Friday, August 13, 2010

Time(Roll) Management

Hey again blog, I've been thinking what to write about the past week since I've been grinding it out this week and I thought about Time(Roll) Management. When you think about bankroll management, you have to have enough money to support the limits you are playing at anytime. It determines weather or not you are able to move up or down in the stakes. What I have come up with Time(Roll) Management is you have to have enough time to be able to play enough poker while having enough time to maintain a life outside of poker. It also determines how much time you want to dedicate to poker based around your life circumstances. I think its a perfect fit while I pursuit SNE. It's a way to balance you as a person, a poker player, a family man, a student, etc. If you take poker serious to any degree even part time or full time, you really need to manage your time properly and that is in every aspect of life. It's something I have been trying to work on the past year and until this day still find it tough to do.

So how do you manage time around playing poker? This is really tough for me as all of you know. I literally spend 6-8 hours a day trying to put in volume playing as many hands I can while working on building my bankroll and supporting my family. I also have to spend time working on my game, weather it be reviewing my sessions, going over hand histories, watching a training video, posting in poker forums, writing in this blog, or just talking about the game in itself. I also work part time in the evenings which takes up anywhere between 12-24 hours a week. Have enough time to spend with my family, try to have time to do little things to help out, and have enough time to spend with my wife.

Right now I feel is most important in my poker career is being able to build my bankroll up and this is where it involves time. Lately this month and pretty much throughout the past few months my wins have resulted in shorter sessions and losses result in longer sessions. It's been a real problem for me that I have really been improving on. My volume has increased but no where near the potential I think I'm capable of. The thing in the past is I have been pretty much break even over the course of 4 months and volume was never an issue. Since I've had more success than note over the 2 months, I have to say that my time management has been a bit tougher since I have to try and make up some time here and there over the day or week since when I have winning sessions, I tend to take more breaks which maybe longer or quitting for the day. My friend pretty much staked me for a session so I can put in more volume after I had a +7 buy-in session over 2600 hands. Unfortunately that same day he staked me, I put in 3500 hands and managed to lose him -3 BI's.

As you can see, its a battle. What I realized about pursuing SNE is really pursuing yourself. Life isn't all about poker and I think to some who pursue SNE, they get really stressed or give up because it's just too much work. You need to find a balance and chasing SNE is no different. Some days I grind a lot, if feels like a walk in the park and some days feel like it's never going to end. The later part of that is what I need to work on. I need to get over winners tilt. I need to work on more volume, build my bankroll, and work on my Time(Roll) Management.

Something more or less for me to think about and hopefully help anyone out who reads this.

Good Luck on your journey!!

Jeff

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