Poker, Porn and Sensational Headlines

In my previous post I said that I would talk about what kind of things I study.  Later, I realized that I had already done that as part of a recent Facebook posts.  Here it is:

I just read an online article titled "How a British town became a home for porn, poker and online scams."   As a poker player who plays tournaments both live and online, I have to respond.

First, the headline was incredibly misleading.

The article describes how shell corporations work and how a lot of people in the same British town had their names on the paperwork for such companies, often without knowing anything about what the companies did. Out of many business types under the umbrella of shell companies, the headline writer evidently decided that pornography and poker were the most scandalous examples.

This isn't 1950. Poker players don't sit in a smoke filled room with their guns nearby if they're needed. They aren't shady characters. Poker, as much as chess, is a form of intellectual combat, in fact, poker is one of the games recognized by the International Mind Sports Association along with chess, go and other games. In legal disputes about poker rooms in various states, judges have ruled that poker is a game of skill and that under the law poker should not be treated as a game of chance.

I got interested in poker when I saw two people playing a hand on TV. The players were Dr. Michael Binger (theoretical physics) and Dr. Chris Ferguson (computer science and artificial intelligence.) That told me all that I needed to know about what kind of game poker is.

I play poker tournaments. That is my job. According to the US Department of Labor, that makes my job title Professional Poker Player. I work at least 40 hours a week, playing, studying and taking care of occasional administrative tasks.

As this point I should be completely honest about some of the things that I've done in the last few days. I hope that it's not NSFW.

1. I read a 60-page database manual to learn how to keep better records of my time, money and tournaments.

2. I Studied "Weekly Poker Hand" videos made by a World Poker Tour Player of the Year.

3. I used flash cards to memorize or review different poker odds, outs, equities and situations.

4. I played both single-table and multi-table online poker tournaments.

5. I spent time on poker forums exchanging information and ideas with other players.

None of the above had anything to do with pornography or shell corporations.

As always, feel free to make a comment or ask a question.

Another Busy Work Week

This week it was another hard push.  We were going to have Thanksgiving Dinner with our family on Thursday.  Saturday we were going to take our grandchildren out for a horse-and-carriage ride and the lighting of the downtown Christmas tree.  At about 1800 on Wednesday I looked at my wife and said, "You know, I'm just going to have to sit my butt in that office and stay there until midnight"--and I did that.that.

I thought it would be easy to work 40 hours.  After all, I worked all kinds of overtime at various jobs. At one job there was so much voluntary overtime available that I sometimes worked aroud 60 hours a week.  Once I worked all three shifts (first, second and third) in the same week.

The difference with poker as a job is that you're locked into that commitment.  You can't volunteer and then change your mind.  It's the only priority and nothing can get in the way.  Being self-employed is different.  I'll always have the Available Guy label on me unless I'm playing a tournament out of town with my phone turned off.

My wife and I are getting better at working things out but I think that it's always going to be awkward.  We will never really have schedules that match.  She gets up early, goes to work early at her home office, and is done by around 1500.  Most weekends she does not work.

I play poker.  Poker is a nights-and-weekends business.  On weekdays almost all of the tournaments in the area poker rooms are at night, on the weekend, or both.  I can theoretically play online any time I want, but most of the good weekday MTTs start between about 1900 and 2200  The big promotions like the Sunday Millions are usually on weekends.

My wife gets out of work at about the same time that my granddaughters get out of school, and she wants to see them as much as she can.  That's about the same time that the main part of my work day starts. I can and often do play during the online off hours, but I'm an MTT player.  MTT players have to go where (and when) the tournaments are.  During the off hours I'm often limited to SNGs online.  I love my grandchildren and I want to see them often, but the conflict between that and maximizing profit is going to be difficult sometimes.

I did get my 40 hours in.  I wound up playing or studying starting on Friday at 1000 and ending on Saturday on 0327, with breaks totaling about 4 hours.  I spent the final 2.25 hours of that push going over Jonathan Little's Weekly Poker Hands for 2.25 Hours.  When I stopped studying at 0317 on Saturday I was at at 39 hours.  After we took the grandchildren out, I came home and signed up for an MTT starting at 2020.  I got knocked out at 2242, giving me another 2.25 hours for a total of 41.25 hours for the week.

