gone to Chicago to play a big tournament there.'

I don't have any of those advantages.  I've never played at a high level, or satellited into a major tournament.  I haven't played in a casino, and given the combination of the nearest casino that deals poker being 100 miles away, my caregiver duty and my wife and I sharing one car, that's not going to change soon.

The other problem I have is that, to put it simply, the top players in my local room know things that I don't.  They can look at two hands and know, within half a percent, what the chances are that each hand will win the pot.  Some of them can read tells well.  I could list about 10 things that those people can do, but I can't.

I've read enough poker books to know what all those thing are, and that I have to learn them.  I also know myself well enough to know that I learn best in very small chuncks.  When I watch for tells, I pick one person to watch.  I can't handle more than that because I'm just starting to get good at keeping track of the pot size as the hand evolves.  Keeping track of the pot size is the one thing that I've really concentrated on in my last 10 or 15 tournaments, and I'm getting pretty good at it.

That's fine as far as it goes, but I've only been working on keeping track of the pot size, to the exclusion of almost all else.  But now I'll be back to 3-4 tournaments a month, and most of the things I need to learn will be put on hold, probably until sometime in 2016.

So here I am, trying to make something out of poker.  I know less than a lot of the good players. I have less experience, I play less often.  I don't study as much.  I'm not a big winner.  I'm old (half of the top players in the world are under 30.)

Yet, I'm getting better.  I just don't know why or how, and that bothers me.

My tournament schedule, blown up again

I try to play a live tournament once a week.  I can't play this week, because the other caregiver got sick and I was called in to cover two extra days.  The way that the schedule was going, I knew there was a good chance that I wouldn't get a chance to play this week in any case.

Next week my wife is going out of the country, I'm only scheduled as a caregiver for two days, so I've been counting on playing at least twice.  One of those poker days just got knocked out.

My wife leaves on Tuesday.  I will be driving her to the airport, which is out-of-town but near the a poker room in another city where I was going to play.  Then I got a call from my state National Guard headquarters, offering to help me expedite the paperwork for my military retirement pay, which I am scheduled to receive starting in September.

He made me an offer I couldn't refuse, but it complicates poker once again.  On Monday I will be on my fourth day of caregiver duty, which is always tiring and messes my poker schedule up.  The more consecutive days that I'm on duty, the more tired I am..  I usually need a day to catch up on my sleep before I try to play.

My plan was to sleep late before I took my wife to the airport for her afternoon flight.  Now I have a morning appointment with the sergeant, my wife has to be at the airport in the afternoon, and I have to be register by 1600 to get a seat for the tournament at 1800. Not much chance there to grab some extra sleep.

I thought I was all set.  My time was my own, I had the car.  What could go wrong?

This.is is the recurring problem about which I can do nothing.  When I'm not on caregiver duty there are things at home that don't get done.  After I get my day to catch up on my sleep, the few days that I'm home often get jammed full of things that have to be taken care of at the expense of poker, which is supposed to be my job.  The sergeant is going to be in my part of the state.  Given my schedule, I don't know when I would get that opportunity again.  I had no choice but to say yes.

I have referred to this by the title of a very good book, The Tyranny of the Urgent.  The idea is that we let so many things become urgent that we don't deal with what's important.  That's what's happening to me, over and over.  The appointment with the sergeant is urgent, because I don't know when he'll be in the this part of the state again when I'm free to meet him.  My job is important, and it loses again.

Computer programming has a word for cycles like this..  A poorly written program can cause a computer to run the same routine over and over. It's called an "infinite loop."  It feels like I'm one now.

Multiplication tables

I cashed in my last live tournament.  It was a small cash (about two buy-ins) but it's better then not cashing.

One of my strengths is that I'm very good at honestly analyzing my play.  I know that when I sit down for a live tournament, there are areas where I'm very weak, such as reading tells.  There are other areas where I'm always one of the best players at the table, especially at final tables or any other time that blinds are high.

There is one area where I need to improve. I've never seen it mentioned in any poker book, or on any forum or coaching site, but I know what needs to be done. I need to work on my multiplication tables.

Poker requires doing a lot of math at the table. I've been working on keeping track of the pot size.  If I'm in a pot with four other players, that's a lot of betting.  With betting and raising on multiple streets, someone could put money in the pot 10 or more times during a hand. I have to keep a running total going in my head.  That's a lot of addition.

