Party Party

   Well, here in New Zealand we had 102 days with no community transmission of covid 19 and then we hit a speed bump. Somehow it got back in and the city of Auckland went back up to Level 3; only essential retail outlets open, limits on gatherings, social distancing etc. So my brief window of live poker came to an end again and I had to go back to the online games. As it happens, this worked out quite well for me.

 Back in July, when we were still at Covid Level 1, I'd been surfing around on some poker websites when I came across something interesting. It was an article that claimed that the easiest Sit and Go tournaments around were to be found on Party Poker. According to this article Party Poker has been trying to make itself more attractive to recreational players. One way they were doing this was by running ring games where the participants were 'anonymised'. Players'  user names don't get listed, which makes it impossible for other players to use tracking software to gather information on their opponents. In other words, Party Poker was trying to discourage the grinders. This sounded like great news to me, so I went to Party Poker and signed up.

   However, when I went looking for these juicy ring games, there were none available, at least not at the micro level. They were listed, but no-one was playing. The only games available were 6 max tables, so I gave them a shot. I figured that to adjust to a short handed game I needed to play more hands more aggressively. I tried that for a couple of sessions, but with a singular lack of success. After that I had a look around the site and realised that all the game types were structured in such a way as to encourage lots of action. So I decided to try out a few of these games, just for fun. And once the covid restrictions kicked in I had plenty of time to check out what Party Poker had to offer.

   The Sit and Go games are all turbos or hyper-turbos. I tried my hand at the turbos, where the blind levels go up every 5 minutes and the whole game usually lasts no more than about 30 minutes. I played these using a basic strategy that can be boiled down to 'play tight and aggressive, let the other guys fight it out then get loose aggressive approaching the money'. Oh yeah and 'pick on the short stacks'. This worked out pretty well for me. There was a lot of action, with many players, myself included, looking for spots to get all their chips in the middle. You can't be messing around with drawing hands in this kind of game. So after years of avoiding turbo games I came away from these sessions with a tidy little profit.

   My next project was the Spin and Go games. These are hyper-turbo 3 player tournaments that typically last about 10-15 minutes. The prize-pool is variable and can be higher than the amount paid in or (more usually) lower. I'd played these before on Pokerstars but hadn't done well. I had better results on Party Poker. I think this is because there are quite a few players who just aren't adjusting to the breakneck pace of this game type. They are often folding way too much and raising way too seldom. As for me, I'm playing nearly every hand and betting a lot, whether I hit or not. Although I did quite well, it could have been better. Unfortunately, because the prize varies, there's not much you can do about it if you lose when the prize is higher and win when it's lower.

   Not content with these two game types, I decided to try my hand at the 'Fast Forward' game. This is a ring game where there is a large pool of players with each player being moved to a new table when they fold. Most sites have this type of game, under various different names. On 888 Poker they are called 'Snap" games. I only played this a couple of times and came out marginally ahead. The one drawback was that they were 6 player tables and if the player pool was small (which it often was) then you might end up playing 4 handed sometimes. I wasn't too keen on that.

   It's interesting working out an effective strategy for Fast Forward games. Initially I was thinking that I should just play premium hands as everyone else was likely to be folding a lot until they hit something decent. So it made sense to be only playing hands that were likely to be ahead. But after a while I realised that if everyone else was making a similar assumption then there was an opportunity for some serious bluffing in position. If most of the players just fold unless they have something really good, then a few good late position bets can often induce other players to give up without a fight. So that's the way I played it; much like the other action games.

   As if all that wasn't enough I also played in a few 'regular' tournaments. Except that nothing on this site is regular. All of the multi-table tournaments I could find (at the micro stakes at least) were progressive bounty tournaments. This was a new one on me and I had to Google it to find out what it meant. So it turns out to be a tournament where half the buy-in  goes to a player's bounty and only half of a won bounty goes to the winning player: the rest is added to the bounty on the winner's head. So as the game progresses the bounties on the remaining players get bigger and bigger. I guess it becomes more and more about busting out players rather than going deep, but I wouldn't know because in the few games I played I never went deep. Yet another action game.

   I never came near cashing in the handful of progressive bounty tourneys that I played, but that's okay. You have to play a decent number of tournaments before you can get an idea of how you're doing, and I'm just not that keen on making that sort of commitment. I'm perfectly happy to keep playing in the other short-run game types for now. My best results came from the Turbo Sit and Gos so that's what I'll be concentrating on for now, with maybe the odd Spin and Go or Fast Forward thrown in for good measure.

