POKER HOURS
Admin 0.75
Study 1.25
Play 28.75
TOTAL HOURS 30.75
I should have got this up a lot earlier, sorry about that. In fact, I finished it yesterday, but neglected to published it.
I can't say that I'm happy about my hours. I've cut my TV watching way back, but for some reason I just don't seem to be able to get the hours in. My next weekly report will probably be even worse, as I've already goofed off in the last couple days. I watched all of game 7 of the NBA playoffs, and the second half of the US vs. Slovenia World Cup game. Before that I had not watched a sporting event start-to-finish in at least a month (except for episodes of The Ultimate Fighter, but that's only one hour a week).
That's a lot of goofing off in less than 24 hours. I'll have to get more serious about putting in my poker time.
Of course, the study time is totally unacceptable. That's really almost more important than my playing. It's an investment in being a better player both now and in the future. That has to consistently be at least 10% of my time (for some of the top players, that number is 50%).
POKER PROFIT AND LOSS
Beginning bankroll 6/6, $204.79
Ending bankroll, 6/12, $200.34
-$4.45
Those numbers may make it look like the last week was basically breakeven and uneventful, but it was anything but. I got beat up pretty badly for a few days, and was down to $156.00 at the end of 6/9. That rattled me (something that rarely happens when I play poker) and I lost a little more in other tournaments Then I turned things around and won most of it back the last three days.
I have been reading a lot on the 2+2 poker forums about what a good deal the 180-man tournaments are. I even printed out Sean Deeb's Beginner's Guide to the 180s and started carrying it around with me so I could look it over whenever I had a few minutes.
The 180s on PokerStars and other sites don't pay a lot of places, and the payouts are skewed even more heavily than usual to the top 3 finishers. First place gets 54 times the buy-in, a very unusual pay structure for a tournament that small.
This is exactly the type of structure that a good player likes to see. He doesn't want to waste time on the typical tournaments that pay 15-20% of the field, and pay a bunch of people 2-5 buy-in "almost winner" prizes. He wants to compete for the big bucks at the top.
In this case, we are talking about $4.40 tournaments, 180 players, paying 10% of the field, with 10th through 18th winning $10.64, and the top 3 spots paying $216.44, $144.00, and $85.68. I decided to sit down and play a bunch of them, 2 at a time. I played 9 in a row, and didn't cash in any. That little adventure cost me a quick $39.60.
I knew that $4.40 tournanets were right at the edge of my bankroll requirements, so I thought I better stop at that point, especially since my bankroll situation had, um, changed. But then I thought about it some more, and since I knew that big swings like that are normal in MTTs, I decided to do some math and figure out exactly what I was facing with these tournaments.
I set up a spreadsheet to do some "what if" scenarious. I ran one where my average cash was $20 (a reasonable if slightly conservative estimate, since $20 is near the bottom of the pay scale). With an average cash of $20, it turns out that I would have to cash 28 times out of 100 to break even.
I thought that I had had some bad luck in my 9-tournament losing streak. And even though cashing more than 1 time in 4 seemed daunting, on the other hand I really didn't think that my average cash would be less than $20. So the numbers didn't seem so bad.
Then I thought about it some more. If I'm going to cash 28 times out of 100, that means that there will be 72 times out of 100 where I don't cash. That's enough room for a lot of nasty losing steaks--which, of course, is the reason for having a bankroll in the first place, to weather those storms.
Given the downside risk and a bankroll of $200 (less than 50 $4.40 buy-ins), the math says that I should have stayed away from those for a while. I might take a shot at one from time to time as long as my bankroll is over $200, but I'm definitely not bankrolled to play those things on a regular basis.
Anyway, I abandoned the 180s for a while, played a bunch of 1-3 table, $1-3 tournaments, and broke won back a little over the next few days. Then in my last tournament of the week, starting on Saturday at 11:10 P.M., I played a $2.20 90-man tournament, took second place and cashed for $33.30, winding up almost even for the week!
Online poker can get monotonous sometimes. Last week, that was definitely not the case. Poker as a job is definitely not for the faint of heart.