Many players, including me, often bet in fractions of the pot size.  My standard bet in many situations is 1/2 of the pot. I can't make that bet unless I know how much is in the pot.  I'm always doing addition at the table, and I'm much better at keeping track of the pot size than I was a couple months ago.

When blinds are high, everything changes.  At high blinds, half of the pot might be a significant portion of my stack, so I need to use a different metric. How much of my stack I'm willing to commit matters a lot more than the percentage of the pot.  That's where multiplication comes in.

I need to know my M, the number of orbits that I can play before I run out of chips.  For example, if the blinds and antes total 20,000 and my stack size is 200,000, my M is 10 and I need to be looking for a good spot to shove.  I will shove with an M as high as 30 in some circumstances, but with an M or 10 or less a shove is often the only option.)

Keeping track of my M is as important as keeping track of the pot size.  If I know my multiplication tables into the twenties and beyond things get a lot easier.  If I have 16,000 chips, the blinds and antes total 275,000 and I know my multiplication tables, I know that 16 X 17 = 272,  My M is 17, no math required.

I'm with my mother-in-law now.  Studying or working on anything is very difficult here.  I can lose my train of thought very easily.  Remember, because I have ADD and am easily distractable my ideal study environment is total silence.

This is the second day of a five-day stretch with her and I try to maximize the use of my time while making sure that her needs, including companionship, are taken care of.  Even with half-concentration when we're sitting in the living room together with the TV on, I don't have to worry about losing my place or forgetting what I was doing when I have a flash card in my hand.

Having a profitable year

For purposes of discussion now and in the future, let's define "small cash" as any tournament where I cash for less than five times the buy-in.

Yesterday I placed 4th of 59 for a cash of $115.  That's a pretty interesting number.  If I played 200 tournaments in a year (200 days is considered a standard work year*) my cashes for the year would total $23,000.  That's close to the median national income in the United States, which is just over 26 thousand.

Of course, poker doesn't work that way.  Tournament players fail to cash more often than not, and most of the cashes are small.  A few large cashes are usually most of a tournament player's income.

I thought about all of that for a minute, then I realized something.  $115 was a the gross amount, not the net.  The entry fee for the tournament was $60, which means my profit was only $55.  Oops!

If my average daily profit over a 200-day work year was $55, my annual profit from poker would be $11,000.  That's a nice supplementary income, but not a real income when it's my only job.

I often think about the income issue and what I could reasonably expect to make, even though it could be a while before I can play full-time.  We will probably be moving shortly after my caregiver duties are over.  When everything settles down it could be 2016 before I'm playing full-time.

I looked up the median income number a few months ago when one of the many "How much can I make playing poker?" questions appeared again on the 2+2 poker forums.  I mentioned that $26,000 number and said that there are lot of poker players who will never be famous or be a poker millionaire.  They just play tournaments several days a week or grand cash games for six hours a day and support their families.  Let's not forget study--some of the top pros study for 20 hours a day,  I'll probably be studying about 15 hours a week and playing about 30 hours when I can get back to full-time.

If I am full-time on January 1, 2016, I think it's realistic that I could end the year with a profit of $10,000,  I would like it to be more, but I'm not laying the groundwork to make that happen. I can't be improving a lot playing three live tournaments a month and studying only a few hours a week.

I would expect to make above the median income in 2017--but that would be working more than 300 days, not 200 or less.  I'm trying to get a business off the ground.  Vacations and long weekends off are not part of the plan.

I'm looking forward to the day when I get the "poker isn't a real job" line and I can say "I make more than the median national income."  That will be very satisfying.

*This is of course an oversimplification of the schedule of a tournament player.  A player in a poker room or casino could play more than one tournament in the same day..  A live tournament with thousands of players could take several days to finish.  Threre would probably be online tournaments in the mix, in fact, some online players play 10 or more online tournaments simultaneiously (see the link, below.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnLh_DrQ3Uw

My last three tournaments

In this blog I often write about process.  When you think about it, everything is about the process.  Professional football players practice plays and study film of the other team.  Doctors typically go to school and train until around age 30.

