The Bankroll
We made a handful of poker posts over the past few weeks but none that directly gave a rundown of our bankroll. As documented previously we went from $0-$XXX-$0-$XXX-$0 multiple times now. Our strategy out the gate is working like a charm. It involves no financial risk. The downside: lots of man hours are needed. We have no issue with putting in that work as anything worth doing isn't going to come easy. So where do we stand? Did we break the cycle. Did we finally build that bankroll for jumping into the cash play scene? I'd like to report that I did but that is not the case. A combination of variance smacking me up the head when shot taking plus playing bad afterwards has my "roll" on life support.
Variance doing its thing
What type of variance am I talking. I'm talking losing $250 pots with AA to players who decided to jump in the hand holding 87 UTG. I'm talking getting it all in on the turn while being an 84% favorite for the river to drown my hand. That's the risk of taking shots. Even when you play good variance can hit and because the bankroll can't sustain the hit it can zonk days or weeks of progress. That being said I was aware of that going in. I took on maximum risk for maximum reward. I built rolls like this before. Regardless its time to switch gears. It's time for the slow build instead of the shot taking. I actually decided this some weeks back during my last build up and dip. A series of promos had me weighing the positives and negatives of going for one more attempt at shot taking. Ultimately I decided to go for the fast rise after the slow build one last time. The promo's offered provided a cushion and that cushion falls into our account on March. 1st. Once it lands we will report the outcome.
No emotion just consequence
As stated already multiple times I decided to risk the small rolls for quick gains and thus far it didn't work out. No emotional attachment - just decision making and consequences that I was aware of going in. Emotion has no place in such decisions or outcomes. Note: I do not recommend this route of mine. This experience I'm sharing with you is the normal outcome of shot taking outside of ones bankroll. I feel its important to share this journey truthfully or not at all. I highly recommend bankroll management when grinding the tables. At the very least for someone starting out you should have 50 buy ins for the game you intend on playing. Some will even say 100-250 buy ins. Adjust levels if you go on a slump or heater. I haven't played much in the last week or more. I'm giving myself time to get my mindset out of cash-table mode and back to high volume tournament play mode.
Reviewing and Optimizing
During this downtime I been reviewing my play and optimizing my strategy. I put my stats into AI and had it analyzed. Feedback was overwhelming good for my micro tournament play. But I was specifically advised that I'm jumping between too many formats. In no specific terms I was told to stop my cash play for the time being. I also discovered some big leaks in my end game. Meaning I play micro sats to get into bigger tournaments. Winning phase one/two seem like a breeze. I have extremely high conversion rate in phase ones but once I'm in the final I seem to fumble the win. The final sats that I play are usually worth $109-$320 USD (ticket win). The lower tickets being worth $22-$55 USD. So a significant win considering the phase one sats I play are micro (pennies to enter). Final sats are usually 3-5 tournaments deep.
The leaks:
(1) I'm not fully adjusting my play correctly. I'm taking winnable plays in hyper-turbos and instinctively applying to the slower paced finals. (2) I also sometimes push with standard push hands from the button when I shouldn't be. Standard push hands in regular formats not the format I play. I am currently playing turbos or hyper-turbos that reward top XX the same prize - short stacked in such a format is much different than being short stacked in a regular blind structure tournament. I already knew this but yet I was still miss-calculating when I should be in shove mode so I don't blind out. The (2) second mistake I was making which is compounding into the first (1) boils down to thinking I need more chips.
The Leaks continued....
In such tournaments the chips you have are much more valuable than the chips you can win. This is because you are not playing to win. You are playing to survive. I have made adjustments that should help me win more of these high value tickets. I'm excited to get back at it but will continue with my break from grinding. I'll still play the odd micro tournament here or there if time allows but no full on grinding until SCOOP is here. Even then I'll only be playing the days that my yet to be dropped promo tickets allow and then resetting into a new routine. Bankroll sits at about $20. Which isn't much but plenty to get back to the three digits. That's it for this post. Thanks for visiting. Our very next post we will have a look at Arcade Colony and the assets that come with. Markets are down: what doest that mean for the COLONY token? Tune in to our next post for our take on that and more. See you then :)
