The school night problem

With a new job under my belt and a huge workload in the final weeks of my old job, my poker playing habits have to be adjusted somewhat. In some ways I worked for an ideal company for a poker player as starting times were pretty flexible and this meant that if I went deep in a tournament resulting in a late night, this was (usually) okay. The new job is an earlier start, thus essentially curtailing my tournament play on school nights.

Working out what I could play going forward on weekdays proved difficult...

During the first few days of the new job, I tried playing various format games which were quick-in-time, but higher-in-variance than I would normally like. This didn't end well, with coin-flip after coin-flip going against me. It's one thing talking about getting your money in 'good', but even a situation where you will win 70% of the time isn't much consolation when you fall into the 30% failure bracket time and time again. I lost count of the number of times I would raise on the button with KA of spades, get called by the big blind and see a flop like KK7 with two clubs, bet out and get called, turn would come a 2 of diamonds, I'd fire another barrel and get re-raised all-in, only for my opponent to turn over two clubs, drawing to a club on the river for the flush - which seemed to *always* turn up. I don't want to turn this into a bad-beat story because I know that ALL poker players have been here time and time again. My main point is that if you play faster format games with higher variance, you are entrusting way too much to luck for my liking.

I'm also guilty of starting games I am in no position to finish. Just because there is a juicy overlay on a tournament starting at 10pm doesn't mean you have to play it! I've started these things and been really focused, only to start anxiously looking at my watch at midnight when I realise that I am still 300 places off a min-cash, and probably several more hours off any substantial win. This noticeably affects decision making, and I've lost count of the times I've called an all-in and said to myself 'What the hell - I need to go to bed anyway'. No way to spend (lose) money.

My best results by a country mile have happened in the early hours of Saturday and Sunday morning. The reason for this is simple - I have no distractions, time to be patient and no pressing reason to be up at the crack of dawn the next day. I can play a patient game, where I limit risk and try to exploit opportunities. So, for this reason, if I play an MTT of any significance, it will be weekends only from now on. During the week I may play STTs (perhaps Steps) where I can focus for the hour or so they take, or perhaps some smaller-field MTTs.

I just feel that playing when you are not completely focused is not just negative EV, but frankly stupid - unless you are playing for entertainment value alone (which I'm not!).

So - for the foreseeable future at least, I plan on playing sensible - max of two tables in order to focus, kill the browser window, ensure I have enough spare time to complete what I register to play and if I go out on a bad beat then hey.

Call me boring.....