I've been playing every Wednesday night in the Landmark Bar re-buy tournament for about three years now and for the last five months I've also been running the game. This came about because Dan, the original game organizer, decided to quit last year and nobody else stepped up to take over. I like this game and didn't want to see it fold so when there was no sign of it re-starting by the end of February this year I went up to the Landmark, talked to the management, and volunteered to run it myself.
I'd run a couple of tournaments previously at my old club and had a pretty good idea of how to go about running this game. The hotel has all the essential equipment: a couple of rather tatty but still usable 8-player poker tables (leftovers from the National Pub Poker League), a couple of cases of tournament chips, some packs of cards, cut cards and dealer buttons. As for the tournament blinds timer, Dan originally used an app on his phone for this, then he changed to using a tournament timer that was in the shape of a dealer button. He passed this on to me but I found that the battery connection wasn't good; sometimes it worked okay and sometimes it didn't. So in the end I bought a cheap kitchen timer and have been using that ever since.
When I took it over, this was a turbo-style re-buy tournament. For a buy-in of $20 players got a chip stack of 4,000. The blinds started at 25/50 and then went to 50/100, 100/200, 200/400, 300/600, 400/800, 500/1k, 1k/2k. 2k/4k... Late entries were allowed for the first hour of play (7 pm to 8 pm) with a maximum of 18 players. Players could re-buy if they lost all their chips, getting a stack of 2,500 for $20. Re-buys were allowed until the prize-pool reached $500 (the maximum allowed for this type of game under New Zealand's gaming laws). With a maximum prize-pool the prizes were $250, $150, $60 and $40 with a couple of bar vouchers provided by the hotel management for 5th and 6th places. We usually got two full tables and a maximum prize-pool, with the tournament ending around 10.30 pm.
There were a couple of things that I wanted to change when I took over. I never liked the short re-buy stack and as a result it was my policy to never re-buy. So I changed the re-buy stack to 4,000, the same as the buy-in. I also changed the blind intervals. Originally, the first two blind levels lasted for 25 minutes, followed by a break. Then they went to 15 minute blinds with a break after every 4th level. I've never been a fan of variable blind intervals in a tournament so, after making a few calculations, I changed the blind intervals to 17 minutes all the way through, with a 10 minute break after every 3rd level. Apart from making it more consistent this also worked well for the timing of the chip-ups on each break.
My first game was in mid March and only 7 players turned up. I had advertised the game on Eventfinda, an event listing website, and the hotel had listed the game on their 'upcoming events' blackboard. I'd been in touch with Dan and got contact details for some of the regulars, but he only had a few available. The second week was also a small field and it wasn't looking too good for a reboot of this game. But over the next few weeks the number of players grew and pretty soon I was paying out the $500 maximum. The 'old hands' finally got the word that the Landmark game was back and I started getting a few new regular players. Even Dan turned up for most of the games.
It took a while but I eventually got into the routine of setting up the tables and chips, taking down names, announcing new blind levels and so on. I had to work out some basic procedures for moving players from one to two tables and for seating new players, but now that's all pretty straightforward. Now I don't really get a break when everyone else does, because I have to do the chip up. It also means I can't just go home when I'm eliminated. I have to stay to the end and pay out the prizes, and I also do the dealing for the final four players if I'm not still in the game. On the plus side, I get to use some of the bar vouchers for myself, so I get a couple of free beers for my trouble.
When I started out I received some files which included a fairly basic set of tournament rules. But I dropped those and adopted the Tournament Directors Association Rules for my game. Applying the rules in a typically loose pub game can be a bit of a challenge. On the one hand, this is not the World Series Main Event, but on the other hand, you've got to make sure the game is played in a fair and consistent way. With so many different players with varying amounts of live poker experience you find yourself having to pull people up over really basic stuff like string betting, keeping cards on the table, talking about a hand, rabbit hunting and so on. I try not to intrude too much into the general flow of the game but I'm coming to the conclusion that I've been a little too relaxed and things are getting a bit too loose. So I think I'll be cracking down a bit more on etiquette breaches over the next few weeks, just to bring things back into line.
As far as juggling the roles of player and Tournament Director goes, it's a challenge. I always keep the same seat, close to the chip case, because I'm constantly getting up to buy in and seat new players or organize re-buys, especially in the first hour. I'm also acutely aware that, as a TD who is also a player, I have to be seen to be fair and impartial. In particular, I'm careful to ensure that the chip-up process is open and transparent for all players to observe if they wish. Despite the constant interruptions I don't think my game has suffered significantly. I'm definitely less able to concentrate on the game in the first hour or so, but if I make it through to the second period it's not so bad. I've had a few cashes over the last few months and I'm definitely ahead overall. My change to the re-buy stack size also means I can sometimes re-buy if I need to, which I think improves my chances of cashing.
Apart from the two changes mentioned earlier I've kept the game pretty much the same as it was in previous years. But I had to make another change a few weeks ago. The original procedure was to set out 8 stacks of chips on both tables and have players deal to all the stacks and have all stacks pay the blinds in turn. New players were then seated at one of these stacks at random. I thought this system was a little unfair, because new players would get varying stack sizes depending on which table they were seated at and at which position. It was also a headache for me to keep track of the 'dead stacks' especially when I had enough players to make two tables. So a couple of weeks ago I changed to an 'earlybird' system. There are no stacks on the tables; when players register they get a starting stack to play with. If they register after the game starts they get a shorter stack of 3,800. This system is much easier to administer and it seems to have encouraged some of the habitual late-comers to turn up on time. So I'll be continuing to run the stacks this way.
