Today I might be mad,
Tomorrow I'll be glad,
I've got Friday on my mind. The Easybeats
As mentioned in my previous post, I've discovered a weekly live Texas Holdem tournament. This tourney is on a Friday night, and costs $20 to enter. My wife and I found out about this in late June and we've played five weeks in a row since then, although we're probably going to give it a miss this week as we have a pool competition on Saturday that starts quite early. If you make the money in this tourney (usually the top five) you're probably going to get home close to midnight. Typically there are 20 to 25 players involved, which means a total prize pool of around $500. So far I've finished 18th, 7th, 3rd, 6th and 5th, leaving me $20 down overall. I'm reasonably happy with this result although I think I need to work on my endgame a bit to get a better payout when I make the money.
I'm impressed with the professional way in which this tourney is run. Firstly, it invariably starts on time, at 7pm. When I used to play in a tournament at a pub a couple of years ago, their 7pm start time usually became 8pm or later. The current tourney organisers also use tournament management software, displaying all the relative information on a big screen for everyone to see. It's good to be able to look up and see when the next break is, when the blinds go up next and by how much, how many players are left in, what the average stack size is and so on. Also, they usually manage to find someone to do the dealing once the numbers get down to the last three or four. I discovered last week that ten percent comes out of the prize pool for a charitable donation. This is a requirement under New Zealand's gaming laws, and is not much different from the standard ten percent game fee of most online tournaments. So overall, a very good event to be involved with.
After playing online for so long, I didn't realise how much I missed playing live poker until I started up with this game. There's just nothing like sitting around a table with real live people, peeking at your hole cards and stacking up your chips. Although it's taken me awhile to get used to the duties of live play. You have to remember to post the blinds, not to act out of turn, to announce your raise, not make string bets and to refrain from commenting on the cards while the they are still in play, among other things. Unlike playing on a computer, you've got to do it all yourself.
The people who play in this tournament are a pretty good bunch, all very friendly and have welcomed us into their game without reservation (even though my wife and I are not even members of their club - yet). Many of them have been playing for a while and know each others' play quite well. But I haven't come across anyone with a particularly intimidating playing style. Play is generally pretty loose and passive, especially in the early stages. For most of the players, it's all about the draw. Of course, being a club, there is a fair bit of drinking going on by some of the players, myself included. It's not beyond the realms of possibility that my lack of top two finishes has something to do with the cumulative effects of alcohol consumption, so I guess I'd better cut back a bit.
Apart from this weekly tourney, we got involved in a monthly Texas Holdem tournament that involves a number of different clubs. This is a teams competition that is played once a month on a Sunday. Each club puts up an eight player team and they all play in a $20 entry tourney. Each person plays individually, in the usual way, but they also get points for their team, based on the position they finish in. Apparently some of the prize money goes into a separate pool that is paid out to the highest-scoring teams at the end of the year. As individual, non-team players can also participate, my wife and I both entered and played in this game. Oddly enough, it was held at our home club. It turns out that the poker players from our home club had been entering teams in this competition for some time, but this was the first time we'd ever heard about it. Anyway, my wife and I both went deeper into this tourney than any of our RSA team players managed, and I ended up making the top three out of a total of 59 players. We three split the prize pool and I walked away with $200. Nice.
Despite this success, I'm not sure if I'll play in this monthly game again. A big chunk of the prize pool goes into the end-of-year pool, which amounts to a pretty big rake unless you are in a team and play in every tourney. Even then, any end-of-year payout would depend on how well your team-mates did. I just don't see poker as a team sport.
But I will definitely be turning up at the Workingman's Club most Friday nights for the weekly poker tourney. My immediate goal is to take out first place and get a decent payout. But regardless of the results, even if I come up with a string of poor results, I think my Friday nights are booked for quite a while.
Monday, 22 July 2013
Sunday, 7 July 2013
News Briefs
What's the buzz?
