1000 Hours

  Anyway you'll never know the many times I've tried
  And still they lead me back to the long and winding road           The Beatles

   Five years ago the only poker game that I was involved in was an occasional home game among friends, played at my place. This game was played five or six times per year, so I was playing maybe 30 hours of poker per year. By this stage we had already added Texas Holdem to our list of games, having seen it played on TV on ESPN. It was seeing this TV coverage, with its cast of poker professionals,  that really got me thinking about the game and how it was played. So sometime around the end of the year I went down to the local library and borrowed a couple of  "beginners' guides". 
   I don't remember the name of that first poker book (I think it was written by Ken Warren), but it was something of a revelation to me. I came to realise that there were certain basic principals to successful poker play, based on simple mathematical concepts. By applying these principals correctly, you could become a winning player and there were even people who made a living out of playing poker! This book also pointed out the importance of two things: bankroll management and record-keeping. So I set about applying some of the things I'd learned, starting with record-keeping. I got a notebook and started writing down the details of the games I played in, including the type of game, my bankroll balance, the amount won or lost, and the hours played.
   The first game that I recorded was played on Saturday 11th October 2008, at 7.30pm. This was a five-handed home game, dealer's choice, with a betting limit of $1-$5. I went in with $80 and broke even, coming out with the same amount. I played for 5 1/2 hours. There were many games to follow that and when I'd filled up my notebook I graduated to an exercise book and started drawing up tables and recording results for particular game types separately from the overall totals. It all got rather complicated but I could never complain about not having enough information about my games. If anything, I was suffering from information overload.
   There are only two other entries for that year; one more home game and my first ever casino game, played on Christmas eve. In 2009 things changed a bit. The year was book-ended by visits to the casino. I'd got into the habit of playing a few No Limit Texas Holdem cash games at the casino during the Christmas holidays. Meanwhile, the home games continued, and I also played a few other games at a local pool club. By the end of that year I'd played a total of 82 hours since my records started and was ahead by a handful of dollars (no, nowhere near a fistful).
   I played a lot more in 2010. This was the year when I discovered the Friday night Texas Holdem Tournament at the Phoenix Tavern. My regular home game fizzled out in March and was replaced by a regular visit to the Friday night tournament. This game cost $20 to play in ($10 buy-in, $10 re-buy or add-on), and my bankroll started moving into negative territory, $20 at a time. It wasn't until October that I had my first win, by which time I was several hundred dollars in the red. I had enough wins after that to reduce the deficit, and by the last game of the year (Christmas Eve again) I had almost got back into the black. At this stage I'd played 178 hours of poker.
   2011 started out much the same as the previous year, but then I started playing online. My first ever online poker game was on February 8th, playing in a Texas Holdem ring game on Fulltilt Poker. From that point on I was playing at least once per week online, first on Fulltilt, then on 888 Poker. And I was still playing in the live tournament every couple of weeks up until October when they stopped playing. By the end of the year I'd played another 250 hours of poker, taking my total to over 400 hours. Considering I was playing 30 hours annually a few years before, this was a huge increase. Poker was starting to take over my life.
   By March of 2012 I was playing exclusively online and had hit the 500 hours mark. At this point I considered something I had read in that same poker book several years previously. The author had pointed out that poker is not for everyone; that some people just didn't have the knack for it. He suggested that if the reader was still not a winning player by the time they'd played 500 hours, then maybe poker wasn't for them; maybe they should take up macramé, or topiary or something. At this point my results were not very good. Although I was ahead, it was not by much, and my win rate was barely above zero. Not a great result for 500 hours of play. So I did consider giving up and taking up the trombone. Briefly. Very briefly. Actually, I was hooked on poker and was probably never going to give it up. Maybe if I'd used up all my poker reserves and had to start paying back into my bankroll I would have considered it. Maybe.
   Now, fourteen months later, I've just passed the one thousand hours mark. So the first 500 hours took me nearly 3 1/2 years; the second 500 took just over a year. My bankroll has got healthier in that time too. Although my balance dipped into negative territory in the middle of last year (see 'Mid-Winter Nosedive'), it recovered around the beginning of this year and has been more or less climbing ever since. In fact my poker stake hit an all-time high in the middle of April, although it's dropped back a bit since then. Since I started concentrating on SitnGos things have been looking up. But it's still very much a learning curve, and every game presents a new challenge. That's the great thing about this game; after 1000 hours of play there is plenty still to learn.
   Now that I've reached this milestone, I can look forward to the next one: 2000 hours?  5000 hours?  Actually, I've set myself some more modest goals, some things that should be achievable in the short to medium term. These include:
   *Moving up to the next level in 7 Card Stud (if I can manage a few wins at the current level)
   *Moving up a level in SitnGos (I just have to get out of my current flat patch)
   *Making a withdrawal from the 888 poker site
   *Playing multiple online games
   *Getting back into a live game (got to get my bankroll up a little higher first).
 And of course there's always the goal of increasing my poker stake. Maybe the next milestone I should be aiming for is a $1000 bankroll...
    I'll keep you posted.
  