   It's ironic really that I came to Party Poker because I was looking for a good ring game and ended up being seduced by the action games that I've always shunned in the past ('You don't know the power of the dark side'). But, even though it's early days yet, the results so far speak for themselves. The long 'tail' of our Covid 19 outbreak looks like it's finally coming to an end, so the live games can't be too far away now. But for now I'm actually enjoying playing online poker. We may be living in difficult times but for me, it's party time.

   

   

The Clare Inn

   Well, here in New Zealand we've been at Covid 19 Alert Level 1 for a couple of months now. So the country is back to some kind of normal, except that anyone entering the country has to go into a two week quarantine Not to mention the massive debt the government has taken on to keep the country going, and the job losses, and the failed businesses... But apart from all that we're back to 'normal', which means that live poker is back. So while most of the rest of the world continues to go to hell in a handcart, I've been getting back into the live poker games.
   However, there aren't as many games around as there used to be. The pub where I play occasionally on a Wednesday night changed management during lockdown and the new manager cancelled the tournament. Meanwhile, the casino re-opened, but not the poker room. I went and checked it out but they are not saying when, or if, the games will re-start. So I went looking for another live game to play in addition to my regular Friday nighter. Most of the National Pub Poker League games have re-started, but I didn't want to go there, so I ended up going to check out the Thursday night tournament at an Irish pub called the Clare Inn.

 This game has been going for years and I have played there once before so I thought it might be worth another try. The tourney starts at 8 pm so I arrived plenty early and sat down and tried one of their over-priced beers. I managed to find one of the organisers and paid him my $25 then waited some more. There was a certain amount of faffing around but things eventually got under way at about 8.15 pm. The game is played in a side room and there were three tables set up. On arrival I was given a choice of playing on two of the three tables; the table with the 'young drunk guys' or the 'faster table with the old guys'. Apparently table three was reserved for the regulars. Interesting. Anyway, I chose the 'young drunk' table and grabbed a seat.
   The format of the game is actually very similar to the one I play on Wednesdays, being a turbo-style rebuy tournament. You start with 5k in chips and the blinds start at 25/50 but go up very steeply. One significant difference is that there are extra chips for bar purchases. Players get a tally card and every time they buy something at the bar, the organiser endorses the card. Then you get 1k extra in chips for each purchase, paid out at the first break.
    The other difference is that $5 of the $25 entry fee goes towards a special end-of-year tournament. Players earn points throughout the year and those at the top of the ladder get to play in that big game. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to realise that the prize in that final game must be huge, but of course you'd have to play all year long to have a decent chance at winning that. So for someone like me who is playing a one-off game, it just means that there's 20% coming out of the prize pool.
   We started out with 18 players registered, but two of them hadn't arrived yet so we had two tables of 5 players and one with 6 (the 'regs' table, of course). After a while the organiser, who everyone calls Rambo, decided to condense us down to two tables of 8, which later became two tables of 9 when the late-comers arrived. I couldn't help but notice that there were no women involved in this game at all. It was all men and there seemed to be quite a few English guys and even a couple of Americans. A rather different player profile than what I'm used to.
