Change of Season

     I'm ready for the shuffle,
     Ready for the deal,
     Ready to let go of the steering wheel.
     I'm ready, ready for the push.                    U2

  It's been a brilliant summer, the hottest since records were kept, and I've been out watering the garden every second day for the last month. The cicadas have been droning away, the beaches have been crowded with sweating bodies and the frangipani we bought last year has been fooled into flowering way earlier than expected. But despite all the distractions, I've managed to play quite a lot of online poker this summer.
   I've been playing nothing but SitnGos for the last three months and the results have been very pleasing. I started out at the end of November with an overall loss, but by mid-January I was at the break-even point and now my bankroll is showing a nice profit. In fact, a couple of weeks ago my bankroll hit an all-time high, although it's dropped back down a little since. My 'Plan C', as outlined in a previous post, has been yielding some pretty consistent results.
   At this time of year I usually decide what sort of games I'll be playing in the coming year. The plan is to play two game types: the game that I've had the best results from in the previous 12 months, and a new game that I haven't played before. There's no doubt that my most successful game of the last 12 months is 9 player online SitnGos, thanks mainly to the last two months of results. The Texas Holdem six-max fixed-limit cash games and the online tournaments don't even come close. So I'll be playing more SitnGos in the coming season.
   The new game that I'll be playing is Fixed-limit Seven card Stud. I've wanted to try my hand at this game for some time. In fact, I meant to try it last year, but after a disastrous attempt at playing Omaha the previous year, I decided to play it safe and stick to the relatively familiar Texas Holdem fixed-limit. So, having played maybe three hands of Stud in my life, I'm going to give it a go. I have been reading up on Stud strategy a bit, but I expect it'll be a bit of a struggle at first. However, past experience has taught me to dip my toe in the water before diving in. So for the first few weeks I'll be playing in play money games and observing the cash games. Then I'll start at the lower levels and only move up if I have some consistent success.
   If I want to play Seven card Stud I'll have to play on a different site. Although 888 has Stud tables available, there are hardly any players on them. Any time I've looked I've been lucky to find more than three players on a single table, and these have generally been at the higher levels. So I visited a number of websites that compare poker sites to see which were the best ones for Stud games. Oddly enough, 888 was frequently listed as one of the best sites for Stud poker! The other listings were pretty inconsistent from site to site, but Pokerstars got quite a few mentions. I checked out Pokerstars and found that the Stud tables were pretty well patronised at all levels, so I downloaded the software and am ready to give it a shot.
   I took a look at the Pokerstars SitnGos as well but they seem to consist mostly of turbos, super-turbos, 6 player games and other variations on the standard 9 player games. So I'll be sticking to 888 SitnGos and playing Stud on Pokerstars. Meanwhile, I'll be continuing my never-ending search for live games that meet my exacting standards. I'm determined to find a regular live game that I can afford to play in. But for now, it's all online.

User-Name Awards

   It's awards season and the airwaves are awash with red carpet interviews and deeply humble acceptance speeches. But of course, there are the minor awards and then there's the big one. Yes, you know what I mean: the Kingjack user-name awards. So without further ado let me introduce:

 THE COMPLETELY UNOFFICIAL, COMPLETELY UNSANCTIONED AND IN-NO-WAY-WHATSOEVER-CONNECTED-IN-ANY-WAY-SHAPE-OR-FORM-TO-THE-WEBSITE-OF-THE-SAME-NAME KINGJACK 888 USER-NAME AWARDS...