I'm pretty happy that I've been able to rescue the Landmark game, even if it does mean having to run the game as well as play. Despite a shaky start the game is now going well. There are 4 or 5 regulars who turn up every week as well as a larger pool of semi-regulars and quite a few casual players who turn up from time to time. I'll definitely keep on as a TD/player for the rest of the year. After that, probably not. It's my intention to try and find someone else to take over the reins next year. The thing is, I have no interest in being a Tournament Director. I took on the role because it was the only way I could see of keeping a good, profitable poker game going. But I just want to play, not run the game. So for the rest of the year, I'm TD for the Landmark Poker Tournament. Next year it becomes somebody else's problem.
Friday, 4 August 2017
Friday, 30 June 2017
Weymouth
Friday
It was Queen's Birthday Weekend early in June; time for another round of the Clubs NZ North Island Poker Championship. This year it was being hosted by the Weymouth Cosmopolitan Club in South Auckland, so no away trip required. This event kicks off with a stand-alone tournament on the Friday night before the main event starts on the Saturday. I got my wife to pick me up at work and we were able to avoid the worst of the long weekend traffic and arrived at Weymouth nice and early. I was surprised at first to see there were no tables set up in the main club area and then realised they must be using the downstairs function room for the tournament.
This Friday event was being run differently to previous years; the Weymouth Club had decided to run three different tournaments on the night. They were all re-buy and add-on events with three different buy-in levels: $20, $40 and $80. The higher buy-in options were a bit outside my comfort zone so I opted for the $20 game, as did my wife. We had plenty of time so went and had a bite to eat while the players from other clubs started to drift in. By the time we reached the 7 pm start time there was no sign of any action and we were all just milling about in the club-rooms. But eventually we were given the word to go downstairs for the start of the tournament.
They had about 20 tables set up downstairs, but the organisers were still frantically working on their laptops, trying to get the seating charts set up. Eventually they announced that we should just pick a seat at any table. The $20 tournament tables with their 20k starting stacks were all at one end of the room and each tournament had a different clock set up. So I picked a seat at one of the flash 'Tuakau tables'. These are octagonal tables borrowed from the Tuakau club. They have wooden rails around the edges and are covered with speed-cloth with felt underneath, and are a joy to play on. There were a couple of Aucklanders at my table but the rest were from various clubs around the North Island, and we were in a field of 50 players.
I was quite surprised to find that play was generally pretty loose and passive, although not as bad as it is at my usual Friday night game. Things progressed pretty well but the one major distraction was a particularly loud and increasingly drunk player sitting across from me. She was winning quite a few hands but seemed incapable of remembering what the chip values were, or of keeping her chip stacks from falling over. In the end, one of the other players had to help her to make her bets or calls. Normally I wouldn't let something like this bother me but I'd had to deal with a couple of drunk and/or inexperienced players a couple of days earlier at my Wednesday game, so I was pretty happy when she was moved to another table.
I didn't need to re-buy but I did take the $20 add-on at the first break. As for my progress in the game, my stack had its ups and downs but as the evening wore on it was mostly down. The pivotal hand came when I pushed all-in short-stacked with pocket twos. I was not happy to be called by three people. However my mood changed when I flopped trips and went on to turn a full house, chipping me up nicely. However, the rate of increase in the blinds seemed to be getting higher, so my decent-sized stack dropped in value pretty quickly.
By the time we were approaching the final table I was seriously short-stacked, but so were most of the other players. I had less than 6 big blinds left for most of the last hour of play, so was reduced to a basic push or fold strategy. Some of my table-mates seemed to think I was going for the world record for all-in pushes, but it was a strategy that kept me alive in the game. It was approaching midnight when I reached the final table. Looking around the room, I could see that the other two tournaments were at about the same stage. We were in the money but all still pretty short-stacked thanks to the massively increasing blinds. The remaining players started to drop out very quickly at this stage and when two of them fell victim to the player opposite me I suddenly found myself heads up, playing for first or second place. My opponent was from Stokes Valley in Wellington and he had a bigger chip stack than me. So with the blinds at 60k/120k we started playing heads up poker. We'd only played one hand when the tournament director walked past our table and it occurred to me to ask him what the payouts were, as they hadn't been posted anywhere. When he told me how much the prizes were it seemed like a very good idea to me to split the prize money with Mr Stokes Valley. I put the question and he agreed to split 50/50, so I walked away from the table with $620 for my $40 investment. This was my first ever cash in this event (not counting side games) and I was very happy.
Saturday
We turned up on Saturday morning in plenty of time for the scheduled 10.30 start of the qualifying tournament for the Sunday Main Event. The other 10 players from my club were there. They hadn't played the previous night at Weymouth; our poker organiser had continued to run his regular Friday night game and the others had all played in that. Obviously, I was glad to have come and supported the Weymouth Club's game. When we got downstairs we were surprised to discover that the organisers were still taking late entries for the game, even though the cut-off had been advertised as being a week before the start. There was a single sheet of paper on one of the tables with a table allocation list so things were somewhat chaotic as everyone crowded around trying to find out where they were sitting. But in the end it settled down and we got under way.
There was a total of 172 players and we were playing to qualify for the main game to be held on Sunday. Normally it's the last 48 players who qualify but we knew that with such a large field there were likely to be more qualifiers this time, but no-one had said how many. The blind intervals were 30 minutes long and we'd started with reasonably deep stacks, so there was plenty of time to play. I had a couple of decent collects early on but spent most of my time just watching lots of passive play including an epidemic of limping under the gun.
