Tell me what's a-happening. Jesus Christ Superstar
Having taken a one month break from poker play in an effort to break my most recent losing streak, I am now back in the game. Although I haven't been playing poker, I've still been keeping in touch with the poker world in various ways:
SECRETS OF SITNGOS. I went down to the local library and got myself a poker book to study: Secrets of Sitngos. This was the only book I could find that dealt specifically with SitnGo tournaments, and I found it to be moderately useful. As usual it was aimed mainly at higher-level players but there were a few ideas that I found to be of interest. I particularly liked the end section, where particular scenarios were put forward and the reader was given the opportunity to answer a multiple choice question on what to do next. However much of the book was based on a theory called the Independent Chip Model or ICM, a mathematical model based on the assumed real-money value of tournament chips in different situations. This mathematical stuff went pretty much completely over my head and frankly, if being a good player in SitnGos is dependant on applying complex mathematical hand analysis, I guess I'll just have to keep swimming with the other fish.
POKER ON TV. I'm still watching Poker after Dark and The Big Game each week. In fact my wife and I have got into the habit of watching these shows over breakfast on Saturday and
Sunday mornings. The new 'loose cannon' (the amateur player) on The Big Game is doing pretty well, especially after doubling up through Phil Hellmuth. He's so far ahead of the other contenders now that he's basically shut up shop. He even folded pocket aces at one stage in order to preserve his big stack. Meanwhile I've found yet another poker show playing on Thursdays. This one covers the Aussie Millions tournament and one of the commentators is Aussie poker pro Joe Hachem. His comments about the play and what he thinks the players are going to do, or what they should do, are always interesting and insightful.
POKER SCHOOL. I also checked out the Poker Stars Poker School which looks to be a useful tool for learning about correct poker play. However I only read the first few sections, as I wanted to concentrate on the SitnGo book. I will get back to it sometime soon, but for now I'm concentrating on actually playing.
WSOP. The World Series of Poker is now in full swing and I've been checking out some of the results on www.wsop.com . It's nice to be able to go to the website and see who's winning or losing in different events. They're even streaming some of the final tables live, with commentary. Last year they showed the Main Event live (delayed by about 10 minutes actually) on ESPN. I don't know if they're doing that again this year, but I think Day One starts tomorrow, so I'll be keeping an eye out. Actually, I may be approaching saturation point for Poker TV programmes.
LIVE TOURNEY. After searching high and low I've finally found a decent live poker tournament. It turns out that the Workingman's Club just up the road from the RSA where I usually hang out has been running a Texas Holdem Tournament every Friday night for the last three years. This tourney is $20 entry, no rebuys, no add-ons, no extra chips; just what I've been looking for. The entry fee is technically beyond my buy-in limit but I'm willing to bend my buy-in rules for the sake of being able to play in a live tourney. My wife and I have played for the last three weeks and intend to continue going up there pretty much every week. The first week I was eliminated 16 out of 18, week two I came in 7th and this week I made 3rd out of 26 and made my three buy-ins back.
NEW CONCEPTS. The book I previously mentioned introduced me to three new poker concepts.
The ICM. The Independent Chip Model basically tells you how to act based on your chip stack and that of your opponents and a number of other factors. Apparently you can get software that does the calculations for you. I'm not really interested in going down this road. I had enough maths in school.
Sharkscope. This is a website that gathers information on online players. You go to www.sharkscope.com , type in a player's username, and get a lot of information on their results from the tournaments they've played online. This could be potentially quite useful. I went to the site and discovered that 888 poker doesn't allow this sort of data mining so there is no info available for 888 players. So I tried typing in my own username for Pokerstars, as I've played a couple of SitnGos on that site. The info that came up said that I'd played 1 SitnGo and 1 Omaha Pot-limit Tournament. I've never played an Omaha tournament in my life, so I guess the information available on this site is not entirely accurate.
ROI. I've seen players refer to 'return on investment' before, as a measure of success in games, but never paid much attention to it. But having it explained in the SitnGo book has made me realise that it is a much better way of measuring poker success than my current method. It's very simple. ROI is just a measure of the amount won (or lost) as a percentage of the amount 'invested'. This provides a useful measure of results regardless of the buy-in level. I will definitely be re-assessing my record-keeping to accommodate this new concept.
NEW ATTITUDE. The online games I've played so far since my break have yielded very poor results. It seems that my losing streak is still alive and well, as far as online games go anyway. But the difference is that it's not bugging me anymore (at least not so far). I've come back into the game with a whole new attitude. Maybe I was getting so worked up over losing before because it was in contrast to my previous good results. Now, even though I'm losing consistently, and have actually dropped down a couple of levels in my SitnGos, I accept my losses with good humour and just keep trying. I seem to have gained a sense of perspective on my poker play that I didn't have before and I think that I will be re-assessing my whole approach to the game. But more on that later...
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