Change of Pace

I recently reviewed the number of games I've played so far in my online poker odyssey and it appears that I've breached the 700 games mark this April. Broken down by site, they are roughly as follows

Pokerroom = 300++ games
Full Tilt = 300++ games
Poker.com = 70++ games

This is in approximately 9 months of playing. So If I divide the number of games by the number of days I've been playing. This averages out to about 3 games per day.

Heheh. Ngyek. I know. I need to play more games. I read in the blog of manila grind that he was planning 800 games for this month alone. So if I plan to catch up to him, I need to bust my ass. ;)

The thing is, I do not have time to play more than my current rate because of my job and family.
Well, unless I resign my job and become the next poker pro. But this is just a pipe dream that will never happen unless I win the WSOP or something equivalent. =)

So having said this. I decided to do some ABC Analysis between MTTs and SNGs. And the results are quite surprising. It actually should have been obvious from the start but I have not really been paying attention.

It seems that aproximately 90 percent of my net profit so far has come from MTTs. While only 10% came from SNG playing. The thing is, out of the 700 games played so far. I think I've participated in less than 30 MTTs. All the rest have been SNGs.

Now this data could be skewed by the big ITM in the grand tourney, but recent results show otherwise. I've been monitoring my MTT playing these past two months and it appears that I at least have a good ITM in every one of three or four tourneys I join.

So what does this tell me. Quite simple really, play more MTTs. Or more accurately, play less SNGs and transfer the limited time I have to MTTs. It seems that my style may be more suitable to medium sized MTTs. Efficiency wise, at least.

The facts say it all. 5% of the games I've played contributed 90% of the profit. Some of you may say that we cannot do a direct comparison as an MTT takes longer than an SNG so it eats up more resources. So converting it to number of hours spent assuming an average MTT takes 3 hours. So that's 30 MTTs x 3 hours each = 90 hours. Compare this to maybe 670 SNGs x 45 minutes each = 502 hours.

So another way to look at it. 90 hours of the time I spent playing poker contributed 90% of the profit. While the other 502 hours contributed only 10%.

Obvious diba that I should allocate more time to MTTs. The main problem that I see is that MTTs require a block of time, 3 hours at least. And in normal nights, I do not have this. At most, I have 1 to 2 hours of playing time. Just right for 2 to 3 SNGs.

So aside from Sundays and holidays (I also have work on Saturday), I really cannot play the normal tourneys that abound. So there lies my dilemma.

Heheh .. oh well. Let's see na lang what happens. I'm sure I can figure out a way to make use of this analysis/realization to my advantage.