  
  

Goodbye, Zarquon 9

   Now the good times are all gone,
   I'm bound for moving on...                 Neil Young

   I started playing poker online on the 8th of February 2011, on the Fulltilt poker site. I had checked out a few of the websites that compare different online poker rooms, and came up with a list of the five most promising names. At the time the plan was to try a different one of these sites every couple of months and then decide which one I liked the best at the end of the year. So I started with the middle-ranked site: Fulltilt. However, it soon became obvious that changing sites every couple of months would be a big hassle, especially as I was on dialup at the time, so I just stuck with my original choice.
   Just choosing a username proved to be a bit of a challenge. There was a huge number of players on Fulltilt so all the best names were long gone. Even apparently obscure, geeky names were unavailable, or were available only if a string of numbers was tacked on to the end, which I didn't really want to do. I had gone through quite a few possibilities before I finally settled on "Zarquon9". I thought that Zarquon would be a suitably obscure name, being the name of a minor character in the Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy books, but it was already heavily used. However, my birthday is on the 9th, so when I saw that "Zarquon9" was available, I grabbed it.
 There was a huge number of games available on Fulltilt, including a lot of freerolls. There was a freeroll every night for New Zealand players, and a bunch of other free tourneys for all players on an almost hourly basis. My wife and I both had Fulltilt accounts and played a lot, sometimes even playing freerolls together, playing under her account and playing hands alternately. We particularly enjoyed "Rush Poker", a tourney where all players who fold a hand get instantly moved to a new table, creating non-stop action for everyone.

   Of course, in June it all fell apart when "Black Friday" happened (although it was a Saturday in New Zealand) and Fulltilt was shut down. What followed was a long and deafening silence from Fulltilt and I pretty much wrote off the money that was sitting in my Fulltilt account. As mentioned in previous posts, I went looking for the most stable, most reliable poker site I could find and ended up joining up with 888 Poker, where I've been playing ever since.
   When Fulltilt was resurrected last year, after being taken over by Pokerstars, I had no interest whatsoever in going back there. I toyed with the idea of trying to get my $US43 back, but in the end decided that it probably wasn't worth the effort. Then, earlier this month, I joined up with Pokerstars because I wanted to play Seven Card Stud and there were no games available on 888. Once I deposited some money with Pokerstars and took a look around the site, I discovered that it was possible to transfer cash between Fulltilt and Pokerstars accounts. So I decided to try to get my money back.
   Downloading the Fulltilt software was easy enough, although I had a little trouble getting back into my account because, even though I had my password written down, it was apparently wrong. But I was soon back into the Zarquon9 account and it proved to be pretty easy to transfer the money across to Pokerstars. Meanwhile, my wife decided to play with the $5 or so that was in her account and, as is usual, it was all soon gone. The Fulltilt Poker site looks much the same as before, although the table avatars seem to be a bit bigger than previously; a positive change. Zarquon9 still had a few thousand play-money chips, so I played a few hands for old times' sake, then signed out. I'd taken a look around the site to see if there was a way to close my account, but couldn't find anything. I've just finished uninstalling the software, so that's the end of my association with Fulltilt Poker.

