Another change in my situation.

I have talked about how I got myself in my current situation, which makes it very difficult to play poker (see posts on February 26 and June 20.) Now there is a new development, which once again leaves me in an awkward situation.

As mentioned in earlier posts, there are four of us who are directly involved in my mother's care. Two of us, my sister-in-law and I, are live-in caregivers who split up the week, staying there full-time three to four days a week. My wife and my brother-in-law have full-time jobs which require them to be there at regular times, and when they are not working they do other takes like home maintenance, playing her bills, and handing her medical issues.

That was the setup, which I made the mistake of agreeing to, putting poker on hold.  The four of us would work at this until my mother-in-law died or someone in our group of four just couldn't do it any more.

Well, someone has cracked, and that family member found a replacement from outside the family (some of us were not involved in that decision) to be her on-call substutute.   She has been offered to me as a subsitute as well.  I know next to nothing about this person, and I have never communicated with her in any way.

So, now my situation is even weirder.  When I committed to this arrangement, I knew that I was 100 percent in.  Once I take something on, I don't quit.  I had one job where I worked lots of overtime and sometimes all three shifts in a week, and I missed only three scheduled work days in 12 years.  I knew there was no way I was going to be the one to pull the plug on the arrangement to take care of my mother-in-law, I would keep going until someone else quit.

So what do I do now?  I made a commitment to be with my mother-in-law on all of my scheduled days.  I don't feel right about asking a sub to take some of those days--and, since this person was sprung on me, I don't even know how much she is willing or able to do (she is 75.)  If I do all of my scheduled days (taking away from my real job, poker) am I doing the right thing, or am I a sucker?

What a mess.  This weekend I was going to so something I rarely am able to do--play live poker tournaments two days in a row.  I didn't play today.  I was too tired.  I won't waste a $50 buy-in if I'm too tired to play.

I will play tomorrow.  I hope.

Chess players, poker players and drug dealers

In a 2+2 forum post about chess vs. poker, the discussion was about things like which was harder, whether a great poker could be a great chess player and vice-versa, and which skills were needed for each game.

One person said that whether your occupation is chess player, poker player or drug dealer, you have to study and work hard to be successful at your profession.  That got me thinking about what would happen if a drug dealer thought like a poker player:

Studying is fine, but it has to be applied:

If I make a drug sale on the corner, I get x dollars, but if I go to jail, I will not only lose the ability to make money, it will cost me money in fines, legal fees, etc. I estimate the chance that I will be arrested for any one transaction at about 0.5%, so . . .

How am I doing this?

I said in a recent post that I'm good at analyzing my strengths and weakness.  What's happened in the past week is giving me pause.

My caregiver duty schedule was changed, at the request of my sister-in-law, who is the other primary caregiver for my mother-in-law.  She wanted to do something with some friends, and the days she wanted me to cover lined up perfectly for me able to play poker every day of the week (I wound up missing one day.)

The continuity of playing almost every day helped me a lot.  It's hard to stay focused and have my mind in the right place when I'm constantly jumping in and out of poker mode.  There are weeks where I'm not even home for more than three days, and one of them is often lost to catching up on my sleep.

The other factor that makes it tough for me to stay in poker mode is the difference in caregiving and poker schedules.  As a caregiver, I have to be up in the morning to make breakfast.  As a poker player, I want to sleep so that I'm ready for tournaments that start at 6 P.M. and sometimes go past midnight.

The thing that I'm confused by is how well I'm doing.  In the live tournaments that I've played in the last week, I had a $310 cash ($230 net after expenses) and two tournaments where I missed cashing by one or two spots.  I made the final table almost every time.

I know that I'm getting better, this isn't just short-term variance.  People regard me differently.  I'm getting a lot more respect, and even a little fear from time to time.  But it doesn't make sense.

I know the background of some of the regulars that I play against in my main poker room.  One worked with a poker coach/backer every day for a year.  The coach was paid with a percentage of her winnings.  Other players have played on the Heartland Poker Tour, or gone to Chicago to play a big tournament there.'

I don't have any of those advantages.  I've never played at a high level, or satellited into a major tournament.  I haven't played in a casino, and given the combination of the nearest casino that deals poker being 100 miles away, my caregiver duty and my wife and I sharing one car, that's not going to change soon.

The other problem I have is that, to put it simply, the top players in my local room know things that I don't.  They can look at two hands and know, within half a percent, what the chances are that each hand will win the pot.  Some of them can read tells well.  I could list about 10 things that those people can do, but I can't.