Tell me what's a-happening. Jesus Christ Superstar
Having taken a one month break from poker play in an effort to break my most recent losing streak, I am now back in the game. Although I haven't been playing poker, I've still been keeping in touch with the poker world in various ways:
SECRETS OF SITNGOS. I went down to the local library and got myself a poker book to study: Secrets of Sitngos. This was the only book I could find that dealt specifically with SitnGo tournaments, and I found it to be moderately useful. As usual it was aimed mainly at higher-level players but there were a few ideas that I found to be of interest. I particularly liked the end section, where particular scenarios were put forward and the reader was given the opportunity to answer a multiple choice question on what to do next. However much of the book was based on a theory called the Independent Chip Model or ICM, a mathematical model based on the assumed real-money value of tournament chips in different situations. This mathematical stuff went pretty much completely over my head and frankly, if being a good player in SitnGos is dependant on applying complex mathematical hand analysis, I guess I'll just have to keep swimming with the other fish.
POKER ON TV. I'm still watching Poker after Dark and The Big Game each week. In fact my wife and I have got into the habit of watching these shows over breakfast on Saturday and
Sunday mornings. The new 'loose cannon' (the amateur player) on The Big Game is doing pretty well, especially after doubling up through Phil Hellmuth. He's so far ahead of the other contenders now that he's basically shut up shop. He even folded pocket aces at one stage in order to preserve his big stack. Meanwhile I've found yet another poker show playing on Thursdays. This one covers the Aussie Millions tournament and one of the commentators is Aussie poker pro Joe Hachem. His comments about the play and what he thinks the players are going to do, or what they should do, are always interesting and insightful.
POKER SCHOOL. I also checked out the Poker Stars Poker School which looks to be a useful tool for learning about correct poker play. However I only read the first few sections, as I wanted to concentrate on the SitnGo book. I will get back to it sometime soon, but for now I'm concentrating on actually playing.
WSOP. The World Series of Poker is now in full swing and I've been checking out some of the results on www.wsop.com . It's nice to be able to go to the website and see who's winning or losing in different events. They're even streaming some of the final tables live, with commentary. Last year they showed the Main Event live (delayed by about 10 minutes actually) on ESPN. I don't know if they're doing that again this year, but I think Day One starts tomorrow, so I'll be keeping an eye out. Actually, I may be approaching saturation point for Poker TV programmes.
LIVE TOURNEY. After searching high and low I've finally found a decent live poker tournament. It turns out that the Workingman's Club just up the road from the RSA where I usually hang out has been running a Texas Holdem Tournament every Friday night for the last three years. This tourney is $20 entry, no rebuys, no add-ons, no extra chips; just what I've been looking for. The entry fee is technically beyond my buy-in limit but I'm willing to bend my buy-in rules for the sake of being able to play in a live tourney. My wife and I have played for the last three weeks and intend to continue going up there pretty much every week. The first week I was eliminated 16 out of 18, week two I came in 7th and this week I made 3rd out of 26 and made my three buy-ins back.
NEW CONCEPTS. The book I previously mentioned introduced me to three new poker concepts.
The ICM. The Independent Chip Model basically tells you how to act based on your chip stack and that of your opponents and a number of other factors. Apparently you can get software that does the calculations for you. I'm not really interested in going down this road. I had enough maths in school.
Sharkscope. This is a website that gathers information on online players. You go to www.sharkscope.com , type in a player's username, and get a lot of information on their results from the tournaments they've played online. This could be potentially quite useful. I went to the site and discovered that 888 poker doesn't allow this sort of data mining so there is no info available for 888 players. So I tried typing in my own username for Pokerstars, as I've played a couple of SitnGos on that site. The info that came up said that I'd played 1 SitnGo and 1 Omaha Pot-limit Tournament. I've never played an Omaha tournament in my life, so I guess the information available on this site is not entirely accurate.
ROI. I've seen players refer to 'return on investment' before, as a measure of success in games, but never paid much attention to it. But having it explained in the SitnGo book has made me realise that it is a much better way of measuring poker success than my current method. It's very simple. ROI is just a measure of the amount won (or lost) as a percentage of the amount 'invested'. This provides a useful measure of results regardless of the buy-in level. I will definitely be re-assessing my record-keeping to accommodate this new concept.