   Once we got started I found that play was generally tighter and more aggressive than at my Friday night game, but that's a comparison with possibly the loosest game in the known universe. In general terms, it was quite loose and fairly passive. There wasn't much action coming from me as I was getting rag hand after rag hand. There were a few loose all-in calls early on while rebuys were still available but after the rebuys ran out things settled down a bit. By the time we got to the break my stack had dropped a bit, but not too much.
   During the break 'Rambo' (who bore no resemblance whatever to Sylvester Stallone) chipped everyone up and paid out bonus chips to those that had been supporting the bar. When the ten minutes was up I rejoined the table but it turned out we all had to wait around for the regs to come back from their 'smoko' break outside. Earlier, Rambo had told me the tournament could go on until as late as midnight sometimes, and I could see why.
   Not long after the second break I ran into some trouble due to a calculation error. I'd been keeping an eye on my blinds/stack ratio, as I always do and thought I still had more than 20 big blinds left; not great, but still playable. But then I realised I'd miscalculated. Before I could do anything the blinds went up again and I suddenly found myself sitting behind a stack of just 7 BBs. Oops. Drastic action was required so when a couple of players limped in I pushed my dwindling stack all-in with J9. I would have preferred to see everyone fold but I got called by a player with 44. I flopped a 9 and that was good enough to get me out of the red zone at least. One of the players reckoned it was a 'ballsy move' to push with that hand. With only 7 BBs, I thought it was pretty standard and that the call with pocket fours was ballsy, but that's just my opinion.
   I managed to make it through to the final table with a few judicious pushes here and there, but I was just barely hanging on. I found myself sitting next to a player with a monster stack, while most of the rest of the players had stacks not much bigger than mine. It wasn't long before I was deep into the red zone again and looking for a last-ditch hand. With A9 under the gun I had to think for a minute before finally deciding to go with it. I got three callers, including Rambo and the big stack, which wasn't the greatest result. Rambo and Bigstack played it out while I watched on. The flop of 8 9 J didn't look too bad for me but when a Queen came on the turn I figured I was in trouble. Sure enough, Rambo had pocket tens, giving him a straight. Two and a half hours of play, coming in 8th of 18. Not bad, I guess.
   It was quite an enjoyable game to play in but there are a number of factors that make it less than ideal for me. Firstly, there's the bar purchase bonus chips. A lot of bars do this and I've never been a big fan. It makes for an uneven playing field, unless you're willing to spend a lot of extra money at the bar. The second thing is the $5 that goes towards the end of year game. With 20% coming out of the prize pool it means you're pretty much committed to playing all year in order to have some chance of recouping that money. But the biggest problem for me is the late finish. I start work fairly early in the morning and I'm just getting too old to be burning the candle at both ends. on weekdays at least..
   Playing at the Clare Inn was enjoyable enough, but it's not going to be part of my regular poker routine. It looks like my Friday night game is all I've got for the moment. But that's one hell of a lot more than I've had for most of the year. So I'm not complaining.
 
