Rethinking My Tournament Options

In my previous post I said that I keep, and regularly update, a list of tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker that are worth playing.  Something about that list has been bothering me for a while, and one day after showing my list on this blog, I changed my mind.  I took off the tournaments that start at 0429, 0559 and 0759.

That really cuts down my choices.  I'm down to six options now, and only one of them runs every day of the week. When I play later tonight (Tuesday, 4/11.)  three of my six remaining options won't be running, so I'm down to three:: tournaments starting at 2019, 2214 and 2329.

Thee are some obvious problems with that list:

1. They are all in the evening, with nothing available if I want to play in the morning or afternoon.

2. There are separated by just enough time to make playing two tables more difficult.  Though they are all grouped together in the evening, there is a gap of more than an hour between the starts of the first two and between the starts of the last two.  Even if I play all three of those on Tuesday nights, I will only have the chance to be playing two at once a very small percentage of the time.

3. When I cash and the field is small, that doesn't do much to increase my bankroll..  If I spend two hours playing a tournament, even if I win the amount won't be significant.  13 players don't generate much of a prize pool.

4. I'm not a good short-table player (except that I'm a very good final table player..) I can't expect to win a lot when tables are almost always short, and I might even lose a little bit.  If I break even playing the small tournaments that isn't good enough.  I need to regularly add to my bankroll, and any time spent playing a tournament where that won't happen is wasted time.

High variance is deadly for bankroll building.  I'm not trying to win a bunch of money right now.  I'm steadily grinding up a bankroll to put me in a great position in 2018.  When you have a big bankroll and are playing to win, high variance is part of the deal.

Having a bankroll and building a bankroll are very different.  I'm building a bankroll so that I have more choices of what to play, and so I can play the large-field tournaments where all the big money is, buy with very high variance, because variance doesn't matter nearly as much with a cushion of more than 100 buy-ins.  This is all about 2018.

Dumping the early morning tournaments was the right thing to do.  A side benefit.is that I'll have more time to study.  I'm been slacking on that.  With  fewer tournaments to play there is no excuse for not studying more.

As always, your comments are welcome.

Tournament Analysis Matters

One local player doesn't care much about the details of a tournament. He insists that if you have an edge, that is, if you are one of the best players in that tournament,  that's all that matters if you want to make a profit.  Having an edge is certainly important, but it's far from the only thing that matters.  So what matters?.  As always, the answer to almost any poker question is, "it depends."


Here are some of the things that I consider important:

Don't play while impaired (you are tired, drunk, high, or had a fight with your spouse an hour ago.)

Play within your bankroll--If your bankroll is $100 and you're playing a $10 tournament you're making a big mistake.

Limit your distractions.--When you're not in a hand, will you be reading your text messages or watching the other players?  If your phone is just too tempting, put it in your car during the next break.

Opportunity cost--Is this the best use of your time or could you be doing something more important? If you're missing your kid's band concert for the third straight time you're probably in the wrong place.

Be prepared for live tournament conditions--The room might be too hot or too cold, especially if you're sitting next to a door.  Some casinos are infamous for having a cold poker room.  If you have to deal with that for 6 hours it's a big distraction.  I always have both a light sweater or jacket and a heavier one in my bag.  I'm ready for anything.

Tournament analysis--This matters a great deal to me.


For now I'm playing only online and on only one site (Juicy Stakes Poker.)  It's a low-traffic site without a lot of tournaments that work well for the way I play, so I'm very serious about what poker players call "tournament selection."

I have a list of tournaments typed up under the title, Best Available Tournaments.  As I scout or play more tournaments, I make some decisions.  As mentioned in earlier posts, my first project for this year was to play on a site where I had $34 parked and, using only that money, grind that bankroll up to at least $500.  I'm currently at $180.

Starting with just $34, I needed to keep the buy-ins as low as possible.  I also wanted to play the tournaments that best matched my playing style.  There was no room for mistakes.

When I first made my tournament list, I could find only three tournaments worth playing.  As I played more, studied more tournaments and had more money to work with I was able to expand that list.  I learned a lot, including some things I had not considered. I'll give some examples.