I've read enough poker books to know what all those thing are, and that I have to learn them.  I also know myself well enough to know that I learn best in very small chuncks.  When I watch for tells, I pick one person to watch.  I can't handle more than that because I'm just starting to get good at keeping track of the pot size as the hand evolves.  Keeping track of the pot size is the one thing that I've really concentrated on in my last 10 or 15 tournaments, and I'm getting pretty good at it.

That's fine as far as it goes, but I've only been working on keeping track of the pot size, to the exclusion of almost all else.  But now I'll be back to 3-4 tournaments a month, and most of the things I need to learn will be put on hold, probably until sometime in 2016.

So here I am, trying to make something out of poker.  I know less than a lot of the good players. I have less experience, I play less often.  I don't study as much.  I'm not a big winner.  I'm old (half of the top players in the world are under 30.)

Yet, I'm getting better.  I just don't know why or how, and that bothers me.

My tournament schedule, blown up again

I try to play a live tournament once a week.  I can't play this week, because the other caregiver got sick and I was called in to cover two extra days.  The way that the schedule was going, I knew there was a good chance that I wouldn't get a chance to play this week in any case.

Next week my wife is going out of the country, I'm only scheduled as a caregiver for two days, so I've been counting on playing at least twice.  One of those poker days just got knocked out.

My wife leaves on Tuesday.  I will be driving her to the airport, which is out-of-town but near the a poker room in another city where I was going to play.  Then I got a call from my state National Guard headquarters, offering to help me expedite the paperwork for my military retirement pay, which I am scheduled to receive starting in September.

He made me an offer I couldn't refuse, but it complicates poker once again.  On Monday I will be on my fourth day of caregiver duty, which is always tiring and messes my poker schedule up.  The more consecutive days that I'm on duty, the more tired I am..  I usually need a day to catch up on my sleep before I try to play.

My plan was to sleep late before I took my wife to the airport for her afternoon flight.  Now I have a morning appointment with the sergeant, my wife has to be at the airport in the afternoon, and I have to be register by 1600 to get a seat for the tournament at 1800. Not much chance there to grab some extra sleep.

I thought I was all set.  My time was my own, I had the car.  What could go wrong?

This.is is the recurring problem about which I can do nothing.  When I'm not on caregiver duty there are things at home that don't get done.  After I get my day to catch up on my sleep, the few days that I'm home often get jammed full of things that have to be taken care of at the expense of poker, which is supposed to be my job.  The sergeant is going to be in my part of the state.  Given my schedule, I don't know when I would get that opportunity again.  I had no choice but to say yes.

I have referred to this by the title of a very good book, The Tyranny of the Urgent.  The idea is that we let so many things become urgent that we don't deal with what's important.  That's what's happening to me, over and over.  The appointment with the sergeant is urgent, because I don't know when he'll be in the this part of the state again when I'm free to meet him.  My job is important, and it loses again.

Computer programming has a word for cycles like this..  A poorly written program can cause a computer to run the same routine over and over. It's called an "infinite loop."  It feels like I'm one now.

Multiplication tables

I cashed in my last live tournament.  It was a small cash (about two buy-ins) but it's better then not cashing.

One of my strengths is that I'm very good at honestly analyzing my play.  I know that when I sit down for a live tournament, there are areas where I'm very weak, such as reading tells.  There are other areas where I'm always one of the best players at the table, especially at final tables or any other time that blinds are high.

There is one area where I need to improve. I've never seen it mentioned in any poker book, or on any forum or coaching site, but I know what needs to be done. I need to work on my multiplication tables.

Poker requires doing a lot of math at the table. I've been working on keeping track of the pot size.  If I'm in a pot with four other players, that's a lot of betting.  With betting and raising on multiple streets, someone could put money in the pot 10 or more times during a hand. I have to keep a running total going in my head.  That's a lot of addition.

Many players, including me, often bet in fractions of the pot size.  My standard bet in many situations is 1/2 of the pot. I can't make that bet unless I know how much is in the pot.  I'm always doing addition at the table, and I'm much better at keeping track of the pot size than I was a couple months ago.

When blinds are high, everything changes.  At high blinds, half of the pot might be a significant portion of my stack, so I need to use a different metric. How much of my stack I'm willing to commit matters a lot more than the percentage of the pot.  That's where multiplication comes in.

I need to know my M, the number of orbits that I can play before I run out of chips.  For example, if the blinds and antes total 20,000 and my stack size is 200,000, my M is 10 and I need to be looking for a good spot to shove.  I will shove with an M as high as 30 in some circumstances, but with an M or 10 or less a shove is often the only option.)

Keeping track of my M is as important as keeping track of the pot size.  If I know my multiplication tables into the twenties and beyond things get a lot easier.  If I have 16,000 chips, the blinds and antes total 275,000 and I know my multiplication tables, I know that 16 X 17 = 272,  My M is 17, no math required.