I know that this emphasis on hours seems very process-oriented,  That is exactly what it is, by design. Getting good at anything is about the process.  How many miles to you have to run to train for a marathon?  How many hours a week do you have to play scales to be a good clarinet player, or practice rudiments to be a good drummer?  To be a doctor you have to go to school until around age 30.

I have a process, and it's pretty specific.  I want to work at least 40 hours a week.  I'm doing that.  I want at least 25% of my poker time to be study.  Last week I fell short but this week I hit the studying hard:

Playing, 59%
Study, 39%
Administrative, 2%

I'll talk about what I study in a future post.  The study percentage won't always be that high, as I hope to spend some time going deep in MTTs before too long. For the forseable future I would like to keep study at or above 25% every week. I'm thinking about poker differently than I did just two weeks ago and it's exciting.

Mission Accomplished

Last week I worked for over 40 hours.  It wasn't easy.  I only count events, when I am actually working.  When I'm "on the clock" and I do something poker-related for 15 minutes or more, I record the time by the quarter-hour.  If I play for two hours, then take a five-minute break before I study, the five-minute break doesn't count.   The clock starts again when I'm studying.

There are a lot of family things going on this week. I feel like I'm already scrambling to get this week's hours in before the family things happening on Thanksgiving (Thursday) and Saturday..  We have two of our sons coming from a distance, in fact, one has just moved back after several years in Alaska.

It's great to have so much of the family together again and it's certainly not something I should complain about.  However, if I really intend to be a poker pro, I have to put the work in.  After all, my wife knows that she's going to work her 40 hours this week, and I need to look at my job exactly the same way.

Last week it was really a scramble.  My last work hour was study.  Specifically, between 2240 and 2353 I spent some time on the coaching site of Jonathan Little, a two-time World Poker Tour Player of the Year.  At a subscription cost of $10 a month the site is a tremendous bargain.

I finished up my poker time by reading Little's blog, then watching videos of the Jonathan Little Weekly Poker Hand, episodes 116-121.  When I finished it was 7 minutes before midnight and I had reached my goal.

My hours for last week:

Playing poker online, 29 hours.
Studying, 9.25 hours.
Administrative, 2 hours.
TOTAL, 40.25 hours.

I wanted studying to be at least 25% of my work week and I fell a bit short, with study at 23%, but I'm just getting used to being a full-timer.  Soon everything will fall into place.

The Pursuit of the 40-Hour Work Week

I think that making this my first 40-hour work week leaves my wife conflicted.  For a long time I've been Available Guy, the utility infielder, the part-time poker player that could do whatever needed to be done, at whatever time it needed to be done, while my wife worked her eight-hour days, five days a week.  We had a few conversations yesterday that went something like this:

Me: I have to put in at least 40 hours a week.  Poker is my job now.
Her: I know, but I need you to help me with (fill in the blank.)

This isn't just about my wife and I.  Once I got a call asking me to pick up my granddaughter because other family members were "at work."  All of those people who were "at work" were closer to her than I was at the time.  I was Available Guy.

As I type this it's 0208, Saturday morning, and I have recorded 29.25 working hours this week.  We had our grandchildren over for several hours yesterday.  My wife finished her work day.in time for us to pick up the girls from school.

I spent time with my grandchildren yesterday, and I have to make up that time today to get my 40 hours in.  It's not negotiable. I won't set that precedent my first week.  I'm going to bed soon, and when I wake up my number one priority, my only priority, will be to put in those last ten work hours.

I now have my own office. I can set my own schedule, though I do have to pay a lot of attention to the tournament schedule.  I'm not going to fail in my first attempt to put in a 40-hour week.  I hope that every month I can put in at least one 50-hour week, but one step at a time.  I have had many jobs where I worked a lot of overtime.  Sometimes my wife works a more-than-40-hour week.  Poker is my job now, and there is no reason that I can't put in my 40 hours, and more, to make poker a big success.

Available Guy is dead.

Thoughts From The Grocery Store

When my wife and I go grocery shopping, I'm the designated cart pusher.  As is always the case, when I'm not doing something I get bored.  So when she is checking prices, or when she goes somewhere and says "I'll be back" I need something to do.  We went shopping yesterday and I had a pocket notebook with me.  I wrote down some things that I've learned or been thinking about that I need to add to my poker arsenal.