Friday, June 18, 2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
6/9/2010--Results for week of 5/30/2010-6/5/2010
WORK HOURS
Administrative 2.75
Study 6.00
Play 31.25
TOTAL HOURS, 40.00
PROFIT AND LOSS
Bankroll beginning 5/30, $170.90
Bankroll ending 6/5, $204.79
+$33.89
I'm still making money, and of course I'm happy about that. And I'm happy that I finally put in 40 hours in a week. But because of things that may need to happen down the road, I really need to keep putting in the hours, and not just playing.
Work hours are not where I would like them to be, but still very much improved. I got 40 hours in, finally, which is not bad. One of my goals is to spend at least 10% of my time in study, and I accomplished that.
The problem is that I'm way behind on the paperwork, and I need to spend more administrative time. There is the day-to-day business to track, but more than that, I don't think the spreadsheet system that I've cobbled together is going to work very well as things get more complicated.
I hope to be withdrawing a percentage of my winnings soon. For every calendar quarter that I make more than $450 (I hope that soon it will be every quarter) I have to set aside 30% for estimated income tax.
Eventually I will be taking money out for taxes, for personal/family use (mostly paying bills), for office supplies, and for reinvestment in the business (poker books, a second monitor, or whatever).
All of this will eventually be divided into live and online play, and run through two checking accounts, and possibly through two savings accounts, to set aside the funds for income taxes. I'm not sure how all this will shake out as far as income tax liability, so until I get a feel for that it's best that I set aside too much for taxes rather than too little.
Every time think about this, it gets a little more complicated.
At the very least, at some point soon I'm going to have to sit down and devote at least 5 hours to figuring out how I want to approach this, and how it's going to all evolve.
For now, I don't have any business accounts, I don't have two bankrolls, I'm not playing live, and I'm not making enough to have to set aside any for taxes. But considering that last year I had a $381 net tournament cash, and a $250 net live cash, I need to start thinking about this now. When I start cashing like that on a semi-regular basis, I'm going to make a real mess if I don't have a system in place to handle it.
Administrative 2.75
Study 6.00
Play 31.25
TOTAL HOURS, 40.00
PROFIT AND LOSS
Bankroll beginning 5/30, $170.90
Bankroll ending 6/5, $204.79
+$33.89
I'm still making money, and of course I'm happy about that. And I'm happy that I finally put in 40 hours in a week. But because of things that may need to happen down the road, I really need to keep putting in the hours, and not just playing.
Work hours are not where I would like them to be, but still very much improved. I got 40 hours in, finally, which is not bad. One of my goals is to spend at least 10% of my time in study, and I accomplished that.
The problem is that I'm way behind on the paperwork, and I need to spend more administrative time. There is the day-to-day business to track, but more than that, I don't think the spreadsheet system that I've cobbled together is going to work very well as things get more complicated.
I hope to be withdrawing a percentage of my winnings soon. For every calendar quarter that I make more than $450 (I hope that soon it will be every quarter) I have to set aside 30% for estimated income tax.
Eventually I will be taking money out for taxes, for personal/family use (mostly paying bills), for office supplies, and for reinvestment in the business (poker books, a second monitor, or whatever).
All of this will eventually be divided into live and online play, and run through two checking accounts, and possibly through two savings accounts, to set aside the funds for income taxes. I'm not sure how all this will shake out as far as income tax liability, so until I get a feel for that it's best that I set aside too much for taxes rather than too little.
Every time think about this, it gets a little more complicated.
At the very least, at some point soon I'm going to have to sit down and devote at least 5 hours to figuring out how I want to approach this, and how it's going to all evolve.
For now, I don't have any business accounts, I don't have two bankrolls, I'm not playing live, and I'm not making enough to have to set aside any for taxes. But considering that last year I had a $381 net tournament cash, and a $250 net live cash, I need to start thinking about this now. When I start cashing like that on a semi-regular basis, I'm going to make a real mess if I don't have a system in place to handle it.
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
6/2/2010--May 2010 results
Beginning bankroll, $151.45
Ending bankroll, $193.34
+$41.89
I was breakeven most of the month. I had a good week the last full week of the month, as detailed in my previous post. I also had a couple decent days on the 30th and 31st, so overall, a very nice month.
