April 2017 Summary and Results

April was a rough month.  I was in the black, but just barely.  Of course statistical variance is going to happen and players know that every month won't be a winning month, unless maybe they play 100,000 hands or more per month (some players do) which makes short-term variance a non-factor.

In this case, it wasn't about variance.  I just didn't play well.  I let myself get distracted and made a lot of dumb mistakes.

I'm still working on things, learning new things, and dealing with difficult situations.  In my previous post I mentioned the problems that I'm having with sleeping and with playing on weekends.  I think that I understand what I need to do about that and other issues. Some of the problems can be more easily solved than others, but I have some ideas to make things work better.  I'll talk about that future posts, but I'll tease with this:

I will be playing on a second sight very soon.  That will give me more options for when I play and when I can sleep. I won't be locked into playing the same block of tournaments every night.

On a positive note, I did see one thing in my numbers that I liked.  I always try to spend at least 25% of my poker time studying.  I let that slip for a while, but I've been working on bringing that number up. I don't have the number for the month, but in the last week of April my study percentage was 22%.  If I keep working on that it will make a big difference in my results.

Without further ado, here are the numbers:

April 2017 Tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker
Tournaments played, 46
11 net win tournaments, +$78.09.
37 net loss tournaments, -$69.30

RESULTS FOR APRIL 2017, +$8.79.

The Weekend Problem

Weekends are the best time to to play poker, for lots of reasons.  There are more players, which means bigger prize pools.  Players who only play on weekends tend to be weaker because they don't play as often, Sites know that that most of the action is on weekends, and they often run special tournaments to draw even more players.  The larger sites occasionally run weekend tournament promotions with a total prize pool of a million dollars.  Depending on which sites you have access to, you can find tournaments with names like The Sunday Millions a few times a year.

The same thing is true on the smaller sites, just on a smaller scale.  The tournaments on weekends are always better than the ones on weekdays.  Serious poker players understand this.  In fact, in poker forums where someone is talking about "going pro, players are often told that poker is a nights and weekends business, they better be OK with that. and the people close to them have to accept it.  The general idea is that if you're young and you like to go with your friends to the clubs or parties on weekends, that will have to change.

I don't have those issues. If I go to a party its usually a family birthday party.  I'm married and my wife understands what it takes to be a poker player.  Even so, weekends can be a problem.

My work day usually starts around 2000 and goes well past midnight., Almost every night I play a block of tournaments that starts at 2019 and I'm still playing or studying well past midnight, in fact, I usually go to bed sometime around 0800.  Most of those tournaments run every night or at least several times a week--but some of the  best tournaments, the ones with the best structures and/or the biggest prize pools, are only on weekends.

Of course, it's impossible to completely control my time by doing everything at night.  I can't go to my doctor or dentist or mechanic at 0200.  That means that I have to adjust my schedule, and if I'm busy during the day, I compensate by taking a nap before it's time to work.  Even so, there are times when I get a little run down.

One problem is church.  When I'm used to going to bed around 0800 going to church is tough. My wife and I came up with a compromise where I would go to church every other Sunday, but still, it's not fun for her when I'm fighting to stay awake in church and I understand that.

Another problem is time with my grandchildren.  I love them dearly.  It was tough not seeing them for four years when my son was stationed in Germany  Now they live only five miles from us, and their school is even closer when we want to pick them up.  We have one of them over each month from Friday afternoon to sometime Saturday.  Last night was kind of a mess.

We picked one of them up from school on Friday afternoon, so I didn't get to sleep very long.  I enjoyed that time, but it was obvious to my wife how tired I was.

We went a couple places with them, came home and had supper.  Then I went to bed to sleep for a few hours.  I skipped my regular 2019 tournament so that I could get some rest and play the better tournaments later.  I got up at 2200 to play the two best tournaments that night, which were running, at 2214 and 2314. When I started the 2214 my granddaughter was still awake.

So there I was with my monthly granddaughter visit.  I was tired when we went out, I slept when we got her home, then I got up and went to work.  I was either tired or ignored her much of the time that she was here.

I had that on my mind, along with  trying some of new strategies that I've learned for playing flush draws, plus I was playing two tables when the second tournament, a good one that runs only on Friday night, started . . . this is too weird, it's 0247 and she woke up while I was typing.

