My Aces Got Cracked

Nothing upsets poker players more than getting their aces cracked.  It happened to me last night.  My chip stack was below average but I was pretty close to a cash.  I don't remember all of the details, but I think that if three more players were knocked that would have put me in the money.  Of course, the real money in poker is making it into the top three, and ideally, winning.

I started counting that money when I bet, villain raised, I shoved preflop with aces and he called with kings.  Mathematically I couldn't have been in a better spot.  With no suits in common I win that one 81.26% of the time.  Of course, poker is a game of probabilty, not certainty.  Over the long term, I win in that situation often enough to make a profit.  In one tournament anything can happen..  The kings in that spot win 18.74% of the time, and this time they did.

Unlike most players, I don't freak out when that happens.  Poker is referred to as a "volume game" for a reason. I play often enough (I almost 500 tournaments this year) that losing with aces is a glitch, not a disaster.

I lost most of my stack in that hand.  I hung on and looked for a good spot to shove, but I missed again and was knocked out.  As Doyle Brunson famously said, "That's poker folks."*

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doyle_Brunson

The Rest of 2017

I mentioned recently that I was going to try again to get some STTs (single table tournaments, also called SNGs or sit 'n goes) running  It didn't happen.  (See 12/13 post, Other Playing Options.)  I opened an 8-player table on a Saturday night, poker prime time, and nothing happened.  More than an hour later I was still the only player registered.

It is still the case that I'm not going to be concerned about how many hours I work, or when, for the remaining days of 2017.  There are too many things coming up for the rest of the year that I can't control.  The updates that I want to make to my recordkeeping system for 2018 will take a few hours.  I won't worry about whether I am able to study for 10 hours or work 40 total hours this week.

I have gone back to flash card memorization and that will help me a lot.  Some of it is review of things that I've learned or memorized before, but it gets a little hazy after a while if I don't review those cards on a regular basis.  For example:

If I have 11 outs, I need to know immediately that the odds against hitting one of those outs on the river are 3.27 to 1.  Knowing that it's "about" 3 to 1 isn't good enough.  I need to know the exact odds and the pot size to know whether it is profitable to make that call.  Poker is like chess, in that there are many situations that have to be memorized so that when I'm looking at that situation, I know exactly what to do.  Unless chess, online poker moves fast and I have seconds, not minutes, to consider my next move.

I will be more comfortable playing online next year.  I just got a new office chair.  I can set a height and it doesn't slide back down on a regular basis as did the old chair.  I had to completely cover the new chair because one of our cats immediately put a few claw holes in it.  I tied a blanket onto the front and back and I taped towels onto each arm rest so that all of the soft parts of the chair are covered.

There is one thing happening this year that's a pretty big deal.  In a few days it will be December 26.  Why does that matter?  Because it's the best poker day of the year.   More recreational (weak) players, bigger prize pools, and often special tournaments offered by the sites.  Once I see the tournament lineup I'll plan when (or if) I'll be getting any sleep for those 24 hours.

Thoughts on Recent Topics

Thoughts on topics covered in recent posts:

1.  Total weekly study hours.  I might have to accept racking up fewer study hours during the rest of the year and add some administrative time to my schedule.  I track my poker time in three categories:  playing, studying and administrative (a catch-all for everything that is not studying or playing.)  I want to improve my recordkeeping system for next year.  I also want to make better use of the spreadsheet tools so that I can put my results on graphs and post those graphs in this blog.  I also want to track the financials, both income and expenses, more efficiently.



2.  Total weekly work hours.  My total work hours might fall short of 40 hours per week for the rest of the year.  Church and family activities around the Christmas season will eat into some of my time.  Also, the snow is hitting us pretty hard, which means I am and will be spending significant time dealing with the snow.  We've been in a winter storm watch or warning several days in a row.



3.  Not getting enough sleep.  I think that part of the reason for my lack of energy and not sleeping well is because I haven't been keeping myself in shape.  Until a few months ago I was running at least every other day as well as doing push-ups, sit-ups and other exercises every day.  Now I've become a coach and office chair potato.

If I get my act together I should easily drop 30 pounds next year, from my current 180 to 150, and I know that I will feel a lot better than I do now.  I have run one marathon (I weighed 140 then) and a lot of shorter races of between 3 and 15 miles.  I know what it takes to get in shape and I have no excuse for not doing it.

Other Playing Options

Being tied to a rigid schedule of two tournaments a night, with the first starting at 1829 and the second at 2214, is causing a lot of problems.  I've mentioned this before many times.  The main issue is that I start my work day a little before 1829.  That means that I need to get a decent amount of sleep during what most people would call normal work hours, or first shift.  That isn't working very well lately.

My granddaughter spent the night recently, which kept me out or the early tournament, but I was prepared to just play the 2214, then catch up on my sleep.  She woke up around 0330 and we wound up spending several hours watching videos together.  I was pushing hard to get my poker hours in that week.  The total was 37.75.

I admit that some of it was laziness and/or getting distracted by something else.  I wasn't diagnosed with Attention Deficit Disorder until I was 40.  That's a long time to build bad habits and I'll be fighting against that until the day I die.

It isn't going to get any easier.  This is December and I live in the Lake Michigan snow belt, where over 100 inches of snow is always possible. The seasonal record for the city of Muskegon, Michigan (I live in Muskegon Township) is 240 inches (20 feet).

Now I have two things that I have to do at a certain time: play the evening tournaments and make sure that the driveway and all of the exits are clear of snow.  I have to play poker when the tournaments are running and I have to deal with the snow when it falls.

Part of the problem has been daytime appointments which cut into my sleep time. In the last week and a half I had appointments with my doctor and my optician.  I also had to go to the local poker room because I'm the one who puts their schedule online.  The room had stopped communicating with me, and members on the area poker forum threads were asking if it was still open.

To top if off, this is the Christmas season (sorry, I'm going to be a grinch here.) There is more church activity than normal and more family gatherings.  It is also prime time for online poker, with the most players, the most casual (weak) players, the biggest prize pools, and special promotions from the poker sites.

This wouldn't be such a big deal except that the year is almost over and I'm ready to move up from bankroll building to making some real money. When everything is set up the way I want it and I'm making a decent income, missing a few tournaments or some sleep won't be such a big deal.  I'm 62 years old.  I don't want to be 80 years old, saying that someday I'll be making a lot of money playing poker.  The clock is ticking and it's loud.

I know that this isn't a permanent situation.  It won't always be snowing and I'll have some weeks that my schedule is clear for poker.  I'll have yard work to do in the spring, but at least I can do it when I want, not whenever the snow falls.