After 90 minutes of play I was ahead of my starting stack and it was time for a one hour lunch break. When we came back downstairs we were told the game would be delayed. It seems that the players that went to eat had to order their food then wait for it to be cooked, resulting in a long wait for over 100 hungry people. So we had to wait for a while for everyone to get fed. No points to Weymouth for organisation on the catering front.
Eventually play got under way again and the field slowly started to thin out. The blinds began to increase a lot faster and we had several levels where they doubled up, thinning the field even more. My wife had been knocked out and had gone back upstairs to play the pokies and I was starting to wonder what the qualifying mark was. There was a lot of speculation about this at our table; we thought it might be 56 players (7 tables) but we weren't sure. The TD announced that we'd be playing hand for hand when we were down to 60 players, so we figured the bubble must be at 56. In the last hour of play I had fewer than 10 big blinds (BB) left so I tightened right up. I was trying to figure out if I had enough chips to fold my way to the qualifying mark but I wasn't sure how many players were left, and the TD wasn't saying. So I started standing up and counting the number of players left after every few hands. I thought I could limp across the bubble so just started folding everything.
Most of the others at my table were now also serial folding. Only the big stacks could afford to play if they wanted. At one point a woman at my table got out her phone and took a picture of her hand before folding it. She later told us it was pocket kings. Finally it was announced that we were playing hand for hand. It looked to me like there were only 58 players left. Every time there was an all-in hand play was stopped and a lot of players would go and watch, hoping to see someone eliminated. This happened about half a dozen times before a cheer went up and we were told that we'd qualified. It was about 6 pm and I had about 3 BBs left.
I went looking for some food while they set up the tables for the Second Chance Qualifier, which my wife was due to play in. The catering was not very well organised but I eventually found myself something to eat, then I found myself a cash game to play in. I'd been looking forward to the cashies at this event, but it was a bit of a let down. They were playing dealer's choice, Omaha or Hold'em, with a short stack buy-in. This is the sort of game that a lot of Auckland clubs play after tournaments and I wasn't very keen, but I thought I might as well have a go. At least the Omaha game was being played pot limit.
I lost my starting stack in the very first hand when I flopped top set in Omaha and bet it hard, thinking I had the nuts. Unfortunately, I didn't see the possible straight and ended up giving all my chips to one of my club-mates. So I reloaded and played on but they were mostly playing Omaha and I just wasn't feeling it. I lost more chips when I did hit the nuts but then got rivered. Then I took someone else's chips when I rivered them. Let's play bingo. In the end I decided to leave but had to wait for one full round to do so, so I just folded every hand. It was a $30 loss, but I guess it could have been worse.
The second chance event was well under way and my wife was doing okay so I went upstairs to see what was going on in the clubrooms. I saw that they were showing the first British and Irish Lions game, versus a provincial Barbarians selection, so I watched the end of that. After the game I went back downstairs with the news that the Lions had managed a rather unconvincing win over the Barbarians. The second chance game was nearing the end and I went and found a spot near my wife's table to see the action. The field was approaching the last 16 qualifiers level and there were a lot of short stacks. Knowing how much she likes to gamble, I kept willing my wife to 'fold, fold, fold', although I couldn't actually say anything. She did fold a lot and in the end she was sitting left of the big blind with a stack of about 100k, with the blinds at 30k/60k when the bubble finally burst. A very close thing indeed. Six of our twelve OWMC players had qualified for the Main Event. It was about 10 pm and time to go home and rest up for round three.
Sunday
Once again we were due to start the main game and the consolation tournament at 10.30 in the morning. This time the organisers had everything under control and everyone was was given an assigned table. Their were 72 players in the main game, so probably eighty or so in the consolation event. Both tournaments were to run on the same clock but the consolation players started with a shorter chip stack. The blind intervals were just 15 minutes this time and once again we started with a reasonably gentle blind structure in the early stages.
The early to middle stages of this tournament were pretty straightforward for me. I was just playing my good hands, taking the occasional gamble, and mostly just keeping out of trouble while always keeping an eye on the size of my stack. It was nice to be playing for the win again, rather than trying to limp over the qualifying line. One of our six OWMC players got knocked out fairly early but the rest of us played on into the afternoon.
By mid-afternoon the blinds were getting pretty steep and once again they doubled up several times in a row, pushing the remaining players into increasingly desperate situations. By the time we were down to four tables only my wife and myself were left from the Onehunga Workingmen's Club and the tournament had degenerated into a push-fest. I was just sitting there, nursing my short stack and trying to gauge the right time to get my chips into the middle. On being moved to another table my first hand was KJ and I pushed all-in and everyone folded. My next hand was KJ again, so I announced to the table that I had the same hand and pushed again. Everyone folded. Someone asked me to turn over one card so I obliged. It was the jack so they decided I must have pushed with JJ. I let them believe that.
By this stage I had about 12 BBs, which was actually a big stack at this table, but not at all comfortable for me. When Neil, a solid player from the Papakura Club, went all-in and I had 77, I had to decide what to do. I knew I had to double up soon if I was to go deep in this tournament and Neil's stack was smaller than mine. I figured it was most likely a coin-flip situation and even if I lost, I'd still have some chips, so I called. He showed A9 and he hit a 9 on the turn, so I was a seriously short-stacked again. Meanwhile we were down to three tables and my wife was the last of the OWMC players to be knocked out, at about 20th place.