Poker players are no different.  We ready and study poker books.  We subscribe to online poker coaching sites. We bounce ideas and strategies off other players.  A two-time World Poker Tour player of the year answered some of my questions online.

That said, ultimately it's about what happens at the poker table.  I usually schedule one live tournament each wee.  Here's how my last three tournaments came out.  All were $50 tournaments that usually have around 60 players:

Two weeks ago.  I surprised the table by calling raises with some speculative hands, including flopping the nut straight when I called a raise with suited connectors.  I was one of the chip leaders for much of the tournament.  The cards dried up and my stack dwindled at the end, but I still made it to the final table.  After playing from 1800-0045 I cashed for $300.

One week ago.  The switch from the schedule with my mother-in-law where I get up with her every morning, to a poker schedule where I try to stay up late and sleep in late before I play a tournament that could go past midnight, didn't work.  An hour before the tournament I decided that I was too tired to play and I stayed home.  I'm not going to waste a buy-in when I'm too tired to play well.

Yesterday.  Instead of the usual 55-60 players, there were only 25.  I didn't get many good cards, and my play wasn't horrible, but not my best.  I made the final table, going out in sixth place, but since there were fewer players than usual (and therefore a much smaller prize pool) only the top three got paid.  I went out in fifth place, again playing until after midnight, but didn't cash.

Those are the ups and down of a poker player.  Most full-time players would just play another tournament (or more than one) the next day, either live or online.  As I can't play full-time for now, the times that I don't cash are a little more painful.  I have to wait a week or more for another chance.

Making More Time for Poker

I'm constantly trying to carve out more time for poker.  About a week ago, after my mother-in-law fell asleep, I played on online tournament from 2030 to 2330,* and I finished 4th of 42 for a net cash of $6.20.  (It was a $2.20 tournament and I cashed for $8.40  It was the only tournament that I could find that I knew wouldn't take four hours or more.)

A few days ago I got the bright idea to study coaching videos while my mother-in-law and I were sitting in the sun room together watching the action at the bird feeder. Sometimes we sit in the living room together and she is so engrossed in her puzzles that she barely knows what I'm watching on TV.  But she gets upset when I turn the TV off because "you should be able to watch it."

It follows that if someone talking on TV doesn't bother her, someone talking about putting a player on a range during a coaching video shouldn't bother her, right?  Wrong.  She watched the birds for a while, then became engrossed in her word searches.  But when I turned the coaching video on, several times she asked me something like, "Who's that talking?"  Around 1400 she switched to her favorite topic--supper:

"When are we eating supper?  Is somebody bringing supper?  Should I make supper?" And many variations on that theme.  Supper came up about twice every five minutes.  I record of all my poker time (playing, studying and administrative) by the quarter hour, but I recorded no study time for that afternoon, even though the video was more than an hour long.

I've mentioned before that sometimes I play or study at home while wearing earplugs.  I can't study unless it's quiet.  I will sometimes read a poker book during commericals when I'm watching TV, and I learn a little that way.  But I don't count that as legitimate study time.

My ADD makes it almost impossible for me to get much out of studying when other things are going on around me.  A simple question like "Who's that talking?" can cause me to lose my train of thought.  But when I'm in my office, wearing earplugs, with the door closed, I sometimes get so "locked in" to what I'm studying that I forget I'm sitting in an office.  It's almost like I'm inside the book, video, or online poker forum.

I can't figure out why a voice on TV doesn't bother my mother-in-law, but a voice on the computer does.  I'm a logic-driven person, but as my wife often reminds me, life isn't always logical.

The next time I'm sitting in the living room with her and she's engorossed in her puzzle, I'm going to try something different.  I will turn the TV on with the sound muted, then start my coaching video, and maybe she'll think I'm watching something on TV (which seems to be very important to her) and I will able to study--at least until she gets hungry.  I'll give it a try and report back.

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*I find myself using military time more and more, because poker tournaments can run any time of the day or night, and the same is true when I study.  As I type this, it's 1:29 A.M. (0129).   I might start an online tournanent at 10 P.M. and finish at 2 A.M.  I also play live tournaments that start at 6 or 7 P.M. and often end after midnight.  When I keep track of my results and record my time, it makes sense to me to think of a day as both starting and ending at midnight.

