I'm back at work now after the summer break. It was a pretty relaxing three week holiday with my wife and I just hanging around in Auckland and enjoying the summer. At the start I decided that I'd try to play at least three sessions of poker each week, even though most of my regular live games were not being played during the break. As it happens, I was able to achieve this, so in between other holiday activities I got to play a fair bit of poker:
Tuesday 19th Dec, Ye Olde Bailey pub, $30 tournament.
This was actually two days before the start of my holiday but as my regular Wednesday night game had finished for the year my wife and I went to check out this evening tournament. As it happens, several of the Wednesday night regulars were also at this game, as well as a couple of others that we knew. After late entries they had five full tables. These were oval tables that sat on bar leaners and the players sat around them on bar stools. My wife and I both got about halfway through the field before being eliminated, which was probably just as well as I had to go to work the next day. 16/39.
Friday 22nd Dec, Onehunga Workingmen's Club, $30 tournament.
This was the final game for the year at the Workies and included the prize-giving. I put on my bright red island shirt for this game but couldn't find my reindeer antlers so we had to stop off at the $2 shop to get another pair, along with some flashing Santa earrings for my wife. I received a $200 prize for coming first in the final Ten Week Challenge but came nowhere in the over-all yearly points. As for the game, I finished 11th out of 20 players.
Sunday 24th Dec, PokerStars, US$11 tournament.
I couldn't find my favourite 888 tournament on Christmas eve so I entered this one on PokerStars. Two hours into the tournament, with about 50 BBs I got dealt Aces. Player1 raised, I re-raised, he went all-in and I called. He showed pocket Kings, a King hit the flop and I lost most of my stack. A few hands later, with 12BBs I was dealt KQs. Player1 min-raised and I pushed all-in. He called with pocket Kings. I hit a Queen on the flop but that's it. 106/548.
Tuesday 26th Dec, Mangere Cosmopolitan Club, $50 deep stack tournament.
Instead of joining the crowds at the Boxing Day sales my wife and I went to this game in Mangere. These guys love re-buys so I was surprised to find they were running a freeze-out tournament. But the starting stack was 100,000 with the blinds at 100/200 so there was plenty of scope for loose play with a 500 BB stack. Sure enough, I lost most of my chips to a donkey who called my initial raise with Q5 when I had JJ. He then went on to call my substantial bets with nothing but Queen high until he finally hit the Queen on the river. 26/31.
Thursday 28th Dec, PokerStars US$11 tournament.
Another PokerStars tournament. These games are on at 10.30 am. The one I usually play on 888Poker
is on at 12.30 pm. But for some reason the 888Poker games weren't on during the holiday period so I played PokerStars instead. In this one I lost my stack bit by bit and only managed to last for an hour. 309/442.
Saturday 30th Dec, Sky City Casino ring game, $180 buy-in.
I took the bus into town to play in this game, which started at about 6 pm. I checked out the timetable for the return trip and it turns out there are a couple of late buses going my way, with the last of these at about 2 am. This is very convenient if I happen to end up playing late on any of these trips when I don't have the car. As for the game, there was an awful lot of limp-calling and I ended up doing okay. I called it a night after about 5 1/2 hours and got home not long after midnight. $197 profit.
Monday 1st Jan, Mangere Cossie, $30 re-buy and add-on tournament.
New Years' Day and another deep stack tournament at Mangere. After nearly 5 hours play my wife and I both found ourselves in the money. When we were down to just 3 players the chip leader, Aroha, suggested a deal, but I declined. I was aiming for the 1st prize of $400. My wife was eliminated in 3rd place and Aroha and I ended up with similar stack sizes. Not long after that we were both all-in. I had the better hand pre-flop but she hit and I didn't. I got $200 for 2nd place. 2/22.
Wednesday 3rd Jan, Sky City ring game, $180 buy-in.
The character of the table was different this time, with much more pre-flop raising and very little limp-calling. Two players in particular were quite aggressive before the flop. I wasn't getting good cards and decided to push the action a bit, losing $50 in an ill-conceived bluff attempt. After that I was still card dead and short-stacked as well, making for a slow night. After 4 hours I decided to quit while I still had some chips. $115 loss.