1.  I need to add a 3-bet stat to Holdem Manager 2.

I use HM2 to keep statistics on the other players when I'm playing online.  I started with the basic two or three stats that most players track on the heads-up display.  I'm tracking eight of them now.  Some players track as many as 20 while playing 10 tournaments at once, but that's way beyond my capabilities at this point.  I'm slowly adding them states, one at a time, as I get comfortable with scanning more and more numbers.

I decided to add the 3-bet statistic ("3-bet" is a poker term for reraising.)  I'm not good with 3-bets at all.  I don't use them much postflop, but more important, I think I fold to 3-bets way to often.  There is a lot of information out there about the optimal way to play against 3-betting.  I need both to learn study that, and I need to pay attention to c-bet percentages when I play online.  I \need to know how often I might expect 3-bets from a certain player and then adjust my play accordingly.

2. I need to pay more attention to the Rule of 5 and 10.

That rule says that you should play speculative hands only if they are between 5 and 10 percent of your chip stack.  I won't go into the reasons for that, but it's a good rule.  I'm always looking for a spot to play suited aces, suited connectors and small pairs and I think that I play them pretty well most of the time.  The problem is that sometimes when I'm shortstacked I don't pay enough attention to what percentage of my stack that bet is going to cost me.  I need to fix that.

3. I said in a previous post that I intend to devote 40-50 hours a week to poker, with 40 being the absolute minimum.  One of my favorite quotes comes from financial advisor and radio talk show host Dave Ramsey:

"I know a lot of millionaires.  I don't know anybody that got rich working 40 hours a week."

That's very important, but I also need to concentrate on how those hours are apportioned.  As a part-time player I had way too many weeks were I would play poker for 15 or 20 hours, and only one or two of those hours were study time.

Numbers like that are not going to get me where I need to go.  I'm going to make sure that doesn't happen again.  I just checked my Poker Time Sheet, which is a spreadsheet that I keep on Open Office. My percentages are currently: playing 62, study 28, administrative 10.  That's what I want my numbers to look like almost every week.

I will report my numbers at the end of this week.

Future Plans for Poker

Before I can talk about the future I have to talk about the recent past. The last few months I have been working on a lot of things.  I have been concentrating on hitting the ground running in 2017 and not worrying too much about what happens in the rest of 2016.

First, I have to upgrade my recordkeeping by the first of the year..  I have to make sure that my records are straight when I'm making enough money playing poker to interest the IRS.  I've always declared all of my income, but now that I will be declaring myself as a Professional Poker Player (that's the US Department of Labor classification for what I do) and making enough that someone might get curious.enough to audit me I'm going to be ready. They could even ask me to prove with a time sheet that poker is my main source of income and the main source of my work hours, but I'm already doing that.  I time all of my poker activies, whether play, studying or administrative, to the nearest quarter hour, just like I'm punching a time clock.

I  plan to go way beyond what is required and have a very complete list of my statastics for every tournaments I play: buy-in, start time, end time, amount won, type of tournament, poker site, etc. etc. The IRS loves information and well-kept records.  If I give them a big information dump any planned audit will probably be canceled..

By the end of last year I had no live bankroll, which was probably inevitable.  A study of regulars on the World Poker Tour shows that at the highest levels, the ones that make the most money are the ones that cash between 8 and 16 percent of the time.  The math behind this is that if one is cashing at least 8% of the time, he has a good chance of making a profit.  However, when you're cashing more than 16% of the time, you're not taking enough chances to get those few but very large payouts, because most of the tournament prize pool goes to the top three places.

The biggest bankroll that I ever had for live tournaments, most of which start at around $50, was never more than 10 buy-ins.  I had some decent cashes playing live, but never any of really big ones.  Playing with such a small bankroll is almost a guarantee of growing broke.  In math terms, my risk of ruin was always high.

Since I have no live bankroll, I've been playing exclusively online and that's  going fairly well.  I'm only breaking even, but I'm doing that while I'm learning a lot and trying a lot of new things.  A year ago I was playing almost nothing but live deepstacked tournaments.  I'm now playing a lot of online deepstack tournaments, but I've also been playing a lot of SNGs (sit & goes, a one table tournament with 9 or 10 players.)   need to have as many poker options as possible.

I'm learning a lot about when to be more aggressive and when to dial it down.  I'm much better at adjusting to table conditions.  I'm better at realizing when I need play a bad hand because I'm in position and/or when I'm getting good odds to play and/or it's a good spot to bluff.

