A Visit From Our Granddaughters

I am always a long-term thinker and planner, but I do have two weekly goals when I play poker:

1.  Work at least 40 hours.
2.  At least 25% of those hours will be studying.

In late December and early January I missed those goals because I was upgrading my spreadsheet for 2017.  This was going to be the first week this year that I met those goals and it didn't happen.  I worked 37.25 hours and 21% of that time was spent studying.  The main reason (though I don't like excuses) was that I agreed to babysit our three granddaughters on one days's notice and that messed up my playing and study schedule.

I've been thinking about it and there are several ways I could have handled that but I don't like any of the choices:

1. I could have said no, but we often see them less than once a month, and their parents deserve a break once in a while.

2. I could have said yes, playing or studying in the office with the door closed and wearing ear plugs and lettting my wife handle it.  That would not be practical.  First, the office door doesn't completely close. Second, even if the office door was shut and I had earplugs I would probably hear some of the noise from a television plus four people not far from my office.  I have ADD and am easily distracted, so that's a very big deal  Third, they wouldn't want to leave me alone.  They would want to be with both of us.

3. I've said before that I try to frontload my schedule to work more hours in the early part of the week  I should have done that except that on the 14th, the first day of last week, I was still putting the finishing touches on my new spreadsheet system.  A lot of playing and study time got pushed out early in the week so that I could spend some admin time putting the finishing touches on the spreadsheet. I had discovered a few things that needed to be fixed.

So, here I am in the fourth week of January, and I need to get it right this time.  There is one fairly drastic option that I could take.  Leave.  I could sit down and read or look go through flash cards just about anywhere and we live close to a library.  If the weather was good I could even sit in the car.

I'm not thrilled with that idea, but it's better than any of the other options.  I could probably play poker with one girl here if the TV wasn't on.  She could even come in the office from time to time to see what I was up to or ask about what she was seeing on the screen--but having all three of them here for several hours just won't work when I need to work.

A good start to 2018

For the most part things have gone pretty well in the first month of 2018.  The numbers are pretty good--my top three cashes in the first 14 days of January 2014 are almost equal (about $5 difference) to my top three cashes in January 2015.  I'm on a roll right now, running deep consistently.  In my last three tournaments I finished 10th of 67, 7th of 99 and 2nd of 45.  When I sit down to play, I don't hope to make it to the final table, I expect to be there.  I don't know how much of that is playing better and how much is positive variance.  My guess is that it's about 50% of each.

I'm much better at playing final tables that I was just a few months ago.  I must admit, however, that a lot fell into place for me last night.  In the 2214 tournament I moved up from something like 35th out of 45 to the final table (8 players) in about an hour.  After that things happened without my playing a major role.

Several players were knocked out very quickly.  It seemed like every time I looked at the screen there was one less player than before.  Sometimes at a wild table you can sit back and watch the other players knock each other out, but I wasn't doing that.  I spent about 15 minutes folding a run of mostly bad hands.  During that time 5 of the 8 players were knocked out.

The only problem that I've had so far this month is that I haven't done much studying.  I spent a lot of time in late December and early January finalizing the updates for my 2018 spreadsheets.  Most of my usual study time was surrendered to administrative time.  Instead of 10% of my hours being devoted to study, it was much closer to 5% in the first two weeks of this year.

Today is the beginning of the third week in January.  There are always things to tweak in how I manage my time in all three categories (playing, studying and administrative) but now that I've made all the major changes to my spreadsheets, things should get back to normal. I expect to spend at least 25% of my time on study almost every week for the rest of the year.  The study time is at least as important as my playing time.  I would rather come up a little short on playing time than study time.

I'm a long-term planner.  I don't think much about tomorrow or next week, I think about the next month or the next year.  When I say that study is more important than playing it's because I'm planning for the long term.  As I move up the levels the players will be better.  On average the players in $5 tournaments are better than in $1 tournaments, the players at $10 are better than the players at $5 and the players at $50 are better than the players at $25.  I don't study only so I can beat the games that I play now.  I'm studying to be profitable in the tournaments that I'll be playing five years from now.

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

2017 Poker Results and Plans for 2018

2017 was a year with a lot of ups and downs.  If that was not the case, it wouldn't be poker.  I had eight months where I made money (net profit after tournament fees) and four where I didn't.  My balance on Juicy Stakes Poker is $237.84, just a little under the minimum $250 withdrawal on that site.  At one point my balance was getting close to $300.  The big loss in December wiped out a big chunk of that   Overall, I'm happy with what I was able to do.

I did the best I could with what I had to work with.  Most of the year I had little or no money to work with.  Yes, I was growing my online bankroll, but I didn't have access to that money.  Twice this year the printer was down for a few days because I couldn't afford to buy toner.  A month ago I was sitting in a beat-up office chair that kept sinking down.

We made good decisions.  I had to do poker on a shoestring budget so that we could accomplish some things.  We are making good decisions as a family. We put a lot of money toward paying off all of our debts.  We pay for everything with cash or use a debit card.

We own our home free and clear.  When my wife retires all of our debt will be gone.  We have a significant amount saved for retirement.  We can fly at no cost because I am a retired veteran--all we need to do is find a military flight with space available.