Saturday 6th Jan, Mangere Cossie, $30 tournament.
I was told that MCC planned on running two games a week this year. A $30 freeze-out on Saturdays and a $10 unlimited re-buy and add-on tournament on Sundays. My wife and I went to check out the first of the Saturday games. Along with a handful of others from other clubs we were becoming regulars at these holiday season games. Deep starting stack, very loose play, steep blind structure. 14/30.
Tuesday 9th Jan, F Bar, $20 unlimited re-buy and add-on tournament.
This one had a strange structure. It was $20 for a 20k starting stack, with an additional 5k 'earlybird' bonus. There were unlimited $10 re-buys for 20k before the first break. Then there was a $20 add-on for a stack of 160k! And also bonus chips for bar purchases. It was basically an all-in-fest for the first hour or so with players re-buying multiple times. I just waited it out, made my add-on at the break and started playing after that. In the first hand after the break I picked up pocket Aces against a player with a monster stack. He flopped a set of threes and I made a very bad call, refusing to believe that he'd outdrawn me, and was eliminated. 13/15.
Friday 12th Jan, PokerStars US$11 tournament, 888Poker US$3 Sit 'n' Gos.
Another early finish in a PokerStars tournament, lasting for just an hour. I lost half my stack after flopping two pair with 34s and failing to stop a chaser from hitting his flush. Then I spent the rest of the time trying to stay alive with a short stack. After that I tried a few single table tournaments on 888Poker, but came out behind. 338/510. 5/9, 2/9, 7/9, 5/9.
Saturday 13th Jan, Sky City ring game, $180 buy-in.
Went home after about 1 hour of play and making bad decisions in two hands. First up, I raised with KJs and got 1 caller. The flop was Q x x, he checked, I bet, he called. The turn was another blank and we both checked. He checked the A on the river so I bet at it and he called with his Q 5, taking about $56 from me. In the second hand I had ATs and raised in position, getting 2 callers. The flop was T T J and we all checked. The turn was a K. I bet at it and got one caller. When the caller checked the river K, I foolishly bet again and got called by the player with K x. I was only ever getting called by a better hand. Another $60 thrown away. Total loss $143.
Sunday 14th Jan, 888Poker, US$12 tournament.
My last game before going back to work, back on 888. I started real slow, hardly getting any playable cards, but towards the middle things changed and I chipped up a bit. Then I went into a decline again and spent a lot of time nursing a short stack. After a couple of hours I was approaching the bubble but had only 7 BBs left. I was desperately hoping for a hand I could go all-in with. I was dealt the following hands: 94, 64, 64, 62s, 92s, T3, 63, Q6, J6, Q3, 43. By the time I was dealt J3 I had less than 4BBs so shoved and lost to pocket sixes. I finished 5 places from the bubble. 20/110.
That was my summer holiday. Now that everyone is drifting back into town I guess some of the regular games will re-start. So I look forward to playing some more poker.
Monday, 22 January 2018
Thursday, 4 January 2018
The New Year
I'm in the middle of a three week holiday and the weather in Auckland has been pretty good so far. But a storm hit yesterday and it's raining and blowing a gale outside. So this is as good a time as any to look back at last year's poker results and consider how things might shape up in the coming year.
I hit a couple of milestones in 2017. The first of these was when I had my biggest ever payout in a poker game. In late May I split first and second prize in the Clubs NZ Friday tournament and came away with a $580 profit. I also went deep in the main Saturday/Sunday tournament, coming 17th out of 172 players. So it was a pretty successful long weekend. The second high point came when my bankroll reached a level that allowed me to play in the Sky City Casino $1/$3 ring game. I'd been hoping to reach this level for a while and it finally came to pass in August of 2017. Another pleasing aspect of the last year is the fact that I was able to reboot the Wednesday night rebuy tournament at the Landmark Bar. When it became obvious that no-one was going to step up to run this game I took it over. It had a bit of a slow start but eventually it was running well and hitting the $500 prizepool level through most of the year.
