Just Grinding

Most poker days are just grinding.  No big highs and lows, no big problems, no big cashes.  Today was one of those days.  My son will have a car soon and once we don't have to give him rides, that will cut down on the Available Guy Problem and things will be a lot easier.

No one needed a ride today.  Nothing was messing with my schedule.  When Wednesday ended at midnight (it's 0024 on Thursday as I type this) I had worked 8.25 hours.  I'm still not used to having my own office in a quiet neighborhood and (most of the time) being able to work whenever I want.  It feels great!

I have to take the car in for some work today, but on Friday I might just sit down sometime in the morning and work for 10 straight hours.  It would be great to pile up some hours and still have time to watch TV at night.

My poker day yesterday:

SNGs plus one MTT, 6.5 hours.
Study on poker forums, 1.25 hours
Flash cards, 0.5 hours.
TOTAL, 8.25 HOURS.

I finished with the flash cards a few minutes after midnight.  Flash cards at midnight, or whatever kind of studying other players do, certainly isn't as glamorous as what you see on TV.  You see people sitting around poker tables playing for six-figure paydays--but those people didn't get there by accident.  They put in the work, just as I am I'm doing.

I'm happy with what I did today but there is one adjustment that I need to make.  This week so far I've done way too little studying.  That will be how I spend most of my poker time today.

My spreadsheet is set up to keep a running total of my percentages.  Study is at at 12% of my time this week.  I need it to be at least 25%, so the rest of the week will be heavy on study.  I've been slacking on the flash cards, not doing that every day as I should, so that will definitely get some attention every day for the rest of the week..  There are so many things that I need to learn, so many leaks in my game that I need to fix, that sometimes it's hard to know how to manage my study time.  I need to work a lot on flash cards, but sometimes I get frustrated, knowing all of the things that I don't know and should be working on..

I have memorized the top 10%, 20% and 50% of hands and I will review those as well odds and outs to hit the turn..  I need to regularly review what I've memorized before it starts slipping away, but I need to start adding some new hand ranges as well.

I like to play 50% of my hands from the button whenever I can get away with it, but for the times I can't get away from it, as well as for other situations, I would like to memorize the top 30% and 40% so that I have that in my arsenal when I need to tighten up a bit.

Of course I recognize that I could easily tighten my ranges by just dropping some of the weakest hands, but I think that knowing exactly what cards are in a range, especially online, will be very helpful.  When I'm looking at the heads-up display on my monitor I can see exactly what percentage of his hands my opponent is playing and I can be precise in responding by playing in the top half of that range, or by making other kinds of adjustments suggested by the math or by game theoretical considerations. Knowing precisely which hands are in various ranges will make that a lot easier.

So, that was my poker day and those are the kind of  things that I think about when I play or study. Not exciting, but all important to learn.