I got moved again and soon found myself with 2 BBs left and the big blind fast approaching. So I min-raised all-in with Q2. Desperate times call for desperate measures. When someone called me with QJ I felt sure that my tournament was over. There was a queen and a king on the flop, but then one of the other cards paired up, giving us both two pair with a king kicker and we split the pot! But my luck didn't hold and my next desperate push with a marginal hand didn't hold and I was eliminated in 17th place. Although it was disappointing not to make the money I was still pretty happy about another deep run in this tournament and another year when I've managed to qualify first up.
It wasn't long after this that they got down to the last nine players and they took a break while the final table was set up. They set this table up in a roped-off area and had a camera suspended above the table which was connected to a couple of big screens, so everyone could see the action. There were five Auckland players at the final table, including Neil. The TD then introduced the players one by one and announced to everyone that the blinds would now be dropped down a level 'to give them a fair chance at playing'. I thought this was grossly unfair on the players who'd had to endure those huge blinds and simply went to prove that the TDs had done a poor job of arranging the blind structure.
Nevertheless, the game began again, with a crowd of people eagerly watching the TV screens. It soon became apparent that all we could see on the screens was a lot of green cloth with a pair of hands dealing the cards, which then disappeared from view. Most of the time we couldn't even see the board cards when they were dealt. There was also someone with a microphone giving a commentary on the action but it was patchy at best and most of the time the audience had no idea what was going on. It was a good idea, but very poorly executed.
By this time my wife had come down from upstairs and we sat and watched the green screens long enough to see a couple of players get eliminated but it was all a bit pointless so we decided to skip the prize giving and call it a day. So, another year, another Clubs NZ tournament, another deep run. As if that wasn't good enough, my wife also had her first main event game and went deep also. And let's not forget the big cash on Friday night. Despite some organisational glitches from the hosts it was an enjoyable and profitable weekend of poker. Next year it's back down to Wellington I believe. I'm counting the days.
It was Queen's Birthday Weekend early in June; time for another round of the Clubs NZ North Island Poker Championship. This year it was being hosted by the Weymouth Cosmopolitan Club in South Auckland, so no away trip required. This event kicks off with a stand-alone tournament on the Friday night before the main event starts on the Saturday. I got my wife to pick me up at work and we were able to avoid the worst of the long weekend traffic and arrived at Weymouth nice and early. I was surprised at first to see there were no tables set up in the main club area and then realised they must be using the downstairs function room for the tournament.
This Friday event was being run differently to previous years; the Weymouth Club had decided to run three different tournaments on the night. They were all re-buy and add-on events with three different buy-in levels: $20, $40 and $80. The higher buy-in options were a bit outside my comfort zone so I opted for the $20 game, as did my wife. We had plenty of time so went and had a bite to eat while the players from other clubs started to drift in. By the time we reached the 7 pm start time there was no sign of any action and we were all just milling about in the club-rooms. But eventually we were given the word to go downstairs for the start of the tournament.
They had about 20 tables set up downstairs, but the organisers were still frantically working on their laptops, trying to get the seating charts set up. Eventually they announced that we should just pick a seat at any table. The $20 tournament tables with their 20k starting stacks were all at one end of the room and each tournament had a different clock set up. So I picked a seat at one of the flash 'Tuakau tables'. These are octagonal tables borrowed from the Tuakau club. They have wooden rails around the edges and are covered with speed-cloth with felt underneath, and are a joy to play on. There were a couple of Aucklanders at my table but the rest were from various clubs around the North Island, and we were in a field of 50 players.
I was quite surprised to find that play was generally pretty loose and passive, although not as bad as it is at my usual Friday night game. Things progressed pretty well but the one major distraction was a particularly loud and increasingly drunk player sitting across from me. She was winning quite a few hands but seemed incapable of remembering what the chip values were, or of keeping her chip stacks from falling over. In the end, one of the other players had to help her to make her bets or calls. Normally I wouldn't let something like this bother me but I'd had to deal with a couple of drunk and/or inexperienced players a couple of days earlier at my Wednesday game, so I was pretty happy when she was moved to another table.
I didn't need to re-buy but I did take the $20 add-on at the first break. As for my progress in the game, my stack had its ups and downs but as the evening wore on it was mostly down. The pivotal hand came when I pushed all-in short-stacked with pocket twos. I was not happy to be called by three people. However my mood changed when I flopped trips and went on to turn a full house, chipping me up nicely. However, the rate of increase in the blinds seemed to be getting higher, so my decent-sized stack dropped in value pretty quickly.
By the time we were approaching the final table I was seriously short-stacked, but so were most of the other players. I had less than 6 big blinds left for most of the last hour of play, so was reduced to a basic push or fold strategy. Some of my table-mates seemed to think I was going for the world record for all-in pushes, but it was a strategy that kept me alive in the game. It was approaching midnight when I reached the final table. Looking around the room, I could see that the other two tournaments were at about the same stage. We were in the money but all still pretty short-stacked thanks to the massively increasing blinds. The remaining players started to drop out very quickly at this stage and when two of them fell victim to the player opposite me I suddenly found myself heads up, playing for first or second place. My opponent was from Stokes Valley in Wellington and he had a bigger chip stack than me. So with the blinds at 60k/120k we started playing heads up poker. We'd only played one hand when the tournament director walked past our table and it occurred to me to ask him what the payouts were, as they hadn't been posted anywhere. When he told me how much the prizes were it seemed like a very good idea to me to split the prize money with Mr Stokes Valley. I put the question and he agreed to split 50/50, so I walked away from the table with $620 for my $40 investment. This was my first ever cash in this event (not counting side games) and I was very happy.
