Yesterday Everything Changed

This is going be complicated, but it has to for the explanation to make sense.  I've mentioned before that I've had a lot of issues with Juicy Stakes Poker.  One of those has been that they make cashing out too complicated.  In fact, that was going to be my next post.  I'm including some of that anyway, and you'll see why as you read.

On most poker sites, it's not complicated.  When I played on PokerStars it was simple.  When I wanted to cash out some of my winnings, I told them how much I wanted and they sent me a check.  There were a few rules, for example, minimum and maximum withdrawals and how frequently you could cash out, but it was easy to understand.

On Juicy Stakes Poker it's so ridiculously complicated and they can't or won't ell me how it works.  When my bankroll was over the minimum amount to cash out ($250) I asked what the requirements were, even though at that point I didn't want to make a withdraw.  They told me that they would let know "what else was needed" when I was ready to withdraw.

For the last month, on an off, I've been working on that problem, trying to figure out what's going on.  After a lot of investigation and no small amount of math (trying to extrapolate from situations and transactions that I've run across on their web pages) I thought that I had it figured out, not the details, but a good general idea of how it worked..  The problem wasn't how much I could take out, or how often.  The problem was that I had to "clear" the amount that I wanted to cash out, which in my case was a very big problem.

What "clear" means is that I have to do a certain amount of playing on the site, at certain levels, to get FPPs (Frequent Player Points.)  It's a forced loyalty program.  For example, if I play fifty $1 tournaments in a month I will get twice as many FPPs than if I play only 25 of those tournaments.  Also, if I played fifty $2 tournaments a month I would get twice as many FPPs than if I played only $1 tournaments.  It's a combination of playing frequency and buy-in level.

The bottom line is that what I just explained runs into a basic tenant of poker success--bankroll management.

When I did the math I figured out that with the mostly $1 and $2 tournaments that I've been playing, I could barely get enough FPPs in a year to clear the minimum $250 withdrawal.  I could theoretically make more money, have a balance of $1,000 (or more) and never have enough FPPs to make a withdrawal.  Very shady in my opinion.

I can't solve the clearing issue by playing more often..  For a while I was playing tournaments starting at 10:14 A.M. and 10:14 P.M., and sometimes others as well.  I have to sleep sometime.  I could solve the issue by playing at a higher level, but if I moved up, for example, to play more $3 or $5 tournaments, I wouldn't have the 100-buy-in bankroll necessary to cover  my mathematical risk of ruin.*

I had been playing a few $3 tournaments, and rarely, maybe once a month, a $5 tournament.  I decided to bump that frequency up a little bit, keep a close eye on my bankroll and see what happened.  This is what happened, documented in an E-mail from Juicy Stakes Poker, when I played a $5.50 tournament on 2/25:


Congratulations on your Juicy win PokerClif,

Out of 25 players in Tournament 16597102 ($300 Guaranteed), you came in 1st and have won $120.00.

You've also been awarded 1.75 Frequent Player Points for participating in the tournament.

Kind Regards,
Juicy Stakes Support


That win increased my bankroll by over a third.  I am now bankrolled to move up, make more money and get enough FPPs to clear my withdrawal sometime soon.

I've said more than once that success in tournament poker is often the result of just a few big cashes.  Now we've seen that principle in action.  The tournament started at 2314 on 2/25.  When it ended at 0150 on 2/26, everything changed.
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*https://www.pokerstrategy.com/glossary/Risk-of-Ruin/
http://pokerdope.com/poker-variance-calculator/

A Painful Loss

I finished my tournaments for the day.  A $3.30 tournament with 40 players started at 2314 last night and I was knocked out at 0124 this morning.