OK, it's 0610 and I'm finally back. The point is that I was just tired enough and distracted enough to make a few small mistakes that cost me both tournaments.  I didn't make a lot of mistakes when playing individual hands, but I lost track of the big picture, the table dynamics.  I'm still working on getting better at playing two tables at a time.  I got in a weird situation where a lot of players at my table were sitting out and I didn't comprehend or take advantage of the situation at all.  All I was thinking about was myself and the players with me the individual hands.  It didn't end well.

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Why I Don't Post Every Day

People spend a lot of time communicating online.  Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Skype, you name it. People are on social media all the time.  Everyone wants to document every moment of their life,  For example, Facebook shows that "Jane is at Starbucks now.."  Good job Jane, you just told your druggie Facebook friend (who you've never met) that he's free to take things from you house to get money for drugs.

I will never be one of those people who has to check his phone every five minutes, or tell everyone where I am or what I'm doing.  If I didn't have relatives that don't communicate any other way I probably wouldn't be on Facebook.  It's a tool, not an obsession. I never want to have 100 Facebook friends, and it won't hurt my feelings if I never get to 50.

So, what does that have to do with poker?

I recently read an article wherein the author stated that to be relevant as a blogger, you have to keep it fresh and post something new at least once a day.  No thank you, I'll just be irrelevant.

I've been trying to post more often, at least a few times a week, but there are two reasons I don't post daily:

1. I have better things to do with my time.
2. What I do isn't very exciting.

Playing live poker is fun.  It's a fascinating parade of all kinds of people.  All races, ages, backgrounds, you name it.  I've been at a table with a married couple and a player with a girlfriend who's the dealer.  I've played with an 18-year old playing his first live tournament and with an area pro who played with her poker coach every day for an entire year.  I've played with drunks and teetotalers, non-stop talkers and a player who didn't say a word at the table for three hours.

So far this year I've only played online, and it's very different..  I sit at a computer several hours a day.  I move a mouse around and click on something when it's my turn to bet, raise or fold.   When things get really dramatic, I type a number (how much I want to bet) then I click on something.

I hope that wasn't more excitement than you can handle.

Don't get me wrong, I think that my blog is useful and I'm happy to have readers.  Not only does it let my readers know what I'm up to, but putting it down in words helps me think through what I'm doing. Sometimes I will be writing about a tournament when I suddenly realize that what I typed doesn't make sense--there was a better way to play that hand.  Doh!

Unless you're a hardcore poker player I just don't have enough to tell you to make it interesting. Some days I might play tournaments for five hours, post on my poker blog and watch a poker webinar.

Now that I think about it, documenting what I do all day might be kind of interesting--if I only do it once a month.  An honest review of how I'm spending my time could be a good thing..

As always, your comments and questions are welcome.

How I Spent My Poker Week

The last week has been interesting.  April is probably not going to be a big month, but at last it should be a winning month.  I'll run down some of the things that have happened in the last week.

I had two back-to-back bad days.  The first day I just missed cashing in two tournaments.  In the first one I finished 9th.  Eight players cashed.  In the second one I think I missed cashing by four spots.

The next day I couldn't play.  I got locked out of Juicy Stakes because I couldn't remember the password.  I was going to play two tournaments but after one already started I decided to try to save the second one.

I found the paper with my passwords, got on the Juicy Stakes help page and tried to use "24 hour Live Chat."  I got a response on the screen that said they were down and I should type a message.  I tried phone support but they were down as well.  They also said that I should leave a message, so I did.  Finally I tried E-mail support, which said that their usual response time was 1-2 hours.

After four hours of no responses from any of the methods I stopped checking.  The next day I had a response from E-mail support which said that I had to send my question somewhere else.

I was able to play that night, but customer support of poker rooms continues to be horrible.

The other notable thing from the past week is that I found something new to study.  I signed up to another coaching site (no monthly fee and a lot of free stuff) and downloaded 20 Rules For Playing Flush Draws. It's going to help my game a lot.  It's actually more than I expected.  It explores two areas where I'm somewhere between weak and clueless, building a range for a situation and check-raising.  Here are the first two rules, to give you an idea:

Rule #1.  If my hand wasn't a flush draw, how would I play it?  Chances are that you should play the flush draw the same way.