The same success didn't come to the 50/50 Deep Stack Tournament, a monthly game I was running at the Onehunga Workingmen's Club. Although it started out okay, at least getting enough players for two tables, it went into a bit of a decline in the second half of the year. In the last two games of the year I only had enough players for a single table, which is pretty disappointing. I'm going to have my work cut out for me this year to keep this game going. Another aspect of the end of 2017 that was not so good was my performance in online Sit and Go's. I decided to give this game type another shot for the Spring season (September to November) and once again failed to get any traction. My ongoing struggle to work out a successful Sit and Go strategy continues.
Playing in the Sky City ring games and reviving the Landmark game are two of the goals that I set myself at the start of last year ('2017', 13/02/17) so I can tick those two off the list. The other goal that I've been able to at least partly achieve is the promotion of the 50/50 game. Although I wasn't able to build it up as I'd hoped, at least I was able to keep it going all year, which is something. I guess promotion of this game is an ongoing project for the coming year.
A couple of the goals that I set myself at the beginning of the year actually changed part way through 2017. I originally intended to try out all the available local live tournaments in my search for the optimal game, and to then aim at playing four poker games each week. But I ultimately came to the conclusion that this was just too much poker and it was time to give other aspects of my life a little more time. So I abandoned the optimal game search and just stuck to the three games per week that I'd been playing. I think this was a sensible move and I plan to continue with this level of play in the coming year.
The one goal for 2017 that I failed to complete was to read 'Harrington on Hold'em Volume 2'. When I realised that I was approaching a bankroll level that would allow me to play at Sky City I thought I'd better read up on ring game strategy. So I bought both volumes of 'Harrington on Cash Games' and read them instead, leaving me no time to read Volume 2 of the tournament guide. That goal is now moved forward into 2018.
As for my overall results for last year, they've been pretty good. The category that I call 'other live tournaments' covers the tournaments that I play during the year that are not part of my regular schedule. This was my most profitable game type for the year, showing a massive 123% Return on Investment (ROI). However, this was due mostly to the single big win that I had in May, and is not representative of the rest of my results, which show a more modest return. Of these, my best results came from the OWMC Friday nighters, with a ROI of 36% and Sky City ring games, with a ROI of 27%. It should be noted however that the results from Sky City are from just three games played towards the end of the year. I also had positive results for the Landmark game and the 50/50 game.
There were two game types that showed negative results for the year. The first of these was online Sit and Go tournaments. I played these at the $3 level for three months and racked up an 11% loss. That was a failed experiment. The second loss came from online tournaments, which I played through the other nine months of the year. My ROI for these games was -24%. On the face of it this a bad result but I'm not actually too concerned. I did so well in this game type during the summer season that I decided to move up a level in terms of buy-in. I played two seasons at this new level before trying my hand at Sit and Go's in the spring. As a result, I've only actually played eight online tournaments at the new level; the jury's still out on this one. I'll have to play more games of this type before I can get an accurate indication of my progress.
I'm very happy with my overall results for the past year, showing a 24% ROI for all game types. I also added a new stat to my Poker Summary for 2017. I went back over the last five years' results and worked out an average ROI. It turns out that my average for the last five years has been 24%. That's a great result and I'm very keen to at least maintain that rate of return, and preferably improve on it.
That brings me to my Poker Plan for the coming year. I know that I will be continuing to play 3 poker games each week, but I'm not at all sure what those games will be. I'm no longer running the Wednesday night tournament and have decided that it's no longer an optimal game, so will be playing it less often this year. My wife is also reconsidering whether she'll continue playing in the Friday night game. If she decides to give up playing that game, then so will I, as I've really only be playing there because she likes (or liked) it. I've heard that the Mangere Cosmopolitan Club have now started playing a $30 freeze-out tournament on Saturday afternoon, so that may be an option. I'll also continue to run the monthly 50/50 Tournament and I will be putting a big effort into increasing the number of participants.