Using strict bankroll management, I am bankrolled for tournaments up to $3.30. PokerStars tournaments are usually "raked" for around 10%, that is, given a tournament entry fee of $3.30, $3 goes into the prize pool and $0.30 goes to PokerStars.
I'm not too far away from being bankrolled for $4 tournaments, which will give me another good option. There are $4.40 (bankroll requirement $237.60), 180-man tournaments that will be a good option for me when I don't have the time to play for hours as a time. Setting aside 6+ hours to play a tournament with thousands of people has been a real challenge.
But these 180-man tournament are long enough, with a big enough prize pool, to have a lot of the characteristics of an MTT. The prize pool is $720, 18 places are paid, and first place is $218.
Overall it was a good month, but there are always things to be worked on that will make this venture more successful.
Ending bankroll, $193.34
+$41.89
I was breakeven most of the month. I had a good week the last full week of the month, as detailed in my previous post. I also had a couple decent days on the 30th and 31st, so overall, a very nice month.
Using strict bankroll management, I am bankrolled for tournaments up to $3.30. PokerStars tournaments are usually "raked" for around 10%, that is, given a tournament entry fee of $3.30, $3 goes into the prize pool and $0.30 goes to PokerStars.
I'm not too far away from being bankrolled for $4 tournaments, which will give me another good option. There are $4.40 (bankroll requirement $237.60), 180-man tournaments that will be a good option for me when I don't have the time to play for hours as a time. Setting aside 6+ hours to play a tournament with thousands of people has been a real challenge.
But these 180-man tournament are long enough, with a big enough prize pool, to have a lot of the characteristics of an MTT. The prize pool is $720, 18 places are paid, and first place is $218.
Overall it was a good month, but there are always things to be worked on that will make this venture more successful.
Tuesday, June 1, 2010
6/1/2010--Results, week of 5/23-5/29
HOURS:
Admin 0.50
Study 2.00
Playing 19.75
TOTAL HOURS, 22.25
PROFIT NUMBERS
Bankroll, beginning of week, $136.23
Bankroll, end of week, $170.90
PROFIT, $34.67
I'll deal with the bad part first. I'm not at all happy with my 22-hour work week. I certainly had an excuse--a medical issue in the family. Even so, I've had several weeks in a row where I haven't worked at it for even 40 hours, and that's just not acceptable.
There are poker players who make a lot of money playing part-time, college students in particular. But I'm not there yet. The first step is to build a bankroll, and mine is not yet big enough to win significant amounts of money, which means I am not winning enough to take any out of my bankroll.
A +$35 week is a big step in the right direction, but I can't let up. I have to hit this hard until I have enough of a bankroll to have a little breathing room. I look at my work week something like this:
Any week where I get 40 total poker hours is an OK week.
Any week where I get at least 40 play hours is a good week.
Any week where I play for at least 40 hours, and log 60 total hours, is a great week--and that should be my goal every week.
I look at it this way. I'm basically an entrepreneur trying to get my small business off the ground. Like anyone starting a small business, I should expect to put in a lot of hours to make the business successful.
Now, to the good news of the week. A $35 profit is great news. I finally got through my long breakeven stretch. I knew that mathematically, the statistical variance of that breakeven stretch was bound to end sooner or later. And a 25% increase in my bankroll is huge--I would be wealthy pretty quickly if I could keep that up!
The other reason that this is exciting is that my recently developed Simplified Mixed Game Bankroll Strategy (more details in a future post) allows me to move up $1 in tournament level every time I add a little over $50 to my bankroll. For example, if I am bankrolled to play no higher than $3 tournaments, adding just over $50 to my bankroll keeps my mathematical risk of ruin very low when moving up to $4 tournaments (with their proportionally larger prize pools).
So, even though I'm not happy with my hours, a $35 boost to my bankroll certainly makes this an overall successful week. I'll just have to see if I can get more hours in, and make even more money, this week.