Rule #2. Check the nut flush draw most of the time, except in instances where it is a very strong hand and you are borderline value betting.

There is a lot there to assimilate.  Some of the rules have three or more bullet points that further define the situation.  I was going to try it out when I played last night, but I quickly learned that I didn't have time to look through all of that to find the relevant rule and situation.

That will be even more true on the days where I'm playing more than one table at a time. Memorization is difficult for me, but I have to somehow jam all of that information into my brain.  It will be a significant piece of my study time for a while.

The Shoestring is Wearing Thin

I've been playing poker on a shoestring for a long time, and it's getting old.  When I started I couldn't afford to buy poker books for my studies, so I got books from the library.  Many years later, I find myself in a similar position.

When I played live tournaments last year I took $50 out of the family budget from time to time and played in a local or area poker room.  I had several cashes between about $100 and $300, but I never hit any cashes of over 10 buy-ins or more that I could use to start building a real bankroll of 100+ buy-ins. As happens with almost every tournament player that doesn't have a decent bankroll, I eventually went broke.

I'm not gong to let anything like that happen again.  This year the focus in on bankroll management. In a sense I'm not trying to win any money this year, though I have done that every month in 2017. I've been playing only online and spending almost nothing to do it.

I started building a online bankroll with $34 that had been sitting on Juicy Stakes Poker for a couple years. That amount is now $188.89 and I will get it up to $500 sometime this year.  I have played mostly tournaments with buy-ins of $1.10 and $2.20 and as the bankroll has growns I started mixing in a $3.30 once a week.

When I have $500 on Juicy Stakes I will probably take out the minimum $250 withdrawal.  I will use some of that money for office supplies and use some to put on Americas Cardroom to give me more playing options.  After I withdraw I will of course keep grinding up my bankroll on both sites.  I expect to have total online bankrolls on the two sites of more than $1,000 sometime in 2018.

The problem is that I don't have any free cash now.  As is true with any business, I need working capital.   I don't have any.  Family finances are very tight. Moving and other things have cost us much more than expected.  We can pay our bills and eat, and we know that it will get better down the road--but that doesn't help me now.

It's been like that for most of this year, but in the last week it affected my play..  A few weeks ago I played two tournaments and my concentration was very poor.  I folded AK three times.  Each Time I clicked the Fold Button instead of All In.  I let the pressure get to me.

I'm a patient player and I don't mind grinding up a bankroll.  I understand that poker is a long-term game--but I'm 61 and my wife will be retiring in a few years.  Poker is going to be part of our retirement income.  I don't have time to be patient any more.

There is also a short-term problem.  I need money now.  Bluffing is a very weak area for me, and there is a book with the title Bluffing that I badly want to get.  The author is one of my favorite sources for poker knowledge, as well as a two-time World Poker Tour Player of the Year..  I subscribe to his coaching site. (only $10 a month) and I certainly don't want to have to give that up.

I have an old book that I'm going to sell.  I'm pretty sure that I can get at least $100 for it.  I'm hoping that it's a lot more.  Even $100 would help a lot.  I would have some cash to get that poker book and money for some office supplies.

If my book turns out not to be as valuable as I thought, I could get some kind of temporary or part-time job outside of poker to scrounge up a little money, but that's really tricky because of the income tax ramifications.

As a full-time poker player I am considered to be the self-employed owner of a Schedule C business. However (and here's where it gets tricky) to keep my status as a Schedule C business, poker has to be my main source of income and/or take up the majority of my work hours..  There is no exact rule about hours or income and if I am audited, the IRS will decide if I meet the Schedule C standard for poker players.

To be safe I have to make sure that the majority of my work hours are spent on poker AND that the majority of my income comes from poker.  If I fail either test I could lose my Schedule C status, and with it all of my business deductions. If I buy things that I need for poker, for example, a poker book, the cost of that book would be disallowed, as would the cost of subscribing to a poker coaching site.   If I upgrade my poker software or buy a new computer, same thing.

I really hope that selling my book gives me enough wiggle room to do some things that need to be done.