I started by playing only $1 tournaments, most of which had very few players, sometimes less than 20. With so few players, it was hard to find. tournaments that had a big enough prize pool to be of much help to my bankroll, so I started looking for those.  As I played and analyzed more tournaments, I found more options.  I also found some things that I didn't expect.:

The worthwhile tournaments, both in the early morning and late at night, are bunched fairly close together.  That means that I can plan my sleep to be awake during one or both of those blocks of tiome.  It also allows me to do some multitabling, which is something that  I didn't expect on a low traffic site.

Here are those tournament times::

0429
0529
0759
2019
2214
2314
2329

Any two tournaments an hour or less apart are good targets for playing two tables, especially the last two on the above list.  So far I have only played two tables when the tournaments at 2214 and 2314 overlapped, because they are my two favorite tournaments, but I will soon try other combinations as well.

My list does more than show the tournament times. I've also broken it down to show things that I like or don't like about each tournament, as well as other information.  To give me an even better visual, I used bold black to note the best aspects of that tournament and bold red to not the worst.  When I sit down for a poker session I can easily understand what my options for are for that day.

I like tournaments with late registration, because more players = a bigger prize pool.  I also like low buy-in and tables with at least nine players.  I like lots of time to play before the blinds go up.

I don't like bounty tournaments because I would like all of the money in the main prize pool, so that first place will be a larger cash

You will see as you look at that list that there is only one tournament that doesn't have any red, which means that it fits very well with the things that I look for.  The rest are a mixture of good and bad.

Below is the list that I'll see when I play later today (it's 0256 as I type this).  As always, your comments are welcome,

Juicy Stakes Poker-- Best Available Tournaments as of 4/6/2017

Tournaments Available on 4/8

0429

0759

2019

2214

2314

0429 (every day) $1.10/8 minute blind levels/6-max/re-entry/60 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips

0529 (Mo/Sat) $20 GTD 6-max/re-entry/$1.10/8 minute blind levels/60 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips.

0759 (every day) $50 guaranteed bounty/$3.30/re-entry/6-max/2,000 starting chips/8 minutes per blind level/80 minutes late registration.

NOTE: When I scouted this tournament it finished with a total of only 13 players, short tables all the way of course.

2019 (every day) $100 GTD Bounty/$2.20 with $1 to prize pool and $1 to bounty/60 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips/8 minute blind levels.

2214 (Su/Tu/We/Th/Fr/Sa) JS/$100 GTD JUST ONE DOLLAR/$1.10/30 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips/15 minute blind levels.

NOTE: The field size of this tournament is remarkably consistent. The last 3 that I have played, all on weekdays, had 64, 64 and 73  (on Friday night) players. I have not noted Saturday numbers but I assume that the fields will be a bit bigger.

2314 (Sa) $200 GTD/$3.30/2,000 starting chips/15 minute blind levels/30 minutes late registration.

2314 (Tu/Fr) $100 GTD BIG BOUNTY/$2.20 with $1 to prize pool and $1 to bounty/30 minutes late registration/2,000 starting chips/15 minute blind levels.

Note: This tournament usually has at least 100 players on Friday.

2329 (every day)/$50 GTD Big Bounty/$3.30 with $1 to prize pool and $2 to bounties/60 minutes late registration/8 minute blind levels/2,000 starting chips.

NOTE: I played this one for the first time on Thursday 3/16. Tournament started with one short table but filled up after a few hands. There were 18 players (3 cashing spots) so tables were short during most of the tournament.

2017 First Quarter Results and my Plan for the Year

Here are the first quarter numbers

January     +$35.70
February    +$40.77
March        +$17.70
                     ---------
                     +$87.17

That's not much for three months work, but building a bankroll from the ground up takes some time. You play $1 tournaments until your bankroll is big enough to play $3 tournaments which you play until your bankroll is big enough to play $5 tournaments . . . well, you get the idea.  When I first started this in January I had to be very careful with the small amount that I had on Juicy Stakes poker. The offerings on that sight are so meager that when I made a list of the tournaments that I thought that  I could play without putting my bankroll at risk, there were only three.  Now there are nine tournaments on that list..