Admin 0.50
Study 2.00
Playing 19.75
TOTAL HOURS, 22.25
PROFIT NUMBERS
Bankroll, beginning of week, $136.23
Bankroll, end of week, $170.90
PROFIT, $34.67
I'll deal with the bad part first. I'm not at all happy with my 22-hour work week. I certainly had an excuse--a medical issue in the family. Even so, I've had several weeks in a row where I haven't worked at it for even 40 hours, and that's just not acceptable.
There are poker players who make a lot of money playing part-time, college students in particular. But I'm not there yet. The first step is to build a bankroll, and mine is not yet big enough to win significant amounts of money, which means I am not winning enough to take any out of my bankroll.
A +$35 week is a big step in the right direction, but I can't let up. I have to hit this hard until I have enough of a bankroll to have a little breathing room. I look at my work week something like this:
Any week where I get 40 total poker hours is an OK week.
Any week where I get at least 40 play hours is a good week.
Any week where I play for at least 40 hours, and log 60 total hours, is a great week--and that should be my goal every week.
I look at it this way. I'm basically an entrepreneur trying to get my small business off the ground. Like anyone starting a small business, I should expect to put in a lot of hours to make the business successful.
Now, to the good news of the week. A $35 profit is great news. I finally got through my long breakeven stretch. I knew that mathematically, the statistical variance of that breakeven stretch was bound to end sooner or later. And a 25% increase in my bankroll is huge--I would be wealthy pretty quickly if I could keep that up!
The other reason that this is exciting is that my recently developed Simplified Mixed Game Bankroll Strategy (more details in a future post) allows me to move up $1 in tournament level every time I add a little over $50 to my bankroll. For example, if I am bankrolled to play no higher than $3 tournaments, adding just over $50 to my bankroll keeps my mathematical risk of ruin very low when moving up to $4 tournaments (with their proportionally larger prize pools).
So, even though I'm not happy with my hours, a $35 boost to my bankroll certainly makes this an overall successful week. I'll just have to see if I can get more hours in, and make even more money, this week.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
5/26/2010--A good day
Yesterday was a good day. It seems like I've been stuck between about $135 and $150 forever, but I've finally broken through.
I've switched my focus a little bit. My mother recently had sugery, which has complicated my schedule. Instead of doing what I usually do in such cases, which is to fit in as many small tournament as time allows, I've been playing larger fields, from 90 players to a few thousand, even if I only get in as few as one or two a day. I haven't posted in a while, and I need to be more dilligent--my wife and my father read this thing, even in no one else does.
Yesterday I got some decent work in. with five tournaments: one just after midnight, one in the afternoon, and three between about 9 P.M. and midnight. I cashed in 3. Here are the results.
Entry fees, $10.50
Cashes, $28.95
Total bankroll, $162.85.
I also got 1/2 hour of study time in.
I'm really going to try to post at least every other day, and I'm also going to start doing complete weekly and monthly summaries, including how much I won and how I spent my time.
I've switched my focus a little bit. My mother recently had sugery, which has complicated my schedule. Instead of doing what I usually do in such cases, which is to fit in as many small tournament as time allows, I've been playing larger fields, from 90 players to a few thousand, even if I only get in as few as one or two a day. I haven't posted in a while, and I need to be more dilligent--my wife and my father read this thing, even in no one else does.
Yesterday I got some decent work in. with five tournaments: one just after midnight, one in the afternoon, and three between about 9 P.M. and midnight. I cashed in 3. Here are the results.
Entry fees, $10.50
Cashes, $28.95
Total bankroll, $162.85.
I also got 1/2 hour of study time in.
I'm really going to try to post at least every other day, and I'm also going to start doing complete weekly and monthly summaries, including how much I won and how I spent my time.
Monday, May 17, 2010
#28, 5/17/2010--They still don't get it.
My son just called. He said that he is going to bring back the lawnmower that he borrowed. I told him that I'm glad he called, because I'm just about to play some poker, but that I'll wait until after he drops the mower off. He said that I could go ahead and play, because he won't be over for about 20 minutes.
Seriously? Just when I think that at least those close to me are understand my poker playing, I get something like that? My son not only knows that I play only tournaments--we sat at the same table at a live tournament a few months ago. So how can he think that I can play for 20 minutes and then stop?