Playing Fewer and Fewer Tournaments

Below this paragraph is a link to a 2:51 video which shows how poker players think.  My wife always asks if I have to analyze everything.  The answer is yes.   I'm a poker player.  It's what we do.  You'll see what I mean when Tony Dunst compares two poker hands in this video (2:51.)

https://video.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?fr=yhs-iba-1&hsimp=yhs-1&hspart=iba&p=let%27s+break+it+down+tony+dunst#id=1&vid=9fda7e0cd41deb99d8b09af6a1a73785&action=click

I have a few poker rules that I almost never break.  I should make a list and number my rules the way that Agent Gibbs does on NCIS.  One is, "I will not play when I'm tired."  If I'm tired when I play I'm likely to lose my concentration.  It's hard enough to concentrate, given that I have Attention Deficit Disorder.  Combine lack of sleep with with ADD and nothing good can come from that.

I was tired last night so I slept through the 2019 tournament that I usually play.  I set my alarm for 2200 so that I could play at 2214.  I played that one and wound up in a big hand early, I started with about 2,000 chips, I lost the hand and I was down to 414 chips after playing for about 20 minutes. 

I hung on for a while and got a few more chips, but I was knocked out 44 minutes in.  I checked to see when the next tournament started, and there wasn't one.  That's because a few days ago I took another one off my list.  I skipped one tournament, got knocked out of the second one early, and that was it. There was nothing else to play.

I have so few tournaments to play because on 4/14 I took another one off my list.  On my Best Available Tournaments page I made this note:

"A tournament that starts at 2329 was also removed because of small fields and because 2/3 of the prize pool goes toward bounties."

It was the right thing to do.  This is all about growing the bankroll and only playing the tournament structures that give me the best chance to make money.  I have to follow the plan and grind my bankroll up to $500 with as little risk as possible.

That leaves me with a dilemma.  What am I going to do with my time?  I want to work 40 hours a week.  When on one day I play for less than an hours that leaves a lot of time to kill..

Legally I don't have to work 40 hours a week to keep the IRS happy and prove that my poker playing qualifies as a Schedule C business. They don't care how many hours I work, as long as I don't have another job which pays more than poker and/or takes more of my time than poker.

As always, I'm considering my options.  If there's a problem, I'll analyze it and either come up with a solution, or at least some good options.  I haven't really thought this through yet, but off the top of my head, here are some things that I could do:

1. Tackle one study topic very deeply..

There are a lot of plays that I make because good players or good poker books have told me that I should.   There is nothing wrong with that, but there have been times where I really wanted to dig into the math that the great players use to solve certain problems.

In Harrington on Holdem the author talks about a problem which involves several players in a hand, and how each player might react to what other players in the hand do.  He shows the math to solve that problem.  That math takes up six pages of the book.

Many times I have thought about digging deeply into the math, but I've never done it.  Now would be a good time.

2. Reduce my poker time to 30 hours per week.  That's a possibility, but I really hate to do it.  If I'm not willing to work at my job for at least 40 hours a week, I'm not serious.

3. Tackle some important family projects.

We moved recently\and we live in a mobile home.  Before that, we lived in a house with a full basement.  We have a lot of things that we need to get rid of, both in our home and in storage.

Getting rid of all that stuff would improve my poker situation in three ways:

First, some of that stuff is taking up about half the space in my office, and I like having room to spread out and keep a lot of papers where I can reach them.

Second, my poker budget and the general family budget are both very tight right now.  Not having to pay rent for a storage unit would take some pressure off. 

Third, until a few months ago we had been working on paying off debt and being debt free in three years.  That's been on hold for a few months because of expenses involved with the recent move. Freeing up money to attack our debt would, again, take a lot of the pressure off.  I will discuss these issues in my next post.

All of the above are good answers.  I've known for a long time that I need to get serious about advanced poker math.  I also need to put in more study hours than I do. A few pros spend a full 50% of their poker time studying. I don't want to do that, but I try to keep study as 25% of my work hours.  I've slipped in that area.  There is no reason that it can't study more than 25% of the time for a while.

There are important family projects that need to be tackled, and cutting back my poker hours would allow me to do that. If one of those project was to get rid of all of our extra stuff, it would free up money for other things, including poker.  I could also put in 40 hours some weeks and work less in other weeks.