NEW ATTITUDE. The online games I've played so far since my break have yielded very poor results. It seems that my losing streak is still alive and well, as far as online games go anyway. But the difference is that it's not bugging me anymore (at least not so far). I've come back into the game with a whole new attitude. Maybe I was getting so worked up over losing before because it was in contrast to my previous good results. Now, even though I'm losing consistently, and have actually dropped down a couple of levels in my SitnGos, I accept my losses with good humour and just keep trying. I seem to have gained a sense of perspective on my poker play that I didn't have before and I think that I will be re-assessing my whole approach to the game. But more on that later...
Tell me what's a-happening. Jesus Christ Superstar
Having taken a one month break from poker play in an effort to break my most recent losing streak, I am now back in the game. Although I haven't been playing poker, I've still been keeping in touch with the poker world in various ways:
SECRETS OF SITNGOS. I went down to the local library and got myself a poker book to study: Secrets of Sitngos. This was the only book I could find that dealt specifically with SitnGo tournaments, and I found it to be moderately useful. As usual it was aimed mainly at higher-level players but there were a few ideas that I found to be of interest. I particularly liked the end section, where particular scenarios were put forward and the reader was given the opportunity to answer a multiple choice question on what to do next. However much of the book was based on a theory called the Independent Chip Model or ICM, a mathematical model based on the assumed real-money value of tournament chips in different situations. This mathematical stuff went pretty much completely over my head and frankly, if being a good player in SitnGos is dependant on applying complex mathematical hand analysis, I guess I'll just have to keep swimming with the other fish.
POKER ON TV. I'm still watching Poker after Dark and The Big Game each week. In fact my wife and I have got into the habit of watching these shows over breakfast on Saturday and
Sunday mornings. The new 'loose cannon' (the amateur player) on The Big Game is doing pretty well, especially after doubling up through Phil Hellmuth. He's so far ahead of the other contenders now that he's basically shut up shop. He even folded pocket aces at one stage in order to preserve his big stack. Meanwhile I've found yet another poker show playing on Thursdays. This one covers the Aussie Millions tournament and one of the commentators is Aussie poker pro Joe Hachem. His comments about the play and what he thinks the players are going to do, or what they should do, are always interesting and insightful.
POKER SCHOOL. I also checked out the Poker Stars Poker School which looks to be a useful tool for learning about correct poker play. However I only read the first few sections, as I wanted to concentrate on the SitnGo book. I will get back to it sometime soon, but for now I'm concentrating on actually playing.
WSOP. The World Series of Poker is now in full swing and I've been checking out some of the results on www.wsop.com . It's nice to be able to go to the website and see who's winning or losing in different events. They're even streaming some of the final tables live, with commentary. Last year they showed the Main Event live (delayed by about 10 minutes actually) on ESPN. I don't know if they're doing that again this year, but I think Day One starts tomorrow, so I'll be keeping an eye out. Actually, I may be approaching saturation point for Poker TV programmes.
LIVE TOURNEY. After searching high and low I've finally found a decent live poker tournament. It turns out that the Workingman's Club just up the road from the RSA where I usually hang out has been running a Texas Holdem Tournament every Friday night for the last three years. This tourney is $20 entry, no rebuys, no add-ons, no extra chips; just what I've been looking for. The entry fee is technically beyond my buy-in limit but I'm willing to bend my buy-in rules for the sake of being able to play in a live tourney. My wife and I have played for the last three weeks and intend to continue going up there pretty much every week. The first week I was eliminated 16 out of 18, week two I came in 7th and this week I made 3rd out of 26 and made my three buy-ins back.
NEW CONCEPTS. The book I previously mentioned introduced me to three new poker concepts.
The ICM. The Independent Chip Model basically tells you how to act based on your chip stack and that of your opponents and a number of other factors. Apparently you can get software that does the calculations for you. I'm not really interested in going down this road. I had enough maths in school.