One Thousand ways to Play

   Deal out Jacks or better
   on a blanket by the stairs          Tom Waits

   One of my poker goals for this year is to start playing Seven Card Stud. It's my plan to play a new version of Poker each year. Last year I played Six-max Fixed Limit Texas Holdem cash games and the year before it was Six-max Pot Limit Omaha cash games. So that's three down, God knows how many more to go. The fact is, there is an enormous number of variations on the game of Poker.
   My father taught me how to play Poker when I was a boy. The game he showed me was Five Card Draw, but he didn't call it that. He called it Poker, and as far as I knew that was it. It was a little later that I began to be aware of a number of variations on that basic game. First up, on American TV shows and movies (especially cowboy movies) they could sometimes be seen to be playing something called Five Card Stud Poker. I had no idea how this was played, but I knew of its existence.
   Then I got hold of a copy of Hoyle's Rules of Games and read up on the game of Poker. That was a bit of am eye-opener. First-up I learned that the basic game of Five Card Draw is played with antes rather than blinds and that the version I learned is called Australian Poker. There are also a number of other variations, including Pass and Out, and Jackpots (also known as Jacks or Better). Then there were the stud games: Five Card, Seven Card, Lowball, High-Low, Mexican Stud, Spit in the Ocean, and many more. On top of that there were a number of  other versions of the game listed, such as Cincinnati, Criss Cross, Three Card, and Put and Take. Of course, all this was a long time ago. My memory is not that good. I cheated by checking my current copy of Hoyle's.
   I was introduced to a new group of games after I met my wife-to-be. She was in the habit of playing a game called Nine Card with her work-mates before work. I learned to play this community card game by playing with her and her friends. Then when we started playing in a regular 'Poker circuit' I learned a clutch of more complicated games. One was similar to Criss Cross and there were others such as Basket and Shopping. These were all multiple card games involving many possible combinations of hands. In other words, they were action games, and were particularly popular with the Pacific Island community.
   This was back in the days when playing poker meant sitting around a table with real people. But that was about to change. They started showing a new game called Texas Holdem on ESPN and it was being played as a tournament; another new development. I started playing Texas Holdem regularly and not long after that I started reading up on poker strategy. That's when I discovered other versions of the game, such as Omaha, Omaha High-Low and Razz. Since then, as a result of reading books and websites, playing online and mixing with other poker players, I've come across a trickle of new game types. I heard about Badugi Poker from a Poker meetup group, Double Holdem from a Poker website and Chinese Poker from a book. I have no doubt that there are many other variants around that I haven't heard of, at least not yet.
   But this is just the beginning. There are a number of other factors that create even greater variety in the number of possible poker games. Any of these games can be played with different limit structures. Typically, they can be played as No Limit, Pot Limit, Spread Limit or Fixed Limit games. Anyone who has played in both Fixed Limit Holdem and No Limit Holdem games knows that there is a big difference in the way that the two games are played. You can even play in games with mixed limits; The Big Game, currently showing on TV here, is played pot limit before the flop and no limit after the flop.
   Of course, another major difference is that between tournaments and cash games. Playing in tournaments requires a player to be much more active, while patience is an important attribute of cash game players. Cash games can also vary according to the number of players at the table. Normally you can find full table games (9 or 10 for Holdem), six-max games (6 players) and heads-up games (2 players). Once again, the character of the game changes significantly with changes in the number of players.
   And once you start looking at tournaments, the variations are even greater. Firstly, there are SitnGo (on demand) Tournaments and regular Tournaments that start at a specified time. Then the numbers can vary from 6 player games all the way up to tournaments that involve thousands of players. Tournaments can also be short-stacked or deep-stacked, slow or fast (Turbos), satellites, have re-buys and/or add-ons, and the payout structure can vary from a small fraction of players being paid to double or nothing games where the top half get paid. All these variations (and the many that I've failed to mention) require adjustments to the way the game is played.
   Being able to play one version of Poker well doesn't mean that you'll be able to win at a different game type, or even at a different limit structure of the same game. Although the basic principals might stay the same, the strategies require constant adjustment from game to game. I figure that trying different game types will help me to become adaptable in my general play and broaden my understanding of the principals of the game. Failing that, it's fun to try different formats, not to mention challenging. And I haven't even mentioned the differences between playing at low buy-in levels and more expensive games, live and online games, or the effect of the rake on games.
   So what this all adds up to is this: if I play one new game type each year, there is little if any likelihood of me ever running out of new games to play.