Saturday
We turned up on Saturday morning in plenty of time for the scheduled 10.30 start of the qualifying tournament for the Sunday Main Event. The other 10 players from my club were there. They hadn't played the previous night at Weymouth; our poker organiser had continued to run his regular Friday night game and the others had all played in that. Obviously, I was glad to have come and supported the Weymouth Club's game. When we got downstairs we were surprised to discover that the organisers were still taking late entries for the game, even though the cut-off had been advertised as being a week before the start. There was a single sheet of paper on one of the tables with a table allocation list so things were somewhat chaotic as everyone crowded around trying to find out where they were sitting. But in the end it settled down and we got under way.
There was a total of 172 players and we were playing to qualify for the main game to be held on Sunday. Normally it's the last 48 players who qualify but we knew that with such a large field there were likely to be more qualifiers this time, but no-one had said how many. The blind intervals were 30 minutes long and we'd started with reasonably deep stacks, so there was plenty of time to play. I had a couple of decent collects early on but spent most of my time just watching lots of passive play including an epidemic of limping under the gun.
After 90 minutes of play I was ahead of my starting stack and it was time for a one hour lunch break. When we came back downstairs we were told the game would be delayed. It seems that the players that went to eat had to order their food then wait for it to be cooked, resulting in a long wait for over 100 hungry people. So we had to wait for a while for everyone to get fed. No points to Weymouth for organisation on the catering front.
Eventually play got under way again and the field slowly started to thin out. The blinds began to increase a lot faster and we had several levels where they doubled up, thinning the field even more. My wife had been knocked out and had gone back upstairs to play the pokies and I was starting to wonder what the qualifying mark was. There was a lot of speculation about this at our table; we thought it might be 56 players (7 tables) but we weren't sure. The TD announced that we'd be playing hand for hand when we were down to 60 players, so we figured the bubble must be at 56. In the last hour of play I had fewer than 10 big blinds (BB) left so I tightened right up. I was trying to figure out if I had enough chips to fold my way to the qualifying mark but I wasn't sure how many players were left, and the TD wasn't saying. So I started standing up and counting the number of players left after every few hands. I thought I could limp across the bubble so just started folding everything.
Most of the others at my table were now also serial folding. Only the big stacks could afford to play if they wanted. At one point a woman at my table got out her phone and took a picture of her hand before folding it. She later told us it was pocket kings. Finally it was announced that we were playing hand for hand. It looked to me like there were only 58 players left. Every time there was an all-in hand play was stopped and a lot of players would go and watch, hoping to see someone eliminated. This happened about half a dozen times before a cheer went up and we were told that we'd qualified. It was about 6 pm and I had about 3 BBs left.
I went looking for some food while they set up the tables for the Second Chance Qualifier, which my wife was due to play in. The catering was not very well organised but I eventually found myself something to eat, then I found myself a cash game to play in. I'd been looking forward to the cashies at this event, but it was a bit of a let down. They were playing dealer's choice, Omaha or Hold'em, with a short stack buy-in. This is the sort of game that a lot of Auckland clubs play after tournaments and I wasn't very keen, but I thought I might as well have a go. At least the Omaha game was being played pot limit.
I lost my starting stack in the very first hand when I flopped top set in Omaha and bet it hard, thinking I had the nuts. Unfortunately, I didn't see the possible straight and ended up giving all my chips to one of my club-mates. So I reloaded and played on but they were mostly playing Omaha and I just wasn't feeling it. I lost more chips when I did hit the nuts but then got rivered. Then I took someone else's chips when I rivered them. Let's play bingo. In the end I decided to leave but had to wait for one full round to do so, so I just folded every hand. It was a $30 loss, but I guess it could have been worse.
The second chance event was well under way and my wife was doing okay so I went upstairs to see what was going on in the clubrooms. I saw that they were showing the first British and Irish Lions game, versus a provincial Barbarians selection, so I watched the end of that. After the game I went back downstairs with the news that the Lions had managed a rather unconvincing win over the Barbarians. The second chance game was nearing the end and I went and found a spot near my wife's table to see the action. The field was approaching the last 16 qualifiers level and there were a lot of short stacks. Knowing how much she likes to gamble, I kept willing my wife to 'fold, fold, fold', although I couldn't actually say anything. She did fold a lot and in the end she was sitting left of the big blind with a stack of about 100k, with the blinds at 30k/60k when the bubble finally burst. A very close thing indeed. Six of our twelve OWMC players had qualified for the Main Event. It was about 10 pm and time to go home and rest up for round three.
Sunday
Once again we were due to start the main game and the consolation tournament at 10.30 in the morning. This time the organisers had everything under control and everyone was was given an assigned table. Their were 72 players in the main game, so probably eighty or so in the consolation event. Both tournaments were to run on the same clock but the consolation players started with a shorter chip stack. The blind intervals were just 15 minutes this time and once again we started with a reasonably gentle blind structure in the early stages.
The early to middle stages of this tournament were pretty straightforward for me. I was just playing my good hands, taking the occasional gamble, and mostly just keeping out of trouble while always keeping an eye on the size of my stack. It was nice to be playing for the win again, rather than trying to limp over the qualifying line. One of our six OWMC players got knocked out fairly early but the rest of us played on into the afternoon.