I'm always trying to figure out how to improve this situation and I have an idea that might work.  It's not a great solution, but it might be a reasonably good one.  I'm going to take a shot at playing some sit-n-goes.

I've considered that before, but there are some drawbacks:

1. It's takes a long time to get one running, usually a half-hour or more to get eight players to register..

2.. The rake for $1 SNGs is very high.  When I play an MTT I pay a 10% rake.  For a $1 SNG the rake is a ridiculous 29%.   That explains why they don't run very often. The best players in the world would have a hard time making money playing those.  I've even heard the word "impossible" used my some of the top players.

3. I am a deepstack tournament specialist building a bankroll to set myself up with options in 2018.  My focus and study should be on that.  Being a good SNG player requires a solid knowledge of ICM* but that's still on my list of things to study.  ICM is part of MTT poker theory, but it comes into play much more often in SNGs.

Here are the reasons that I think it might work, compared against the problems above:

1. It takes a long time to fill one up, but I can always wait while I'm at my desk studying.  If it takes an hour to open, then that's what it takes.  When it starts I can l put my study aside and play the SNG, which should take an average of something like 45 minutes.

2. I was thinking about SNG rake this morning (it's 0211 as I write this) and I remembered hearing in a webinar that usually the higher you go in SNGs, the smaller the rake is as a percentage.  I checked it out and for a $3.50 SNG the rake is only 12% of that amount.  That's a manageable number.

3. I should be able to make at least a small profit playing these.  I had a 14% ROI (return on investment ) playing them at the $11 level on PokerStars.  Even though I'm rusty and haven't kept up with the new developments in SNG theory, I should be able to hold my own without a lot of ICM study.

This might not work if I can't play enough of them to make it worth my trouble.  On the other hand, with an average profit of 14% (49 cents) those cents would slowly but surely turn into dollars.  This whole bankroll building effort has been about turning cents into dollars. If I can find enough of them I think I could play two at a time, if I overlap them so one is starting about the time I'm half way through the other one.  The thing that scares me the most about multi-tabling, whether it's a SNGs or an MTTs, is being heads-up in two tournaments at the same time.  I am definitely not ready to deal with that.

----------------

*Independent Chop Model

http://www.thepokerbank.com/strategy/tournament/icm/what/

Sometimes Everything Goes Wrong

I said in yesterday's post that I often have trouble getting to sleep.  I also said that I shouldn't have any problem getting my 40 hours in this week. Some of that plan is going well  Other parts are a mess.

My wife knew that I was scrambling to get hours and playing time in this week.  Even though my granddaughter was here, my wife suggested that I talk a nap before I played the 1829 tournament.

I put earplugs in and went to bed.  About an hour it was obvious that I wasn't going to be able to sleep, so I got back up.

Strike one!

I tired again an hour or so later. I got some sleep. woke up at 2255, and felt pretty good about the upcoming tournament.  Granddaughter was sleep in a recliner.

I played the tournament and half an hour in, I had one of those hands that "plays itself" because both players have a hand that is too good to fold.

On a very wet board I flopped a backdoor flush draw and open-end straight draw (which was also the nut straight draw.)  Villain bet and I called.  On the turn I flopped the second nut flush draw.

This was an easy decision.   I had a boatload of outs.  I was in 10th place with 8 cashing, so if I folded I had a decent chance to make some money.  If I won the hand villain would be knocked out, we would be down to nine players and I would be in second place with a great chance for a big cash.  You never ignore any reasonable chance to move into the top three.

All the chips went in, and the ace of diamonds hit the board, giving villain the nut flush. I was out in 31st place.

Strike two!

So, here I am a little past midnight and the only thing on my list that I can accomplish is to hit my weekly numeric goals.  I need to work 9.75 hours today to get to my 40 for the week.  I would like to play one or both of my tournaments tonight, but study comes first.  The study hours are just too important.

For the next 12 hours I'll either be spending time with my granddaughter or studying.  There isn't time for anything else.  To get my study in I will have to plan carefully.  I did some math and it comes down to this:

If I wind up with 40 hours total, at least 25% of that time, or 10 hours, needs to be study.  I'm only at 3.25 study hours now, so if all I do is study I'll be in good shape.  If playing one or both tournaments puts me over 40 hours, then my study time today would have to be more than that, at least seven hours.

The bottom line is that I front-loaded my weekly schedule to get hours in, but too few of those hours were study.  I will watch that next week.
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Updates: Sleep Problems and Work Hours

Someday I'm going to make a list of rules like the ones Agent Gibbs has on NCIS.  I won't always carry a knife but I'm sure that two rules will be on my list:

1. Don't miss a hand.
2. Never play tired.

I'm mentioned number one before, and it's pretty obvious.  I don't want to come back to my desk just in time to see my big pocket pair folded because my time ran out.  It's happened to me and it's a sick feeling.  One hand like that at the right time can be the difference between missing the money and making it to the final table.  I watched my queens get autofolded with only 12 players left.

I've mentioned trouble sleeping more than once.  It really hit me today how big a deal it is.  I knew how important it was to get enough rest, but last night I really felt it.

I was really tired when I played the 1829 tournament last night and it was a mess.  I didn't make any huge mistakes, but just a few small ones can make a big difference. If I don't pay attention to the stack size of someone sitting next to me, I'm missing valuable information on how he might react if I make a big bet.  A very short stack might be forced into going all-in regardless of what I do.  I made a couple inattention mistakes like that and I was knocked out pretty quickly.

I took a nap of a little over an hour before the 2214 tournament.  When I sat down to play I felt like a different person.  It really emphasized the difference between playing rested and tired.

I cashed in that tournament  (10th of 55), but more important, I felt great.  It was the first time in several days that I wasn't tired while I was playing.  I had so much energy and focus that I was disappointed to get just the minimum cash.  I was fired up and ready to play for a few more hours.

Regarding my work hours, it looks like I'll hit my goals two weeks in a row.  My granddaughter is spending the night tonight (Friday) but I planned for that and got a lot of work in early in the week.  As I type this its 0330 on Friday and I've worked 28.25 hours so far. Even considering my granddaughter's visit, I shouldn't have a problem getting the last 11.75 hours in, because I'll get some time in today before she comes over, and Saturday is completely open.

I'll have to hit the studying hard this weekend to make sure it's at least 25% of my time. That number is really important, in fact, it's just as important as getting my total hours in.  Many of the pros that you see on TV study all the time.  Jonathan Little, the co-author of Bluffs, has his own coaching site, to which I am a subscriber.  Even so, Little has subscriptions to five other coaching sites.