Sharkscope. This is a website that gathers information on online players. You go to www.sharkscope.com , type in a player's username, and get a lot of information on their results from the tournaments they've played online. This could be potentially quite useful. I went to the site and discovered that 888 poker doesn't allow this sort of data mining so there is no info available for 888 players. So I tried typing in my own username for Pokerstars, as I've played a couple of SitnGos on that site. The info that came up said that I'd played 1 SitnGo and 1 Omaha Pot-limit Tournament. I've never played an Omaha tournament in my life, so I guess the information available on this site is not entirely accurate.
ROI. I've seen players refer to 'return on investment' before, as a measure of success in games, but never paid much attention to it. But having it explained in the SitnGo book has made me realise that it is a much better way of measuring poker success than my current method. It's very simple. ROI is just a measure of the amount won (or lost) as a percentage of the amount 'invested'. This provides a useful measure of results regardless of the buy-in level. I will definitely be re-assessing my record-keeping to accommodate this new concept.
NEW ATTITUDE. The online games I've played so far since my break have yielded very poor results. It seems that my losing streak is still alive and well, as far as online games go anyway. But the difference is that it's not bugging me anymore (at least not so far). I've come back into the game with a whole new attitude. Maybe I was getting so worked up over losing before because it was in contrast to my previous good results. Now, even though I'm losing consistently, and have actually dropped down a couple of levels in my SitnGos, I accept my losses with good humour and just keep trying. I seem to have gained a sense of perspective on my poker play that I didn't have before and I think that I will be re-assessing my whole approach to the game. But more on that later...
Tuesday, 18 June 2013
Skycity
You always said
The cards would never do you wrong
The trick you said
Was never play the game too long Bob Seager
Auckland got its first (and only) casino in 1996. Not long after it opened my wife and I went and checked it out, just to see what it was like. I guess we must have enjoyed it because we've been going there maybe two or three times a year ever since. Back then there were no poker tables at the casino. Some of the gaming machines were poker machines, where you get dealt a poker hand and try to draw a prize-winning one. There was also a table game called Caribbean Stud Poker, where patrons play against the house like they do in Blackjack. But there were no live poker games available, not that I was looking for that at the time. Generally my wife would play on 'the pokies' and I would play Roulette, or occasionally try my hand at Tai Sai or the 'Winning Wheel'.
They installed poker tables on the mezzanine floor sometime in the early Twentyfirst Century and I finally got around to trying it out in 2008. The poker primers that I'd been reading inspired me to go and try my hand (so to speak) at casino poker games. So, after a couple of stiff drinks at the bar I went and bought in for $100 and joined the $1/$2 cash game. After getting over my initial nervousness, I found it quite enjoyable. Although it was my first ever casino game I probably wouldn't remember much about it if it wasn't for a particular incident.
I'd been playing for a while when I picked up a small pocket pair. Two other players saw the flop, which was A A X. There was a bet and a call from the other two, and I called as well. There was more betting on the turn and the river, and for some reason I kept calling. I don't know why I thought my two pair was good in the face of two players' aggressive raises but I did, and both my opponents turned over aces. This was an embarrassingly bad play but it was made much worse by what happened afterwards.
One of the players who'd turned over trips was astonished by my stupid call. He proceeded to address the table at length about how he couldn't understand why I'd do that. He spent some time carefully dissecting the hand while I sat there and tried to shrink into the back of my seat. He never actually addressed me and he never actually called me an idiot, but he might as well have. I was well aware of how bad the play had been, but he was just making sure that everyone else knew. Not long after that I picked up AJ suited and raised. Mr Analysis then re-raised all-in. I thought for a bit , then called him. I think it's fair to say that a good part of my decision to call was a desire to get even. He turned over pocket sevens, and by the time we reached the river I had nothing and he had a full house. That was the end of my first casino game. Not a great start.
I went back up and played three more times over that summer holiday period, with mixed results. It was a while ago now but I do remember flopping an Ace high straight at one stage, and also seeing my pocket Queens become trips on the flop and then quads on the river. I also recall one game where one of the players was a big-stack maniac, raising nearly every hand and annoying the hell out of everyone else. At this time the poker area was very busy, with a number of different levels of cash game being played and regular low buy-in SitnGo tournaments. They were even playing Omaha cash games for a while there.
