Analyse Schmanalyse

      So this is Christmas,
      and what have you done?
      Another year over,
      and a new one just begun.                  John Lennon

   Although the calendar year hasn't ended yet, my poker year has in fact ended. This is because I divide my playing year into two parts: the "summer season" from December to February, and the "regular season" from March to November. So I consider November 30th to be the last day of my poker year. A good time to look back and assess my progress.
   I don't want to get too bogged down in figures, but here is a basic summary of my year. During this time I have played 70 hours of online tournaments, 88 hours of online fixed limit games and 160 hours of online sitngos, making a total of over 300 hours of poker. These figures are surprising to me. I didn't realise how much of my time was taken up with playing sitngos. I was supposed to be concentrating on fixed limit holdem and tournaments this year, but more than half the time is taken up by sitngos. This is partly because the fixed limit games and tourneys have not always been available to play at a convenient time. I think this is because of the lower player numbers on 888 and also because there are a lot of European players, who are in time zones that are around 8-12 hours behind New Zealand. So if I want to play in the evening, its early morning to them and often sitngos are the only one of those three game types that are available.
   The measure I use for assessing my results is "blinds won or lost per hour".  I use this measure because it makes it easier to compare games with varying buy-ins. For cash games, it's pretty straightforward. For tournaments, I set a nominal blind for each game, which is the average big blind from the last ten cash games I've played. So if the nominal blind is, say 50c, then if I play a $5.50 sitngo and lose, then I've lost 11 blinds. Likewise, if I play in a $3.00 tournament and win $11, then I've won 16 blinds.
   My worst results this year come from multi-table Texas Holdem tournaments. I am currently losing 9 blinds per hour in these games. This is very disappointing, considering that this was the game I was getting the best results with coming into the beginning of the year. Second-best are Texas Holdem single-table sitngos, with a loss of 3 blinds per hour, another game that I had been doing quite well with up until this year. Surprisingly, my best results have come from fixed limit six-max Texas Holdem cash games, with an overall loss rate of 2 blinds per hour. I actually think that I was beginning to get a feel for the fixed limit games, and if I'd been able to get more game time I might even have turned my losses into a small win. Maybe.
   Looking at the hours played for each game type, I'm beginning to think that I might have to change my poker site. If I'm playing my primary game on Wednesday night, then I should be able to clock up at least 120 hours over a 9 month period. I haven't decided which games I'll be playing in the regular season next year, but I'm likely to have similar availability problems if I stay on 888. Despite my paranoia about poker sites since the Fulltilt ponzi scheme collapsed, it looks like I'm going to have to find a bigger site, with a larger variety of available games.
   As for the overall health of my bankroll, it's not doing too well. My overall profit became an overall loss in September, and has stayed in negative territory ever since. Since November 30th last year I've lost nearly half of my original bankroll. This is not good.
   In an earlier post I posed the question, "am I a bad player who just got lucky for a while? or am I a good player on a bad streak?" It's becoming increasingly likely to me that the answer is that I'm not a very good poker player who was enjoying a lucky streak for a while. So, where to from here? Well, to state the obvious, I need to become a good player. Even if I don't have that X factor required to become a really good player, there are always going to be ways of improving my game to some degree. It's just a matter of finding them.
   I've finally got my copy of Super System from the local library and have started reading it. It's an interesting read, but not really of much value to me as a low limit online poker player. The book is clearly aimed at live game players who play at the higher limits. In fact, Doyle Brunson states on several occasions that these principals are intended for use against good players. He says that if you're up against weak players, most of the time you're going to have to beat them by showing down the best hand. I'm beginning to realise that this is a problem shared by most "how to" poker books.
   I've read a few books on poker play, and the problem is that I'm not in their target audience. The advice that they dispense is designed to help players who are up against others who have a reasonable level of skill. They are not aimed at players who are up against a table full of gamblers, calling stations and wannabes playing for milk money. That's not to say that poker guides (in book form or online) have no value. The general principals of correct play are vital, but the way that they are applied is different for these sorts of games. That's the trick. I need to figure out how to apply the principals that I've learned to these low level online games.
   So I will continue reading Super System with the idea of picking up any little tips that I can, but in the knowledge that most of this stuff is going to be of little value to me in the games I'm playing. I really need to develop my own 'super system'. So, for a start I'm going to be taking notes on all my games during the summer, with particular emphasis on big losing plays and big winning plays. In other words, what am I doing wrong and what am I doing right? Hand analysis, game analysis, strategy analysis, whatever it takes.
   During the summer season I play one game-type only. So for the next three months I'll be playing sitngos and nothing else. By the end of February, maybe I'll have worked out a successful playing style. Then again, maybe I'll just go outside and get a tan.