The other live game that I'm looking at playing during 2018 is the Sky City $1/$3 ring game. My bankroll plan allows me to buy in to these games for $180 (60 big blinds) and I decided that if I lost the equivalent of 3 buy-ins ($540) then I would give it up. I've now played seven cash game sessions and am hovering below the break-even point. I figure that as long as I'm still in the red I'll just play one session per month. If I start making a decent profit then I'll play once every three weeks and if I end up doing very well then I'll start playing fortnightly. But for now, once I emerge from the holiday period, it looks like a monthly trip up to Sky City Casino. I'll either be playing these games on Wednesday night or Saturday night; that's yet to be determined.
I'm intending to play two live games and one online game every week this year. During the holidays I've been playing in a Pokerstars tournament that starts at 10.30 am, but that will only be available to me on the weekends once I go back to work. There doesn't seem to be anything available at the right buy-in level and a convenient time on 888Poker so I guess I'm playing Pokerstars for the next year. Neither site seems to have evening tournaments at the right level, so Wednesday night (my traditional poker night) could prove to be a problem. In short, I know how often I want to play this year, but where and when I'll be playing are yet to be determined.
Towards the end of last year I decided that I need to set some short to medium term poker goals for myself. The idea is to have a set of goals that should be achievable in a matter of months and then, when I reach one goal, I can add another to the list. The five goals I have listed so far are as follows:
I hit a couple of milestones in 2017. The first of these was when I had my biggest ever payout in a poker game. In late May I split first and second prize in the Clubs NZ Friday tournament and came away with a $580 profit. I also went deep in the main Saturday/Sunday tournament, coming 17th out of 172 players. So it was a pretty successful long weekend. The second high point came when my bankroll reached a level that allowed me to play in the Sky City Casino $1/$3 ring game. I'd been hoping to reach this level for a while and it finally came to pass in August of 2017. Another pleasing aspect of the last year is the fact that I was able to reboot the Wednesday night rebuy tournament at the Landmark Bar. When it became obvious that no-one was going to step up to run this game I took it over. It had a bit of a slow start but eventually it was running well and hitting the $500 prizepool level through most of the year.
The same success didn't come to the 50/50 Deep Stack Tournament, a monthly game I was running at the Onehunga Workingmen's Club. Although it started out okay, at least getting enough players for two tables, it went into a bit of a decline in the second half of the year. In the last two games of the year I only had enough players for a single table, which is pretty disappointing. I'm going to have my work cut out for me this year to keep this game going. Another aspect of the end of 2017 that was not so good was my performance in online Sit and Go's. I decided to give this game type another shot for the Spring season (September to November) and once again failed to get any traction. My ongoing struggle to work out a successful Sit and Go strategy continues.
Playing in the Sky City ring games and reviving the Landmark game are two of the goals that I set myself at the start of last year ('2017', 13/02/17) so I can tick those two off the list. The other goal that I've been able to at least partly achieve is the promotion of the 50/50 game. Although I wasn't able to build it up as I'd hoped, at least I was able to keep it going all year, which is something. I guess promotion of this game is an ongoing project for the coming year.
A couple of the goals that I set myself at the beginning of the year actually changed part way through 2017. I originally intended to try out all the available local live tournaments in my search for the optimal game, and to then aim at playing four poker games each week. But I ultimately came to the conclusion that this was just too much poker and it was time to give other aspects of my life a little more time. So I abandoned the optimal game search and just stuck to the three games per week that I'd been playing. I think this was a sensible move and I plan to continue with this level of play in the coming year.
The one goal for 2017 that I failed to complete was to read 'Harrington on Hold'em Volume 2'. When I realised that I was approaching a bankroll level that would allow me to play at Sky City I thought I'd better read up on ring game strategy. So I bought both volumes of 'Harrington on Cash Games' and read them instead, leaving me no time to read Volume 2 of the tournament guide. That goal is now moved forward into 2018.
As for my overall results for last year, they've been pretty good. The category that I call 'other live tournaments' covers the tournaments that I play during the year that are not part of my regular schedule. This was my most profitable game type for the year, showing a massive 123% Return on Investment (ROI). However, this was due mostly to the single big win that I had in May, and is not representative of the rest of my results, which show a more modest return. Of these, my best results came from the OWMC Friday nighters, with a ROI of 36% and Sky City ring games, with a ROI of 27%. It should be noted however that the results from Sky City are from just three games played towards the end of the year. I also had positive results for the Landmark game and the 50/50 game.