The plan for 2018 is simple.  Keep doing what we're doing.  My wife will do her usual great job of managing the family finances.  I will keep growing my bankroll until I cash out sometime this year.  I started with around $40 (I don't remember the exact amount) on Juicy Stakes Poker last year, now it's $237.  I was mindful of variance and almost always played within a bankroll of 100-buy-ins.  Last year played $1 tournaments until I had almost $200, then I started playing $2 tournaments.  When I found a really good $3 tournament I played it, but my average buy-in was always under $2.

I'll just keep doing that.  I'll be the tortoise, not the hare. By the time I'm playing $4 tournaments I will have a lot more options for when I can play. I can of course still play some $1 tournaments, but when I'm playing higher that doesn't stop me from playing a cheaper tournament if it looks good. Not being tied to the same two evening tournaments every single day will make a huge difference.

The one thing that I have not mentioned is Americas Cardroom.  When I make my first withdrawal from Juicy Stakes Poker, some of that money will be used to get a starter bankroll back on Americas Cardroom.  When that happens I can play almost any time of day or night because STTs (single-table tournaments) on Americas Cardroom run almost all of the time with an average playing time of about 45 minutes.

I expect big things in 2018.

December 2017 Results

It was not a good month and I took a hit in more ways than one.  I lost some money, but I also lost valuable study and playing time because of end of month and end of year business.  I only played 44 tournaments in December, compared to many months when I played 60 or more.  I'll be more prepared at the end of this year and December 2018 won't be such a scramble.

December was one of my worst financial months:

Juicy Stakes Poker, December 2017, 44 tournaments
16 net win tournaments:   +$58.57
28 net loss tournaments:    -$89.10
                                                 ----------
                                                -$30.93

I've said before that making money playing poker tournaments isn't about cashing in a lot of tournaments, it's about taking mathematically correct risks and getting a few big cashes.  In December I didn't get those big cashes, and that was the difference.

In November I went 15 straight tournaments without cashing, but just a few large cashes put me into the black.  In December there was a similar losing streak (as there will be almost every month) but I didn't get the big cashes to make the month profitable.

My three biggest cashes in November were $38.40, $25.90 and $24.84.

My three biggest cashes in December were $18, $15 and $15.

The part that really stung was that in several tournaments I was in or close to first place for an hour or so but I couldn't finish the job.  Sooner or later there is a big all-in that decides whether you get a big cash or a small cash (or nothing) and I was on the wrong side of a lot of those.  What a lot of people (including some poker players) don't understand is that when I'm all-in preflop with AA and I'm called by 65 offsuit, I have 81% equity in that hand.  To put it another way, I will win in that spot 81% of the time.  That's a probability, not a guarantee.

Probability plays out over time, which is why poker players refer to it as a "volume game."  Over a decent sample size of 10 thousand or more hands I'll win in that situation very close to 81% of the time.  That doesn't mean that I can't lose over a small sample size, for example, five times in a row when I'm an 81% favorite.

Poker is in many ways counterintuitive.  If you are the best player or you have the best hand you should win, right?  No, that's not right.  The chess player with the highest rating will not win every game--that rating is earned by his results over time.

This is a concept that can be applied over multiple fields. The New England Patriots don't win every Super Bowl but they win a lot of them, and their basic approach doesn't change.   They have had the same owner, coach and quarterback (he is 40 years old) for more than 15 years and, as Marcus Lemonis would say, they "trust the process."

Warren Buffet became a billionaire investor by "buying and holding."  Buffet invested in companies that he trusted and didn't buy or sell that stock for ten years or more.  He is a strictly long-term investor, and his choices have rarely been wrong.

I'm investing in poker and if I do it right, the long-term reward will be well worth the time and effort.

I said before that I am going to come up with a list of rules, just like Agent Gibbs on NCIS.  I think that my number one rule is going to be, Trust The Process.

My balance on Juicy Stakes Poker is six times what it was in January.  I did not make a deposit in 2017, I just worked with what I had and I only played tournaments that I could afford.  The process is working.

Updating My Records

I apologize that I have not yet posted the December or the 2017 results.  I've been busy setting up for 2018 and I have a bit of a mess to clean up.

I have planned for a while to upgrade my recordkeeping system for ease of use.  That upgrade became even more important when I started digging into the rather complicated rules for withdrawing winnings from Juicy Stakes Poker.

I decided to add more columns to the spreadsheet to keep track of how close I am to meeting the requirements not only for my first withdrawal, but for others withdrawals in the future.  While I was doing this I was tinkering with the spreadsheet, adding all of the information after each tournament and seeing how the newer version worked for what I need to do.

While I was tweaking my systems there were several versions of that spreadsheet printed.  I keep a printed report of every tournament, six tournaments per page, in case the IRS has any questions.  Every tournament is considered a "taxable event" by the IRS, so I'm very careful to do more than the minimum reporting for poker, which is in my case a Schedule C business.

Just when I was pretty happy with everything and ready to try out the final version, the printer went down.  Now I have old and new spreadsheets to consolidate, but with the printer down, I've been recording my 2018 results by hand on notebook paper.

I hope to resolve this soon and get back to my regular schedule of about 30 hours a week playing poker and 10 hours studying.  I'll do my best to get it done early next week, but in any case, I'll post the rest of the 2017 information in the next few days.