It was one of those tournaments where I was having trouble getting any traction. I hung in there, staying around the bottom of the pack, as players were knocked out.  Nine players would cash and I was between about 10th and 15th most of the time.  When we got down to 11 players I knew that I had a good chance to move up.  When you play certain tournaments you get a feel for the dynamics and I knew that in this one I had a good chance to move up.  Here's why:

At tournaments with buy-ins < $5, players don't know how to move up.  They don't know how to use a push-fold chart to play optimally, taking big risks to win the big paydays in the top three cashing spots.  They also don't know when, even with a small stack, there is a good chance to move up one or two spots with little risk.  Most pros believe that it's all about the big risk for the big payday, but I think that both approaches have their place--and in the real world, a lot of pros play that way, even if their actions don't match their rhetoric.  It's called "laddering up."*  [I hate it when nouns are turned into verbs, for example, nerds are no longer writing computer programs as I did in college, they are "coding."]

Here is my brilliant analysis** of why I thought it would be easy to move up in my situation:

1. The blinds and antes would not hit me as often as they would at the usual (for Juicy Stakes Poker) 8-player tables, so I would have some room to work.  In fact, I chose to play that tournament largely because it had a 10-player table.

A player is on average dealt a pair in no-limit holdem once every 17 hands.  At the usual 8-player table I would be much less likely to get a pair in the first two or three orbits.  While my stack was being cut down by the blinds and antes I could play go two orbits or more without getting a pair.  At a 10-player table the blinds would hit me less often and I would be much more likely to be dealt a pair in the first two or three orbits.

2. I got to the final table in 10th place, needing only one knockout to be in the money.  Of course, I didn't want to just squeak into the money and get a cash about the size of my buy-in.  I would be looking for the right had and/or situation to move up several spots, and I got it.

In the first four orbits I was dealt two pairs.  I went all-in with 66 and everyone folded, increasing my stack size by about 1/4.  The second pair was AA, and I was in business.  I didn't just want to squeak into the money, I was looking for a hand or a situation good enough to move me up a few spots, and I got it.  Tenth place bet, I shoved, 10th place and a big stack both called.  If I won the hand I would move up to 7th.  I don't rememberthe exact details of the hand but I remember the result.  The big stack had two hearts and got his flush on the river.

The big stack knocked both me and the other small stack out.  Since we were both knocked out at the same time, the player who started the hand with the most chips (9th place) kept that last cashing spot.  I finished 10th and missed the money.

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*https://betting.betfair.com/poker/marcus-bateman/laddering-at-mtt-final-tables-141108.html

**The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft a-gley.
Translation: The best-laid plans of mice and men [and poker players] often go awry. ---  Robert Burns

An Up and Down Day (and month)

It was quite an interesting day.  It started out badly with the 1014 tournament, which was a complete mess.  I didn't get good cards and I don't think that I played very well.  I finished 19th of 60, way out of the money.  Plus, I used my "brain pill" (ADD medication) in that tournament and wouldn't have it for another shot at night.  I had been on a good cashing streak for quite a while and I knew that it had to end sometime.  Still, 19th of 60 and being in the bottom of the pack every minute of those 2.25 hours was not fun at all.

When the tournament ended I had not cashed in 6 straight tournaments, 8 of the last 10.  I know that that's normal, but missing by so much and keeping my losing streak going was very disappointing.  Before the losing streak started my bankroll was almost $350 and I was up over $40 in the first 10 days of the month.  Now I was down to about $320.

Twelve hours after I started that tournament, I played the second one at 2214.  It's the same tournament, running twice a day.  After four hours I finished 2nd of 71 for a cash of $22.62 and all was right with the world.  If you want to be a poker player you have to jump on that variance train and be ready for a wild ride.

I'm up $46.21 for the month so far, I'm close to getting my bankroll above $350, and I did it without my brain pill, which is an 8-hour dose, taken once a day.  In January all of my tournaments were in the evening between about 1800 and midnight, so I took the pill just before I started my block of tournaments.  Now I'm playing tournaments whenever and whenever I can find one, with the 1014 and 2214 tournaments being the anchors of my schedule.  I have to pick my spots and I took the pill before the A.M. tournament, but everything at night turned out just fine.

I feel a whole lot better than I did yesterday morning.

Flash Cards are my Scales

I am a musician.  After three years in an infantry unit I auditioned for an army band.  For 20 years I played clarinet, did a vocal on occasion, and even played oboe for one rehearsal.  One thing that every musician knows is that you have to practice your scales.  Many musicians do that every day.  Now that poker is my job, flash cards are my scales.