Little is one of the top players in the world but he often talks about all of the things that he learns from other players.  Study is that big a deal.  If the guy sitting across from you at the poker table has a good grasp of the math and theory and you don't, as the little girl on Full House used to say, "You're in big trouble mister!"

I will be playing the 2314 tournament tonight.  My granddaughter will be asleep by then.  It's the best available tournament and runs only once a week.  I try to never miss it.  Other than that, when I'm not sleeping today I'll mostly be studying.  I need to make sure that I get my 25% (at least 10 hours) of study time.

This weekend I'll be working on two things

1. Math (flash cards for review and memorization of different situations)

2. Bluffs, concentrating on the chapter on continuation betting.  I already have a C-betting cheat sheet on a clipboard, ready for the 2314 tournament tonight.

By no means am I limiting myself to 40 hours a week, or to 25% study.  I've had plenty of jobs (or more than one job) where I worked more than 40 hours a week.  For now, since my sleep problems are messing me up, I'm happy with the twin goals of 40 work hours with at least 25% study.  Those two numbers are an acceptable minimum.

As always, your questions and comments (see the box below) are always welcome.

Professional Poker Doesn't Always Mean Setting Your Own Schedule

Sometimes I envy my wife.  She has a job and an employer and she knows what her work hours are.  When someone asks her to do something, she can decline because "I have to work."  Those are her hours and no one can mess with them.

I thought that one of the best things about poker would be that I could make my own schedule.  I didn't want a boss. I wanted freedom to run my Schedule C poker business however and whenever I wanted.  It hasn't worked out that way.

I said in my previous post that most of the time I haven't hit both of my weekly goals, which are at least 40 work hours with at least 25% of that time studying.

My plan was always to work about 6 hours a day, seven days a week, but I'm losing a lot more days than I expected.  When I have to go to the doctor or deal with some other business that happens "during the day" that can throw my schedule off.  When one of our grandchildren spends the night, that knocks out or more of my evening tournaments.

All of this messes up my sleep.  I'm an insomniac (I sleep soundly but have a lot of trouble falling asleep) so this is definitely an issue.

My best-laid plans often go astray.  That's not going to change.  To make sure that I put in my time  each week I need to front-load my schedule.  Besides the things I've already listed, sometimes there are surprises, like being asked to babysit our grandchildren without much notice.  I love spending time with them, but it is, in a way, bad for business.

I can no longer assume that I have enough time left to get everything done. Instead of working about six hours every Monday through Wednesday, I'll make it seven or eight.  It's not an ideal solution.  As someone said in the twoplustwo.com poker forums, if poker is going to be your profession you have to accept that it's a nights-and-weekends business, because that's when the biggest and best tournaments run.

I can't add more tournaments early in the week.  I'm very careful with my tournament selection, and the fewest players, and therefore the smallest prize pools, are always on Tuesday.  The best tournaments are always on Friday and Saturday.  I can't say "I have to work" when weekends are the usual time that my grandchildren can visit.

On another topic, I've been studying Bluffs, by Jonathan Little and Albert Hart.  It turns out that there are a lot of different aspects to bluffing.  One of those is opening pots with a wide (loose) range of hands and I've improved a lot in that area..  During my early-in-the-week study time I'm going to start working on another facet of bluffing.  I have to decide whether it will be continuation betting or check-raising. I'm weak in both areas.

As always, your questions and comments (see box below) are always welcome.

Hitting my Goals for the Week

Despite my efforts (I'm not sure that I can call them my best efforts) until now I had never hit my two weekly goals at the same time.  Those goals are  at least 40 hours of work time, with at least 25% of those hours being study.  I finally did both in the same week and I hope to make that a regular event.

I have the details of last week in front of me so I decided to give you an idea of how I spend my time.  I tried to copy and paste the spreadsheet.  It worked fine in a E-mail, but when I did the same thing here everything was scrambled, so I'll write it out.  This is how I spent my work week from Sunday, November 26 through Saturday, December 2:

Playing Online Poker Tournaments (27 hours)

I play two tournaments a night, six or seven nights a week.  I pick from the three tournaments that I think will be the most profitable.  Those tournaments start every night at 1829, 2214 and 2314 on Juicy Stakes Poker.  It's not always the same tournament at 2314, so some nights I play that one and other nights I play the one at 2214 instead.  I play the 1829 tournament almost every night.

Studying (11.5 hours)
I read and communicate with other players in an online poker forum.  I watch and study televised episodes of the Heartland Poker Tour and the World Poker Tour, where I learn at lot from the expert commentary.

I also read and study poker books.  I have read my most recent book, Bluffs, by Jonathan Little and Albert Hart, three times.  I typed out some of the ideas from that book and put it on a chipboard so that I can see it while I'm playing.  Sometimes it's just a reminder, but often I have it in front of me so that I can memorize the information while I'm playing..

I have a subscription to an online coaching site.  I watch videos where Jonathan Little, a World Poker Tour Player of the Year, shows a video of a tournament, or hands from several tournaments. There is analysis of his play and the play of his opponents.  I also get to participate in a poker webinar once a month.

Administrative (1.75 hours)
Most of this time is spent  keeping records, for myself and for the IRS.  Blog posts also go under this category.  Sometimes I will visit or correspond with area poker rooms (even though I'm only playing online for now) so that I can keep in touch with the rest of the area poker community.  I hope to be playing live and on two online sites sometime in 2018.


As always, your comments and questions (see box below) are welcome.

November 2017 Results

The month started out well, but the last three weeks were pretty bad.  I was card dead for several weeks, then I started getting a lot of good hands that didn't hold up.  I don't think that I made a lot of mistakes.  Sometimes variance just happens and there is nothing that can be done.

I did not play on Americas Cardroom and I will not be doing so until sometime in the first quarter of 2018.  I was hoping to announce that my bankroll hit the $300 mark, but it didn't happen.  Below are the November results.  I guess some profit is better than none.  Poker players call it grinding for a reason.


Juicy Stakes Poker, August 2017, 56 tournaments
15 net win tournaments:   +$126.57
41 net loss tournaments:    -$112.10
                                                 ----------
                                                +$11.47


As always, your questions and comments are welcome (see box below.)

Weak (short-term) Results but Continued Improvement

I can tell that I continue to get better.  Not because of results, but because of the things that I'm thinking about.  My results for this month, which I will post tomorrow, were positive but not great, but it's kind of silly to worry about a month anyway.  I have to have some way to note my progress and a month is as good a benchmark as any.  No one is going to read this if I post my results once a year.

I let myself get discouraged at the number of things that I don't know about poker (see previous post) but just the fact that I'm thinking about all of these new things puts me way ahead of where I was at the beginning of this year.