Change of Season

     I'm ready for the shuffle,
     Ready for the deal,
     Ready to let go of the steering wheel.
     I'm ready, ready for the push.                    U2

  It's been a brilliant summer, the hottest since records were kept, and I've been out watering the garden every second day for the last month. The cicadas have been droning away, the beaches have been crowded with sweating bodies and the frangipani we bought last year has been fooled into flowering way earlier than expected. But despite all the distractions, I've managed to play quite a lot of online poker this summer.
   I've been playing nothing but SitnGos for the last three months and the results have been very pleasing. I started out at the end of November with an overall loss, but by mid-January I was at the break-even point and now my bankroll is showing a nice profit. In fact, a couple of weeks ago my bankroll hit an all-time high, although it's dropped back down a little since. My 'Plan C', as outlined in a previous post, has been yielding some pretty consistent results.
   At this time of year I usually decide what sort of games I'll be playing in the coming year. The plan is to play two game types: the game that I've had the best results from in the previous 12 months, and a new game that I haven't played before. There's no doubt that my most successful game of the last 12 months is 9 player online SitnGos, thanks mainly to the last two months of results. The Texas Holdem six-max fixed-limit cash games and the online tournaments don't even come close. So I'll be playing more SitnGos in the coming season.
   The new game that I'll be playing is Fixed-limit Seven card Stud. I've wanted to try my hand at this game for some time. In fact, I meant to try it last year, but after a disastrous attempt at playing Omaha the previous year, I decided to play it safe and stick to the relatively familiar Texas Holdem fixed-limit. So, having played maybe three hands of Stud in my life, I'm going to give it a go. I have been reading up on Stud strategy a bit, but I expect it'll be a bit of a struggle at first. However, past experience has taught me to dip my toe in the water before diving in. So for the first few weeks I'll be playing in play money games and observing the cash games. Then I'll start at the lower levels and only move up if I have some consistent success.
   If I want to play Seven card Stud I'll have to play on a different site. Although 888 has Stud tables available, there are hardly any players on them. Any time I've looked I've been lucky to find more than three players on a single table, and these have generally been at the higher levels. So I visited a number of websites that compare poker sites to see which were the best ones for Stud games. Oddly enough, 888 was frequently listed as one of the best sites for Stud poker! The other listings were pretty inconsistent from site to site, but Pokerstars got quite a few mentions. I checked out Pokerstars and found that the Stud tables were pretty well patronised at all levels, so I downloaded the software and am ready to give it a shot.
   I took a look at the Pokerstars SitnGos as well but they seem to consist mostly of turbos, super-turbos, 6 player games and other variations on the standard 9 player games. So I'll be sticking to 888 SitnGos and playing Stud on Pokerstars. Meanwhile, I'll be continuing my never-ending search for live games that meet my exacting standards. I'm determined to find a regular live game that I can afford to play in. But for now, it's all online.

User-Name Awards

   It's awards season and the airwaves are awash with red carpet interviews and deeply humble acceptance speeches. But of course, there are the minor awards and then there's the big one. Yes, you know what I mean: the Kingjack user-name awards. So without further ado let me introduce:

 THE COMPLETELY UNOFFICIAL, COMPLETELY UNSANCTIONED AND IN-NO-WAY-WHATSOEVER-CONNECTED-IN-ANY-WAY-SHAPE-OR-FORM-TO-THE-WEBSITE-OF-THE-SAME-NAME KINGJACK 888 USER-NAME AWARDS...