It's been interesting.  I've been working on a lot of things while playing online tournaments between $1 and $3.  At one time I was playing both $1.50 and $3 SNGs as well as MTTs between $1.10 and $3.30.  At one point I ran my online bankroll down to $8, then I put the experimenting to one side, stuck to $1 tournaments and got my bankroll up to $36 in a few days.  Two deep runs in MTTs helped me with that, I had two nice cashes (for $1 tournaments) finishing 2nd of 116 players, then two days later 73rd out of 1,110.  I think I'll just keep running it up playing $1 tournaments until I'm up to $150 to $200, which if all goes well will take less than a week.

The most important thing is that now I have an office. No more playing in the living room a few feet from the television. No more negotiating about who gets the TV or the computer.  My wife only needs the computer part of the time, so now she works around my poker schedule and she can watch TV whenever she wants.  Probably later next year or early 2018 we will get another computer so we each have our own personal computer.

I love my first taste of really playing full-time--I've wanted to do for so long!  A few days ago I had a 10-hour poker day, 8.5 hours playing and 1.5 hours studying.  It was great to finally be able to do that!  The amount of work that I'm putting in should help me improve much more quickly.

My time management goal is to work a minimum of 40 hours every week, and at least 50 hours some weeks.  I want at least 25% of that total time to be studying.  I don't care about what happens every day.  I could have a day with no poker followed by a day where I put in 12 hours, as long as it adds up to 40+ hours a week I really don't care.  Poker is all about winning in the long term, so I don't even want to think about short time periods.

If this goes as well as I think it will, I'll just keep playing online and when I make enough I will occasionally cash out some of it to take shots at live tournaments.  When I get that big live cash I'll try to keep the live and online bankrolls entirely separate. I wanted to keep the two bankrolls entirely separate but for now I need to use one to boost the other.  In time it will all work out.

That's the plan and I will of course keep my readers up to date about how it goes.  As always, feel free to fire away with your questions and comments.  I've been mostly playing today.  Now it's time to watch a coaching video.

I'm a Full-Time Poker Player!

I haven't posted here in a very long time.  The last two months have been crazy and very little poker has been played.  Moving from our old place, and moving into the new place, were both much more eventful than expected.

My wife and I at one-point lived in a two-story house, then we moved to a much smaller house.  This last move was a major downsizing effort.  All of the stuff accumulated at previous residences was way too much to bring to a trailer park.  We did it to downsize, simplify our lives and save money, but some of the issues were daunting,

The main problem was what to do with all of our stuff.  My wife and I were both going to have a home office in the trailer.  There would be no basement..   No Attic.  No spare room.  We had to get rid of a lot of things and it took several weeks and three dumpsters to do that.

While that was going on, we found out that there was a major flea infestation at the new place.  I could sit down in a recliner and have fleas crawling all over my hands and arms in a matter of seconds. I flea-bombed the place, but that was only part of what was needed.

We found out that fleas have a very quick life cycle.  Some eggs would survive the bombing and there would be brand new baby fleas in less than a week.  So, I drove the seven miles from the old place to the new just to vacuum, every day, for three weeks, until we were sure that all the fleas and their eggs were finally gone.

Fleas weren't the only surprises that greeted us, for example, the mattress pad had cigarette burns.  It really hurt to realize that the new caregivers had both fought and smoked around my mother-in-law.  There were a lot of unpleasant surprises.

While all that was going on were were struggling with the huge amounts of stuff that could not go with us to the new place. For starters, I estimate that we had about 1,500 books in our home.  We tried to sell some of them, and other things, at a flea market, with very little success.  We made a few trips to the local rescue mission store to donate some of our things.   In the end, we were running out of time and we wound up throwing at least 1,000 books into the dumpsters.

It hurt to throw away all of those books.  It reminded me of the book (and movie) Fahrenheit 451.  One of my dreams was to someday have a home library for all of those books.  But, this is the 21st century and no one needs physical books any more.  My newest poker books are on my Kindle.

The move was much more expensive than expected.  We didn't expect to fill dumpsters at more than $100 a pop, we didn't expect a pitched battle against fleas and we didn't expect to use professional movers twice.  It set us back financially for a couple months.  After that we can go back to paying off all of our debts and I will be able to afford some things that I need to keep poker going, inlcuding properly setting up my new poker office.

I'm finally in the new place.  I have my own office where I can study and play poker. My next post, which should be tomorrow, will talk about my plans for poker as I look forward to 2017.