I've mentioned before that I have Attention Deficit Disorder.  I have another mental issue as well.  I have a very difficult time moving information from short-term to long-term memory.  If I store that information but don't use for a while, it's gone.  I'm forgetting the names of a lot of people who played in the band with me, even though in many cases I played music and traveled all over the world with them for more than 10 years.

I have the same problem with poker information.  I memorized a lot of information, for example, with a certain number of outs, what kind of odds do I need to get to profitably play my hand in that situation?

An example:  I know that if I have two overcards (cards higher than the three flop cards, perhaps an ace and a queen) each overcard is worth three outs, because if I have an ace (or a queen) there are three others out there somewhere.  I also know that if the odds that I'm getting are less than 6.83:1 ( spoken as 6.83 to 1), it's not profitable in the long term to play my hand in that situation.

If it sounds complicated it isn't, especially if you memorize "odds and outs."  Once I've memorized (or rememorized) that information I don't have to think about it.  I just got done working with flash cards for 1.5 hours, and a lot of what I've forgotten is either coming back to me or getting relearned.  It works like this:

I make my own flash cards.  For the situation that I described, on one side of the card I wrote"6 OUTS" and the other side says "6.83:1."  Once I have memorized that datum the only math that I have to figure out (unless it's a real close call an estimate is usually good enough) is whether there are enough chips in the pot to pay me 6.83 times my bet if I win the pot, which I might adjust to "around 7 times my bet" to make the math a little easier.  So if  I want to bet or call for 300, the pot should be close to (300 X 7) = 2,100.

I don't know whether other players use flash cards.  It was something that I came up with on my own.  You can write down and learn many types of poker information with flash cards.  For example, I have cards for memorizing the odds than if I'm dealt an ace, how likely am I to be the only player holding an ace (it depends on how many players there are at your table)

I can use the concept to memorize hand ranges, learn what kind of flops I need to see to make a continuation bet, or to know how my hand stands up against a random hand.  Again, it may sound complicated, but anyone who has memorized multiplication tables can do the same thing that I do with poker flash card numbers or ideas.  The concept is the same, in fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the children competing in the National Geography Bee are doing similar things, but with rivers and mountain ranges instead of odds and outs.  If you know anyone who enters those competitions, I would be interested in hearing from them.

Flash cards are boring. In 2017 I got caught up in learning a lot of things that were more interesting and I let the flash cards fall by the wayside.  I'm not going to do that again.  My brain lost a lot of information that I need to get back and there are always new things to learn.  As with playing scales, working on it every day is probably the right choice.

Government at it's Worst

WARNING: In this post I will be talking about one of the dumbest US government ideas ever.  If that might be too much for you, stop reading now.

Lately I've been talking a lot about process and planning.  I believe that it's critical to have a plan if you want to make an income playing poker.  Of course, most people don't want to hear about that.  They want to know one thing: "How much did you win (or lose)?"  Before I talk about that, I have to give the standard caveat:

Poker is a long-term game with considerable statistical variance for the short term.  My definition of long-term is at least a year.

It's been going very well.  My profit in January was $76.69.  I hope to do better this month.  Ten days into February I'm up $48.49.  I hope to be cranking out some $100 months very soon.  I will be very disappointed if my profit this year is less than $1,000.  I will do my best to make it a lot more than that.

Until very recently I was playing online $1 and $2 tournaments, mostly $1.  Now I'm playing buy-ins from $0.30* to $3.30 and occasionally higher.  I played a $5.50 twice and I cashed once.  My bankroll is currently $345.07 and the bigger it gets, the more options I have for when and where to play.  I'm now using a 30-day rolling average to make sure that my average buy-in is no more than 1% of my bankroll, which means that my average buy-in should not be more than $3.45.  That allows me to play a greater variety of tournaments and better tournaments, without putting my bankroll at risk.

There is one odd financial issue that I will have to deal with as my income goes up.  I collect Social Security, and they have some interesting rules which affect what will happen when I'm making more per month working (poker) than I get from Social Security.