I don't expect a casual acquaintance to understand this, but my son, who plays live once in a while, still doesn't get it? Disappointing, to say the least.
There have been way too many times where I have been "frozen" like this. I am ready to play poker, and then I get put on hold because someone, usually a family member, does something like this--keeping me waiting much longer than the specified time.
For anyone other than our parents, I'm going to have to stop answering the phone when I'm playing, or ready to play.
Seriously? Just when I think that at least those close to me are understand my poker playing, I get something like that? My son not only knows that I play only tournaments--we sat at the same table at a live tournament a few months ago. So how can he think that I can play for 20 minutes and then stop?
I don't expect a casual acquaintance to understand this, but my son, who plays live once in a while, still doesn't get it? Disappointing, to say the least.
There have been way too many times where I have been "frozen" like this. I am ready to play poker, and then I get put on hold because someone, usually a family member, does something like this--keeping me waiting much longer than the specified time.
For anyone other than our parents, I'm going to have to stop answering the phone when I'm playing, or ready to play.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
#27, 5/13/2010--A new poker book
I've recently been going through the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide: Tournament Edition, edited by Michael Craig, with chapters by Andy Block, Richard Brodie, Chris Ferguson, Ted Forrest, Rafe Furst, Phil Gordon, David Grey, Howard Lederer, Mike Matusow, Huckleberry Seed, Keith Sexton, and Gavin Smith. All of the authors are very succesful poker pros, and some are very highly educated. For example, Chris Ferguson has a Ph.D. in computer science with an emphasis on artificial intelligence.
What's particularly interesting about this book is that each author tackles a different subject, such as bet sizing, playing with a big stack ["stack" refers to how many chips you have in front of you], or playing with a small stack. The kicker is that the authors often disagree on how to approach a particular problem.
For that reason, I would never recommend this book to a beginner. It's not that the concepts are too advanced, it's more that at the level at which these guys play, poker is both an art and a science. For someone just learning the basics of how, when, and whether to make a raise, this would be way too confusing.
The chapter that helped me the most is No Limit Hold 'em: Play Before the Flop by Andy Bloch. He talks about starting hand systems, and he details the starting hands that he uses, backed up by twelve pages of tables and charts of starting hand values in different situations.
This has helped me in at least two ways:
1. I am weak as far as being able to change gears, that is, change my playing style to keep my opponents off-balance. Bloch's basic system is to play a lot more hands than I do (more than twice as many), so I've been trying it out, with the book open next to me when I play online. The point isn't to learn to do it exactly as Block does. The point is to get out of my comfort zone, play more hands than I'm used to, see how it feels, and figure out what I can take from it to improve my game.
2. It reminded me how much work I still have to do on my fundamentals, especially the dreaded m-word--memorization.
I have commited the math of many common poker situations to memory. For example, I know that the odds of hitting a flush draw with one card to come are 4.11:1. That is, if my hand is 2 diamonds, and there are two diamonds on the board (the community cards), that means the final community card (the river) has to be a diamond for me to make my hand. That will happen 1 out of every 5.11 times, in other words, the odds against me hitting my diamond are 4.11 to 1.
So, knowing that I, can look at the bet I have to make to stay in the hand, and if I'm not getting 4.11 to 1 odds (that is, if the amount of money in the pot is not more than 4 times what I have to bet), I have to fold. Over the long-term, it's a mathematical loser. Knowing the odds for or against you is pretty basic, and it's hard to be a winning poker player if you don't.
But, if you want to get better, there are always more fundamentals to learn. Consider a young musician that thinks he has it down because he can play "the scale". Then he finds out that scales come in different keys, and that there are different types of scales to memorize, such as major, harmonic and melodic minor, modal (7 of those), and pentatonic. The same idea holds true in poker. As you get better, there are more and more fundamentals that you have to learn.
It's the same thing in poker. Remember the phrase from earlier in this post: " . . . backed up by twelve pages of tables and charts of starting hand values in different situations"? So, do I really need to memorize all that? Well, that depends, because the answer to that question is another question--How good do I want to be?
On the twoplustwo.com poker forums, I have often seen threads opened with a question such as, Do I have to . . . ? or How important is it to . . . ? The most common is, Do I have to understand math to play poker?
