Laying The Groundwork--Part Two

This isn't going to be one of my usual posts where I talk about a subject in detail.  It is entitled "Laying The Groundwork" because that's what I've been doing.  I've been learning a lot of new things, experimenting with playing different ranges of hands and studying different things.

When I look at the numbers it doesn't look like much is happening.  I'm not making any money, in fact, my online play in 2016 has me -$6.76 online over about 250 SNGs. There is, however, a method to my madness.  I'll list of lot of different things that have been going on.  There won't be much detail, because many of those points are worthy of their own post individual post.

There are some of the things on which I've worked so far this year:


Study
1. More emphasis on flash cards.  I'm memorizing the math in a lot of different situations. I'm not in my comfort zone making certain plays unless I know that the math backs me up.

2. I'm learning new concepts that are beyond the level I usually see in a local charity room.  I do occasionally run into a professional player who frequents the smaller circuits such as the Mid-Stakes or Heartland poker tours.  It would be a lot better if I could handle some of those situations without just avoiding that player. I have to learn those advanced concepts, such as optimal frequencies for 3- and 4-betting, at some point.


Time Management
I now seldom just do one thing and stop.  If I finish a SNG and have a few minutes before the next one, I do something else poker-related during that time.  I'm writing this a few minutes at a time between SNGs.


Money Management and Tournament Selection
Most of my play hours are online now and might be for a while..  I had some money already sitting on two poker sites, so I decided to spend some time there and grind up my bankrolls.  I'm only playing live about two times a month, picking only tournaments with the structures which give me the best chance to get some big cashes.  When I have a decent live bankroll backing me up I can be less choosy.


Technology
I'm putting a lot more emphasis on technology, including setting aside time to study some of the tools that help me track my play as well as that of my opponents. I'm constantly tweaking or upgrading my recordkeeping system and I'm thinking about using Quickbooks next year. I'm making more use of study tools available online such as equity calculators.


All of the above changes have been happening at the same time, and there have been some stumbles on the way.  For example, I've been using flash cards to memorizing the top 20% of hands so that I can open with all of those hands in live tournaments, instead of the usual 10-15% with which I have opened in the past.  At the same time I'm cutting back the number of hands that I open in a SNG to no more than 10%, so I memorized that range as well.  I've done the same thing with playing the top 50% (more hands than most players, amateur or pro, would play) from the button.

There have been a some proverbial train wrecks during my tournaments because of this.  At the point where I had the 10, 20 and 50% ranges memorized (more or less) I had to keep all the different ranges straight and remember in which situations and in which types of tournaments I would play them.  That didn't always go well, and I screwed up more than a few SNGs playing more hands than usual when I actually needed to play fewer hands than I did in the past..

The combination of learning and trying so many new things at once, combined with whatever statistical variance may have been involved, brought my online results this year down from a high of +$52 to a low of -$7.

It's time now to take a break from learning so many things so fast.  I study almost every day and I will continue to do that, but I definitely need to slow down the rate and intensity at which I'm feeding myself new information.  I've been on information overload for the last month.  I need to slow down a little, consolidate what I've already learned, and grind my online bankroll back up.