I'm Not Taking It Anymore

When it comes to poker, I am usually in one of two moods:

1. I am mad at my situation, because I don't have a lot of opportunites to play.

2. I'm mad at myself for not doing something to play more, play better, and make some money.

I know that I am doing the right thing.  I also know that I should not have been in this position, or more correctly, I should not have allowed myself to be put in this position.  My wife and brother-in-law have "real jobs", so it was decided that by some family members that I should do half of the day-to-day caregiving.

I agreed to this, and a year later, I'm still doing it, living with my mother-in-law three or four days a week.  I can't let anything like this happen to me again.  My father and/or my sister might need that level of help very soon, and I will gladly do my part if I am not too tied up with my mother-in-law..  But I will insist that my job be treated the same way as anyone esle's, and that more won't be expected of me than anyone else in the family, just because I don't get a paycheck.  I learned a tough lesson, one that I will NEVER repeat again.

This week I was with my mother-in-law from Sunday night through Wednesday night.  Today (Thursday) I had a dental appointment.  I got on the computer around noon to see when the online tournaments were running, and I was excited to find one with a very good structure.  I haven't been able to fit one of those into my schedule for at least two weeks.  It starts at 1315 and if I made it to the final table, I could be playing for about eight hours or more..

Then I came back to reality.  I had the car for my dentist appointment, so I have to pick my wife up from work at 1430.  After that, we have to go to the bank and the grocery store and run a couple other errands.  Besides, since I had to get up for a morning dentist appointment I'm not yet caught up on my rest.

It's not easy getting up in the morning with my mother-in-law for a few days, then switching to a schedule where I sleep in so that I can play live tournaments that run past midnight.  I won't waste time and money trying to play tired.

I spent four days this week with my mother-in-law.  This is day five, leaving Friday and Saturday open.  Except that Saturday we are going to a wedding.

This is the pattern every week.  It's my mother-in-law, maybe a rest day, then we jam our family business or other important things into what time is left.  I try to play a live poker tournament (aka do my job) once a week, and about three times out of four I'm able to do that.  My wife and have started scheduling time to see a movie together- once a month.

With a schedule like that, something as simple as a heavy snowfall requiring a lot of shoveling time can knock out that week's poker tournament, or cause our movie night to be rescheduled to another week.

I'm in a horrible box.  My wife plans to retire in seven years.  I'm trying, with very little success, to get my career off the ground.

The more I think about it, I'm not mad at my situation.  I'm not mad that I can't make something happen in spite of my situation.

I'm mad at myself.  I let this happen.  I'm went along with some family members who made plans based on the assumption that my job didn't matter.  If I don't turn playing poker into a decent income, I have no one to blame but myself.  I'm an a horrible box.  My family built that box, I agreed to jump in that box for as long as necessary, and there is no way out.

Never again.  I'm sick of people not believing that poker is my job.  I'm sick of my state goverment trying to close local charity poker rooms, while being all for the casinos that offer poker (which are all more than a 100-mile-drive from me.)  I'm tired of people who should know me better thinking that my poker playing is juvenile, or stupid, or unrealistic, or degenerate gambling.

I'm looking for another bank for my poker funds, because even though the complicance department of my local bank agreed with me when I brought there attention to the Justice Department Ruling that the Wire Act applies to sports betting, but not poker, the don't want anything to do with my poker business.*.  After a lot of back and forth correspondence, my local banker told me that Iwas right, but "they just don't want to mess with it."

I'm sick of the way I'm regarded and treated because I play poker.

In the last two months I've been reading a lot about how game theory concepts can be applied to poker.  I learned that it I have 40 percent equity in a hand, that equity plus my fold equity makes it mathematically correct to go all-in even when I don't have the best hand or great odds.  I also learned that when stacks get below a certain level, it can be mathematically correct to go all-in in certain situations even when I don't have a lot of equity in the hand.

In that tournament two weeks ago I was in a spot where both of those concepts came into play, I went all in, and I wound up at the final table, eventually cashing.  If I had not been studying, I would not have known to make such seemingly counterintuitive plays. If you don't think poker is a game of skill, you're wrong.

In litigation concerning "illegal poker games" several state judges have ruled that poker is a game of skill, not a game of chance, and therefore it is not gambling.  The International Skill Game Association lists poker, along with Chess, Go, and other games, as a game of skill.