I am executing a one-year plan. I knew that the start would be slow, but now that I have a few dollars to work with I can execute that plan:

1.  I will keep growing the bankroll and not take anything out until I have $500 in my Juicy Stakes account.

2. As my bankroll grows I can safely play higher denomination tournaments, growing my bankroll more quickly.  Keep in mind that it's not a matter of having to choose between $1 or $10 tournaments. Someone bankrolled to play $10 tournaments can still play at $3 or $5 if, for example, the $10 tournaments are not running at convenient times that day.

3. I'm now two-tabling (playing two tournaments simultaneously.)  That' gives me more options.  For example, if there are two tournaments that start just an hour apart, I don't have to decide which one to play.  I can choose to play both, as I did on April 1..  Clearly, when I'm playing two tournaments at a time, I can make money more quickly than I did in the first quarter.

4. Once I have $500 on Juicy Stakes, I will make a withdrawal of $250, which is the minimum that I can take out.  Some of that will go into my Americas Cardroom account so that I don't have to build that one up from scratch.

Americas Cardroom has a lot more tournament choices, running at all different times of the day and night, where Juicy Stakes is almost a total blank between 0800 and 2000.  More times that I can play, again, means more options.  Also, Americas Cardroom has a minimum withdrawal of just $100, which will be much more convenient.

Poker income is irregular and I don't really know how long it will take to build my bankroll up to $500.  It could take 6 more months, or 12 more.  One year starting from nothing is ambitious, but I am convinced that I can get it done in 2017.

March 2017 Summary and Results

I have said many times that I probably don't have as many numbers in this blog as some people would like.  In fact, one of the first things people want to know when they meet a professional poker player is some variation of "How much do you make?"  That upsets a lot players and I understand that some are private about those things.  After all, as several male players have stated, "No one would ask my wife how much she makes."

Most people either greatly overestimate or greatly underestimate how much poker players make.  A lot of people hear "poker player" and they think "broke degenerate gambler." At the other extreme, people see poker on TV, with a big pile of hundred dollar bills on the table for the winner to claim, and they think that every pro is a millionaire.

When I was getting a new pair of glasses, I told one of the workers, who knew that I was a poker player, that I once played a $3 online tournament and won "three hundred eighty-four." She asked, "thousand?"

Everyone wants to know how much.  I don't like to get on here and post how much I won or lost in one day or one week unless something unusual happens, because it doesn't really matter.  Too many poker players obsess over what happens in a day or a week or a month.  It doesn't matter, just as losing one game in a 162-game baseball season doesn't matter very much.   Poker, like baseball, has winning and losing streaks. I focus and plan to make money over the course of a year. In my next post, which will cover my results for the first quarter of 2017, I will dig into that topic.

Without further ado, the numbers.  All numbers are net cashes, amount won minus the entry fee, unless stated otherwise.

March 2017 Online Poker Tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker
tournaments played: 51
net cashes, 14 for a profit of $81.60
net losses, 37 for a net loss of 63.90
month profit or loss, +$17.70

That's not much of a profit and it's less than the two previous months, but with three straight winning months I've steadily increased my online bankrol.  That's all that matters.  Again, I'll have more to say about the long-term view in my next post.  For now I'll just say that I had about $30 sitting on Juicy Stakes Poker for two years, and this year I decided to concentrate on building an online bankroll.  It's now more than five times what it was in January, which gives me a lot more flexibility in my tournament choices.

One more thing.  I've said before that making money in poker isn't about cashing often, it's about getting a few big cashes.  Look at the numbers above and you will see that I only cashed in 14 of 51 tournaments.  More than 1/4 of that net profit came from just one tournament on March 26.

It was a bounty tournament,  That's a tournament where part of that prize pool consists of bounties. In this case, I could get a $1 bounty for each player I knocked out.  I'm not usually good at picking up bounties because I concentrate on making the final table and getting a big chunk of the general prize pool, where most of the money is--but this time, everything fell into place.