I came back to play some more casino games towards the end of 2009. Skycity was running a prize draw promotion on Wednesday nights and my wife was keen to try and win the big prize. So we went up to the casino on a number of Wednesday evenings over the holidays and I took the opportunity to play a little poker. By this stage the blinds in the lowest level cash game were $2/$3, so a $100 buy-in only amounted to 33 big blinds, rather than 50.
The great thing about casino games is that you get all the fun of a live game without the hassle of having to deal. The dealer does everything for you, even keeping you informed of whose turn it is to act. All you have to do is concentrate on your game. What's more, there are a lot of gamblers around, which is generally a good thing for someone who knows a little about correct play. Of course the down-side is the rake. From my reading I understand that Skycity's ten percent rake is on the high side, and makes it difficult for anyone to win in the long run.
By the end of 2010 I was playing in regular tournaments at a local pub, so I gave the casino a miss. However, I did go up there in January 2011 to check out the Monday night tournament that some other players had told me about. First I went up to the casino on the weekend to get all the details, and confirmed that it was $20 buy-in and $20 re-buy. So I turned up on Monday night and bought my tourney chips along with maybe 50 or 60 others. I was somewhat surprised when I sat down at the table to find that nearly everyone else had a bigger stack than me. That's when I learned that players could buy in for double the starting stack for an extra $10; something that the cashier I'd spoken to on the previous day had neglected to mention. Much to my disgust, I started the game at a disadvantage and eventually got knocked out after going all-in with KQ. Then when I tried to re-buy I found that I had to use casino chips rather than cash; something else I didn't know. Luckily for me one of the other players helped me out and sold me some of his casino chips which enabled me to re-buy. The tournament hadn't been going for an hour when I ended up all-in pre-flop with KQ again, and lost again. It turns out that there was also a variable re-buy and a two-level add-on available in this game. If I were to buy-in, re-buy and add-on for the maximum amount it would have cost about $100. Very far from the $20/$20 cost that I been told about! That was my one and only Skycity poker tournament.
It was not long after this that I started playing online. I was now in a position to play poker at any buy-in level I chose, which allowed me to start a proper bankroll management plan. No more expensive buy-ins for me. So on the odd occasion when my wife and I went to the casino, I stuck to the roulette. Except for one occasion last year when I decided to have a 'just-for-fun' game; one that I would play with my gambling money, not my poker bankroll. By this stage the 'poker zone' had been moved to a new location; a much smaller room on the other side of the mezzanine, tucked away out of sight. I guess the poker boom was over. The blinds had also been increased to $2/$4. Even though I bought in for only 20 big blinds I did very well in this game, coming out after a couple of hours with nearly $600. That was my best result ever in any poker game in terms of actual payout.
Despite this success I haven't been back to the 'poker zone' and don't intend to do so any time soon. Since then it's been moved again: it's now in an even smaller area with only a handful of tables in a sort of sports bar arrangement. If I ever play poker at Skycity it will be when I have a large enough bankroll to support the buy-in, which is still a very long way off indeed. At the moment the cheapest available game is a $60 weekly tournament, which is way beyond a comfortable buy-in for me. Even so, I consider it to be a medium to long term goal to one day play poker at Skycity again. Meanwhile, I'll be rubbing shoulders with the other gamblers at the roulette tables.
The cards would never do you wrong
The trick you said
Was never play the game too long Bob Seager
Auckland got its first (and only) casino in 1996. Not long after it opened my wife and I went and checked it out, just to see what it was like. I guess we must have enjoyed it because we've been going there maybe two or three times a year ever since. Back then there were no poker tables at the casino. Some of the gaming machines were poker machines, where you get dealt a poker hand and try to draw a prize-winning one. There was also a table game called Caribbean Stud Poker, where patrons play against the house like they do in Blackjack. But there were no live poker games available, not that I was looking for that at the time. Generally my wife would play on 'the pokies' and I would play Roulette, or occasionally try my hand at Tai Sai or the 'Winning Wheel'.They installed poker tables on the mezzanine floor sometime in the early Twentyfirst Century and I finally got around to trying it out in 2008. The poker primers that I'd been reading inspired me to go and try my hand (so to speak) at casino poker games. So, after a couple of stiff drinks at the bar I went and bought in for $100 and joined the $1/$2 cash game. After getting over my initial nervousness, I found it quite enjoyable. Although it was my first ever casino game I probably wouldn't remember much about it if it wasn't for a particular incident.