If you still think poker is gambling, I suggest that you find a slot machine or roulette player, or someone who buys lottery tickets on a regular basis, and ask them what they do to get better at their game, and how many hours a week they study. Then I can direct you to a forum post from a single mother who supports her family by playing online poker while her kids are in school.

Then talk to me about what's gambling and what isn't.

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*According to the IRS, a Professional Poker Player (my Department of Labor job classification) is a self-employed owner of a Schedule C business and must file the appropriate income tax forms.

My Sick Month

I'm watching an episode of the Heartland Poker Tour and typing this during the commercials.  The HPT is a US midwestern poker tour that makes stops in my state (Michigan) at least twice a year.

I've been sick for about a month.  I haven't played poker, live or online.  I had to take some time off from being a caregiver for my mother-in-law. I hated doing that, because there are only two of us.

Some of the disagnoses were uncertain and ultimately changed, but in the past month I have either had, or thought I had: shingles, cellulitis, strep, a really bad cold, and tooth pain.  I didn't have the first two, I still have the last two.  The cold has been really nasty.  I lost a lot of sleep because I was too busy blowing my nose to be able to sleep.  It's been a slow recovery.  I'm not used to being sick like this.  I had a job where I worked all three shifts and put in a lot of overtime, and I only missed three work days over 12 years.

I think I'm most of the way back now.  The cold is still hanging on, but I'm blowing my nose every ten minutes instead of every minute.  I'll be back with my mother in law tomorrow, and since I'm only on duty three days this week I should get through it OK.

Yesterday I was finally able to get a few things done after a couple days of serious sleeping (12 hours one of those days.)  I did our taxes during the day, and last night I played some online poker.

It wasn't exactly a big poker night. I played two tournaments and didn't cash in the first one.  Then I played a SNG (sit-n-go, a one-table tournament) and cashed, second place out of nine.  Net result for the two tournaments--a profit of 22 cents.

Another exciting day in the glamorous life of a professional poker player.

The State of My Poker, 2015

Tonight is the annual State of the Union address.  In that spirit, it's time to take stock of where poker is for me, and where it's going.  This won't be a detailed anyalyis, instead, I'll just touch on several things.

I played very little, probably about three times a month live, and about the same online.  I haven't put all of the numbers together yet, but I definitely lost money playing live.  As the saying goes, poker is a volume game.  You can't make money when you're not playing.  More about poker finances, family finances and how it all works together in a future post.

I know that I'm playing better, and taking a lot of the right steps.  I'm learning so many new things that I get frustrated.  I can read 25 pages of a poker book and come across at least 5 new ideas or concepts that I want to try out  or implement. I'm a step-by-step learner, and I work on one new idea, or one area that needs work, every time I play a live tournament.

I can't look for chip-handling tells, put several players on a range of hands, and keep track of the exact pot size, all in one tournament.  I have to work on one thing every tournament.  That's the way that I learn the best.

I can only imagine how quickly I'll improve once I'm a full-time player.  I will be able to pick a concept and work on it during 5 tournaments in the same week!  I get really excited thinking about that.  I could play a bunch of $20 to $40 live weekday tournaments and do a lot of improving on the cheap.

My improvement feels agonizingly slow, but other players tell me all the time that I'm getting better.  A guy told me at my last live tournament that I was the most dangerous player at the table when we are down to two tables and almost everyone is short-stacked.  He also said that my new sunglasses were messing him up.    :)

I have definitely been subjected to negative statistical variance.  I've been knocked out of tournament after tournament with a big hand or a statistical advantage, I think I'm at zero cashes for my last fifteen $50 60-player MTTs.  Two weeks ago, I lost with a pair of queens all-in against jack-ten suited.  Whoever won would be at the final table, in the money, and playing for close to $1,000, and the loser would be knocked out or crippled and probably go home with nothing.  Queens that don't share any of villian's suits win that showdown 81.1% of the time.

Two days ago I played an online tournament, similar situation.  I went out in 14th place.  12 players got paid.  Over a statistically valid sample size (hundreds or thousands of tournaments) variance will even out, and I'll get my share of final tables, with chances to win the big money.  I'm sure that a lot of players quit when they hit a long losing streak, not knowing that long winning or losing streaks are completely normal.  It's all about the math, and having the stomach to ride out the variance.
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A Bad Week

One of the biggest problems that I have is making time for poker.  When I take care of my mother-in-law I alternate between staying with her three days or four days a week.  Since this was a three-day week, starting Sunday and ending on Wednesday, I thought I would have a day (Thursday) to catch up on my rest, and I could play a live tournament on the weekend.  It's not working out that way.

