April 2018 Results

I apologize for being so late with this.  I got hammered in April and I lost most of May when I was down with computer issues and other problems that I've talked about in earlier posts.  I was discombobulated for a while.  You will get the May numbers tomorrow.  There has been a lot of doom and gloom in my recent posts, so I'll tease you with this:  June is already well on the way to being my best month in a very long time.

In April I started playing higher because I was bankrolled to do so.  There is nothing wrong with that, but variance was definitely not on my side.  Sometimes you get very hot (as I have this month) and sometimes you go very cold (as I did in April.)  By the end of my first week in April I was down $56.45 and never completely recovered.

Here are the numbers:

April 2018
-$27.95
10 net win tournaments	$118.23
27 net loss tournaments	-$146.18

At this point it's worth repeating that the swings in poker (positive and negative statistical variance are the mathematical terms) are so big that you can't really understand what it's like until you've been through it.  If you get upset when you lose five tournaments in a row you won't last long.  In fact, if you lose money for five straight months and get upset, poker probably isn't for you.

If you are confident that you can play poker for a year and make a decent amount of money (whatever that means to you) then you might have the right mindset for poker.  If you play a lot during that year, variance should start to even out over time--but if you play one weekend a month at your local casino. your chances to make money are very small, for two reasons.

First, with such a small sample size,variance could slap you in the face and you might fail to cash in every tournament that you play that year.  Second, if you only play two days a month, you won't learn and improve enough to make money.  And don't forget studying.  Some pros actually spend more hours studying poker than playing.*

April was a mess.  May, as you will find out in my next post, barely happened.  I was fighting so many issues that I sat out most of the month.  I did some studying of course, but it's really hard to be motivated when I can't use anything that I'm learning.  I don't have the numbers with me, but if I was really serious I would have spent at least 40 hours in May studying.  I think it was more like 25 hours, I was lazy and there is no excuse for that.

I'll give you the May numbers tomorrow.  After that I promise that I will have some very good news about the first week of June.

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*Poker players love to argue about the correct balance between studying and playing.  It's one of those questions for which there is no correct answer.  I always try to make 25% of my poker time studying every week, which means that if I'm working 40 hours a week, at least 10 of those hours will be spent studying.