By mid-afternoon the blinds were getting pretty steep and once again they doubled up several times in a row, pushing the remaining players into increasingly desperate situations. By the time we were down to four tables only my wife and myself were left from the Onehunga Workingmen's Club and the tournament had degenerated into a push-fest. I was just sitting there, nursing my short stack and trying to gauge the right time to get my chips into the middle. On being moved to another table my first hand was KJ and I pushed all-in and everyone folded. My next hand was KJ again, so I announced to the table that I had the same hand and pushed again. Everyone folded. Someone asked me to turn over one card so I obliged. It was the jack so they decided I must have pushed with JJ. I let them believe that.By this stage I had about 12 BBs, which was actually a big stack at this table, but not at all comfortable for me. When Neil, a solid player from the Papakura Club, went all-in and I had 77, I had to decide what to do. I knew I had to double up soon if I was to go deep in this tournament and Neil's stack was smaller than mine. I figured it was most likely a coin-flip situation and even if I lost, I'd still have some chips, so I called. He showed A9 and he hit a 9 on the turn, so I was a seriously short-stacked again. Meanwhile we were down to three tables and my wife was the last of the OWMC players to be knocked out, at about 20th place.
I got moved again and soon found myself with 2 BBs left and the big blind fast approaching. So I min-raised all-in with Q2. Desperate times call for desperate measures. When someone called me with QJ I felt sure that my tournament was over. There was a queen and a king on the flop, but then one of the other cards paired up, giving us both two pair with a king kicker and we split the pot! But my luck didn't hold and my next desperate push with a marginal hand didn't hold and I was eliminated in 17th place. Although it was disappointing not to make the money I was still pretty happy about another deep run in this tournament and another year when I've managed to qualify first up.
It wasn't long after this that they got down to the last nine players and they took a break while the final table was set up. They set this table up in a roped-off area and had a camera suspended above the table which was connected to a couple of big screens, so everyone could see the action. There were five Auckland players at the final table, including Neil. The TD then introduced the players one by one and announced to everyone that the blinds would now be dropped down a level 'to give them a fair chance at playing'. I thought this was grossly unfair on the players who'd had to endure those huge blinds and simply went to prove that the TDs had done a poor job of arranging the blind structure.
Nevertheless, the game began again, with a crowd of people eagerly watching the TV screens. It soon became apparent that all we could see on the screens was a lot of green cloth with a pair of hands dealing the cards, which then disappeared from view. Most of the time we couldn't even see the board cards when they were dealt. There was also someone with a microphone giving a commentary on the action but it was patchy at best and most of the time the audience had no idea what was going on. It was a good idea, but very poorly executed.
By this time my wife had come down from upstairs and we sat and watched the green screens long enough to see a couple of players get eliminated but it was all a bit pointless so we decided to skip the prize giving and call it a day. So, another year, another Clubs NZ tournament, another deep run. As if that wasn't good enough, my wife also had her first main event game and went deep also. And let's not forget the big cash on Friday night. Despite some organisational glitches from the hosts it was an enjoyable and profitable weekend of poker. Next year it's back down to Wellington I believe. I'm counting the days.
Saturday, 13 May 2017
The Story So Far (Part 2)
I started writing this blog about five years ago, in May of 2012. At that time I'd already been running a poker 'log book' for a while, keeping records of my games and results. My live tournaments had dried up and I was basically just playing one online session a week. Since then, things have changed a lot.
I think the watershed moment in my poker journey over the last five years was my discovery of the Onehunga Workingmen's Club Friday night tournament. I stumbled across this game in June of 2013 and have been playing in it pretty much every week since. Previously I'd been playing only in online games and it was great to get back into the live poker scene. This is a $20 to $25 'freeze-out' tournament and it has been pretty profitable for me over the years (although things have slowed down a bit in recent months). Not only does this give me a regular weekly tournament to play in, but it has opened up a variety of other club games to me. So I now play in the monthly 'Interclub' Tournament and have also attended the annual Clubs Championship for the last three years. In addition, I am now aware of a number of other regular club games and play in some of these from time to time.
As for other live games, the only others available five years ago were the National Pub Poker League (NPPL) games held in various bars around Auckland. For reasons detailed in previous posts, I just don't play in these. However, about a year ago some ex NPPL players started up the Avengers Poker League. They started running games in a number of venues and these games are pretty good. I've played in a couple of them and would make them regular games if they were played at a convenient time and location for me. Unfortunately most of them fall outside of my 'optimal range' so I'm not playing in them, but it's nice to know that there are some alternatives to the NPPL available.
A couple of years ago I discovered another pub game, not affiliated to any league, that is played just down the road from where I live. This Wednesday night game at the Landmark Bar has become my second weekly live poker game, and this game has also been pretty consistently profitable for me. However, at the end of last year the organizer decided he didn't want to run it anymore. Then at the start of this year I found that none of the people who'd volunteered to take over had done anything, so in the end I took it over myself. I'd much rather just be a player than a Tournament Director/player but this game was just to good for me to let it fade away. So now I'm back to playing in this game as well as running it. The downside is that it's harder to concentrate on my hands when I'm also running the game (especially in the first hour when late entries are available). The upside is that I've been able to make a few changes that make it an even more attractive game for me to play in.
The Landmark game is not the only one that I've ended up running this year. Last year the Onehunga Workies was running a monthly $50 deep stack tournament that I really enjoyed playing. However, the organizer decided not to run it anymore, so I stepped up and volunteered. So once again I've ended up being a TD when I'd much rather just play, but when a game is good you've got to do whatever it takes to make sure it keeps running. Fortunately this game is not a rebuy and has a slow structure, so it's less distracting being the TD as well as a player. This tournament started out fairly slowly, with only a handful of players turning up, but it seems to be gaining momentum and I'm pretty happy with the way it's going now.