I wasn't able to sleep as long as I needed to before we got our day started.  There were a lot of errands that needed to be run, and during that time my wife dropped me off for a dental appointment.  By the time we went to the store, the dentist, the bank and all of the other places that we needed to go, it was already after 4 P.M.  I had some snow shoveling to do at home, and then we had supper.  Before I knew it the day was pretty much over.

There is one thing that really needs to be done this week.  I bought a new laser printer, but so far I haven't been able to install it.  I have the enclosed instructions and a help disk, and I tried to get it done last weekend, but the instructions are inaccurate.  There have been several times where I did what the instructions said, and it just didn't work. For example, the DVD game me three steps, then a box was supposed to pop up.  It did, but it didn't look anything like the instructions said it would.

I spent several hours last week unsuccessfully trying to figure it out. I know I'll get it eventually, but I have no idea how long eventually will be.  Until I can get that done, poker is on hold.

It's the same story almost every week.  Johnathan Little says in one of his books that it takes playing at least 100 live tournaments to be good at it.  Playing just one a week is getting harder and harder.  I don't have a car of my own or any control over my time, and I can feel another week getting away for me.

Our car needs some work, and it looks like I'm going to wind up taking a ride Saturday on city busses that only run once an hour.  The car is supposed to be done around 5:30 P.M.  A local tournament that I would like to play starts at 6 P.M.

So, I have Friday to get the printer up, and maybe I can play then if I get it done, but I'm not counting on it.  That would leave Saturday. So if I can slove the printer problem on Friday, and if the car is done on time and if I drive straight to the poker room, I will be able to play on Saturday.

I need to get 100 tournaments under my belt as soon as possible. I'm struggling to play one a week.  My status as a full-time poker player might be in legal jeapardy, with nasty income tax implications.  I'm a very good problem solver and out-of-the-box thinker, but this situation is untenable, and I have no idea what to do to fix it.

I can give up on my mother-in-law, or face reality and give up on poker (assuming that the IRS doesn't force my hand.)  I'm not prepared to do either.

Changing My Business Plan

A few months ago, I decided that if I was truly going to run my poker like a business*, I needed to have a written business plan.  I wrote one that was several pages long.  It lasted about a week.  I don't really have enough control of my time and situation to stick to any kind of plan that includes things like how many hours a week I'm going to work, or how I'm going to decide which tournaments to play.  When I first decided to play full-time, my goal was to play or study at least 50 hours a week, with at least 25% of that time devoted to study.  That hasn't exactly worked out.

Another part of that plan was how I was going to manage my poker accounts (income tax escrow, live bankroll, online bankroll, and expenses.)  As stated in my 12/10/2014 post, that hasn't worked out well either  When the two bankrolls and my other accounts were added up, in November they were a bit over $1,000.  Now the toal is just over $700.  The combination of my live tournament losing streak and buying a laser printer has drawn down my funds quite a bit.

The reason I bought the printer in early January is because it's a new calendar and tax year.  I'm assuming that I'll have a chance to play often enough to win some serious money this year and use my expenses as business deductions against that income, but then, that's what I thought would happen last year.

I'm making two changes for the first part of 2015.  First, I want to rebuild my accounts so that the total is over $1,000.  No business can operate without capital, and mine is no different.  $700 on hand just isn't enough.  I would love to have a second  30-inch monitor and make other improvements to my office setup.  I need to fatten up my bankrolls.  As soon as I start winning some serious money, I need to keep some of it in escrow for quarterly estimated income tax payments.

The other change is that I'm going to divert funding that has going to my online bankroll and put it toward live poker.  My 68 buy-ins for online tournaments are OK for now and I can build that bankroll from my winnings. I'm spending more time playing online tournaments after my mother-in-law falls asleep (I played two tonight and did some studying, it's about 1:30 A.M. now) so that will help.  I would like my online bankroll to be at 100 buy-ins right now, but it's not exactly a crisis that I'm not there yet.