I think that the process is in many ways the same in most professions or pursuits.  My oldest granddaughter (age 10) just started playing the flute.  She can make a pretty good sound and play the right notes of a very simple song.  She's happy with that, as she should be.  If she continues to play, she will learn about scales, then she will learn that scales are played in different keys.  Then she will learn about major and minor scales, then about harmonic minor and melodic minor.  If she keeps playing for several years, at some point she might learn about pentatonic and modal scales.

There is always more to learn in poker, in music, and in life.  I can't allow myself to get frustrated by the process.

Now I have one more problem.  I would like to tell my granddaughter that I mentioned her in my blog, but that would probably be a mistake.  She would want to read the post and I don't want to fry her brain when I try to explain what modal scales are.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome (see box below.)

Getting Sloppy

I've been going through the usual ups and downs of poker.  I failed to cash in 8 of 9 tournaments, then I played two last night and cashed both of them.  I think I wound up down a dollar or two during the last week. I know it was something close to breaking even.


I get frustrated with all of the things that I don't know.  I just finished watching a couple of Jonathan Little's coaching videos where he was talking about how often, in certain spots, you expect your opponent to fold, and also about how much equity you have.  It seems that your equity plus how likely villain is to fold are added together in some kind of formula.  I've been watching coaching videos for several years and I've been playing for something like ten years and I never heard of those things being combined in that way.

It's a neverending struggle to keep up with all of the things that I should know, and after that, incorporating that new information into my play.  Somewhere down the road I'll deal with that idea from Jonathan Little.

The last week or so I got sloppy.  I've been working on something that I already knew how to do, or at least I thought that I did.  I need to keep my VPIP (money Voluntarily Put In Pot) and PFR (Pre- Flop Raise) percentages fairly close together. On one of her videos, Katie Dozier (aka Hot Jenny) mentioned and showed those percentages enough times in one of her videos that I finally woke up and realized what I was doing.

Her percentages in the online tournament shown on the video were 16/11.  My PFR, like hers, is usually pretty close to 11, but my VPIP has been sneaking well up into the 20s quite often.  A spread of 10 or more is way too much.  My numbers need to look more like hers, so I've been working on that in the last week or so. It's a bad habit and I need to check myself every few hands to make sure that I'm not going off the reservation.  Maybe I should put a piece of paper on the wall in front of me and write, in big letters, WATCH YOUR VPIP.

It's just one of the many, many areas where I need to improve.  The difference is that this time, I knew better but I did it anyway. "With this hand I might hit something good" isn't much of a strategy.

What I'm Doing Right, What I'm Doing Wrong, and What I Can't Control

As it gets close to the end of the year, I've been thinking about how I've done in my quest to set myself up for a profitable 2018.  I'm going to put up a series of posts on the good, the bad and the ugly of what I've accomplished, or not accomplished, this year.

I'm doing this for two reasons:

1.  I need to analyze what worked and why it worked.  I also need to analyze what didn't work and figure out what to do differently  There is always something in the process that can be improved.

I watched a Jonathan Little coaching video yesterday.  Little is one of the top players in the world, but in the video he ticked off a list of several facets of his play that he needs to improve.  The process for being a great poker player is probably not all that different than the process for becoming a great musician, or doctor, or athlete or parent.  In each case, the best are always work on improving their skills.

2. I need to post more often. I would love to post every day, but when I play poker online in my home office, there usually is nothing exciting happening.

I have learned to be more aggressive and open a lot more pots, especially from early position.  Even so, in many of my tournaments I only play about 20% of my hands.  I once played a live tournament where I was so card dead that I folded every hand for the first hour.  It's hard to come up with an interesting post when things like that happen.

While examining the process and outcomes, I'll be posting on that topic often, but it's won't be the only topic.  There will be other things to talk about and I will mix process posts in from time to time.  I like lists and milestones and I hope to very soon post that my bankroll on Juicy Stakes Poker is over $300.  The current balance is $276.92.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome. The comment box is directly below this post.  If you don't understand my use of poker terminology you can ask, or go here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_poker_terms

Every year a lot of new poker terms or acronyms are coined.  Don't be discouraged if what you want to know is not in Wikipedia.  Just post your question.

Fighting My Way Up the Tournament Ladder

I played a tournament last night that had a lot of ups and downs.  Early in the tournament I was in first place, but there were a lot of big hands where I went way up or way down.  I wound up fighting just to get a cashing spot, as seems to happen in a lot of my tournaments.

Very often I will be just out of a cashing spot and having to fight my way up.  In this tournament, 12 players got in the money and I spent most of the tournament's third hour fighting to get up to one of the top 12 spots.  I would be 15th of 21, then 14th of 17, then make it up to 12th place only to get knocked into a lower place after the next hand.

For about half an hour I watched other players get knocked out, which was good, but  I wasn't moving up, which was bad.  Near the end of the third hour I was 12th of 14 and I managed to hang on to that spot while two more players were knocked out.

Once I was in the money at 12th place it got really interesting.  Playing "in the money" requires a different kind of skill then trying to get there, as does then getting to the final table, as does finally getting the win.  They are all different animals with different mathematical and tactical considerations.  I seem to have very different strengths and weaknesses at different stages of a tournament.  My strongest area is playing the final table and I'm definitely not playing "by the book."

I wound up taking second place out of 66 players for a very nice cash.  I do what works for me and I keep getting good cashes.  If I at least break even for the next nine days, November will be my most profitable month so far.  I play a lot more hands and in general I am a much "looser" player than I was just a few months ago.  Still, there are spots where I'm going way off the reservation.

When poker players talk about slowly but surely grinding their way up to once of the biggest stacks at the final table, it's called "laddering up."  I would rather it be called "climbing the ladder," because I don't like turning nouns (like ladder) into verbs, but I'm not in charge of naming poker situations.

The conventional, widely accepted and probably mathematically correct wisdom is that you should follow the math and take big risks to make big money.  From a math standpoint it's much better to take a lot or risks to get just a few big cashes, rather than trying to cash often.

That said, there are times when it's correct to put risk-taking on hold.  For example, if I am in 10th place, nine players cash and two very small stacks are going to have put all of their chips in the pot in the next two minutes, it makes sense to play a little more carefully and see if anyone gets knocked out.

The dilemma is that I'm not careful just in such obvious situations.  I'm very good at "laddering up" but I play much tighter much more often that the math says that I should.  Once I make it to the final table, I just keep going.  Very often I will have the smallest stack at the final table but I move up several spots while waiting for other players to get knocked out.