How much I might get for putting a book, a 1943 hardcover New International Atlas of the World, Wartime Edition, on E-bay might affect some of those decisions.  If I get some serious money for that book it's a game-changer.  I could put some money toward my Juicy Stakes Bankroll, allowing me to play higher and make more money faster..  Or, I could put that money on Americas Cardroom, which has a lot of tournaments at all times of the day and night, some with great structures which filt the way I play.  Some money to stock up on office supplies would be nice as well.

As always, your questions and comments are welcome.

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Embracing Statitical Variance

The more that I play online and build up my bankroll, the less scared I am about losing.  I'm starting to become a maniac in the last hour of tournaments, sometimes going all in several times in a row, until I either get knocked out or I have a huge chip stack  Now that I have an actual bankroll of more than 100 buy-ins, I don't have to be afraid any more.

I played a tournament a few hours ago where 18 cashed.  I was in 10th place with about 30 players left.  I like to be the first one to shove,  I'm rarely the one that calls an all-in unless it would only cost me a small percentage of my stack if I lost the hand.  The (virtual) dealer gave me a pair of jacks.  I would be second to act, and if I was called I was very likely to have the best hand, as JJ is in the top 5% of no-limit holdem hands.  I was going to go all-in.

The player who was first to act went all-in.  He seemed be a pretty good player and based on his play in previous hands, he was very likely to have a top 5% hand as well.  I estimated that my chances of having the best hand were even, about 50%.  I thought about it for less than five seconds, and I called.

Indeed he did have a hand as strong as mine.  He showed a pair of queens and I was out of the tournament.  I had all but locked up a cashing spot, I have been on a losing streak lately (see previous post) but it didn't matter.  I know that playing the way I do now, the times than I win hands like that and wind up with a top three cash will more than make up for a string of losses when I win nothing.

I knew all that when I was playing live tournaments last year, but I couldn't really embrace it. When I won $300 in a $50 live tournament, that gave me six buy-ins.  Intellectually I knew the right way to play, but as a practical matter I knew that when my bankroll was gone, I would be able to afford playing only once a month, if that.   Poker players refer to a situation like that as  "playing with scared money," and it's real.  When everything is at risk, you play differently.

I loved playing live poker.  I met all kinds of people from all walks of life, all types, races and backgrounds, men and women.. If I had to choose to play poker either live or online I would definitely play live, if I knew I could make money doing it.  It's not even close.

That said, I have had to scramble for work many times, and I'll do just about anything legal and moral to make money.  I worked for a lot of temp agencies, and one day I might be working in a cubicle, then a few days later I would be working on a factory floor, running a punch press that squirted grease all over me every time that it slammed down (temps get all the fun jobs in a factory.)

I'll probably play some live poker in 2018.  For now it's online only, probably for the rest of the year. It's all about the bankroll and the benjamins.

A Losing Streak Ends but it's No Big Deal

Last night I played two online tournaments and cashed in one of them.  That cash ended a 10-tournament string of not cashing.

Jonathan Little says that he has more than once played 50 tournaments in a row without cashing, and that "it's not a big deal."  Of course, he has a bankroll of more than a million dollars, so to him it really isn't a big deal.

I don't have a million dollar bankroll, but I practice good bankroll management.  Since the last time I mentioned it, I removed more tournaments from my list of the ones that I consider playable. Only four remain, one of which only runs on Saturday night.

Of the four tournaments left, two are $1 tournaments, one is $2 and the one that runs once a week is $3--but a great structure and a good prize pool make it well worth the once-a-week investment.

When I lost 10 straight the total hit was only $15.  I'm still up for the month with a couple weeks to go, so no serious damage was done.

That is good bankroll management in action.

Rethinking My Tournament Options

In my previous post I said that I keep, and regularly update, a list of tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker that are worth playing.  Something about that list has been bothering me for a while, and one day after showing my list on this blog, I changed my mind.  I took off the tournaments that start at 0429, 0559 and 0759.

That really cuts down my choices.  I'm down to six options now, and only one of them runs every day of the week. When I play later tonight (Tuesday, 4/11.)  three of my six remaining options won't be running, so I'm down to three:: tournaments starting at 2019, 2214 and 2329.