During the last five years I've played a handful of games at Auckland's Sky City Casino, but mainly just casual 'non-bankroll' games.
When I first played in ring games at the casino the blinds were $1/$2, making for a maximum buy-in of $200. Since then they have steadily increased and are now at $2/$5. This is way beyond my bankroll's buy-in range. However, I did manage to win a Satellite that got me into a big buy-in tournament a couple of years ago. I only managed to get halfway through the field but I've always wanted to play in a big buy-in tournament and it was a great experience.
As for online games, I've spent the last five years playing in a variety of different poker games on both 888poker and Pokerstars. The online games I've played include pot limit Omaha ring games, both fixed limit and no-limit Texas Holdem ring games, 9 player Sit N Gos, 27 player Sit N Gos, freeze-out Tournaments and seven card stud ring games. This was all part of my mission to try every possible poker game type. Fortunately I came to my senses and abandoned this project a couple of years ago. It turned out that trying a new form of poker is actually pretty hard and all I was doing was throwing money away. That's one thing that I've learned the hard way: stick to what you know.
These days I play almost exclusively on 888poker. Some of the other game types I tried were on Pokerstars because they were more readily available on that site. But since returning to my core games I've found that I prefer 888. Pokerstars has a lot more ring games available, but there are a lot of 'grinders' on this site, leaving very little room for an amateur player like me to move. The Sit and Go games on both sites are okay, but I prefer the blind structure that's used on 888. My other core game is freeze-out tournaments; I've tried these on both sites but I think that the play is generally looser and more passive on 888 so that's where I'm playing my tournaments.
I've played a lot of Sit and Go tournaments (SNGs) over the last few years. Sometimes I've played these as my main game and at other times they've been 'fillers' that I've played when I only had an hour or two to spare. Playing in SNGs has been a real rollercoaster ride. For a few years my results were pretty good and I was slowly moving up the buy-in levels. Then it all turned around and I had a year when I just didn't seem to be able to do anything right in this game type. I now play SNGs only occasionally, at a very low buy-in, and I'm struggling to find a strategy that works. This is perplexing to me. I do reasonably well in multi-table tournaments and can't understand why my results are so bad in single table tournaments. At the moment it's a work in progress.
My preferred online games now are multi-table freeze-out tournaments (no rebuys or add-ons). There's one on 888poker during the middle of the day that I sometimes play on the weekend. I did well enough last year that I thought I could move up a level and have been playing at this new level for the last few months. However, because of the number of live games I'm now playing, I only play in this online tournament a couple of times a month. I try to play in at least 3 poker session a week. I already play in two weekly pub/club games. Then I also have two monthly live games I play; the Interclub game and the $50 Deep Stack Tournament. So I usually end up playing online on the weekends when I don't have a live game. But that's fine with me. It's nice to have so many live tournaments available.
For most of the last five years I've been maintaining a graph of my total profit/loss from playing poker, which I update every second month. It was around the time I first starting writing this blog that my bankroll started taking its first stuttering steps over the break-even line. All through 2012 my graph flirted with the base line but then in 2013 it started to move up and it's been trending upwards ever since. Of course there have been periods when the line has dipped down but it always recovers eventually and starts to climb again. The worst of these dips lasted almost a year; I started losing money in late 2014, hitting a low point about four months later, climbed a little, then levelled out for nearly six months before returning to a positive trend late in 2015. I am currently in another levelled out phase but I'm confident that the upwards trend will return in time. Being able to look at a graphic depiction of my poker results is a very useful thing and shows me that I'm on the right track regarding my poker play and game selection.
I've also been doing a fair bit of study of poker theory in an effort to improve my game over the last few years. I've read a few poker books, including a couple of classics and found them reasonably helpful. But most of my information has come from websites and video clips. I found Poker School Online to be particularly useful and also School of Cards on YouTube. There is a huge amount of information on poker available online but not all of it is worthwhile. Googling a particular topic brings up a huge variety of links and the trick is to sort through it all and find the good stuff.
I think my game has developed pretty well over the last five years. Some of this is due to the study I've been doing but I think a lot of it is due to just putting in the game time. There's really no substitute for experience. I've worked out a basic game plan for poker tournaments based on my stack size compared to the blinds; ie, the number of big blinds I have.. As my stack size changes, my playing style changes. I go from the green zone where I basically play it like a cashie, to the much tighter yellow zone, to the 'push the action and steal the blinds' orange zone and then finally the red zone; the all-in or fold level. This basic plan seems to work pretty well for me for most games. However, the one exception is the Friday night tournament.
The Workies tournament has always been a very loose game but lately it seems to have become ridiculously loose. I'm not sure why this is, but it has become a major preoccupation of mine over the last year or so to find a way of beating this game. Raising with decent starting hands pre-flop becomes completely pointless because massive raises will still get called by at least half the table, significantly reducing the chance of your one pair hand being the winner after the flop. And then the pot odds are so huge that it's impossible to bet enough to stop the chasers from drawing to the next card. I'm still trying to work this one out. I'm sure there's an answer somewhere, but I'm yet to find it.