When I was around 15th place last night I would sometimes fold two or three orbits while I waited to be dealt a top 5% hand.  If I won the hand (which I did most of the time.) I would wait for another big hand and keep moving up.  I kept doing that until we were down to fifth place and I was the big stack.  Then I opened up and started pushing the smaller stacks around.  I was in first place for quite a while but I couldn't hang on. The final hand I had 12 outs, I called villain's all-in, I didn't hit and I took second place.

As I have said many times before, I should be getting bigger cashes, not more cashes.  This month I have done both.  In November so far I have cashed in 12 of 41 tournaments (29%.) That percentage seems way too high, but enough of my cashes have been deep runs that it's been a good month so far.

If I asked Jonathan Little or any of the other top players about this, it would be as if  I was in the 2+2 poker forums as a beginner all over again, with everyone answering with a favorite 2+2 saying: "You're doing it wrong."

There are different ways to think about this:

1. Even if my play is nonstandard, I should do what works.
2. What I'm doing against weak competition (mostly $1 and $2 tournaments) won't work when I move up.
3, Both 1 and 2 are correct.

The bottom line is that what I'm doing is working.  I never planned or expected to make a lot of money this year.  I didn't have a number in mind. The goal was to simply to grind some bankrolls that are big enough to put me in a good position in 2018.  I haven't yet done that with Americas Cardroom, but when I take take my first cashout from Juicy Stakes poker I'll move some of that money over to get a second bankroll going.  Then I will be in great shape.

Keep in mind that what I accomplished on Juicy Stakes Poker didn't cost me anything.  I worked with what I had online. I have no doubt that I can accomplish a lot when I have some actual money to put into my business.  More about that in a future post.

Juicy Stakes Poker Withdrawal Rules.

The following is cross-posted from my 11/17 post in the Juicy Stakes Poker thread in the twoplustwo.com poker forums.  The correspondence says it all.  When I mention "FPPs" I am talking about Frequent Player Points:


I'm glad that there is a rep in this forum. I play on another site and I'll be playing in some live tournaments next year. I'm grinding a bankroll on this site to give myself multiple options for where and when I can play.

My problem with withdrawal rules isn't whether they are fair or not. My issue is that they are so hard to understand.

I started grinding with about $40 on the site which I hadn't touched for two years. When I hit the $250 minimum withdrawal requirement, I wrote to support to find out how everything worked, even though I probably won't withdraw until my balance is over $600--I have to leave money behind to build my bankroll. 

To make it simple, after communicating with support, I have no idea how to gauge how close I am to satisfying the standards to make a withdrawal.

I was told that when I got my balance up to $600 that would almost certainly be enough grinding to qualify for a withdrawal. I asked if I could have the formula about progress toward making a withdrawal, and how things like FPPs fit into that formula. I was told that I could call support from time to time to get an update on my progress.

Why is this so mysterious and complicated? I want to know exactly what I have to do to qualify for withdrawal when I hit a balance of $600. How many FPPs do I need? How much "net rake" (first time I've heard that term) do I need? I didn't get an answer to that, but I found out that some of things that I've done could could force me to wait longer. Playing a freeroll is one of those things. Getting a bonus is another. I have done both.

Let me get this straight. When I found something wrong with information on a tournament lobby a few weeks ago, support looked into it and said that I was correct. I got a $5 bonus for reporting the mistake. But in my most recent correspondence I was told that getting a bonus could make me wait longer before I could withdraw.

Somewhere there is a formula for how this all works. Someone wrote the code so that a computer could crunch the numbers. FPPs, bonuses, freerolls, net rake--is there anything else factored in that I don't know about? I have found other tournament page mistakes that I could report, but why would I do that if I get a bonus that is actually a penalty of some sort?

Below is most my recent (10/29) correspondence from support, with some of my specific issues in bold:


Dear Clifton,

Thank you for contacting Juicy Stakes Poker support! We are always happy to assist.

Thank you so much for your e-mail it made understanding your query allot easier.

Normally you can safely assume that after grinding your bankroll up from $250 to $600, you should have made any requirements that your account may have had, however this depends on what those requirements are.

Withdrawing from Poker is very easy, once a Net Rake (rake minus bonuses) of 10% of the deposited amount has been made, and you have not received and free bonuses or free roll winnings you should not have any requirements.

Also before you make a withdrawal, you have to have your account verified with documents. This is for your security and to ensure the accuracy of the withdrawal. I will send you another e-mail with a list of the things you will need.

Finally before you make a withdrawal all you have to do is contact us, ask if your account has any requirements before you make your withdrawal request , and we will send you an e-mail with any requirements you may have, so that you do not have to worry about figuring it out your self.
We do not have a page at the moment that would explain all of this, however we appreciate this feed back and we will pass it on to the relevant department to see if we can have something like this set up, and please, do not hesitate to give us your feed back on what you think of the site. We are currently taking note of all things we can improve upon and e-mails like this help us to get an Idea of what our player could really use.

Thank you so much again, Should you need any further assistance feel free to contact us at any time; we will be more than happy to assist you.

Best regards,

Peter
Juicy Stakes Support

October results

Juicy Stakes Poker, October 2017
35 tournaments played:
11 net win tournaments:   +$61.11
24 net loss tournaments:   -$50.00
                                                ---------
                                                +$11.11


Americas Cardroom, October 2017
6 tournaments played:
2 net win tournaments:   +$0.44
6 net loss tournaments:   -$0.66
                                              ---------
                                          +-$0.22



Combined results for October 2017:  +$10.89


You already know that October was a mess until I got two big cashes near the end of the month.  I was happy just to break even.  Now it's November and the big cashes haven't stopped.

I had two nice cashes already this month:  $25.90 (second of 39) on 11/6 and $33.30 (first of 31)  on 11/8.  Poker players should always be leery of small sample sizes, but it sure seems like all of the studying that I've done this year is starting to pay off.

I'm going to keep grinding the tournaments, but only on Juicy Stakes Poker.  It's going too well for me to waste some of my playing time with 11 cent tournaments on Americas Cardroom.  I hope to cash out some of my winnings on Juicy Stakes Poker sometime in the first quarter of 2018.  I'll use some of that money to restart a bankroll on Americas Cardroom.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

In Poker, More Risk Means More Reward

This was going to be my October results post.  I will post that tomorrow.  November so far has been a perfect example of what variance in poker looks like, and I wanted to show it to you.

I made a profit in October but I wasn't happy with how I played.  I was worrying too much about cashing, and not taking enough risks to get the few (sometimes vary few) large cashes that will make me profitable in the long run.  My wife always likes to know when I cash.  When I do, Juicy Stakes Poker sends me a congratulatory E-mail, which I forward to my wife.  I was putting too much pressure on myself to get those E-mails on a regular basis.