As we play our games of online poker we occasionally stumble across clever, funny or just plain weird user-names. This is the occasion when the inventors of those entertaining names get their overdue recognition. Today, I will award a "Golden Donkey" to the winner in each of  six categories, as well as the supreme award, the "Unobtainium Donkey" to the best of the best. These much sought-after statuettes are made of pure plastic and dipped in genuine gold-coloured paint, and can be collected by the winners by sending me a postage and packaging fee of $US100.
   But before we get to the presentations, a word or two about the selection process. Ever since I started playing on 888 (about a year and a half ago) I've been taking note of any interesting user-names I come across. Having collected a list of about 70 names, these were then passed on to the one-man Category Committee and divided up into suitable categories. They were then passed on to the single-member Short List Committee, at which point just five names were put forward in each of the six categories. The nominees were then delivered to the Selection Panel (that's me) and the final winners were chosen. This information has been passed to me in sealed envelopes and will now be revealed.
    Note; the actual names have been abridged or altered in most cases for the sake of clarity (eg Super_Man806 would become superman)

 

Category 1: THE DONKEYFISH AWARD for the most creative use of the word 'donkey' or 'fish'.
This is a very popular theme and there were a great many entries, making it very difficult to narrow them down to just five names. But here are the finalists:
donkitup                manfishdonk            honkeydonk                     robofish               donkhoar
This was a tough final decision but I finally narrowed it down to two finalists:
Honourable mention goes to....            donkitup
And the winner is....               manfishdonk

Category 2: THE WTF? AWARD for the most obtuse, obscure or absurd user-name.
These are the names that make you go HUH? when you see them and, personally, I'd like to see more of them. The finalists are:
painthendef                    eyesshutwide               eatmyatheism              puffcabbage           runlikegod
After a great deal of soul searching I came up with two names, both of which, coincidentally, have a religious theme:
Honourable mention for outstanding verbal imagery...             runlikegod
And the winner is the perverse and defiant......          eatmyatheism

Category 3: THE I'M NOT OK AWARD for outstanding self esteem issues.
There were a surprising number of these excuse-me-for-breathing type names, and here are the best (or worst) of them:
badinfection              mucupus                dumbitch                      cupidstunt            toiletbrush
Both my finalists take self-denigration to whole new levels and were hard to choose between.
The 'I want to disinfect my keyboard' 2nd place prize goes to...              mucopus
And for sheer elegant simplicity, 1st prize goes to....       toiletbrush

Category 4:  THE MISTER PUMPKINHEAD AWARD for extreme cockiness. These names are the opposite of those in the previous category and often have no correlation to the actual abilities of the persons concerned:
ifIraiseufkd                 hahasukka               saythx2urmom                 payandsmile              itzpayday
There doesn't seem to be as much creativity in this category as some of the others, however:
Honourable mention for absurd bravado goes to....        ifIraiseufkd
The winner, for supreme (and probably unmerited) self-confidence...                   payandsmile

Category 5: THE POKER JOKER AWARD for creative use of poker-related terms.
There are a lot of these types of user-name. They are everywhere. These are the five that stood out for me:
pokerdot                 str8faced                 hotflush                          roboflop                     suckoutmagnet
To be honest, I decided the winner the moment I first saw it, so the only contest was for 2nd place.
Honourable mention; you've gotta love this, very nice wordplay....             roboflop
The winner is so simple and so clever, it was no contest...      pokerdot         (It's even better if the player's name was actually Dorothy)

Category 6: THE NO-MAN'S LAND AWARD for names that don't really fall into any category.
Pretty much self explanatory really:
devilbitch                  palerider               chaseburger                       justdyl                        omgwhyme
Honourable mention goes to...                       omgwhyme
The winner, mainly because I like the movie...                                                  palerider

So there they are, the winners of the most prestigious completely-unsanctioned-poker-site-user-name-awards-in-a-blog for 2013. Now, there is only one more prize to be given out. The supreme best-of-the-best award. The overall winner.
   And the supreme award goes to....
                                                    the envelope please.....
                                                                                   Ladies and Gentlemen, the winner of the Unobtainium Donkey is....
                                               POKERDOT!

 

 

Thank you, thank you and goodnight.

