Winter Bulletin

          Tired of lying in the sunshine,
          Staying home to watch the rain,
          You are young and life is long,
          And there is time to kill today.            Pink Floyd


SIT 'N' GOS
   I've just finished totalling my results for the last 3 months and have confirmed what had been pretty obvious to me already: I'm  doing rather poorly in online Sit'n'Go games. I've been playing this game type for quite a while now but by the start of winter my poor results had already moved me to drop from the $8.80 level down to the $3.00 level on 888poker. Unfortunately the $3.00 games are not as heavily patronised as the higher level ones, so I've found myself playing a lot in the Pokerstars $3.50 games, which are more readily available. These games are usually tougher to play in than the 888 ones, which has only added to my difficulties. I really don't know why my results have been so poor in this game type but I'm looking in to it...

FRIDAYS
   I've been playing tournament poker at the OWMC every Friday night for over a year now and am thoroughly enjoying it. It's become a weekly ritual for my wife and I: once we arrive and pay our game fees, she goes off to play on the pokies while I grab a handle of Steinlager and go hang out with the other players and wait for my order of nachos to be ready. We start at 7pm and there are usually 22 to 35 players involved. Regardless of the results it's always a fun night. I haven't cashed much recently but my finishes have been high enough to put me near the top of the ten-week leader board, so there may be some bonus cash coming my way in a few weeks. Earlier in the year I worked out what it would cost me to play in these games for the whole year. I'd actually won this amount by the middle of May and I've had a few small cashes since then, so anything I win for the rest of the year is pure profit. It's always nice to know that you're free-rolling.

RING GAMES
   This has been my second quarter playing in online Texas Holdem ring games. I play on 888 now, at low stakes. It's been quite an enjoyable experience, although I've still got a long way to go to find the optimal strategy to play this game. The winter season started out pretty well but I've had a few losses recently and I ended up with a small overall loss. I have no intention of changing the level that I'm playing at for now however, if I manage to post a string of positive results, I'll consider moving to playing two tables at a time. Meanwhile, I'll keep calculating the odds and set mining and trying not to get sucked out on (again).

INTERCLUB
    As mentioned in previous posts, I play in the Auckland Interclub poker tournament once a month. This is a teams game and I play in it as a bit of a diversion rather than as a serious poker tourney. I don't use my poker bankroll to play in this tourney, mainly because of the big chunk of change that comes out of the prize pool. I haven't cashed in this tourney since about this time last year. This may be due to my relaxed attitude at these events, or the larger fields (typically over 60 players), or just the fact that I've only played in about ten of them so far. Or a combination of these factors. Anyway, it's just a bit of fun, and I still manage to outlast the other members of my team most of the time. And there's always the possibility of a cash game starting up if I do get knocked out early. That's when I get serious.

POKER SCHOOL
   Some time ago I decided to try some of the courses on Pokerstars' Poker School (www.pokerschoolonline.com). I started out with the cash games course, but when I realised how badly my Sit'n'Gos were progressing, I switched to the Single Table Tournament course. I've taken copious notes on the lessons and worked my way through all the exercises. Now I have to apply it. I've decided to play my Sit'n'Go games according to these guidelines from now on. However, the lessons are pretty complex, detailing the recommended way to play for each tournament stage, and covering a multitude of different situations. So I've tried to distill them down to some basic principals and have started by applying them to the early and middle stages at first: one step at a time. I've only played a couple of sessions this way but so far the games have played out the same way. The Early Stage starting hand criteria are so tight that you end up reaching the fourth blind level with about 10-15 big blinds left and from there it's a matter of all-in or fold. Not the most exciting way to play but at this point I'm willing to try anything.