I'm with my mother-in-law now.  Studying or working on anything is very difficult here.  I can lose my train of thought very easily.  Remember, because I have ADD and am easily distractable my ideal study environment is total silence.

This is the second day of a five-day stretch with her and I try to maximize the use of my time while making sure that her needs, including companionship, are taken care of.  Even with half-concentration when we're sitting in the living room together with the TV on, I don't have to worry about losing my place or forgetting what I was doing when I have a flash card in my hand.

Having a profitable year

For purposes of discussion now and in the future, let's define "small cash" as any tournament where I cash for less than five times the buy-in.

Yesterday I placed 4th of 59 for a cash of $115.  That's a pretty interesting number.  If I played 200 tournaments in a year (200 days is considered a standard work year*) my cashes for the year would total $23,000.  That's close to the median national income in the United States, which is just over 26 thousand.

Of course, poker doesn't work that way.  Tournament players fail to cash more often than not, and most of the cashes are small.  A few large cashes are usually most of a tournament player's income.

I thought about all of that for a minute, then I realized something.  $115 was a the gross amount, not the net.  The entry fee for the tournament was $60, which means my profit was only $55.  Oops!

If my average daily profit over a 200-day work year was $55, my annual profit from poker would be $11,000.  That's a nice supplementary income, but not a real income when it's my only job.

I often think about the income issue and what I could reasonably expect to make, even though it could be a while before I can play full-time.  We will probably be moving shortly after my caregiver duties are over.  When everything settles down it could be 2016 before I'm playing full-time.

I looked up the median income number a few months ago when one of the many "How much can I make playing poker?" questions appeared again on the 2+2 poker forums.  I mentioned that $26,000 number and said that there are lot of poker players who will never be famous or be a poker millionaire.  They just play tournaments several days a week or grand cash games for six hours a day and support their families.  Let's not forget study--some of the top pros study for 20 hours a day,  I'll probably be studying about 15 hours a week and playing about 30 hours when I can get back to full-time.

If I am full-time on January 1, 2016, I think it's realistic that I could end the year with a profit of $10,000,  I would like it to be more, but I'm not laying the groundwork to make that happen. I can't be improving a lot playing three live tournaments a month and studying only a few hours a week.

I would expect to make above the median income in 2017--but that would be working more than 300 days, not 200 or less.  I'm trying to get a business off the ground.  Vacations and long weekends off are not part of the plan.

I'm looking forward to the day when I get the "poker isn't a real job" line and I can say "I make more than the median national income."  That will be very satisfying.

*This is of course an oversimplification of the schedule of a tournament player.  A player in a poker room or casino could play more than one tournament in the same day..  A live tournament with thousands of players could take several days to finish.  Threre would probably be online tournaments in the mix, in fact, some online players play 10 or more online tournaments simultaneiously (see the link, below.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnLh_DrQ3Uw

My last three tournaments

In this blog I often write about process.  When you think about it, everything is about the process.  Professional football players practice plays and study film of the other team.  Doctors typically go to school and train until around age 30.

Poker players are no different.  We ready and study poker books.  We subscribe to online poker coaching sites. We bounce ideas and strategies off other players.  A two-time World Poker Tour player of the year answered some of my questions online.

That said, ultimately it's about what happens at the poker table.  I usually schedule one live tournament each wee.  Here's how my last three tournaments came out.  All were $50 tournaments that usually have around 60 players:

Two weeks ago.  I surprised the table by calling raises with some speculative hands, including flopping the nut straight when I called a raise with suited connectors.  I was one of the chip leaders for much of the tournament.  The cards dried up and my stack dwindled at the end, but I still made it to the final table.  After playing from 1800-0045 I cashed for $300.

One week ago.  The switch from the schedule with my mother-in-law where I get up with her every morning, to a poker schedule where I try to stay up late and sleep in late before I play a tournament that could go past midnight, didn't work.  An hour before the tournament I decided that I was too tired to play and I stayed home.  I'm not going to waste a buy-in when I'm too tired to play well.

Yesterday.  Instead of the usual 55-60 players, there were only 25.  I didn't get many good cards, and my play wasn't horrible, but not my best.  I made the final table, going out in sixth place, but since there were fewer players than usual (and therefore a much smaller prize pool) only the top three got paid.  I went out in fifth place, again playing until after midnight, but didn't cash.

Those are the ups and down of a poker player.  Most full-time players would just play another tournament (or more than one) the next day, either live or online.  As I can't play full-time for now, the times that I don't cash are a little more painful.  I have to wait a week or more for another chance.