Summer Sitngo Season

        When the weather's fine,
         we go fishing or go swimming in the sea.
         We're always happy
         Long's we're living in this sound philosophy.    Mungo Jerry

  After a shaky start, the summer is well and truly here. Enormous black clouds hung over Auckland for days on end over Christmas, then it cleared up but was windy for about a week. But the good weather came with the new year, and I spent quite a lot of time out and about over the holidays. Nevertheless, between bouts of lying in the sand I've managed to play in quite a few online Sitngos. This is at least partly because of the convenience of Sitngos, with a typical game lasting no more than an hour.
   As mentioned in previous posts, my results in Sitngos were less than impressive in the  last few months of 2012. So I decided to look for a new improved strategy for the new season. My playing strategy at the time was based on dividing the tournament into three stages. The first stage, when there are 7 to 9 players on the table, is my conservative stage. I have a pretty tight list of starting hands and tend to fold a lot more than other players. I play basic poker; raising my big starting hands and limping in with drawing hands from late position.
   In the second stage, when there are 4 to 6 players, I get more active. I base my play partly on my cards, but mostly on my position and the relative size of my chip stack. The basic idea is to pick on the short stacks and to avoid playing against the big stack unless I have a monster hand. Position also becomes much more important and I am far more inclined to bet at a pot with nothing if I am last to act and no-one else is betting. I also follow the basic principal that if I drop down to ten big blinds or less then I simply fold and fold until I hit a decent hand and then push all-in.
   If I make the third stage then I'm in the money, and ready to change gears again. My end-game is pretty basic and often successful. It basically boils down to just checking in the big blind, regardless of the hand, and hoping to see the flop. On the button I will usually raise, regardless of the strength of my hand, in the hopes of stealing the blinds. Sometimes I'll fold rags, just to mix it up. The only time that I'll call on the button or the small blind is if I have a monster, hoping to trap my opponent with the second-best hand. This 3rd stage strategy has worked pretty well for me. The problem has been with the earlier stages.
   Around the start of December I read something online about Sitngo strategies. The author advocated a super-tight starting scheme. He said he wouldn't play anything less than AQ in the earlier stages of a Sitngo. I briefly toyed with the idea of adopting this strategy but it just seemed too extreme. So I came up with a modified plan. I put a lot more emphasis on the power of position in the earlier stages. I tightened up my early position starting hands almost to the point of AQ or better. I also tightened up my mid position starting hands somewhat, and abandoned the habit of big pre-flop raises with these hands. However, I loosened up the hands I was willing to limp in with from late position, especially from the button. As for the second and third stages, I continued to play them the same way as before.
   Although this appears to be just tinkering with my starting hands, it had a significant effect on my results. I actually started winning more than I was losing. By the end of the summer holidays I'd played enough games to conclude that this was no flash in the pan. Although the winnings were not huge, I was definitely in the black for summer season Sitngos. So I started thinking about what I could do to improve things further. Eventually I came up with Plan C.
   Plan C is a lot harder to explain than my previous strategies. It's much more.... fluid. It goes something like this:
   In stage one I play conservatively. I'll still raise with big hands pre-flop, but not by too much. I just accept that I'm probably going to get multiple callers and see what comes on the flop.  The only exceptions to this are AA and KK, both of which I'll push hard with pre-flop. Any other playable hands will be played carefully. I try to play small pots from late position. I hardly ever bluff at a pot and am always ready to fold if it looks like someone has drawn out on me. Basically, I'm biding my time, picking up chips here and there and waiting for the maniacs to knock each other out.
   I play the second stage similarly to the way I played before, but it's more about stack management. I'm always watching the size of my stack compared to those of other players and the objective is to survive through to the next stage. It's all about preserving a big stack and trying to pick up enough chips to stay in the game if I'm short-stacked. I also have less tolerance for being short-stacked. If I'm down to 12 big blinds I'll start looking for the all-in hand.
   Playing this way has helped me to make it through to the third stage more often. From there, I play the way I always do. Even if I'm the shortest stack of the three remaining players, I can often crawl my way into second or first place. At the very least, I'm in the money.
   This new strategy has worked well for me so far. Although it's early days yet, I feel confident that I'm on the right track. My results have significantly improved and my bankroll is well above the break-even point. Maybe it's just a winning streak, but I don't think so. I feel like I'm finally getting a handle on the correct way to play online Sitngos. I still have a month of the summer season to go. By the end of this month I should have a better idea of my progress, but for now the outlook is sunny.
  