Thee are some obvious problems with that list:

1. They are all in the evening, with nothing available if I want to play in the morning or afternoon.

2. There are separated by just enough time to make playing two tables more difficult.  Though they are all grouped together in the evening, there is a gap of more than an hour between the starts of the first two and between the starts of the last two.  Even if I play all three of those on Tuesday nights, I will only have the chance to be playing two at once a very small percentage of the time.

3. When I cash and the field is small, that doesn't do much to increase my bankroll..  If I spend two hours playing a tournament, even if I win the amount won't be significant.  13 players don't generate much of a prize pool.

4. I'm not a good short-table player (except that I'm a very good final table player..) I can't expect to win a lot when tables are almost always short, and I might even lose a little bit.  If I break even playing the small tournaments that isn't good enough.  I need to regularly add to my bankroll, and any time spent playing a tournament where that won't happen is wasted time.

High variance is deadly for bankroll building.  I'm not trying to win a bunch of money right now.  I'm steadily grinding up a bankroll to put me in a great position in 2018.  When you have a big bankroll and are playing to win, high variance is part of the deal.

Having a bankroll and building a bankroll are very different.  I'm building a bankroll so that I have more choices of what to play, and so I can play the large-field tournaments where all the big money is, buy with very high variance, because variance doesn't matter nearly as much with a cushion of more than 100 buy-ins.  This is all about 2018.

Dumping the early morning tournaments was the right thing to do.  A side benefit.is that I'll have more time to study.  I'm been slacking on that.  With  fewer tournaments to play there is no excuse for not studying more.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Tournament Analysis Matters

One local player doesn't care much about the details of a tournament. He insists that if you have an edge, that is, if you are one of the best players in that tournament,  that's all that matters if you want to make a profit.  Having an edge is certainly important, but it's far from the only thing that matters.  So what matters?.  As always, the answer to almost any poker question is, "it depends."


Here are some of the things that I consider important:

Don't play while impaired (you are tired, drunk, high, or had a fight with your spouse an hour ago.)

Play within your bankroll--If your bankroll is $100 and you're playing a $10 tournament you're making a big mistake.

Limit your distractions.--When you're not in a hand, will you be reading your text messages or watching the other players?  If your phone is just too tempting, put it in your car during the next break.

Opportunity cost--Is this the best use of your time or could you be doing something more important? If you're missing your kid's band concert for the third straight time you're probably in the wrong place.

Be prepared for live tournament conditions--The room might be too hot or too cold, especially if you're sitting next to a door.  Some casinos are infamous for having a cold poker room.  If you have to deal with that for 6 hours it's a big distraction.  I always have both a light sweater or jacket and a heavier one in my bag.  I'm ready for anything.

Tournament analysis--This matters a great deal to me.


For now I'm playing only online and on only one site (Juicy Stakes Poker.)  It's a low-traffic site without a lot of tournaments that work well for the way I play, so I'm very serious about what poker players call "tournament selection."

I have a list of tournaments typed up under the title, Best Available Tournaments.  As I scout or play more tournaments, I make some decisions.  As mentioned in earlier posts, my first project for this year was to play on a site where I had $34 parked and, using only that money, grind that bankroll up to at least $500.  I'm currently at $180.

Starting with just $34, I needed to keep the buy-ins as low as possible.  I also wanted to play the tournaments that best matched my playing style.  There was no room for mistakes.

When I first made my tournament list, I could find only three tournaments worth playing.  As I played more, studied more tournaments and had more money to work with I was able to expand that list.  I learned a lot, including some things I had not considered. I'll give some examples.

I started by playing only $1 tournaments, most of which had very few players, sometimes less than 20. With so few players, it was hard to find. tournaments that had a big enough prize pool to be of much help to my bankroll, so I started looking for those.  As I played and analyzed more tournaments, I found more options.  I also found some things that I didn't expect.:

The worthwhile tournaments, both in the early morning and late at night, are bunched fairly close together.  That means that I can plan my sleep to be awake during one or both of those blocks of tiome.  It also allows me to do some multitabling, which is something that  I didn't expect on a low traffic site.