There is a sliding scale, but what it amounts to is that if I make most of my money from playing poker, that will reduce my Social Security payment.  That's not a problem, because at some point I'll be making more playing poker than I will collect from Social Security.  Even when that happens,  I will still get a social security payment but it will be reduced.

Hang on, this is where the government bureaucracy goes off the rails.

So, if I make "too much" money playing poker, I'll just get smaller social Security payments, right?  Wrong! That's way too simple and we're dealing with the government.  When I explain this, keep in mind how often I talk about variance in poker.  It's so stupid that I feel kind of dirty just typing the following:

When I'm making a certain amount playing poker, I will have to predict what my income will be for the following year, and my payments will be based on that prediction.  There is no way that I can make a prediction and hope to be accurate.  I could make $500 this year or $2,000, or more if I get lucky in one big tournament.  There are a lot of players living within 30 miles of me who get some big cashes on a site where I will be playing later this year.  By big cashes, I mean a $1,000 or more in one tournament.

As they say on the shopping channels, "But wait, there's more!"

So eventually I will get regular but reduced payments, right?  Nope.  Again, that's too simple and obvious.  This is the federal bureaucracy we're talking about.

Based on my prediction (which will be more like a wild guess) they will cancel some of my payments for that year: the first payment of the year, the first two, or whatever makes the numbers work for them. All of this is based on my prediction of my income for that year.

If my prediction (which will be more like a wild guess) is way off, I don't even want to think about how complicated the adjustments will be.

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**$I played a 30 cent tournaments at 0229 today because there wasn't anything else to play.  I finished 3rd of 29 players for a cash of  $2.81.  Hey, it's nine buy-ins.

Time to Make the Sausage

When doing something is messy or difficult (like Congress trying to get something done) it is often referred to as "making  sausage."  As you watch my business plan for 2018 come together, it might seem pretty messy.  I will be precise about what I want to do in some areas, such as tracking how I spend my work time.  In other areas I have some ideas, but I have not decided how to include them in a formal business plan.  When you read my business plan updates, keep the following in mind:

"I don't care about flowery writing or winning a Pulitzer.  My job is to be clear for my readers."--Issac Asimov.

These are some of the things that I'm thinking about:

1. I will have a list of rules like the Gibbs Rules on NCIS, but "always carry a knife" won't be on it.

I already know what some of my rules are going to be.  In no particular order of importance:

Don't play tired.

Never miss a hand.

Trust the math.

Trust the process (I stole that one from Marcus Lemonis.)

2.  I need to formalize my on and off study of flash cards.

I study flash cards so that I automatically know what to do when I see certain situations at the table. For example, I know that if I am at a table with 5 other players, I have a 50% chance of being the only one dealt an ace.*  If I have an ace with six or more opponents, someone else probably has one as well, but every player that drops out increases my chance of having the only ace.

That should be easy to memorize.  The most players that can sit at a table, virtual or real, is 10.  That means that there are only nine percentages that I need to know because I will have somewhere between one and nine opponents.

I really have to pound things into my memory to keep them there for the long term.  Instead of just studying flash cards when I feel like it, I will come up with some kind of formal rotation or schedule to make sure that all of my cards get looked at on a regular basis.

3. I need to adjust my bankroll management.

2017 was all about growing my bankroll and always having 100 buy-ins at my level.  This year I will often be playing higher than $1 or $2 tournaments.  The balance in my account is $312.83 and the minimum withdrawal is $250, so I need to think ahead about how much and how often I want to withdrawal, and what to do with that money when I have it.

Whatever I decide I will be continuously growing my bankroll, adding more than I take out..  I probably won't pull the trigger until my balance is over $600.  Variance being what it is, I have no idea how long that will take.  It could be a couple months or it could take much longer.

That's enough sausage making for today.  As always, your questions and comments (see box below) are welcome.

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*If you scroll down to the last chart on this page you will see that with five other players at the table, my chance of holding the only ace is 49.6%.

http://www.pokersyte.com/texas_holdem_poker_odds_2.htm

Milestone: $300 balance on Juicy States Poker

I forgot something in my previous post (I edited it in.)    My monthly profit was indeed my largest in one month since 2006, but I missed another milestone.  It was also the first time that my gross cashes for one month were over $100, coming in at $114.  I care a lot more about profit than cashes, but $100 is such a nice round number that I thought it worth mentioning.

