How to Create a Poker Calendar for the Year (Travels, Goals, Bankroll)
Understand how to set out your poker calendar and schedule for the year in this blog post. You need to make a poker schedule that takes into consideration five things:
- Your travel expenses.
- Buy-ins.
- Poker goals.
- Nankroll.
- EV of each event.
Here's a five-step checklist to create your poker calendar.
Step 1: Make a Big Goal for Yourself.
- Make sure your aim is both motivating and achievable.
- It is just exactly in that sweet spot where it is thrilling enough to compel you to act but realistic enough to feel plausible. That is exactly what you are after.
- The likelihood of achieving your goal improves.
- You will be able to better prepare financially and comprehend the hazards involved as a result of this.
- Estimate critical parameters such as his return on investment, variance, probability of losing, win rate, and, ultimately, the likelihood that he would win using a 'Poker Variance Calculator.'
- Knowing the figures allows you to plan for the future, determine how much money you can make per hour, and determine whether poker is a realistic full-time or side-hustle choice.
- Unfortunately, I have seen far too many players, even those who are skilled, fail to achieve because they lack a strong basis on which to grow.
- It is like having magnificent artwork but living in a bamboo house. This is an important step. If you want to avoid a headache, read on.
Step 2: Make a Travel Plan.
- Make your poker calendar and itinerary for the year after you have a clear goal and a greater grasp of the hazards involved.
- Gather everything in one place using a simple excel spreadsheet.
- Add anything you like or think you would like to do to the list.
- Later, you will have time to amend your list.
- To obtain the year's schedules, start by checking major event websites such as the India Online Poker Championship, WSOP, WPT, and EPT, as well as news publications.
Pro Tip: Not all tournaments will be featured for all events. Use the schedule from the prior year as a guide to help you plan what you'll do this year.
Step 3: Establish a Bankroll
- Add a new column in the same spreadsheet to record the buy-in per event and the expenses you will incur for each trip.
- Keep the buy-ins and expenses separate so you can better assess:
- Costs.
- Risk/Reward.
- The overall return on investment.
- It does not have to be elaborate; in fact, the less complicated the better.
Step 4: Go Over Your List Again.
- Once you have written down all of the trips for your poker calendar and timetable, as well as the total bankroll required, the sum of your buy-ins, and projected expenses, go back through your list and eliminate the lowest value events, which are often the bottom 20%.
- Anything that will cost you much more in expenses and accommodation, will be a low-value event.
- You are seeking places where you can play several events as well as cash games on the side.
- Those are the high-value events you should concentrate your efforts on.
- It is important to remember that numbers and worth are not everything.
- It is not recommended to play cash games and tournaments at the same time because it is best to focus on one, you can arrive a few days early, grind some cash games, and then switch to tournaments for the remainder of your trip. Alternately, when you are done with tournaments, do the opposite.
Step 5: Separate your funds physically
- When planning your poker calendar and timetable, keep in mind that it is crucial to approach it like a business, and all businesses demand some level of investment.
- The money you invest may originate totally from you, but it should always be kept separate from your finances if done appropriately.
- This is especially critical in poker, where the stakes are so high.
- Furthermore, the costs are certain, implying that you will have a 'burn rate,' or running costs.
- Simply segregate your finances by opening a separate checking account dedicated solely to poker.
- Begin a savings account for expenses and get a separate credit card for it, one that rewards of course.
- You could go a step further and open two checking accounts, one for tournament money and the other for cash games, but this is not required.
- Just make sure you do not play any real poker until you have physically transferred that money to a bank account you would not touch again.
These were the five steps of making a poker calendar.
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