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.

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*Independent Chop Model

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