  

Cash Game Marathon

   After not playing any live poker games for a year (not counting those freaky NPPL games), I've now played in two in the space of a couple of weeks. A few weeks ago my wife's friend rang us on Sunday morning to let us know that she was running a home poker game at her place. She assured us that this would be a limit game, unlike the one we'd played in previously at the Thirsty Whale pub. She told me that for a $20 buy-in each player would get $100 worth of chips and that the big blind was $2.00. It took me a while to get my head around the idea of a cash game where the chips are worth more than the actual cash value, but eventually I worked out that it was $20 for 50 big blinds. This sounded like a reasonable blind structure and a reasonable buy-in, so we headed off for a game.
   In the end there were six of us playing: myself, my wife, her friend (A), her friend's two brothers (V and M) and their friend (S), all players who'd been at the pub for the previous game. We started at about 5pm that afternoon, and we were playing dealer's choice. However, the game wasn't quite what I'd expected. It turned out that the game was actually being run by V, and he told us that we would actually be getting $50 worth of chips, which meant we were getting 25 big blinds; another short stack game. We started out playing mainly Texas Holdem, Omaha and Nine-card (5 cards in the hand and 4 on the board).
   While the rest of us were playing the three previously mentioned games, V was introducing some different games. He started playing some games that involved multiple sets of community cards and multiple rounds of betting. I'd come across these types of games before when my wife and I had played in "syndicate games" years before. These tended to be action games that were quite expensive to play in so I tended to fold a lot when V was the dealer. So, I was playing pretty conservatively early on and after a few hours play had to top up with another $20, as did a number of other players.
   After a while V started changing the rules on his "Big Nine" and "Big Seven" games to get more action. He introduced compulsory blinds that all players had to play (essentially, antes that cost the same as the big blind) and draws where players had to pay $2.00 for each card drawn. He seemed to be trying to increase the stakes as much as possible without actually raising the limits or the blinds. It was obvious to me that he would have preferred to be playing in a higher stakes game and he was trying to make the hands more expensive. So I resigned myself to folding my blinds in his games unless I had a monster starting hand, and concentrating on playing in the more straightforward game types.
   As we played into the night I started to win some pots and after a while I realised that I'd at least made my buy-in back. This was still the summer holiday period, so I didn't have to go to work Monday morning, but my wife and I had plans for the next day, so we said we'd only play until midnight. Somehow midnight came and went and we were all still playing. By the early hours of the morning my chip stack looked like it might be twice my original buy-in, so I was feeling pretty good. I even started dealing a few hands of Omaha, and even won a pot or two in that game.
   S told us that he was definitely leaving at 4am so we all agreed that the game would end at that hour. Somehow 4am came and went and we were still all playing. Our host was getting pretty tired and finally went off to bed around 5 or 6, but the rest of us kept going. By this stage I was folding a lot, intent on keeping a healthy chip stack, and just playing premium starting hands. Basically, I was just waiting for someone to call a close to the game. Eventually the game finished at around 7am, at which point I discovered that I had more than doubled my starting stack.
   There were a number of negative factors to this game. The blind structure meant starting with a short stack of only 25 blinds. Some of the games were expensive to play in and designed to increase the luck factor. There was a 'donation' towards the house that amounted to about 10% of the buy-in. Despite all this I managed to come out ahead and also had an enjoyable evening, although a somewhat tiring one.
   After 14 hours of poker play without a break, my wife and I headed home for a well-deserved rest. It was great to get back into live home games after so long. While it was nice to win some money, the best part of the whole experience was the possibility of playing another game in the near future, preferably at my place this time. That way,  I get to go to bed whenever I please.