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.