I'd been playing for a while when I picked up a small pocket pair. Two other players saw the flop, which was A A X. There was a bet and a call from the other two, and I called as well. There was more betting on the turn and the river, and for some reason I kept calling. I don't know why I thought my two pair was good in the face of two players' aggressive raises but I did, and both my opponents turned over aces. This was an embarrassingly bad play but it was made much worse by what happened afterwards.
One of the players who'd turned over trips was astonished by my stupid call. He proceeded to address the table at length about how he couldn't understand why I'd do that. He spent some time carefully dissecting the hand while I sat there and tried to shrink into the back of my seat. He never actually addressed me and he never actually called me an idiot, but he might as well have. I was well aware of how bad the play had been, but he was just making sure that everyone else knew. Not long after that I picked up AJ suited and raised. Mr Analysis then re-raised all-in. I thought for a bit , then called him. I think it's fair to say that a good part of my decision to call was a desire to get even. He turned over pocket sevens, and by the time we reached the river I had nothing and he had a full house. That was the end of my first casino game. Not a great start.
I went back up and played three more times over that summer holiday period, with mixed results. It was a while ago now but I do remember flopping an Ace high straight at one stage, and also seeing my pocket Queens become trips on the flop and then quads on the river. I also recall one game where one of the players was a big-stack maniac, raising nearly every hand and annoying the hell out of everyone else. At this time the poker area was very busy, with a number of different levels of cash game being played and regular low buy-in SitnGo tournaments. They were even playing Omaha cash games for a while there.
I came back to play some more casino games towards the end of 2009. Skycity was running a prize draw promotion on Wednesday nights and my wife was keen to try and win the big prize. So we went up to the casino on a number of Wednesday evenings over the holidays and I took the opportunity to play a little poker. By this stage the blinds in the lowest level cash game were $2/$3, so a $100 buy-in only amounted to 33 big blinds, rather than 50.
By the end of 2010 I was playing in regular tournaments at a local pub, so I gave the casino a miss. However, I did go up there in January 2011 to check out the Monday night tournament that some other players had told me about. First I went up to the casino on the weekend to get all the details, and confirmed that it was $20 buy-in and $20 re-buy. So I turned up on Monday night and bought my tourney chips along with maybe 50 or 60 others. I was somewhat surprised when I sat down at the table to find that nearly everyone else had a bigger stack than me. That's when I learned that players could buy in for double the starting stack for an extra $10; something that the cashier I'd spoken to on the previous day had neglected to mention. Much to my disgust, I started the game at a disadvantage and eventually got knocked out after going all-in with KQ. Then when I tried to re-buy I found that I had to use casino chips rather than cash; something else I didn't know. Luckily for me one of the other players helped me out and sold me some of his casino chips which enabled me to re-buy. The tournament hadn't been going for an hour when I ended up all-in pre-flop with KQ again, and lost again. It turns out that there was also a variable re-buy and a two-level add-on available in this game. If I were to buy-in, re-buy and add-on for the maximum amount it would have cost about $100. Very far from the $20/$20 cost that I been told about! That was my one and only Skycity poker tournament.
It was not long after this that I started playing online. I was now in a position to play poker at any buy-in level I chose, which allowed me to start a proper bankroll management plan. No more expensive buy-ins for me. So on the odd occasion when my wife and I went to the casino, I stuck to the roulette. Except for one occasion last year when I decided to have a 'just-for-fun' game; one that I would play with my gambling money, not my poker bankroll. By this stage the 'poker zone' had been moved to a new location; a much smaller room on the other side of the mezzanine, tucked away out of sight. I guess the poker boom was over. The blinds had also been increased to $2/$4. Even though I bought in for only 20 big blinds I did very well in this game, coming out after a couple of hours with nearly $600. That was my best result ever in any poker game in terms of actual payout.