In October, I cashed way too often, more than 25% of the time.  That's never a good thing in the long term.  I know better than to play like that.  Sooner or later there will be long stretches of a month or more when I don't cash.  That's just how it works.  No matter how well I play, I'm not going to regularly play tournaments of 50-100 player players and finish in the top 3, where most of the money is.

November has been very different so far.  As you can see from the numbers below, copied and pasted  from my financial spreadsheet, I took a lot of risks and it paid off.  I was all-in early and often, and for a while if didn't produce anything--but I knew that I was getting better, doing it the right way and there would be a pay-off. I'm getting much better at being more aggressive and unpredictable without being a complete maniac.

I had a losing streak from November 1 to my first tournament on November 6.  I wasn't winning anything and in less than a week I was down over $30.  My second and third tournaments on 11/6 turned that around.  It's similar to the big turnaround that I had at the end of September, but this time it happened early in the month, giving me time to see if I can get one or two more cashes like that and, I hope, make it one of my best months.

Starting on 11/1 and ending on 11/6, this is what those numbers looked like (tournament cashes in black.)  The cash of $25.90 was for second place out of 38 players, followed immediately by $12.95 for finishing 4th of 84 players.

3.15
-3.10
-1.20
-1.10
-3.10
-0.83
-1.10
-3.00
-1.10
-2.20
-3.10
-2.20
-3.30
-2.10
-0.85
-5.50
$25.90
$12.95 --------- + $3.12

Milestone--Juicy Stakes Poker

My balance on Juicy Stakes Poker is now $250.02.  $250 is a nice round number, but it's more important than that.  The minimum withdrawal on that site happens to be $250.

Of course I'm not going to take out the money that I've made so far.  My job this year was to grind up a decent bankroll on both Juicy Stakes Poker and Americas Cardroom so that I would have more money to play poker as well as more places to play.  I guess I'm one for two on that one, as Americas Cardroom didn't go so well.

My plan is to take out $250 next year when my Juicy Stakes bankroll is over $500.  I never want my bankroll to go down, it should always be going up.  It will work something like this:

When I started this year my bankroll was around $40.  I've been grinding it up and now it's $250.

I keep grinding until my balance is $600.  I withdraw $300 and my new balance is $300.

I keep grinding until my balance is $750.  I withdraw $350 and my new balance is $400.

I keep grinding until my balance is $900.  I withdraw $400 and my new balance is $500.

The above are just estimates off the top of my head.  As my account balance grows I will be bankrolled to play higher and make more money, but poker tournament variance being what it is, it's hard to know exactly how and when that will happen.

There are other variables as well.  There will be times when I want to withdraw as much and as often as possible, and there will be times when I want to concentrate on growing my bankrolls.  Another factor is that at some point I'll be spending a lot more time on Americas Cardroom to get that bankroll growing.  Finally, I'll have to make some decisions on how to divide the money that I take out, and there are a lot of places that it could go, including, in no particular order:

a stake to revive the Americas Cardroom bankroll
a stake to start a live tournament bankroll
family budget
poker expenses such as office supplies, hardware, software, and poker books
owner's capital

There is always a lot to plan and think about, but things are definitely going in the right direction.  As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

Working Hours vs. VERY Angry Cats

I always try to put in 40 hours a week.  My work day starts sometime between 1600 and 1730 and goes until sometime the next morning.  That hasn't been working out real well.  That's partly my fault, and partly things that were out of my control--especially last week week.

I wasn't exactly goofing off.  I recorded 35.25 hours for the work week from Sunday, October 15 through Saturday, October 21.  Still, 35 work hours aren't enough.  Forty hours aren't enough.  I had one job where I worked a lot of voluntary overtime because I wanted to make more money.  Every chance I got I would work at least 50 hours.  It's about time that I took poker that seriously.  Forty hours should be the absolute minimum.

I mentioned earlier that I'm playing fewer tournaments and concentrating on the ones that are more profitable.  I still think that it's the right approach.  I have to adjust my schedule and put in some time in the afternoon, or later into the morning.  Since I'm playing fewer tournaments and most of the good ones are at night, that means more studying.

I have to accept that my normal work hours are going to get interrupted.  We have a different grandchild with us overnight once a month, and during the school year, that has to happen on the weekend.  Weekends are of course the most profitable time to play, but there is nothing I can do about that.

In one sense I have a lot of freedom and can work whenever I want, but that's not exactly true.  I don't have an employer, but I have a boss who tells me exactly when I should be working. His name is Tournament Schedule.  On any poker site, the best tournaments run on nights and weekends.

Last week my work hours got badly disrupted.  I have an excuse, but if someone brought my excuse to a teacher I don't think it would fly.  I had to make sure that angry cats were separated.

We have two cats, Vanessa Rousso (named after the poker player)* and Callie, who have a lot of fun chasing each other around the house.  When a human visitor comes over they hide.  When another cat comes over, they go crazy.

Vanessa and Callie were in the sun room, looking for birds, rabbits, chipmunks or whatever else might wander by, when a cat came up to the window.  All three cats started growling and hissing.  The next thing I knew, all three cats were throwing themselves against the window glass.

After the stranger left, our cats were so worked up that they attacked each other.  I didn't want to shut them in separate rooms or carriers in case one someone had to use the kitty litter.  They hate being locked in their carriers and would have got even more worked up.  Besides, it wouldn't be fair to lock them up when they're just protecting the homeland from intruders.

After a couple hours Vanessa had not calmed down at all, so I spent Friday night trying to comfort her. and keeping the two of them apart.  I had to do it again the next night when the stranger returned and Vanessa was again upset. She calmed down by 2300 and I was able to play a good tournament that started at 2314.

I ended the week on a high note.  I played two tournaments yesterday (Saturday) and cashed in both, finishing 9th of 69 and 11th of 57.

----------

*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanessa_Rousso

The Americas Cardroom Dilemma

(10/13/2017--I had to edit the title.  The original was "The Juicy Stakes Poker Dilemma, which doesn't make any sense.

----------

In my previous post I talked about how, even though I've run my very small Juicy Stakes Poker bankroll up to over $200, my Americas Cardroom bankroll is down to almost nothing.

At the beginning of 2017 I didn't have much of a bankroll on either site.  I decided that this year, instead of concentrating on live poker, where I clearly don't have the 100 buy-in bankroll to play the local $50 tournaments, I would spend 2017 concentrating on building up both online bankrolls first, then figure out my next move from there.