My response is that if you start a question with "Do I have to . . ", then you probably don't have the right attitude to be a really good player.
Do I absolutely need to memorize all the charts and graps in this book to be a decent, even good, poker player? No. But when I do memorize them, that's an edge that I'll have against every player at my table that hasn't done the work. I'll close this post with excerpts from the last paragraph before Bloch's six page of tables of tables, Hands by Position--Ante Tournament, followed by Hands by Position--No-Ante Tournament:
"Having these numbers gives you a starting point for all your pre-flop decisions. Your instincts and ability to read the table are important, but now you don't have to make decisions in a vacuum . . . The rankings and percentages of playable hands give you exact answers when you don't have opponent-specific information."
What's particularly interesting about this book is that each author tackles a different subject, such as bet sizing, playing with a big stack ["stack" refers to how many chips you have in front of you], or playing with a small stack. The kicker is that the authors often disagree on how to approach a particular problem.
For that reason, I would never recommend this book to a beginner. It's not that the concepts are too advanced, it's more that at the level at which these guys play, poker is both an art and a science. For someone just learning the basics of how, when, and whether to make a raise, this would be way too confusing.
The chapter that helped me the most is No Limit Hold 'em: Play Before the Flop by Andy Bloch. He talks about starting hand systems, and he details the starting hands that he uses, backed up by twelve pages of tables and charts of starting hand values in different situations.
This has helped me in at least two ways:
1. I am weak as far as being able to change gears, that is, change my playing style to keep my opponents off-balance. Bloch's basic system is to play a lot more hands than I do (more than twice as many), so I've been trying it out, with the book open next to me when I play online. The point isn't to learn to do it exactly as Block does. The point is to get out of my comfort zone, play more hands than I'm used to, see how it feels, and figure out what I can take from it to improve my game.
2. It reminded me how much work I still have to do on my fundamentals, especially the dreaded m-word--memorization.
I have commited the math of many common poker situations to memory. For example, I know that the odds of hitting a flush draw with one card to come are 4.11:1. That is, if my hand is 2 diamonds, and there are two diamonds on the board (the community cards), that means the final community card (the river) has to be a diamond for me to make my hand. That will happen 1 out of every 5.11 times, in other words, the odds against me hitting my diamond are 4.11 to 1.
So, knowing that I, can look at the bet I have to make to stay in the hand, and if I'm not getting 4.11 to 1 odds (that is, if the amount of money in the pot is not more than 4 times what I have to bet), I have to fold. Over the long-term, it's a mathematical loser. Knowing the odds for or against you is pretty basic, and it's hard to be a winning poker player if you don't.
But, if you want to get better, there are always more fundamentals to learn. Consider a young musician that thinks he has it down because he can play "the scale". Then he finds out that scales come in different keys, and that there are different types of scales to memorize, such as major, harmonic and melodic minor, modal (7 of those), and pentatonic. The same idea holds true in poker. As you get better, there are more and more fundamentals that you have to learn.
It's the same thing in poker. Remember the phrase from earlier in this post: " . . . backed up by twelve pages of tables and charts of starting hand values in different situations"? So, do I really need to memorize all that? Well, that depends, because the answer to that question is another question--How good do I want to be?
On the twoplustwo.com poker forums, I have often seen threads opened with a question such as, Do I have to . . . ? or How important is it to . . . ? The most common is, Do I have to understand math to play poker?
My response is that if you start a question with "Do I have to . . ", then you probably don't have the right attitude to be a really good player.
Do I absolutely need to memorize all the charts and graps in this book to be a decent, even good, poker player? No. But when I do memorize them, that's an edge that I'll have against every player at my table that hasn't done the work. I'll close this post with excerpts from the last paragraph before Bloch's six page of tables of tables, Hands by Position--Ante Tournament, followed by Hands by Position--No-Ante Tournament:
"Having these numbers gives you a starting point for all your pre-flop decisions. Your instincts and ability to read the table are important, but now you don't have to make decisions in a vacuum . . . The rankings and percentages of playable hands give you exact answers when you don't have opponent-specific information."
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