 
 
 

A Different Bubble

   So here we are, in the middle of  a global pandemic. As of today there have been over 5.5 million cases of Covid 19 worldwide, and nearly 350,000 deaths. And the death toll is rising every day. Here in New Zealand the government took swift action when the first cases appeared and as a result we are now in a much better position than most of the rest of the world. With a population of 5 million, New Zealand has had about 1500 cases, and just 21 deaths. That's 21 too many but it could have been a lot worse. A LOT worse. We went into lockdown in late March and now, 2 months later, we've had nearly a week with no new cases. So we are now working our way back towards some sort of normality, one cautious step at a time.
 

  Back in February, when the disease was confined to one province in China, it didn't seem to be something to be too concerned about. Then, when a few cases started appearing among incoming travelers, the government started tightening up the borders and urging us all to limit contact with others, to wash our hands frequently and so on. By mid March there was a ban on gatherings over 100 people, and as a result the annual Clubs NZ Poker Tournament, scheduled for late May, was cancelled. But we were still playing smaller games, although we were fist-pumping or elbow-touching rather than shaking hands.
   April was looking like a busy month for live games and I was planning on hosting a single table tournament at the club on Sunday 22nd March. Then on the Saturday the Prime Minister announced that we were now at 'Covid 19 Alert Level 2'. In light of this I decided to cancel my STT and our club poker organiser followed suit with regard to the Friday night games. Poker at the casino had already been suspended, so that was the end for live games. Meanwhile there was another announcement on Monday and by Thursday the country was in full lockdown.
   Within a day of these cancelations a player from a local cosmopolitan club had organised a 'home game' on the Pokerstars site. This was an online tournament to be played every evening at 8pm, involving local players from local clubs. My wife and I played in a couple of these (taking it in turns to play) but in the end I wasn't that impressed. I thought there might be a little chat going on, with people catching up with each other as they played. But nobody was talking and it seemed like just another Pokerstars tournament, with a bunch of anonymous strangers. As the lockdown progressed the number of players in this 'poker club' increased and the last time I looked there were over 150 members. In the end I gave it away, deciding I might just as well play in the regular online tournaments where I could choose my buy-in level and play when I felt like it.
   Our 'Level 4' lockdown lasted just over a month. My wife and I shared our 'bubble' during this time, taking walks, watching TV, video calling family, playing poker online; all the usual stuff. As my wife was unable to have her friend over for their weekly all day canasta game, I took over and we played this every Wednesday. On Fridays I would have a big day out and drive down to the supermarket and join the queue to do the shopping. What fun. You'd think, with all that time on my hands I'd be playing a lot of online poker, but that wasn't actually the case. I got into the same routine that I usually follow when I'm on holiday, playing poker every third day. This was fewer games than I was playing before lockdown, but that was okay with me.
   However I was able to play some live games during lockdown, in a limited sort of way. Every weekend my wife and I would have a 'heads up' poker session that would last most of the day. We'd put up $20 each and play a fixed limit 50c cash game. In these sessions we played dealer's choice: Texas Holdem, Omaha, 5 Card Draw, Pineapple, Crazy Pineapple, and several variants on 9 Card. I'd initially hoped to keep it limited to a few community card games, but somehow it just grew. These were mellow 'let's see the next street' type games that were unchallenging but fun. In the end, after four sessions we were exactly even. No winner, no loser.
   Playing these home games highlighted for me the difference between the my wife's and my playing styles. To her, poker is just another form of gambling, like housie or lotto. You get your cards, you turn over the next streets as cheaply as you can, and see who has the best hand at the end. Simple. This is not at all the way I like to play. But I knew this from the start so just went with the flow and had a relaxing day, listening to rock radio and drinking lots of coffee. If I wanted to play 'real poker', there was always my regular online game, even if it was at the micro level.
   As for my online games, I was mostly playing Sit and Go and regular freeze-out tournaments, on both 888 and Pokerstars. These were mostly losing sessions, as per my usual form. Around the middle of lockdown I had a rush of blood to the head and tried some other game types. I had a go at something called 'Spin and Go' on Pokerstars, with a singular lack of success. Then, for old times sake, I played in an Omaha cash game, managing to play for almost 30 minutes before losing my entire stack. But it wasn't all bad. I came out ahead in some of my Sit and Go sessions and I actually managed second place in one of the tournaments I played. Overall, I'm probably behind for the whole period, but that's the way the proverbial cookie crumbles.
   Playing online poker and 'funsies' live games with your wife is all very well, but nothing really beats a proper chip clicking, stack pushing, facing off across the table no limit poker tournament. By the time I headed back to work as we moved into Level 3 at the end of April I was hanging out for a live poker game. But the best I could do at that stage was to try and play in similar online game types in an effort to at least stay focused on the best live game strategy. So I just stuck to playing in low level online tournaments, because they were the nearest thing to the live games I was hoping to get back to. Loose and passive, that's the kind of game I was looking for.
   Two weeks ago we dropped back down to Level 2 and shops and restaurants re-opened; a week ago the kids went back to school, and late last week the bars re-opened. Things are looking up. We are still practicing social distancing and contact tracing and lots of hand washing, but we can actually gather together in small groups again (no more than 10 people). My wife and I went down to the club on Friday to see what was happening but there was very little going on. I even sent out a few texts to suggest a little get together and a small home poker game (7 players only), but there was no interest. I guess I'll just have to wait a little longer.
   There was another government announcement this afternoon. We are now allowed to congregate in groups of up to 100. And they're talking about going to Level 1 (whatever that means) within 4 weeks. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I don't know when the live poker is going to restart but we are headed out of town this weekend to re-connect with family. Among other things, we have some belated birthday presents to deliver. When we come back, the live games can't be too far away. But even if they're months away, things could be a lot worse. A LOT worse.
 
 
 