Here are those tournament times::

0429
0529
0759
2019
2214
2314
2329

Any two tournaments an hour or less apart are good targets for playing two tables, especially the last two on the above list.  So far I have only played two tables when the tournaments at 2214 and 2314 overlapped, because they are my two favorite tournaments, but I will soon try other combinations as well.

My list does more than show the tournament times. I've also broken it down to show things that I like or don't like about each tournament, as well as other information.  To give me an even better visual, I used bold black to note the best aspects of that tournament and bold red to not the worst.  When I sit down for a poker session I can easily understand what my options for are for that day.

I like tournaments with late registration, because more players = a bigger prize pool.  I also like low buy-in and tables with at least nine players.  I like lots of time to play before the blinds go up.

I don't like bounty tournaments because I would like all of the money in the main prize pool, so that first place will be a larger cash

You will see as you look at that list that there is only one tournament that doesn't have any red, which means that it fits very well with the things that I look for.  The rest are a mixture of good and bad.

Below is the list that I'll see when I play later today (it's 0256 as I type this).  As always, your comments are welcome,

Juicy Stakes Poker-- Best Available Tournaments as of 4/6/2017

Tournaments Available on 4/8

0429

0759

2019

2214

2314

0429 (every day) $1.10/8 minute blind levels/6-max/re-entry/60 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips

0529 (Mo/Sat) $20 GTD 6-max/re-entry/$1.10/8 minute blind levels/60 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips.

0759 (every day) $50 guaranteed bounty/$3.30/re-entry/6-max/2,000 starting chips/8 minutes per blind level/80 minutes late registration.

NOTE: When I scouted this tournament it finished with a total of only 13 players, short tables all the way of course.

2019 (every day) $100 GTD Bounty/$2.20 with $1 to prize pool and $1 to bounty/60 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips/8 minute blind levels.

2214 (Su/Tu/We/Th/Fr/Sa) JS/$100 GTD JUST ONE DOLLAR/$1.10/30 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips/15 minute blind levels.

NOTE: The field size of this tournament is remarkably consistent. The last 3 that I have played, all on weekdays, had 64, 64 and 73  (on Friday night) players. I have not noted Saturday numbers but I assume that the fields will be a bit bigger.

2314 (Sa) $200 GTD/$3.30/2,000 starting chips/15 minute blind levels/30 minutes late registration.

2314 (Tu/Fr) $100 GTD BIG BOUNTY/$2.20 with $1 to prize pool and $1 to bounty/30 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips/15 minute blind levels.

Note: This tournament usually has at least 100 players on Friday.

2329 (every day)/$50 GTD Big Bounty/$3.30 with $1 to prize pool and $2 to bounties/60 minutes late registration/8 minute blind levels/2,000 starting chips.

NOTE: I played this one for the first time on Thursday 3/16. Tournament started with one short table but filled up after a few hands. There were 18 players (3 cashing spots) so tables were short during most of the tournament.

2017 First Quarter Results and my Plan for the Year

Here are the first quarter numbers

January     +$35.70
February    +$40.77
March        +$17.70
                     ---------
                     +$87.17

That's not much for three months work, but building a bankroll from the ground up takes some time. You play $1 tournaments until your bankroll is big enough to play $3 tournaments which you play until your bankroll is big enough to play $5 tournaments . . . well, you get the idea.  When I first started this in January I had to be very careful with the small amount that I had on Juicy Stakes poker. The offerings on that sight are so meager that when I made a list of the tournaments that I thought that  I could play without putting my bankroll at risk, there were only three.  Now there are nine tournaments on that list..

I am executing a one-year plan. I knew that the start would be slow, but now that I have a few dollars to work with I can execute that plan:

1.  I will keep growing the bankroll and not take anything out until I have $500 in my Juicy Stakes account.

2. As my bankroll grows I can safely play higher denomination tournaments, growing my bankroll more quickly.  Keep in mind that it's not a matter of having to choose between $1 or $10 tournaments. Someone bankrolled to play $10 tournaments can still play at $3 or $5 if, for example, the $10 tournaments are not running at convenient times that day.

3. I'm now two-tabling (playing two tournaments simultaneously.)  That' gives me more options.  For example, if there are two tournaments that start just an hour apart, I don't have to decide which one to play.  I can choose to play both, as I did on April 1..  Clearly, when I'm playing two tournaments at a time, I can make money more quickly than I did in the first quarter.