As we play our games of online poker we occasionally stumble across clever, funny or just plain weird user-names. This is the occasion when the inventors of those entertaining names get their overdue recognition. Today, I will award a "Golden Donkey" to the winner in each of  six categories, as well as the supreme award, the "Unobtainium Donkey" to the best of the best. These much sought-after statuettes are made of pure plastic and dipped in genuine gold-coloured paint, and can be collected by the winners by sending me a postage and packaging fee of $US100.
   But before we get to the presentations, a word or two about the selection process. Ever since I started playing on 888 (about a year and a half ago) I've been taking note of any interesting user-names I come across. Having collected a list of about 70 names, these were then passed on to the one-man Category Committee and divided up into suitable categories. They were then passed on to the single-member Short List Committee, at which point just five names were put forward in each of the six categories. The nominees were then delivered to the Selection Panel (that's me) and the final winners were chosen. This information has been passed to me in sealed envelopes and will now be revealed.
    Note; the actual names have been abridged or altered in most cases for the sake of clarity (eg Super_Man806 would become superman)

 

Category 1: THE DONKEYFISH AWARD for the most creative use of the word 'donkey' or 'fish'.
This is a very popular theme and there were a great many entries, making it very difficult to narrow them down to just five names. But here are the finalists:
donkitup                manfishdonk            honkeydonk                     robofish               donkhoar
This was a tough final decision but I finally narrowed it down to two finalists:
Honourable mention goes to....            donkitup
And the winner is....               manfishdonk

Category 2: THE WTF? AWARD for the most obtuse, obscure or absurd user-name.
These are the names that make you go HUH? when you see them and, personally, I'd like to see more of them. The finalists are:
painthendef                    eyesshutwide               eatmyatheism              puffcabbage           runlikegod
After a great deal of soul searching I came up with two names, both of which, coincidentally, have a religious theme:
Honourable mention for outstanding verbal imagery...             runlikegod
And the winner is the perverse and defiant......          eatmyatheism

Category 3: THE I'M NOT OK AWARD for outstanding self esteem issues.
There were a surprising number of these excuse-me-for-breathing type names, and here are the best (or worst) of them:
badinfection              mucupus                dumbitch                      cupidstunt            toiletbrush
Both my finalists take self-denigration to whole new levels and were hard to choose between.
The 'I want to disinfect my keyboard' 2nd place prize goes to...              mucopus
And for sheer elegant simplicity, 1st prize goes to....       toiletbrush

Category 4:  THE MISTER PUMPKINHEAD AWARD for extreme cockiness. These names are the opposite of those in the previous category and often have no correlation to the actual abilities of the persons concerned:
ifIraiseufkd                 hahasukka               saythx2urmom                 payandsmile              itzpayday
There doesn't seem to be as much creativity in this category as some of the others, however:
Honourable mention for absurd bravado goes to....        ifIraiseufkd
The winner, for supreme (and probably unmerited) self-confidence...                   payandsmile

Category 5: THE POKER JOKER AWARD for creative use of poker-related terms.
There are a lot of these types of user-name. They are everywhere. These are the five that stood out for me:
pokerdot                 str8faced                 hotflush                          roboflop                     suckoutmagnet
To be honest, I decided the winner the moment I first saw it, so the only contest was for 2nd place.
Honourable mention; you've gotta love this, very nice wordplay....             roboflop
The winner is so simple and so clever, it was no contest...      pokerdot         (It's even better if the player's name was actually Dorothy)

Category 6: THE NO-MAN'S LAND AWARD for names that don't really fall into any category.
Pretty much self explanatory really:
devilbitch                  palerider               chaseburger                       justdyl                        omgwhyme
Honourable mention goes to...                       omgwhyme
The winner, mainly because I like the movie...                                                  palerider

So there they are, the winners of the most prestigious completely-unsanctioned-poker-site-user-name-awards-in-a-blog for 2013. Now, there is only one more prize to be given out. The supreme best-of-the-best award. The overall winner.
   And the supreme award goes to....
                                                    the envelope please.....
                                                                                   Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner of the Unobtainium Donkey is....
                                               POKERDOT!

 

 

Thank you, thank you and goodnight.

