I've mentioned before that I was working on a written business plan. Forget about that. There are too many things in play, too many things that can change quickly, to have a detailed plan. I'm going to talk about that and give you a look at everything that I do in a typical week, if there is such a thing.
When your job is playing poker tournaments, almost everything is a variable. Sleep is perhaps the most important variable that drives my time. If I've had plenty of rest I can sometimes play evening tournaments back to back, if the timing works out, and pile up a lot of hours--but one of my rules is not to play when I'm tired. I'm throwing money down a rathole if I'm too tired to make good decisions at the table. If I don't play, I don't make money--but if I don't cash because I play badly, I lose money (the amount of my buy-in.) I have no problem with skipping a tournament when I'm too tired to play.
I almost always work seven days a week, for a total of about 40 hours a week. My work week starts when my alarm wakes me at 1000 to play a 1014 tournament. Yesterday I woke up around 0600 and I decided to use some of my free time to finish a Netflix movie that I started the day before. I used the rest of the time for administrative poker tasks until was time to play the tournament.
The tournament went well but I barely dodged a major problem. I was playing heads-up when my wife came in with her coat on to tell me that it was time to go to our dental appointment. Two minutes later I won the tournament and we were on time for out dental appointment.
The tournament schedule is definitely a variable that drives my decisions It's not just about when the tournament starts. As shown in the above paragraph, it also matters when the tournament ends. I can play the same tournament two days in a row and get very different results. One day I might get knocked out in the first half-hour, while the next day I might play for several hours and get a big cash.
Another variable is what I call my outside appointments. The best time to play is evenings and weekends, when the most profitable tournaments are running. That's often hard to arrange. A few days ago I looked at my calendar and saw a medical appointment on Saturday morning, a funeral in the afternoon, and church on Sunday morning. Yesterday (3/14) I had a dental appointment at 1500. Tomorrow (3/16) I have a morning appointment to take the car in for service. I do my best to schedule appointments around poker (or sleep) but the 8 to 5 world doesn't work that way.
There is some order in all of this chaos. I have two blocks of time when I usually work, late morning and in the evening. The 1014 tournament (the one that my car appointment will blow away tomorrow) is the one that I try to play every day. That's usually the only thing that I do in the morning, and winning it takes about 3.5 to 4 hours. After the tournament is done I usually relax and do the things that people with normal schedules do in their free time, like watching TV.
The evening time block is when I do most of my work. There are decent tournaments starting at 1829, 2029, 2214 and sometimes at 2314. If I'm tired I'll take a nap, skip the early tournament and play one of the late ones. When I'm not tired I'll play two tournaments. If there is dead time between tournaments I either study or take a break. After my evening tournament time is done (usually after midnight) I usually spend at least half an hour studying..
Below is a spreadsheet of how I spend my time in a typical week. MTT stands for multi-table tournaments, which is all that I play.
I'm sorry that the formatting is messy, I copied and pasted an Open Office spreadsheet and did my best to make it more readable. All numbers in the three rightmost columns are hours.
As always, your questions and comments are welcome.
| February 4 to February 10 | |||||||
| Date | Event | Start | End | Play | Study | Admin | |
| 02/03 | $3.30 freezeout MTT | 2314 | 0123 | 2.25 | |||
| 02/04 | Blog post: Business plan ideas | 0150 | 0300 | 1.25 | |||
| 02/04 | twoplustwo.com poker forums | 0458 | 0633 | 1.50 | |||
| 02/04 |
Flash cards: odds and outs to hit on the turn | 0642 | 0715 | 0.50 | |||
| 02/04 | $5.50 freezeout MTT | 2314 | 0145 | 2.50 | |||
| 02/05 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 1014 | 1334 | 3.25 | |||
| 02/05 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 2214 | 0108 | 3.00 | |||
| 02/06 | $5.50 freezeout MTT | 0155 | 0329 | 1.50 | |||
| 02/06 | twoplustwo.com poker forums | 0552 | 0631 | 0.75 | |||
| 02/06 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 2214 | 0152 | 3.75 | |||
| 02/07 | twoplustwo.com poker forums | 0343 | 0528 | 1.75 | |||
| 02/07 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 1014 | 1407 | 4.00 | |||
| 02/08 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 2214 | 2343 | 1.50 | |||
| 02/08 | Jonathan Little video: Increasing Aggression | 0048 | 0059 | 0.25 | |||
| 02/08 | Video: Jonathan Little 2 $10 heads up sngs | 0254 | 0326 | 0.50 | |||
| 02/08 | twoplustwo.com poker forums | 0530 | 0706 | 1.50 | |||
| 02/08 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 2215 | 0123 | 3.25 | |||
| 02/09 | Doug Polk poker podcast | 1522 | 1621 | 1.00 | |||
| 02/10 | $0.30 rebuy and add-on MTT | 0229 | 0429 | 2.00 | |||
| 02/10 | Work on 2018 business plan, blog post | 0501 | 0530 | 0.50 | |||
| 02/10 | $1.10 $50 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 0704 | 0825 | 1.25 | |||
| 02/108 | $1.10 $100 guaranteed rebuy and add-on MTT | 1014 | 0010 | 2.00 | |||
| 02/10 | $3.30 freezeout MTT | 2314 | 2321 | 0.00 | |||
| 02/10 | twoplustwo.com poker forums | 2350 | 0200 | 2.25 | |||
| --------- | --------- | --------- | --------- | ||||
| 27.00 | 13.25 | 1.75 | 42.00 | ||||
| Play | Study | Admin | Total | ||||
| (goal 10 hrs.) | (goal 40 hrs.) |
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