So I've been playing poker almost 6 years now and I probably spend 95% of my time playing tournaments varying from 45 & 90 man turbos to larger MTTs. Based mostly on my ability to commit time to play I generally focus on the turbos. And while I have a good shove-botting game and have had success in these tournaments, I don't actually prefer to play them...especially the 45 man turbos on Stars. There is no real concept of post-flop play and even your pre-flop play is mostly all-in or fold. The 90-mans on Full Tilt have a lot more room to play and I prefer those; but toward the end there still aren't enough chips in play to really "play" poker without committing your stack.
The reason I'm even bringing this up is that I started reading an interesting book yesterday called "Treat Your Poker Like Your Business". Basically, this book talks about how if you are going to play poker for money (and not just purely recreation), then you need to treat your time and your bankroll as pieces of inventory...or assets that you are investing. I started reading it last night and flew threw about 75 pages in about 1 1/2 hours.
Now up until recently, I was a recreational player who has had some good success and only focused on growing my bankroll so that I could eventually make significant enough cashouts to do fun things with my family, etc. When I started my business, I withdrew everything except $250 on Stars and started back from scratch. I was able to build that back to about $11.5k. I've mentioned in recent blog posts that we have encountered some bills and my wife came up way to tackle it without having to withdraw my bankroll again. For our insurance, which is a little over $700/month, we set it up to auto-draft out of the ING account where I keep my bankroll reserves. This is a great plan! BUT, that also means that I have now shifted from "recreational player" to "semi-professional player".
So that's pretty cool. I get to say I'm a semi-pro poker player. Well guess what? That also means I'm on a timeline to make money. I am now accountable for a certain amount of volume each month and ultimately need to make, at minimum, $700+ each month just to keep my bankroll in tact. Of course right when we make this decision, I start running horribly. It comes with poker, but now I have the added pressure of getting results.
At first I was becoming tilted and last night I was tested again, playing 7 tournaments without a cash. I pushed through the pain and while I was a little annoyed at the end, it prompted me to download the book I mentioned above. After reading through the first 75 pages, I have a renewed sense of perspective on some things (including variance) and I am actually excited to take on the challenge of grinding each month. The question now becomes, do I continue to play tournaments or do I switch to cash games?
I really enjoy tournaments and have gravitated toward them for a reason. However, my priorities have shifted for now and I need to do what is best for my "poker business". I know that I only have a limited amount of time to play each week and I need to maximize my output during the times that I play in order to ensure my bills are being met. My original plan was to look at the ROI at each tournament type and put in the volume required to at least profit $700 each month. I am currently doing that and unfortunately started off going backwards. I don't necessarily want to abandon the plan now because when variance swings back the other way, I want to reap the benefits. But I guess that's not the best way to look at things. Variance doesn't know what games I'm playing and I can easily go through 10 more tournaments without a cash. I could start playing cash games and hit a hot streak too and make it up just as quick.
I feel like I'm rambling now and I need to come to a conclusion. It all goes back to what my goal for playing is. My primary goal right now is to make consistent money each month. Tournament swings are going to be more dramatic on average than cash games, thus I would need to put in more tournament volume than cash games within a fixed period of time. My time is also limited because I can only play at night, so I can only put in a fixed amount of hours each month. Because of the need to make a consistent amount of money in a fixed period of time, it only makes sense to focus on cash games. Either way, I need to pick one so that I can focus my time and attention on the mental muscles it takes to be successful at that game. I can throw in a tournament or two here and there to keep those muscles warm, but my focus needs to be on cash now.
The only thing I'm a little worried about is that the majority of my training and experience has been in tournaments. There are obviously similarities, but there are also big differences as well. I also need to deal with the emotional aspect of playing with "real money". The last time I was experimenting with playing 6-max cash, I had a $700 loss one night and it freaked me out. My heart was beating through my chest. But I really like the idea of playing multi-street poker and honing my reads. I also could just be nervous because I will be going outside of my comfort zone. I will just have to go through a bit of a learning curve and an adjustment in the beginning and deal with any losses that occur because of it.
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