THE LOCAL GAME
   There used to be a weekly cash tournament at a local pub a couple of years ago. A few weeks back I noticed that they had a blackboard outside advertising a $20 poker tournament. So my wife and I went and checked it out last week. It turned out to be a $20 buy-in with $20 rebuys. This is a bit above my buy-in limit but as we were there we thought we'd give it a try. The organisation of this game was not very good. For starters, I was given the wrong start time and 10 minutes in I didn't even realise that the tourney had already begun. There were only about 15 players involved and I had some difficulty keeping abreast of when the blinds were changing, as the tournament was being run by someone on the other table using an app on her phone. The rebuy rules were a bit strange too; the $20 fee bought only a half-sized stack. On top of this, I was told that when the blinds reached a certain level they stopped increasing; something I'd never come across in a tournament before.
   A lot of the players who got knocked out ended up rebuying, some of them multiple times. I managed to hang on without a rebuy and ended up on the final table. Then, after we'd reached the 'no-more-increases' level (and after I'd adjusted my play to suit this structure) the organiser decided that it was getting late and the blinds would be increasing after all. I'm sure it had nothing to do with the fact that both the organisers had been knocked out of the game. My levels of surprise increased further when we crossed the bubble and one of the organisers asked me, as the big stack, how I wanted the prize pool distributed! I pointed out that this was usually considered to be the tournament organiser's job. As if this wasn't enough, when were down to four players it was announced that the blinds would be increased with every round. Obviously someone wanted to go home. It didn't take long for us to be down to two players, so we decided to split the money. Although I was the shorter stack by this stage the other player didn't seem worried about getting a bigger cut, so we went 50/50. I came out with $200 in my pocket, but despite this good result I won't be back. Apart from the buy-in being a bit steep, the organisation of this tourney can at best be described as chaotic; I like to know where I stand with poker tournaments.

SATELLITE
   I've never been a fan of satellite tournaments; I figure that the chance of winning two or three tournaments in a row are vanishingly small. However I also figure that if I wait till I can afford to play in a big tournament then I'll be older than Doyle Brunson is now (if I'm lucky). So I thought I'd take a shot at playing once a month in a  Pokerstars satellite game to ANZPT (Australia New Zealand Poker Tour) events. The first one I tried had only 8 players in the first stage and I actually made it into 2nd place before getting eliminated. At least I came out with a few dollars to offset my entry fee. The second game involved a smaller buy-in and had quite a few more players, and I got knocked out after about 30 minutes. It was only after talking to a workmate about the games that he plays
 on Pokerstars that I realised that I might have enough FPPs (Frequent Player Points) for a satellite buy-in. Once I worked out how to find my FPP tally, I realised that I had over 600 points; enough for maybe half a dozen games. So my third game of this type was a turbo rebuy event with a 20 FPP buy-in. I had to adjust to a turbo game with unlimited buy-ins, but I think I worked out a reasonable strategy. I ended up spending 100 FPPs before reaching the point where further rebuys became pointless. I'm looking forward to the middle of this month and taking another shot at it. I don't know what happens when I run out of points.

SATURDAY ARVO
   The NPPL no longer plays tournaments at my local RSA club (see 'Increasing the Luck Factor', 13 July 2012). On learning this I went to the club manager and suggested we run our own poker game on Saturday afternoons. To cut a long story short, I ended up on the ORSA Cards Section Committee and started work on a new poker tourney for the club. After some negotiation we decided on a $20 buy-in game with a $10 add-on for a half stack, to be played every second Saturday. One of our committee was also an organiser for the NPPL and she had a couple of old tables and a whole pile of NPPL 'merchandise chips' (whatever they are) so we didn't need to buy much to get started. I was nominated to run the first game. The only thing we didn't have was tournament management software so I started a search for some free programs to download. I found a suitable program at www.pokerdiy.com and it didn't take too long to work out how to use it.
   On game day I arrived plenty early to set up a couple of tables but in the end the turn-out was pretty poor. The tournament went ahead anyway and I found that running a tournament and also playing in it was not that hard after all. It all went pretty smoothly, even though I got knocked out in 4th place after trying to bluff one of my Interclub team-mates out of her hand with 7-2, when she had trips. Oops. I ended up running the next game (not the original plan) and it was still only a single table tourney but once again, the organising side of it was easy enough and actually quite enjoyable. I also managed to grab 2nd prize, which was a nice bonus. I've got another one coming up this weekend and I've been advertising it as much as I can. Hopefully there'll be a few more players this time.

POKER TV
   They've started showing poker programs on Sunday nights again on ESPN. We've had episodes of Aussie Millions, High Roller Tournaments, the Big One for One Drop and a few others. I presume that this is leading up to the WSOP Main Event, which should be coming up soon. I really enjoy watching these shows and can't wait for the start of the Main Event.

Is poker taking over my life?  It looks that way.