Last week was horrible as far as poker volume was concerned, which is ironic considering the post I wrote on May 4th about discipline. I ended up playing just two days of poker … pretty disappointing.
As far as I can see, it appears that there are two reactions to having a good week. Some players get really motivated and want to make even more money as soon as possible, so they’re eager to grind again. Other players feel like they’ve done a good job and therefore they can take it easy for a bit.
I guess I fall into the second category. Even though the previous week wasn’t exceptional, it was still a solid winning week. I think I am guilty of subconsciously taking it easy because I know I had a good week. It’s almost like I’m thinking, “This next week doesn’t matter much because I already won money last week.
This is obviously a terrible attitude to have, even if it is subconscious. I'm going to work very hard to avoid this reaction in the future.
On a related topic (sort of), I recently had a conversation with a lady that runs her own business doing hair and makeup. I told her what I do for a living, and I was really surprised when she said, “You must have weeks where you have tons of money and then other weeks where you have to eat just mac and cheese.”
We then proceeded to talk about the importance of managing money. Just because you make a bunch of money one day, it doesn’t mean you can go on a big shopping spree the next day. If you do that every time you have a big score, you really will be eating mac and cheese a few months down the road once you go on a downswing.
She understood all this because the nature of her work has her making most of her money during the wedding season. She makes piles of money in the summer and then sometimes goes days in the winter without any income. In this way, grinding MTTs is like running your own business. You never know when the next big score is coming, so you have to plan ahead and save just in case it doesn’t come for a while.
Anyway, here are the (small) numbers from last week:
# MTTs: 54
Average buy-in: $37.53 (bigger than usual because one of the days I played was a Sunday)
Hours: 15.5
Net result: +$191.73
I won a 180 tournament, which is why I squeaked out a small profit. And speaking of 180s, PokerStars (once again) shows how much they listen to their players. Since I last wrote, they have fixed both the structure and the buy-ins of their 180 tournaments. I should have known that I had nothing to worry about :)
Until next week, good luck at the tables!
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