Summer Sitngo Season

        When the weather's fine,
         we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.
         We're always happy
         Long's we're living in this sound philosophy.    Mungo Jerry

  After a shaky start, the summer is well and truly here. Enormous black clouds hung over Auckland for days on end over Christmas, then it cleared up but was windy for about a week. But the good weather came with the new year, and I spent quite a lot of time out and about over the holidays. Nevertheless, between bouts of lying in the sand I've managed to play in quite a few online Sitngos. This is at least partly because of the convenience of Sitngos, with a typical game lasting no more than an hour.
   As mentioned in previous posts, my results in Sitngos were less than impressive in the  last few months of 2012. So I decided to look for a new improved strategy for the new season. My playing strategy at the time was based on dividing the tournament into three stages. The first stage, when there are 7 to 9 players on the table, is my conservative stage. I have a pretty tight list of starting hands and tend to fold a lot more than other players. I play basic poker; raising my big starting hands and limping in with drawing hands from late position.
   In the second stage, when there are 4 to 6 players, I get more active. I base my play partly on my cards, but mostly on my position and the relative size of my chip stack. The basic idea is to pick on the short stacks and to avoid playing against the big stack unless I have a monster hand. Position also becomes much more important and I am far more inclined to bet at a pot with nothing if I am last to act and no-one else is betting. I also follow the basic principal that if I drop down to ten big blinds or less then I simply fold and fold until I hit a decent hand and then push all-in.
   If I make the third stage then I'm in the money, and ready to change gears again. My end-game is pretty basic and often successful. It basically boils down to just checking in the big blind, regardless of the hand, and hoping to see the flop. On the button I will usually raise, regardless of the strength of my hand, in the hopes of stealing the blinds. Sometimes I'll fold rags, just to mix it up. The only time that I'll call on the button or the small blind is if I have a monster, hoping to trap my opponent with the second-best hand. This 3rd stage strategy has worked pretty well for me. The problem has been with the earlier stages.
   Around the start of December I read something online about Sitngo strategies. The author advocated a super-tight starting scheme. He said he wouldn't play anything less than AQ in the earlier stages of a Sitngo. I briefly toyed with the idea of adopting this strategy but it just seemed too extreme. So I came up with a modified plan. I put a lot more emphasis on the power of position in the earlier stages. I tightened up my early position starting hands almost to the point of AQ or better. I also tightened up my mid position starting hands somewhat, and abandoned the habit of big pre-flop raises with these hands. However, I loosened up the hands I was willing to limp in with from late position, especially from the button. As for the second and third stages, I continued to play them the same way as before.
   Although this appears to be just tinkering with my starting hands, it had a significant effect on my results. I actually started winning more than I was losing. By the end of the summer holidays I'd played enough games to conclude that this was no flash in the pan. Although the winnings were not huge, I was definitely in the black for summer season Sitngos. So I started thinking about what I could do to improve things further. Eventually I came up with Plan C.
   Plan C is a lot harder to explain than my previous strategies. It's much more.... fluid. It goes something like this:
   In stage one I play conservatively. I'll still raise with big hands pre-flop, but not by too much. I just accept that I'm probably going to get multiple callers and see what comes on the flop.  The only exceptions to this are AA and KK, both of which I'll push hard with pre-flop. Any other playable hands will be played carefully. I try to play small pots from late position. I hardly ever bluff at a pot and am always ready to fold if it looks like someone has drawn out on me. Basically, I'm biding my time, picking up chips here and there and waiting for the maniacs to knock each other out.
   I play the second stage similarly to the way I played before, but it's more about stack management. I'm always watching the size of my stack compared to those of other players and the objective is to survive through to the next stage. It's all about preserving a big stack and trying to pick up enough chips to stay in the game if I'm short-stacked. I also have less tolerance for being short-stacked. If I'm down to 12 big blinds I'll start looking for the all-in hand.
   Playing this way has helped me to make it through to the third stage more often. From there, I play the way I always do. Even if I'm the shortest stack of the three remaining players, I can often crawl my way into second or first place. At the very least, I'm in the money.
   This new strategy has worked well for me so far. Although it's early days yet, I feel confident that I'm on the right track. My results have significantly improved and my bankroll is well above the break-even point. Maybe it's just a winning streak, but I don't think so. I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on the correct way to play online Sitngos. I still have a month of the summer season to go. By the end of this month I should have a better idea of my progress, but for now the outlook is sunny.