I haven't decided yet exactly what to do when I start winning some significant money, but until I have 100 buy-ins for both live and online tournaments, nothing is more important than that. I think I'll divide my winnings something like this:  60-65% for bankroll building, 30%  for tax payments, and 5-10% for owner's capital.

Once both of my bankrolls are set and I have some money set aside for expenses, all options are on the table.  I could keep my focus on bankroll building so that I have 100 buy-ins to play higher and make more money, for example, playing  live tournaments with buy-ins between $80 and $100.  Or I could start saving money to pay cash for a second car, which would make it possible for me to play whenever or wherever I want, including casinos, without have to have a family meeting about who can have the car when.  I could improve my office situation and get all of my poker books switched to Kindle, which would be much more convenient, and would  free up space in my office.

I have big dreams, I just have to figure out how to make them happen. The median US personal income is about $26,000.  There are more players than you think who work hard and make that much or more.  I'm not talking about the poker millionaires you see on TV.  There are lots of players you never hear about who work hard every day and make 30, 50, or 100 thousand dollars a year.  I know of a single mother who supported herself and her two children by playing poker online while her kids were in school.

There is no reason that I shouldn't be able to make at least the median personal income playing poker.  When I can finally work full-time, if I can't make a decent income, what's the point?

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*Professional poker player Dusty Schmidt wrote the book, Run Your Poker Like A Business.  Before turning to poker, he managed his father's toy store. In his book he says that he makes about $800,000 a year playing cash games online.

Still Learning And Finding More Mistakes

I played another $50 tournament.  I didn't cash.  I didn't try any of my bankroll preservation strategies.  The relevant situations never came up.  When I made it to the final two tables, I never had quite enough chips to consider coasting into a cashing spot.

The good news is that I'm learning new things (or finding more areas that need work) and that's always a good thing.

One of the interesting things that happened was that most of the players were pretty tame early, but one kept making big bets to push me out of pots.  So I stayed out of his way for a while, then I realized that at some point I had to take a stand.  I started calling about half of his raises, because:

1. He couldn't have a big hand every time, and
2. In general I had to send the message that I wouldn't be pushed around.

After that happened, I started bullying the weakest players and left him alone for a while.  Then came one of those moments when two players develop an unspoken understanding.

We both understood that we should stop competing to be the alpha dog at the table.  He knew that we were the two best players at the table, I knew the same thing, and for 15 minutes we played very few hands against each other and instead fattened our stacks at the expense of the weaker players.  He was doing it by intimidation (big bets and raising) and I was doing it by deception, slowplaying big hands and pretending I was weak when I was strong by how I played my cards, my posture, and anything else I could think of to give a false impression that wasn't too obvious (this is sometimes called giving off false tells.)

When we got down to two tables, the big mistake that I made was getting too tricky with my big hands.  Often when you're short-stacked your choices are all-in or fold, but there are a times when you can wait until a little more money gets into the pot before you strike.  I have a very good understanding of when it's time for standard short-stacked push-or-fold play.  I have a good feel for it and I understand the math.  I tried to get a little tricky too many times and it backfired.  I had already gone all-in several times, and only got a call with one of my seven or so shoves.  What I knew how to do was working, and I fell prey to FPS (Fancy Play Syndrome.)

When I am one of several small stacks, it might be OK to get tricky once in a while, but not very often.  Once you are down to two tables, a short stack will almost inevitably either make the final table, or get knocked out (or crippled), based on a confrontation with another stack big enough to cripple you or knock you out.  That's just the way it works.

There are a lot of situations in poker that can't be controlled in a tournament.  My job is to make the best decision that I can based on the odds, my hand and what range of hands I think my opponent might play in that situation.  I will get knocked out of a lot of tournaments that way.  But I will also double up in enough tournaments to be profitable in the long run, and that's what matters.

For that to happen, I need to be able to play often enough that there is a long run that means something, a large enough sample size that my tournament-by-tournament results eventually converge at a point when  they are somewhat representative of my skill level. Three or four live tournaments per month just doesn't cut it.  Again, I know that I'm doing the right thing when I spend so much time taking care of my mother-in-law.  But it was jarring to read an old post on 2+2 where I said that I would probably be tied up taking care of my mother-in-law for a little longer.

I wrote that post in 2013.