My current Juicy Stakes Poker bankroll is $229.66.  I built that playing $1 tournaments for a few months, then adding $2 tournaments later.  With Americas Cardroom, everything went wrong and that bankroll is down to almost nothing.

That's not surprising.  Starting with a small bankroll, one is always vulnerable.  To put in mathematical terms, my ROR (risk of ruin) was high on both sites.  I made it work on one site, where I now have enough to work with and safely continue building that bankroll.

So, what do I do about my grand total of 98¢ on Americas Cardroom?.  I could make another deposit, but I'm on a shoestring budget and I don't want to do that unless I have no other options.. I could play 11¢ tournaments and build a bankroll pennies at a time, but is a tournament where I can play for hours and make 50¢ worth my time?

I decided that yes, it is worth my time.  I need to play that 11¢ tournament two or three times a week.  I'm not going to play it every day, because it would step on other tournaments where I can make money that isn't denominated in pennies.

I played a live tournament once or twice every month last year.  I wasn't bankrolled for it, which of course affected my play.  In poker, that's called "playing with scared money."  I learned a hard lesson and lost a lot of money.  I've never going to stray from strict bankroll management again.  I'll take the hit and grind out the 11¢ tournaments for as long as it takes to be bankrolled for whatever the next level is (I think it's 50¢) and take it from there.

As I was about to publish this, I realized that there is another option.  Sometime in 2018, when my JSP bankroll is over $500, I will make my first withdrawal.  I might deposit some of that money onto Americas Cardroom.  But for now I'll stick with grinding the 11¢ tournaments.

Playing Fewer Juicy Stakes Tournaments

I try to get a lot of playing time in every day, but my approach has to change.  I'm making most of my money from just two or three tournaments and the others are dragging me down.  They just aren't worth it.

I've mentioned before that there aren't very many players in the early morning (roughly between midnight and 0700 EST.)  I've decided that those tournaments aren't worth playing  The prize pools are too small.  Sometimes I waste time waiting for a tournament to start, then it gets canceled because there aren't enough players.  A few days ago I registered for a tournament that started at 0229.  It needed three players to start.  It was canceled at 0228 because I was the only one signed up.

If my bankroll was big enough to play $5 tournaments I would have a lot more options, and at different times during the day, but I'm not going down that road.  If I took $5 from my bankroll to play a tournament and I cashed, it would be too tempting to see if I could do it again.  Players go broke that way.  My bankroll is my inventory, and just like any other business, I need to keep enough inventory in stock to keep the business going.  Playing with 100 buy-ins, my mathematical ROR (Risk of Ruin) is only about 3%.  I want to keep it that way.*

My Juicy Stakes bankroll has increased by eight times in 2017.  My strategy is working.  I need to keep playing with at least 100 buy-ins, keep growing my bankroll, and concentrate on the few tournaments that are worth playing and that I can afford.

Five days a week there are three tournaments that should give me a long-term profit.   They start at 1829, 2029 and 2214, but if I go deep in a tournament it might run into the next one, giving me only two to play that day.  There is a good tournament the other two days that runs at 2314, but again, an earlier tournament might step on that one.

The bottom line is that some days I might only play two tournaments.  That would be a short work day if I get knocked out of one or both early.  But, as the saying goes, the situation is what it is.  This is a "How badly do I want this?" moment.

The only reasonable option is to play less and study more, meaning that more than half of my poker time will have to be study.  Studying isn't at much fun as playing, and ADD tends to make me lazy and distracted if I'm not very careful.  Twenty-five or more hours of study in a week could certainly be a grind, but Bluffs is a huge study project, so the timing of this is actually pretty good.

It's a good thing that I track my time in quarter hours, I need those numbers on the screen to keep me disciplined.

----------

*My ROR is actually zero, because if have a bad run and my bankroll dips under 100 buy-ins for my current level I will drop down a level and build it back up.

September Results

Juicy Stakes Poker, August 2017
56 tournaments played:
14 net win tournaments:   +$67.98
41 net loss tournaments:    -$77.15
                                                ---------
                                                -$9.17


Americas Cardroom, September 2017
6 tournaments played:
2 net win tournaments:   +$0.64
4 net loss tournaments:   -$0.44
                                              ---------
                                          +$0.20




Combined results for September 2017:  -$8.97



I lost a few dollars last month and I should be upset, or at least disappointed.  I'm not, for two reasons:

1. A month is as good a benchmark as any, at least for most things.  However, in the big picture, my new record of playing 61 tournaments in one month is nothing.  Some pros play that many in one day. It's not a large enough sample size to prove anything.  That's OK because I didn't expect to be a big winner this year.  I'm setting up my bankrolls this year so that I have enough money to play with next year. I've done that with very disciplined bankroll management.  If you think that's easy, try playing nothing but $1 or $2 tournaments for a while if you're good enough to play much higher.

2. Using Bluffs: How to Intelligently Apply Aggression to Increase Your Profits from Poker, by Jonathan Little and Albert Hart as my guide, I've already read and studied it three times and I've barely touched the surface.  Memorizing and internalizing the concepts is daunting it itself.  Then I have to make it work in the real world.

At the same time I'm working on building ranges and understanding Game Therory Optimal (GTO)  play (see previous post) and that has been very hard to get through.  I have a lot of questions and I've already sent some of them to Jonathan Little.  I hope to get some answers in his 10/11 webinar.  If I do, I'll post it in this blog.

I can definitely say that everything continues to slowly but surely fall into place.  I'm much more comfortable with GTO play than I was a month ago, but as with bluffing, I have a lot of things yet to learn
Given all that, I'm very happy that I could take that on and still wind up close to even at the end of the month.  In fact, September played out a lot like August, with some good cashes at the end saving what was going to be a bad month.  A 9/28 deep run after 4.5 hours of play on Americas Cardroom, 19th of 574 players, got me positive for the month.  A Juicy Stakes Poker win in a $2.20 tournament on 9/27 (1st out of 57, $25 cash) once again saved me from a bad month.

Considering all of the new concepts that I'm trying to learn, I'm very happy with my September results.

What Can We Learn from Expert Gamblers?

The title of this post is also the title of a 16-minute Ted Talk by Dylan Evans.  There is a link at the bottom.  Evans put poker players that he interviewed into three groups:  problem gamblers, leisure gamblers and expert gamblers.

Evans talked about how some of the expert players get very rich, and he attributed that to the way they approach the game.  He said that the experts approach the game with "a cold, rational pursuit of profit."

That's exactly how I look at poker.  Evans said it so well that I have nothing to add.

-----------------------

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jyokhjUCyk

Bluffing and Game Theory

One of my main goals was to spend at least 25% of my poker time studying.  I knocked that one out of the park.  I'm exceeding 25% almost every week.  So far this week I'm at 33%.