Despite this success I haven't been back to the 'poker zone' and don't intend to do so any time soon. Since then it's been moved again: it's now in an even smaller area with only a handful of tables in a sort of sports bar arrangement. If I ever play poker at Skycity it will be when I have a large enough bankroll to support the buy-in, which is still a very long way off indeed. At the moment the cheapest available game is a $60 weekly tournament, which is way beyond a comfortable buy-in for me. Even so, I consider it to be a medium to long term goal to one day play poker at Skycity again. Meanwhile, I'll be rubbing shoulders with the other gamblers at the roulette tables.
Wednesday, 29 May 2013
Time Out
You got to lose,
You can't win all the time,
Well I know pretty baby,
I see trouble coming down the line. George Thorougood and the Destroyers
Well it's Wednesday night, but unlike many many previous Wednesdays, I'm not playing poker. After celebrating playing over a thousand hours of poker in my last post, I am now taking a break from all poker play. It's amazing how quickly things can change over the course of a few weeks.
I mentioned in my last post that my bankroll hit an all-time high in mid-April, but since then things have taken a turn for the worse. The 'flat patch' that I was in has turned into a sudden steep downturn. Since the beginning of May I've cashed very seldom in SitnGos (3 thirds and 1 first in the last twenty games) and as a result I've had the first losing month since November of last year. As Texas Holdem SitnGos are my strongest game, this is a bit of a worry. I can't help thinking back to this time last year when my results started to decline and continued on a downward spiral through to November ('Midwinter Nosedive', 23 July 2012). I don't want that to happen again.
But the problem is not so much the string of losses as the nature of those losses. As far as I can tell, I haven't altered my basic game-plan, but I just keep getting beaten. I seem to have been suffering an incredible run of bad cards and when I do get good cards I hit nothing, or some-one else has something better, or some fool calls with rags and draws out on me on the river. Now this sort of thing happens all the time in poker, but it seems to have been happening to me non-stop over the last few weeks. All this has led to a great deal of frustration, and the more frustrated I get, the more I make bad decisions, which just leads to more frustration.
Playing Seven Card Stud hasn't helped in all this either. Although I knew it would be difficult learning a new game and although I am playing at the absolute lowest level to minimise any losses, my frustration has only increased every time I play this game. I thought that Pot Limit Omaha was a game invented by Satan himself, but it may be that Seven Card Stud is his true favourite. The game seems to be specifically designed to minimise the value of starting hands and to encourage players to draw all the way to seventh street (the seventh and final card). The vast majority of winning hands are made on seventh street and it's ABSOLUTELY DRIVING ME NUTS!
As a result, I've been increasingly playing on tilt. I go into a SitnGo session with the knowledge that my recent results have been poor and consequentially, I'm desperate to win. Then, when something bad happens I'm thinking 'here we go again' and I start playing recklessly. It all came to a head a few days ago when I played in two SitnGos. In the first I suffered a bad beat to an inferior hand and decided to just push all in pre-flop whenever I got a halfway decent hand. I was thinking, 'come on, call this you jerks!' Of course I got knocked out early. Then in the second game I persisted in betting 3/4 of the pot on bottom pair and a gut-shot (inside) straight draw on every betting round. I simply refused to give credit to the calling player for a decent hand and got beaten out of most of my chips by top pair. Well duh! After that I decided to take a step back and take a couple of deep breaths.
I took some time to take a look at my records and see if I could find a reason for this loss of form. So far, I've found nothing. I've been playing at the same level, on the same site, and often against the same players for some months. I don't think my play has become predictable, and I don't think I was playing any differently when this decline started. As far as I can tell, I've just hit a rough patch: a run of bad luck.
So it's time to call a time out. The expert consensus seems to be, when things are running badly, take a break. Trying to play through a rough patch is not generally recommended. So I've decided to give poker-playing a rest for a while. As I came to this decision on May 22nd and the winter solstice is on June 22nd, I thought a month-long break might be appropriate. I've already lasted a whole week without playing any poker, so that's a good start.