The entry fee was $2.20 and there were 66 players.  I picked up a lot of chips early and I was in the top 10 in the tournament except for just a few hands.  I even picked up 2 bounties along the way, the first time I've done that in a long time.  My chip stack didn't keep pace with some of the other players as we got deeper into the tournament, but I limped into the final table in 9th place out of 10.

I'm usually pretty good at moving up a few spots once I make it to the final table, but I did a lot more than that this time.  I tore through the table very quickly, knocking out three players, until we were heads-up.  I was the small stack.

Four hands later it was over. I won the tournament.

The first place prize was $21.45.  Add five bounties and it's $26.25.  Subtract the $2.20 entry fee and my tournament profit was $24.25.

My profit for the month was only $17.70, so added to a few cashes of between $5 and $10, that tournament made the difference in March. You keep plugging away, knowing that most of the time you're not going to cash, and you just keep playing until you get those few big cashes that make the difference.  That's exactly how tournament poker is supposed to work.

I hope that you enjoyed all the numbers.  You comments and questions are always welcome.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly in Two Days

March 26 and March 27 were certainly interesting poker days.

I'm not making money nearly as fast as I need to, so I decided that it was time to work on playing multiple tables on Juicy Stakes poker.  March 26th was a train wreck.

I knew that it would take me a little time to get comfortable with two tables, but it was a lot harder than I expected. Things were happening faster, but more important, it was an information overload.  I watch  nine different statistics for each player on my HUD (heads-up display.)  I pan to add another statistic to track sometime soon.  Some players track a lot more stats than I do.  There is a  link to an example of a poker HUD display is at the bottom of this post.

The trouble was that I wasn't adding 1 new stat for each player, as I plan to do sometime soon., I was adding 9 statistics for each of 9 new players,which comes to 81 more numbers for me to sort through. That sorting has to be done quickly.  Once it's my turn I have 25 seconds to act.

When I added the second table (9 more players) I had to scan the stats of 19 players instead of 9. That's a lot of extra information to add to the other things I have to think about at the table.  I crashed and burned at both tables, getting knocked out of two tournaments pretty quickly.

I didn't make huge errors, just a lot of small ones.  For example, I missed that someone's stack had become small enough that he was in all-in or fold mode, which affected how I should have reacted to that player.  That particular situation didn't cost me a lot of chips, but a lot of small errors added up to big trouble, and soon it was over.  I failed to cash twice, in the only two tournaments that I play which can draw over 100 players (more players equals a bigger prize pool.) I was down for the month with just a few days to go..  I had hoped to string together a few winning months, but March was in trouble.

I turned all that around in less than two hours.

On March 27th I played a bounty tournament.  The idea is that there is a prize pool, but each player also has a bounty on himself.  In this case, I could get a $1 bounty for each player that I knocked out.

I don't consider myself to be a good bounty tournament player.  I am so focused on making it to the final table and getting a big cash that it's hard for me to get excited about picking up an extra dollar or two in bounties-but hat night, everything came together.

It was a $2.20 tournament.  I jumped out to a big chip lead after 15 minutes and I was somewhere in the top ten for the rest of the tournament.  I made it to the final table as one of the smallest stacks but that didn't last long  I knocked out 3 players at the final table and I won the tournament.  First place paid $21.45,  I also knocked out 3 players at the final table ( I had knocked out 2 earlier) giving me a total of 5 bounties, adding $5 to my winnings.

I'm now up $17.45 for March.  That's not a lot compared to January or February, but it gets me closer to my bankroll goals.  Once I get comfortable with playing two tables, things should move a lot faster.

One more thing.  In an earlier post I said that I started with $34 on the site, then ran it  up to $100 in early February.  I said then that the next goal was to have $150 on the site.  My Juicy Stakes Poker bankroll is now.$158.62.

Now that my Schedule C poker business is better capitalized, I have more leeway in my tournament choices as well as with other business decisions..  Add to that the extra profit that I will make once I'm comfortable playing two tables and things should start moving faster very soon.

