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.