The last time I posted was in April of last year so I thought it was about time I did an update. Back then we were Covid free here in New Zealand and still playing live games. Then in August the Delta strain came to town and we had to shut down again. And so it was back to playing online games only. Restrictions lasted all the way through until the end of the year, so I had about 6 months with no live games.
During this time one of the local clubs started up playing games on PPPoker, one of the sites that runs 'Club Games' where the buy in and payout is handled separately from the site, by a club manager. It all sounded a bit dodgy to me, so I passed on that. So for the last six months of the year I decided to play a variety of different game types on 888 and Party Poker; just basically having a bit of fun. As per my usual form, it was all a bit up and down, results-wise.
Then Delta calmed down enough for us to open up again. We managed to run a $50 live game up at the club a couple of days after New Year and then we got back into the Friday night tournaments. I decided to run a monthly 16 player tournament and managed to complete the first one at the end of January (which I won) before the Omicron strain came knocking on the door and the restrictions kicked in again. But this time, with a highly vaccinated population, things were a bit more open. Most of the pubs and clubs that run poker games kept going, with vaccine passes and mask wearing in place. But at my club the consensus was that we should suspend live games until the Omicron wave has passed. So I'm erring on the side of caution and staying away from live games again. So it's back to the online grind for me. Talk about de ja vu.
I took a look at my previous online form and found that I've been doing okay in the Progressive Knockout tournaments and not too bad in Turbo Sit and Go tournaments, so that's what I'm concentrating on. Meanwhile the big picture remains the same as it's been for some time. The losses I've been experiencing in recent years have levelled out, but there's still no sign of an upward trend .My win/loss graph is looking increasingly ugly.
I've been keeping these records for 13 years now and it looked pretty good for a while there. In 2013 and 2014 I had an upward trend in the graph. Then in 2016 and 2017 there was an even steeper profitable trend. But that's all the good news. The other 9 years I've either been breaking even or losing. It's looking increasingly like I'm a break-even type player who's had the occasional good run. That's the reality of the situation. The good news is, at least I'm still in the black. I'm still freerolling; playing with other people's money. So it's not all bad.
Having said all that, the one thing I've been trying to concentrate on recently is to not be so results orientated. The cards will fall where they may but what really matters is whether or not they were played correctly. I've come to the realisation that this is the most important thing for me to be thinking about. Take care of correctly playing the hands and the results will look after themselves. Eventually.
With that in mind, I've been working on analysing my hands as much as I can. In particular, looking at the hands where I lose a lot of chips. If I played the hand right but got unlucky, that's okay. But if I played it bad, well that's when there's some revision to do. Who knew playing poker would be so much work?
I've found writing these blogposts to be quite useful. It's been a good way of ordering my thoughts on my poker journey and keeping a record of how I'm doing at any particular time. But this stuff is increasingly going into my poker journal rather than onto my blog. Hence the long interval between recent posts. And the fact is, very few people actually look at these posts (and 'looking' doesn't necessarily mean reading). Plus, I have another online project in mind and that's likely to take up a fair bit of my spare time. So I'm going to put his blog on hold for a while, most likely permanently.
Meanwhile, I'll keep on playing, working on my game, trying to get better at it. But mostly, enjoying it. The fact is, no matter how bad my results may be, no matter how frustrating the game may be, I just love it. What do I see myself doing in 10 years time? Playing poker. Regardless of anything else. Somebody else's money, my money, whatever. After all; it's a beautiful game.
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