4. Once I have $500 on Juicy Stakes, I will make a withdrawal of $250, which is the minimum that I can take out.  Some of that will go into my Americas Cardroom account so that I don't have to build that one up from scratch.

Americas Cardroom has a lot more tournament choices, running at all different times of the day and night, where Juicy Stakes is almost a total blank between 0800 and 2000.  More times that I can play, again, means more options.  Also, Americas Cardroom has a minimum withdrawal of just $100, which will be much more convenient.

Poker income is irregular and I don't really know how long it will take to build my bankroll up to $500.  It could take 6 more months, or 12 more.  One year starting from nothing is ambitious, but I am convinced that I can get it done in 2017.

March 2017 Summary and Results

I have said many times that I probably don't have as many numbers in this blog as some people would like.  In fact, one of the first things people want to know when they meet a professional poker player is some variation of "How much do you make?"  That upsets a lot players and I understand that some are private about those things.  After all, as several male players have stated, "No one would ask my wife how much she makes."

Most people either greatly overestimate or greatly underestimate how much poker players make.  A lot of people hear "poker player" and they think "broke degenerate gambler." At the other extreme, people see poker on TV, with a big pile of hundred dollar bills on the table for the winner to claim, and they think that every pro is a millionaire.

When I was getting a new pair of glasses, I told one of the workers, who knew that I was a poker player, that I once played a $3 online tournament and won "three hundred eighty-four." She asked, "thousand?"

Everyone wants to know how much.  I don't like to get on here and post how much I won or lost in one day or one week unless something unusual happens, because it doesn't really matter.  Too many poker players obsess over what happens in a day or a week or a month.  It doesn't matter, just as losing one game in a 162-game baseball season doesn't matter very much.   Poker, like baseball, has winning and losing streaks. I focus and plan to make money over the course of a year. In my next post, which will cover my results for the first quarter of 2017, I will dig into that topic.

Without further ado, the numbers.  All numbers are net cashes, amount won minus the entry fee, unless stated otherwise.

March 2017 Online Poker Tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker
tournaments played: 51
net cashes, 14 for a profit of $81.60
net losses, 37 for a net loss of 63.90
month profit or loss, +$17.70

That's not much of a profit and it's less than the two previous months, but with three straight winning months I've steadily increased my online bankrol.  That's all that matters.  Again, I'll have more to say about the long-term view in my next post.  For now I'll just say that I had about $30 sitting on Juicy Stakes Poker for two years, and this year I decided to concentrate on building an online bankroll.  It's now more than five times what it was in January, which gives me a lot more flexibility in my tournament choices.

One more thing.  I've said before that making money in poker isn't about cashing often, it's about getting a few big cashes.  Look at the numbers above and you will see that I only cashed in 14 of 51 tournaments.  More than 1/4 of that net profit came from just one tournament on March 26.

It was a bounty tournament,  That's a tournament where part of that prize pool consists of bounties. In this case, I could get a $1 bounty for each player I knocked out.  I'm not usually good at picking up bounties because I concentrate on making the final table and getting a big chunk of the general prize pool, where most of the money is--but this time, everything fell into place.

The entry fee was $2.20 and there were 66 players.  I picked up a lot of chips early and I was in the top 10 in the tournament except for just a few hands.  I even picked up 2 bounties along the way, the first time I've done that in a long time.  My chip stack didn't keep pace with some of the other players as we got deeper into the tournament, but I limped into the final table in 9th place out of 10.

I'm usually pretty good at moving up a few spots once I make it to the final table, but I did a lot more than that this time.  I tore through the table very quickly, knocking out three players, until we were heads-up.  I was the small stack.

Four hands later it was over. I won the tournament.

The first place prize was $21.45.  Add five bounties and it's $26.25.  Subtract the $2.20 entry fee and my tournament profit was $24.25.

My profit for the month was only $17.70, so added to a few cashes of between $5 and $10, that tournament made the difference in March. You keep plugging away, knowing that most of the time you're not going to cash, and you just keep playing until you get those few big cashes that make the difference.  That's exactly how tournament poker is supposed to work.

I hope that you enjoyed all the numbers.  You comments and questions are always welcome.