However, I don't think it's possible for me to stop thinking about poker. I'll use the time to read up on SitnGo strategy to see if I can pick up any useful advice. I've already checked out a couple of interesting websites: www.cardschat.com and www.suntzupoker.com . Both these sites recommend a SitnGo strategy that is pretty similar to the one I'm already using. I've also found a book at the local library that might be useful. So I'll take a look at that and spend some time looking through some of the other stuff that I've printed off from time to time but never really taken a good look at. At this stage, I'm planning to make my last poker-less week completely poker-free. No study, no planning, no nothing. I've got a big family event coming up in that week, so that should be suitably distracting.
Then, come the shortest day, it's back into the fray refreshed, rested and ready for anything. That's my theory anyway.
You can't win all the time,
Well I know pretty baby,
I see trouble coming down the line. George Thorougood and the Destroyers
Well it's Wednesday night, but unlike many many previous Wednesdays, I'm not playing poker. After celebrating playing over a thousand hours of poker in my last post, I am now taking a break from all poker play. It's amazing how quickly things can change over the course of a few weeks.
I mentioned in my last post that my bankroll hit an all-time high in mid-April, but since then things have taken a turn for the worse. The 'flat patch' that I was in has turned into a sudden steep downturn. Since the beginning of May I've cashed very seldom in SitnGos (3 thirds and 1 first in the last twenty games) and as a result I've had the first losing month since November of last year. As Texas Holdem SitnGos are my strongest game, this is a bit of a worry. I can't help thinking back to this time last year when my results started to decline and continued on a downward spiral through to November ('Midwinter Nosedive', 23 July 2012). I don't want that to happen again.
Playing Seven Card Stud hasn't helped in all this either. Although I knew it would be difficult learning a new game and although I am playing at the absolute lowest level to minimise any losses, my frustration has only increased every time I play this game. I thought that Pot Limit Omaha was a game invented by Satan himself, but it may be that Seven Card Stud is his true favourite. The game seems to be specifically designed to minimise the value of starting hands and to encourage players to draw all the way to seventh street (the seventh and final card). The vast majority of winning hands are made on seventh street and it's ABSOLUTELY DRIVING ME NUTS!
As a result, I've been increasingly playing on tilt. I go into a SitnGo session with the knowledge that my recent results have been poor and consequentially, I'm desperate to win. Then, when something bad happens I'm thinking 'here we go again' and I start playing recklessly. It all came to a head a few days ago when I played in two SitnGos. In the first I suffered a bad beat to an inferior hand and decided to just push all in pre-flop whenever I got a halfway decent hand. I was thinking, 'come on, call this you jerks!' Of course I got knocked out early. Then in the second game I persisted in betting 3/4 of the pot on bottom pair and a gut-shot (inside) straight draw on every betting round. I simply refused to give credit to the calling player for a decent hand and got beaten out of most of my chips by top pair. Well duh! After that I decided to take a step back and take a couple of deep breaths.
I took some time to take a look at my records and see if I could find a reason for this loss of form. So far, I've found nothing. I've been playing at the same level, on the same site, and often against the same players for some months. I don't think my play has become predictable, and I don't think I was playing any differently when this decline started. As far as I can tell, I've just hit a rough patch: a run of bad luck.
However, I don't think it's possible for me to stop thinking about poker. I'll use the time to read up on SitnGo strategy to see if I can pick up any useful advice. I've already checked out a couple of interesting websites: www.cardschat.com and www.suntzupoker.com . Both these sites recommend a SitnGo strategy that is pretty similar to the one I'm already using. I've also found a book at the local library that might be useful. So I'll take a look at that and spend some time looking through some of the other stuff that I've printed off from time to time but never really taken a good look at. At this stage, I'm planning to make my last poker-less week completely poker-free. No study, no planning, no nothing. I've got a big family event coming up in that week, so that should be suitably distracting.
Then, come the shortest day, it's back into the fray refreshed, rested and ready for anything. That's my theory anyway.
Wednesday, 15 May 2013
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.
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.
Tuesday, 23 April 2013
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.
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.
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.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
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.
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.
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