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.