It's paying off. I've run up a bankroll on a poker site from $34 to $220 without making a deposit, just grinding it up, starting with $1 tournaments.

One of my biggest leaks has been bluffing.  When I study, I'm plugging leaks.  I often pick an area where I'm weak and concentrate on it for about a month.  Bluffing is my big study topic for September. My study text is Bluffs: How to Intelligently Apply Aggression to Increase Your Profits from Poker, by Jonathan Little and Albert Hart.

I'm slowly getting some of the many new ideas to stick in my head.  I'll be digging into a lot of fairly complex math.  We're not talking theoretical physics here, it's an algebra problem with a lot of variables.  Understanding the math concepts, then learning how to do it myself, and finally applying it at the table, will definitely take a while, probably running over into next month.

One of the most complicated things, one that I've been putting of forever, is building a range.  The top players don't think about "my hand" against "his hand."  They think about their range against the opponent's range. It's a difficult topic that gets into GTO (Game Theory Optimal) concepts.  I understand the concept in broad strokes, but not well enough to explain it, so I'll let Jonathan Little do it for me.  Here is a paragraph from his teaching on this subject:

"Whenever you have multiple options, if you take different lines with various hands, you split your range. In order to be difficult to play against, you should play different types of hands in the exact same manner. For example, after the flop you should often bet or raise with your best made hands as well as your draws. By playing your best made hands and semi-bluffs the same manner, your opponent will have no idea whether you are value betting or bluffing, forcing them into a guessing game."

https://medium.com/@JonathanLittle_99428/5-ways-to-stop-losing-or-breaking-even-at-poker-cfdfd9db1928

In one of my tournaments tonight I will try out the ranges on Little's charts (scroll down the linked page to the charts with the red and white squares) to find out how comfortable I will be playing such wide ranges.  Like the work on bluffing, it will take some time.

The letters and numbers are shorthand for the cards, for example, AQs is ace-king suited and 85o stands for ace-five offsuit.

As always, questions and comments are welcome.



"

August Poker Results

I played 56 online tournaments in August, the most that I have played in any month.


Juicy Stakes Poker, August 2017
56 tournaments played:
14 net win tournaments:   +$111.26
41 net loss tournaments:   -$97.41
                                                ---------
                                              +$13.85

Americas Cardroom, August 2017
6 tournaments played:
3 net win tournaments:   +$0.29
3 net loss tournaments:   -$0.44
                                              ---------
                                           -$0.15


Combined results for August 2017: +$13.70

Making money playing poker tournaments is all about a few big cashes. I've said that many times.  There is no such thing as a steady income.

That was never more true than in August. The first three weeks were a train wreck.  I was about to post by far my worst month of the year. Two days later my losses were wiped out.  I cashed for $21.60 (3rd of 35) on 8/25  and $50.00 (1st of 63) on 8/26.  I turned a disaster into a small profit.  I'll take that.

I have a lot of work to do on Americas Cardroom, but my balance on Juicy Stakes Poker is $220.16, which is a significant number.  The standard advice for tournament specialists is to have a bankroll of at least 100 buy-ins to survive the ups and downs.  I now have over 100 buy-ins to play $1.10 and $2.20 tournaments.  I can relax a little and not be so concerned when (not if)  something like the first three weeks of August happens again.

The next step is to get myself bankrolled to play higher.  Of course I want to play $3 and $5 tournaments which have bigger prize pools. The goal is always to move up to the next level and make more money, but there is another consideration.  Almost all of my play is between roughly 1830 and 0300.  That's when tournaments are available that have good structures and are affordable.  Every step up the ladder means not only bigger prize pools but also more choices.  I could play more $3.30s in my usual time slot*, or I could play one in the afternoon or whenever else I was free to play.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

----------

*During my usual time block I play a few $3.30 tournaments, maybe three or four per month, but since my average buy-in is less than $2.20 I'm in good shape.

This Is What It's Supposed to Look Like

Things are getting crazy when I play poker.  The swings are getting bigger, both in single tournaments and in general.  I had two recent tournaments where it wasn't long before I didn't have enough chips to play one more orbit around the table and I would be in something like 49th place out of 50.  I somehow turned both tournaments around and just missed cashing.

My bankroll has been moving around a lot as well.  I was up $25 last month.  In the first week of August I was -$25.  After a few small cashes in the last week and a good result today (4th of 70 players) I'm almost even for the month at -$5.82.

That's what poker is supposed to look like.  If I'm taking the risk to win a tournament instead of just trying to get in the top 18 and get a cash, there are going to be a lot of highs and lows.  When Jonathan Little says that it doesn't bother him when he plays 50 straight tournaments without cashing, he means it, because he knows that a 6- or 7-figure cash will come sooner or later if he's making good decisions at the table.

I'm finally starting to believe that it takes big risks in poker to have good results.  I always knew that intellectually, but I never internalized it.  Playing for three hours, then going all-in, when waiting for one player to get knocked out would put me in the money, was a very difficult adjustment.  I can do that with confidence now, because when I really understand the math, I can let math overrule caution.

Things are really starting to turn around, for a lot of reasons.  First, the family situation of being cash-poor might be ending very soon.  That has a lot of implications that I might explain in the near future.

Second, I'm putting in a lot of study time and it's really paying off.  I always aim for at least 25% of my poker time studying.  The last three weeks it's been 32%, 33%, and so far this week 29%.  Very few players study that much, in fact, most pros would say that I should spend more time playing instead. In my case, I'm sure that's not the right strategy and I'm very happy with all the things that I'm learning and all the areas in which I'm improving.

Third, a lot of that studying is a book that I've wanted to get for a long time, because I wanted to improve my play in one of my weakest areas.  The title is Bluffs: How to Intelligently Apply Aggression to Increase Your Profits from Poker by Jonathan Little and Albert Hart. 

Bluffs is helping me open up my game quite a bit. I've known for a long time that I should be bluffing a lot more often, but knowing that isn't the same thing as knowing what spots to look for when I do it.  I have read the book through once and I'm on my second reading..  I'm taking notes on things that I will need to go back and study more deeply when I read it for the third time.  I'm also making notes on things to do differently at the table right now.

I'm more optimistic about making an income playing poker than I have been in a long time.  In 2016 I didn't have my own office.  I didn't live in a quiet neighborhood.  There are still a lot of pieces to put together, but a change in our financial situation would take of a lot of that.  I'm running a business and that requires software, hardware, office supplies and a lot of other things.  When I don't have to worry about having enough money to buy for toner for my printer, things are going to get a lot easier.