---------------

https://www.google.com/search?q=holdem+Manager+HUD&safe=off&rlz=1C1CAFA_enUS667US674&espv=2&tbm=isch&source=lnms&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi2-ezy-PXSAhVK6IMKHfUxC6cQ_AUIBigB&biw=1920&bih=974#imgrc=gaPvAjc8tpzuAM

Tournament Analysis

There is one thing that I have in common with two-time World Poker Tour Player of the Year Jonathan Little..  We both analyze everything.  I told my wife recently that I was "ruthlessly analytical."   She said, "I know" and shook her head.  She once asked me, "Do you always have to analyze everything?"  The answer is yes.  That's how I'm wired.

When I am deciding what to play, I analyze every tournament.  There are just some of the things that I consider:

How large is a typical prize pool?
How much does it cost to play?
Can I make it fit into my schedule?
How long would it take to play it out and win?
How quickly do the blinds and antes go up?
How strong is the field?

A lot of the top pros play all over the world.  Jonathan Little looks at at it a little differently. I love his logical and analytical take on poker travel.  From Poker News Daily, March 14, 2017:

I don’t like going overseas. Whenever you go, you lose a day. I don’t like giving away days. There’s enough going on in America that I don’t need to go overseas. Everything is more expensive and you don’t get to sleep in your own bed. If I go over there, it’ll be for a longer period of time.

February Results and Tournament Selection

In January my online play was +$35.70.  Frebruary was a little better at +$40.70.

It's good that I'm winning, but winning at that rate isn't going to get the job done.  For at least a few months I'll be playing only online and only on one site, Juicy Stakes poker.  The players pools are very soft and I should be able to win consistently, but I really need to start winning at least $50 a month, and there are reasons for that.

I'm depending on building a bankroll on one site and, when I have enough money on that site, cashing out some of that money for things that I need for poker.  The biggest need is to get back on Americas Cardroom.  I need that second site.  And I will have to get up to at least $500 on Juicy States to make that work, because their minimum withdrawal is $250.  I need to have two viable sites.

In 2017 I have my own office and I can devote a lot of time to online play.  This year I have played 55 tournaments on Juicy Stakes Poker.  The main feature of their tournaments is that the fields are very soft and very small.

Since the fields are small, the cashes will be also.  Earlier today I played for about 1.25 hours and played a tournament that had only eight players and three cashing spots ( took third place.)  Once I figured that out, I decided a couple weeks ago that since some of those very small tournaments finished as quickly as 1.5 hours, the best approach was to play as many of those two-hour tournaments as I could so that I could make money faster.

I cam up with a list of eight tournaments that were worth playing, but it turns out that there are some problems with that list.  The starting times are as follows:

0429
0759
2019
2214
2314
2329

There are two problems with that list.   The first is that I included tournaments with a buy-in of $3.30 or less.  That was a huge error.  How many times have I written in this blog that I need 100 buy-ins for the level where I'm playing?  With a bankroll of $130, I have no business investing 2.5% of my bankroll in one tournament.  Most of the tournaments where I didn't cash in February were $3.30, which wiped out a lot of my February cashes playing $1 or $2.

$2 is pushing it, but as soft as the fields are I think that I can get away with it.  I don't have a lot of choices and I have to play regularly.  I can live with a buy-in being 1.6% of my bankroll while I keep grinding it up.

Cutting out the $3.30s leaves me with a big problem, because three of the six cost that much.  That leaves me with three tournaments to choose from every day.  I really can only play two of them in a 24-hour period..

If I take the $3.30s off my list, that leaves me with tournaments starting at:

0749
2019
2214

In my most recent session I played the 2214  followed by the 0749.  That's a pretty big gap but I don't like to start at 2019,because that is one of the longest tournaments and it sometimes is still going when my favorite tournament starts at 2314.  My sleep schedule can get pretty scrambled but I usually can fix that with a nap before my next tournament.

I wish that I could come up with a way to make things happen faster, but I have to be patient and do it the right way.





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