So, as I like numbers with zeros on the end, I'm reporting my newest milestone.  I got close to a $300 balance a few times in the last month or so but I never quite got there..  I played yesterday's 2214 tournament and I was knocked out at 0203 this morning, finishing 5th of 75 players.  My cash of $11.53 finally put me over the top with a balance of $303.33.

Now that I have some funds to work with, I'll be making some changes this year.  As I make decisions I will post them so that you can watch my business plan come together.  One of those changed will be to play some of my tournaments on Americas Cardroom.

Playing on ACR has a lot of implications for my business model.  Some of the tournaments on that site run for more than eight hours.  That's fine with me but I will have to change some things.  One of the things that I strive for every week is that 10% of my time is spent studying.  If I get in several long tournaments in the same week using percentages might not make sense.  I think that I'll change my weekly plan to 10 hours of studying and a total of at least 40 work hours, however many administrative and/or playing hours that might include.

I have a lot of other things that I will be adding or changing, but I have to figure out some details.  I will post those idea as I get a pretty good idea how they would fit in and you get to watch me build a business plan.  Some of you will find it boring and some of you won't.  I like plans and I like thinking way ahead.   That's how I roll.

January 2018 Results

I'm very happy with what I accomplished in January.  It feels like my play to build from the ground up ($40 sitting on a poker site) is working better than I had hoped.  Committing an entire year to building that $40 into much more without investing any more money than was already on the site was a leap of faith.  If I had spent all that time and nothing much came of it I would have been devastated.  It was a big kick in the teeth when I had a significant net loss in December.

The long slog of 2017 was one of those times when I had to trust the math and trust the process, even when I wasn't sure that it was going to work out.  It is working out and January 2018 was a big fat example of that.

I know that I'm only playing (mostly) $1 tournaments but I seem to be dominating the field almost every time that I play.  I used to hope that I would make it to the final table a few times a week.  Now I'm disappointed when it doesn't happen every day--and it is happening almost than much (see total net wins versus losses, below).  In January played two tournaments a day and usually cashed in at least one of them.

There is one player online who I think has switched to some other tournaments partly to avoid being at the same final table with me so often.  That happens a lot and I wasn't surprised.  I considered considered making some changes in my schedule to avoid him.

Good players often can spot each other, in fact, I always check to see if he is signed up for a tournament that I want to play.  It's not uncommon in tournaments for the best players to leave each other alone and pick on the weaker players.

Here are the numbers for January:

January 2018
Profit and loss
18 net win tournaments	$144.15
21 net loss tournaments	-$67.46

                                                                 -----------
                                                                +$76.69

That was my best online month ever except for when I made it to the final table of a tournament with 4,200 players.  That was in 2006.  I've never done anything like that since and I hope to change that someday.

Sometime in February I will be posting about changes that I want to make in 2018.  I was hoping to get my bankroll above $300 at the end of the year but I just missed. My last cash of the month got me up to $294.90, which is a lot more than the ~$40 that I started with a year ago..  I will making some process decisions to take advantage of having more money to work with.  That could include playing more expensive tournaments and/or different types of tournaments and what or how I study.  I have a lot of ideas running around in my head.  I have to pull out best ones.

I already made one important change.  Instead of playing two tournaments starting at 1829 and 2214 and putting all of my poker time in one block, I now play tournaments at 1014 and 2214, 12 hours apart.  My reason is simple.  I found out in mid-January that they are the same tournament.  The tournament that I have been playing at 2214 has the best structure for how I play.  What I didn't know is that it runs twice a day, 12 hours apart.

Having two good tournaments to play, instead of one good one and one that's just OK, is definitely part of the reason for my results last month.  I'm hoping that I can start cranking out some $100 months sometime soon.

When beginners in a poker forum ask what it takes to make money, good tournament selection is almost always mentioned in the responses.  I take it very seriously and it's literally paying off.