There were two game types that showed negative results for the year. The first of these was online Sit and Go tournaments. I played these at the $3 level for three months and racked up an 11% loss. That was a failed experiment. The second loss came from online tournaments, which I played through the other nine months of the year. My ROI for these games was -24%. On the face of it this a bad result but I'm not actually too concerned. I did so well in this game type during the summer season that I decided to move up a level in terms of buy-in. I played two seasons at this new level before trying my hand at Sit and Go's in the spring. As a result, I've only actually played eight online tournaments at the new level; the jury's still out on this one. I'll have to play more games of this type before I can get an accurate indication of my progress.
I'm very happy with my overall results for the past year, showing a 24% ROI for all game types. I also added a new stat to my Poker Summary for 2017. I went back over the last five years' results and worked out an average ROI. It turns out that my average for the last five years has been 24%. That's a great result and I'm very keen to at least maintain that rate of return, and preferably improve on it.
That brings me to my Poker Plan for the coming year. I know that I will be continuing to play 3 poker games each week, but I'm not at all sure what those games will be. I'm no longer running the Wednesday night tournament and have decided that it's no longer an optimal game, so will be playing it less often this year. My wife is also reconsidering whether she'll continue playing in the Friday night game. If she decides to give up playing that game, then so will I, as I've really only be playing there because she likes (or liked) it. I've heard that the Mangere Cosmopolitan Club have now started playing a $30 freeze-out tournament on Saturday afternoon, so that may be an option. I'll also continue to run the monthly 50/50 Tournament and I will be putting a big effort into increasing the number of participants.
The other live game that I'm looking at playing during 2018 is the Sky City $1/$3 ring game. My bankroll plan allows me to buy in to these games for $180 (60 big blinds) and I decided that if I lost the equivalent of 3 buy-ins ($540) then I would give it up. I've now played seven cash game sessions and am hovering below the break-even point. I figure that as long as I'm still in the red I'll just play one session per month. If I start making a decent profit then I'll play once every three weeks and if I end up doing very well then I'll start playing fortnightly. But for now, once I emerge from the holiday period, it looks like a monthly trip up to Sky City Casino. I'll either be playing these games on Wednesday night or Saturday night; that's yet to be determined.
I'm intending to play two live games and one online game every week this year. During the holidays I've been playing in a Pokerstars tournament that starts at 10.30 am, but that will only be available to me on the weekends once I go back to work. There doesn't seem to be anything available at the right buy-in level and a convenient time on 888Poker so I guess I'm playing Pokerstars for the next year. Neither site seems to have evening tournaments at the right level, so Wednesday night (my traditional poker night) could prove to be a problem. In short, I know how often I want to play this year, but where and when I'll be playing are yet to be determined.
Towards the end of last year I decided that I need to set some short to medium term poker goals for myself. The idea is to have a set of goals that should be achievable in a matter of months and then, when I reach one goal, I can add another to the list. The five goals I have listed so far are as follows:
- Play in at least 3 Sky City cashies over the holidays.
- Make a profit in the Sky cashies equivalent to 3 buy-ins ($540).
- Read 'Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 2.
- Play in at least 10 weekly live tournaments other than the OWMC Friday night games.
- Win an online tournament.
I'm already 2/3 of the way towards completing the first goal and I should be able to tick it off next Saturday. I'm also currently re-reading the first Harrington book and will be getting a copy of Volume 2 in a few weeks. As far as the online tournament and Sky cashie results go; that depends on me playing well enough to achieve those goals. The fifth goal is more problematic. Whether this will be easy to achieve or not depends a great deal on what my weekly schedule ends up looking like. And that is yet to be revealed.
Meanwhile, the holiday period has given me a chance to play a few different games, and I've been keeping up my average of 3 games per week. I was up at the casino on Wednesday night (card dead for 2 hours, short stacked and no big hands for 2 more) and it looks like my wife and I are off to Mangere Cossie tomorrow. And so it goes. New year, same game.
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