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.)