The Final Stretch (2011)

Thank god November is over. I have never been so happy to press the refresh button on holdem manager once 12:00 came around. (I have it filtered by month). A combination of playing bad, running bad, not tabling selecting, playing long sessions, and having zero life balance left me with an ugly profit for the month.

To look, or not to look?

The first couple weeks I was doing something that I would like to further discuss- I wasn't looking at my results at all. Not during or after my session. Finally I thought I better look because I had a hunch it was not going to be pretty, and I was right. Actually I have never gone on that big of a downswing in that short of a time.

It was relaxing and minimized stress about playing. Which can be great, especially when your a rakeback pro playing for vpps. But unfortunately, for me, I think I need that motivation to play well. If I check how I'm doing during a session and I'm losing, it doesn't effect me in a negative way in the way it might affect many others. It sort of motivates me to bring it back/ stop distracting myself with other stuff (which is a huge problem for me), and just bring my 'A' game. Where as when I wasn't looking at the results, I have no reminder of the consequence of what I'm doing and would get sloppy. The whole basis of not looking is to minimize the stress of variance so your always making the best decisions regardless of results. When putting in crazy hours this can be really hard to begin with so personally, I like the reminder that if I don't play well my results with suffer.

For conservative and 'timid' people, I think not looking at your results for a long period of time can really be useful, especially if it causes you to tilt even if you are down only a few buy ins. I can think of a few friends of mine that would really benefit from this. One person in particular: very solid player but the one thing that probably stops him from being very successful is his attitude about money. He would get discouraged, stressed, and tilted if he lost even a couple buy ins. He just couldn't detach him self from the money involved with poker. Instead of poker chips just being chips, they would always be money- bills, items etc.

Being careless with money, or tight with money both have advantages and disadvantages in poker, so it is important to learn where you stand and try to set up your lifestyle in a way that doesn't cause your natural propensity to become a handicap. Being on the far side of either spectrum is never a good thing.

Decemeber Plans

With Novemeber being so disatarous, and the stress of having to earn x amount of vpps in little time, I figured the best way to deal with the stress is to set out a clear plan of how I'm going to achieve SNE. I have no time to spare, so time management is important.

VPP's collected this year: 879,500
VPP's left to earn to achive SNE: 120,500

If a average about 5,000 VPPs a day, that would allow me to hit SNE with about 6 days to spare, so that is the goal. I'm going to need a day or two off before Christmas to shop and get ready to go visit my family for Christmas.

5,000VPPs a day= about 20-21k hands = about 12-13 hours. So here is 'ideal day'. (I plan for 5k hands an hour but sometimes it takes longer.)

8:45: wake up
9:00-12:00: 5k hands, sit out-
12:00-12:15: make breakfast
12:15-3:15: 5k hands
3:15-3:30: lunch
3:30-6:30: 5k hands
6:30-8:00: dinner
8:00- : play until I reach 5,000 vpps.
Shower, bed etc.

I don't have time on my side so it's extremely important that I stick to this schedule, and use every minute wisely. It's actually pretty amazing how productive you can be when you don't waste time.