It’s hard. It’s bloody hard. Not hard like my gramps had it, he was a coal miner, but still hard. Keeping all the plates spinning, and knowing when to prioritize which, is certainly a challenge.
If you don’t know me, I’m a mid-stakes professional poker player, ambassador and Twitch Streamer for 888poker. And also, most importantly, a father and a husband.
The husband and father part is top priority of course. And since poker can be played pretty much at any hour of any day I’ve got a fair bit of flexibility when it comes to what hours I work.
There are ways of optimizing your time as a poker player, so I thought I'd share some insight into how I approach that side of my life.
Summer time is study time
My wife, who as well as being the variance-free bread winner, is superb at organising our little triangle family. I then slot in my poker adventures around the family time.
My wife is a teacher, and my daughter is still in school, so come the end of July they both get six weeks off. Poker has a curious quirk in that the prizepools in the summer months trend downwards. People want to be outside enjoying the sunshine, and since poker is very much an indoors activity, fewer people play.
This makes it a good time to prioritize family time over poker volume. I’ll start my grinds a little later than usual in lieu of playing monsters with my daughter or having a longer meal time with them both. Family commitments put aside, the smaller prizepools mean it’s a great time to study a little more and play a little less.
Picking what to study exactly deserves careful consideration.
For me, I’ll be prioritizing my study around PKOs and mixed games during the summer months. That’s because the WSOP will be behind me, and a lot of my volume will be online.
The online schedule nowadays is very weighted towards knockout tournaments, be they mystery bounties or PKOs. The mixed games are something very new to me, but I’ve been enjoying them immensely.
If you take a look at the number of participants year-on-year at the WSOP, there seems to be an upwards trend emerging for the mixed games. They’re a new challenge, a lot of fun and, from my experience so far, are played by a very friendly community of people.
If you’ve never tried them, and feel a little intimidated by them, my best advice would be to just jump in and do it. You’ll meet friendly people who are very happy to help you with the basics, and, if you get good, have another way to make money other than just Texas hold'em.
That is definitely a good thing. It’s a lot easier to win a WSOP bracelet in fields of a few hundred compared to fields of a few thousand. Smaller fields mean less pesky variance!
When to turn up the volume
When summer fades away, and my girls go back to school, I’ll start prioritizing online volume instead of study.
The colder months see people move indoors, and their recreational activities switch back to poker rather than sunbathing. The prizepools start to swell again, so I do my best to play as much as possible. Less study, more volume (and less time playing monsters with Adeline, unfortunately).
This trend will continue until around the spring time, when I’ll be getting excited for two major live festivals, the Irish Poker Open and the WSOP.
The Irish Open has a great variety of mixed games that I’ll enjoy playing, but the vanilla hold‘em on offer at these two festivals will see me taking a lot of time brushing up on my NLH knowledge, specifically non-knockout MTTs, since PKOs and MBs are relatively rare at live poker festivals.
Throughout the year I make sure to attend all of the 888 Live events and stream my online poker grind over on my Twitch channel. The 888 Live stops have a juicy Main Event, usually around the €1,000 price point, and a number of side events throughout the festival.
Our main events usually have between 350 and 450 runners, which are a lot lower variance than the mammoth-sized fields at the WSOP. I do like having both large and medium field sizes in my routine, as lower variance but soft fielded events are great for the bankroll.
You’ll have your own unique life to plan your poker career around; perhaps you have a full time job, or have a greater number of kids or none at all to worry about, but hopefully there’s some tidbits of advice within this article that can help you on your own journey.
Ian Simpson is a UK-based poker pro and an ambassador for 888poker. Watch him play at his Twitch channel.
Additional image courtesy of 888 Live.