Rock Fish

   It's 2020 already and I fervently hope that my poker winnings improve this year. After tallying up my results from last year I found that I actually managed to make a profit in the spring, but it wasn't enough to turn around the results from the rest of the year. In the end I showed a loss for the second year running.
   During the course of last year, when I was trying to figure out how to turn my poor results around, I started thinking about the end of year points prize for the Friday night game. All players in this game are awarded points according to their finishing position. At the end of the year the top points scorers are awarded first, second and third prizes: $1000, $500 and $250 respectively. I thought it might be worth pursuing the top prize as a way of making up for my lack of success in the individual games.
   There are also points prizes awarded at the end of each ten week 'season', so at the end of season three I took a look at the overall points table to see where I stood. It turns out that, despite my poor results, I was sitting in 6th place overall. This is not really surprising as I am one of maybe a half dozen regulars who turn up every week. The points leader was way ahead of everyone else but the others were not so far ahead that I couldn't catch up. I did a few calculations, working out the average score per season and where that would put my competition on the table. My final conclusion was that if I could average 5 points per week then I would be in the hunt for some sort of prize, if not the big one.
   The points system works like this: Everyone who plays automatically gets 1 point. Then everyone who makes the final (10 player) table gets additional points depending on their finishing position. 10th place gets 2 points, 9th gets 3 and so on up to 11 points for 1st. So I figured that if I could make 7th place on average, I'd be in with a chance. The fact that the number of players had dropped off in recent months, with 18 to 20 players turning up most weeks, also increased my chances. So from that point on I decided to change my playing strategy. I was no longer going for the win; now I was playing the long game and chasing points.
   I knew that this was going to prove to be a challenge for me in terms of playing style. There are an awful lot of loose and/or passive players who come to this game and my style of play is the opposite of that. I also knew that some of the people who have won the top prizes in the past have been notoriously passive players. So I was going to have to change my outlook drastically. But the more I thought about it, the more I realised that my early stage play would not have to be changed that much. I typically play tight when I have a stack between 25 and 50 big blinds, which is a period that covers most of the first couple of hours of play. So I continued to play that way and kept a lid on my aggression levels, concentrating on conserving chips.
   My early stage strategy was basically to hang on to my stack until we got close to the final table. Once we got down to 15 players or less I was checking out the other chip stacks at my table and assessing the size of my stack compared to the blinds. I was hoping to limp on to the final table if possible without having to make any big moves that might risk my tournament life. This conservative playing style worked pretty well; I made the final table every time.
   The other thing I had to focus on was which players I needed to beat. In the first few weeks I was focused on two players in particular; the one just ahead of me and the one just behind me. I figured that there was no point worrying about the top contenders: as long as I kept accumulating points I would stay in touch with them. My main concern was to stay ahead of Pete and to catch up with Bill. So as far as it was possible to do so I was determined to stay in the game as long as those two were there, and if I had decent sized stack, I would try and bust them out.
   Three weeks in and I had crept into 5th position and was targeting the next two players above me. Final table play was now completely different to what I was used to. It's always been a hard and fast rule for me that 12 big blinds or less is not a playable stack. This was the push or fold level. And the smaller my stack got, the wider the range of hands I was willing to push with. I would look across the table at players with 5 BB stacks and sneer inwardly at their foolishness. Now I was adopting their play book. I was sitting on my tiny unplayable stack and hanging on waiting for one or more of the other unplayable stacks to be eliminated and gain me one more precious point.
   This style of play could certainly get tricky. It was a delicate balance between outlasting particular opponents and trying to at least keep my stack big enough to gain maximum points. I was constantly keeping an eye on other stack sizes, especially small stacks, my target players, my stack size, the blinds and, oh yeah, the cards. I was no longer concerned in the least about cashing. On at least one occasion I was knocked out on the money bubble as a result of my points chasing and it didn't concern me one bit. It got me one more point.
   All of this worked pretty well in the end. My finishing positions were as follows: 9,4,5,5,4,9,4,7,6,7. Over ten games I averaged 6th place, better than I had originally hoped. But in the end it was not enough for me to get into the money. By game nine I was sitting in 4th position in the overall points but the player above me was 12 points ahead. There was no chance of me catching him.
   However, after focusing so long on the overall points I hadn't been paying much attention to the ten week points table. It turns out that I was at the top of the 'Ten Week Challenge' ladder, with only one other player in a position to knock me off my perch. So I did some quick calculations and realised that as long as I made 7th place I couldn't be overtaken, even if he won that game. Once again I had to play the long game. While the top two in the overall points were fighting it out, I was looking to limp into 7th place and at least win the $150 for first in the ten weeker. And so it was that, with a stack of maybe 4 BB left I watched a player get knocked out in 8th place, leaving me as the Ten Week Challenge winner. Not the result I was originally hoping for, but better than nothing.
   It was an interesting exercise. It seems to me that if I'd started earlier in the year I would have had a real shot at the big money. But the question is, whether it's worth it to play that way for a whole year in the hope of winning the points prize and in the process give up a chance to win or cash in individual games. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. But I just can't see myself playing that way as a permanent state of affairs. When the season starts again in a few weeks I'll be back to my old TAG self, pushing for the win or bust. Playing for the points? It's poker, but not as I know it.