A bad start to the day.

I woke up just before 8 A.M. today, which is earlier than usual.  I had left the computer on overnight, so I checked to see if there was a decent MTT in my price range.

There was, an 8 A.M. $5.50 entry with a $150 guarantee.  That's not much of a prize pool, and I was barely awake, but since I didn't play at all yesterday (an all-study day), I decided to take a shot.  I entered at 8:02, and at 8:15 I was in second place.  Then it happened.

I was dealt aces, someone raised preflop, I reraised, he 3-bet, and it was obvious that villian had a big hand (or though he did.)  All the chips were going in one way or another, so I shoved, he called and showed kings.  He flopped a third king, and I was out after playing for 22 minutes.

I know that my aces have 82% equity in that spot (meaning that I can expect to lose about 18% of the time) and I'm not one of those players who throws his mouse against the wall (there are players that claim to have broken several of them) when I get a bad beat.  And there wasn't a lot of money on the line, as first prize in a $150 guarantee would be around $37.  Still, it wasn't exactly a great way to start the day.

It's a good day when I get some hours in

I"m very happy with what I did yesterday.  The results weren't spectacular.  I ended the night about even, at -$1.35.  What I'm happy with are my hours.

I went to church in the morning, and in the afternoon I watched Fox News Sunday and the Detriot Lions football game.  It was a great game, with the Lions scoring the winning touchdown with 20 seconds left in the game.

I felt guilty about doing all that.  I skipped both Fox News Sunday and the football game last week.  But once I got started with poker, I was on a roll.  Right after the football game (4 P.M.) I looked at the available tournaments. SNGs were dead, as is often the case, but a $5.50 MTT had just started.  After that I just kept going (everything is rounded to the nearest quarter hour):

1600-1715   $5.50 MTT, 61 of 112, no cash
1715-1930   Administrative time: Data entry, bankroll reconciliation, blog.)
1930-1945  Study: Flash cards (odds and outs to hit the turn.)
1945-2000   Break (I don't count breaks toward my total hours.)  
2000-2245   $5.50 tournament, 91 of 785, net cash of $2.74.
2245-2300   Break
2300-0115   $3.30 MTT, mincashed, 11 of 64, net cash of $1.41.

I didn't get started until late afternoon, and I got 8.75 hours in.  I am very, very happy with that.  If I work all 7 days (which I almost always do) I have to average just under six hours per day to get to 40 for the week.  This week, I got  a nice headstart.

Results for October 21-27

Poker Profit or Loss
$1.20   tournaments
  0.71   rakeback
  1.00   bonus
-------
$2.91   TOTAL PROFIT

Another breakeven week--not much else to say.  I was about even both in SNGs and in the few MTTs that I played.  My bankroll has been hovering arond $100 for a week or so. At the end of the week it was $97.46.


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Work Hours
20.25   tournaments
  8.50   study
  1.50   administrative
-------
30.25  TOTAL HOURS


I felt lost last week.  Using strict bankroll management, there really aren't many MTTs that I can play.  Between midnight and 4 P.M. there are none.  What SNGs there are take a long time to fill up, sometimes half an hour or more.  As I write this it's 6:44 P.M.  I was knocked out of the 4 P.M. MTT, now I'm filling time until the next one, which starts at 8 P.M.  After I finish this, it's time for flash cards--what fun!

I see two options:

1. Go back to waking up at noon (or later) every day.
2. Do all of my study and admin work in the morning.

I could study while I wait for a SNG to fill up.  The problem there is that I don't want to get deeply involved in a study topic when I don't know whether I will be playing in 5 minutes or 35.  Also, having a large block of study-only time would be a major challenge to my feeble attention span, but it's something I might try.

I am naturally a night person, and poker is a nights-and-weekends game.  Doing all of my studying in the morning is not an ideal solution.  When I play my favorite tournament, which goes off at 8 P.M. twice a week, I will be playing well past midnight when I go deep.

I"m starting to think that I will never be in control of my time to the extent that I thought I would.  I'm not one of those 18-year olds with no responsibilities who can play 100 SNGs a day, grinding a bankroll in his parent's basement.  I keep getting mad at myself for not getting in 40+ hours, and my wife always says something like: You couldn't help it because event A happened, then we had to go to location B to do something, etc.

Yesterday I was watching a video made by a $150-an-hour poker coach (I got his advice free during a 30-day free trial of a coaching site.)  He opined that the most important things for a tournament player are first, good bankroll management, and second, volume (getting in as many tournaments as possible.)  He referred to putting in volume as "outrunning variance."  I like that term--it's clever, descriptive, and mathematically accurate.

I'm much more diciplined and organized than in the bad old days before my ADD was diagnosed, though I can still do much better.  I'm spending a lot more time on study.  Every month I feel like I'm a better player than the month before.  The only area where I'm not making any progress is volume.  One way or another, I need to make it happen.

My longest MTT this year

I just played what I think was my longest MTT this year.  It started yesterday at 8 P.M., and I was knocked out, getting third place, today at 12:56 A.M.  I cashed for $46.44.  It was good to go that deep, but not very exciting.  I know that I'm a threat to take down a micro (under $10) tournament any time I enter, and I'm disappointed when I don't get first place.  I don't get excited about final tables any more--I expect to make it that far more often than not.

I have been sticking to my bankroll management plan of mostly playing SNGs.  The above tournament was the only MTT that I entered yesterday.  It's ironic that now that I'm not concentrating on MTTs, I'm doing quite well when I do play.

Results for week of 10/14-10/20

I'm racing the thunderstorms which are on the way as I write this.  I got a couple SNGs in today, now I'll try to finish this entry before I have to unplug the computer.

I was already more than a week behind in my recordkeeping when my computer went down, so I didn't do entries for the week of  9/30-10/6 or 10/7-10/13, but I was down almost $100 for those two weeks.  I'll list everything in my monthly post.

Variance works both ways, especially over very short time periods like a week, and I was up $70.25 for the week, which put me in the black for the month.  It's been a while since I've been a SNG specialist, and the progression of the blinds and antes is much slower than it was on PokerStars or Juicy Stakes Poker.  I think I've adjusted now, and I should do a pretty good job of beating up the SNGs from now on.

Poker Profit or Loss
$69.56   tournaments
    0.69   rakeback
    0.00   bonus
---------
$70.25   PROFIT

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For those of you who aren't regular readers, I keep track of things, like my work hours, that a lot of you probably don't care about--but it's very important to me.  I have ADD, and I have a great ability to procrastinate, get distracted, or just plain goof off.  For that reason I monitor my hours just like I'm punching a time clock.  It keeps me from lying to myself about how hard I'm working at this, and putting it out there for my readers give me another reason to document that I'm getting my hours in.

This week I didn't do so well with the hours, but part of the week I didn't have my computer, and there was a lot of other stuff going on, including an out-of-town wedding, so I don't feel too bad about the week  What is encouraging is that I got my priorities right, and I didn't do nothing but play poker, at the expense of studying, when I got my computer back.

My priorities are in the order that I list them:  playing poker first, studying a close second, and after that, whatever administrative hours I need to keep myself and my records straight.

Work Hours
10.25   tournaments
  9.50   study
  5.25   administrative
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25.00

A Surprise Win

I said in my previous post that I was going to cut out the MTTs for a while and play a bunch of SNGs to lower my variance.  Yesterday afternoon I was the second player to enter a $2 SNG.  Two more players quickly joined (it takes nine), then nothing happened.  It went back down to two players.  It would get up to three or four again, then someone would get tired of waiting and drop out.  After about 20 minutes of this, I noticed that it was almost 4 P.M. and that a $5 MTT with a fairly weak field was about to go off.

Since there was no SNG action I decided to give it a shot, one last fling with the MTTs.  This was a Thursday, and I was hoping that there would be more SNG traffic on the weekend.  88 players entered, and 3 hours and 45 minutes later I won it, for a cash of $77.  Since I had a little money to work with, I decided to enter another small $5 MTT at 10 P.M., and I got 11th of 88 for a small cash.

To make a long story short, three days ago my bankroll was under $20.  After 4 straight cashes (the two MTTs plus a first and a second in SNGs), it's now $98.

It's nice to be back from the dead, but I'm still going to have to be very careful with my bankroll.  There are some tournaments with great sturctures that cost around $10 to enter, but I have to be realistic and stay away from those for a while.  In general, my tournament selection strategy will still be to play the two big weekly $5 MTTs along with a bunch of SNGs.  If my bankroll keeps going up, I might throw in one of the smaller MTTs every once in a while, just to keep in practice and apply what I'm studying.

Change in tournament selection strategy

I finally got my computer back.  It's nice to be playing again.

I rethought my tournament selection strategy (again) and I shouldn't be playing most of the available, MTTs, given my small bankroll.  I'm going to play a lot of SNGs for a while, mostly at $1.50, to slowly but surely grind up my bankroll.

There is one MTT that I'm going to keep playing.  I will still be playing the $5.50  8 P.M. MTTs with 500 or more players whenever I can.  They go off twice a week with guaranted prize pools of $2,500 and $3,500.

You might be wondering why I'm concentrating on such big fields, since larger fields mean more variance, which is what I'm trying to avoid  There are two things that make these tournaments always worth playing.

First, the fields are very soft.  The play is bad enough that, in my opinion, my positive expectation more than makes up for the variance that goes with larger fields.  Big prize polls attract fish hoping to get lucky.  Compared to 100-player tournaments at the same level, the players in the $2,500 and $3,500 guaranteed tournaments are really bad.

Second, it really isn't that hard to cash.  Sure, there are a lot more players, but Americas Cardroom MTTs generally pay 20% of the field, whether it is a 100-player tournament with 20 cashing, or an 1,000-player tournament with 200 cashing.

So, that's the plan.  Catch up on my recordkeeping, lots of studying, lots of SNGs, and play the two big tournaments.  There will be a lot of $1 to $5 net cashes from the SNGs, which isn't very sexy.  I just played one for $1.50, took second, and won $4.05. But it's within my bankroll, I can play several in a day, and sooner or later I'll play one of those big tournaments and get a big cash, which will move things along nicely.