So five years on, that's where I'm at now; playing three poker sessions a week, most of them live games, building my bankroll and constantly looking for an edge. As for the next five years, who knows, but I did at least set myself some goals to achieve for this year. I've already achieved a couple of these, having revived the Landmark game and also got the $50 game moving in the right direction. But I've had to rethink a couple of the other goals that I set for myself in February. I no longer think that it's practical to play 4 poker sessions per week. I do have a life beyond poker and I just don't think I have the spare time available for that 4th session. So I no longer need to try all the other available games in order to find the right one to play. I'm just sticking to my current regular tourneys for now. Even though the Friday-nighter is no longer an optimal game for me there are other factors that come into play. Most importantly, this is the weekly night out for my wife and I, so it's not just about the poker any more.
That leaves two more goals for me to achieve this year. One is to read 'Harrington on Holdem, Volume Two' which I haven't done yet but will be doing soon. The other is to play in the Sky City Casino $1/$3 ring game (a new turbo-style cashie that started recently). I'm actually getting very close to having enough in my bankroll to be able to afford to play in this game. Another couple of hundred dollars in the kitty and I'll be off to try my luck in the 'Poker Zone'. Once that happens, well I'll just have to set some more goals won't I? Maybe I'll try to figure out how to win at Omaha. No, just kidding.
I think the watershed moment in my poker journey over the last five years was my discovery of the Onehunga Workingmen's Club Friday night tournament. I stumbled across this game in June of 2013 and have been playing in it pretty much every week since. Previously I'd been playing only in online games and it was great to get back into the live poker scene. This is a $20 to $25 'freeze-out' tournament and it has been pretty profitable for me over the years (although things have slowed down a bit in recent months). Not only does this give me a regular weekly tournament to play in, but it has opened up a variety of other club games to me. So I now play in the monthly 'Interclub' Tournament and have also attended the annual Clubs Championship for the last three years. In addition, I am now aware of a number of other regular club games and play in some of these from time to time.
As for other live games, the only others available five years ago were the National Pub Poker League (NPPL) games held in various bars around Auckland. For reasons detailed in previous posts, I just don't play in these. However, about a year ago some ex NPPL players started up the Avengers Poker League. They started running games in a number of venues and these games are pretty good. I've played in a couple of them and would make them regular games if they were played at a convenient time and location for me. Unfortunately most of them fall outside of my 'optimal range' so I'm not playing in them, but it's nice to know that there are some alternatives to the NPPL available.
A couple of years ago I discovered another pub game, not affiliated to any league, that is played just down the road from where I live. This Wednesday night game at the Landmark Bar has become my second weekly live poker game, and this game has also been pretty consistently profitable for me. However, at the end of last year the organizer decided he didn't want to run it anymore. Then at the start of this year I found that none of the people who'd volunteered to take over had done anything, so in the end I took it over myself. I'd much rather just be a player than a Tournament Director/player but this game was just to good for me to let it fade away. So now I'm back to playing in this game as well as running it. The downside is that it's harder to concentrate on my hands when I'm also running the game (especially in the first hour when late entries are available). The upside is that I've been able to make a few changes that make it an even more attractive game for me to play in.
The Landmark game is not the only one that I've ended up running this year. Last year the Onehunga Workies was running a monthly $50 deep stack tournament that I really enjoyed playing. However, the organizer decided not to run it anymore, so I stepped up and volunteered. So once again I've ended up being a TD when I'd much rather just play, but when a game is good you've got to do whatever it takes to make sure it keeps running. Fortunately this game is not a rebuy and has a slow structure, so it's less distracting being the TD as well as a player. This tournament started out fairly slowly, with only a handful of players turning up, but it seems to be gaining momentum and I'm pretty happy with the way it's going now.
During the last five years I've played a handful of games at Auckland's Sky City Casino, but mainly just casual 'non-bankroll' games.
When I first played in ring games at the casino the blinds were $1/$2, making for a maximum buy-in of $200. Since then they have steadily increased and are now at $2/$5. This is way beyond my bankroll's buy-in range. However, I did manage to win a Satellite that got me into a big buy-in tournament a couple of years ago. I only managed to get halfway through the field but I've always wanted to play in a big buy-in tournament and it was a great experience.As for online games, I've spent the last five years playing in a variety of different poker games on both 888poker and Pokerstars. The online games I've played include pot limit Omaha ring games, both fixed limit and no-limit Texas Holdem ring games, 9 player Sit N Gos, 27 player Sit N Gos, freeze-out Tournaments and seven card stud ring games. This was all part of my mission to try every possible poker game type. Fortunately I came to my senses and abandoned this project a couple of years ago. It turned out that trying a new form of poker is actually pretty hard and all I was doing was throwing money away. That's one thing that I've learned the hard way: stick to what you know.
These days I play almost exclusively on 888poker. Some of the other game types I tried were on Pokerstars because they were more readily available on that site. But since returning to my core games I've found that I prefer 888. Pokerstars has a lot more ring games available, but there are a lot of 'grinders' on this site, leaving very little room for an amateur player like me to move. The Sit and Go games on both sites are okay, but I prefer the blind structure that's used on 888. My other core game is freeze-out tournaments; I've tried these on both sites but I think that the play is generally looser and more passive on 888 so that's where I'm playing my tournaments.
I've played a lot of Sit and Go tournaments (SNGs) over the last few years. Sometimes I've played these as my main game and at other times they've been 'fillers' that I've played when I only had an hour or two to spare. Playing in SNGs has been a real rollercoaster ride. For a few years my results were pretty good and I was slowly moving up the buy-in levels. Then it all turned around and I had a year when I just didn't seem to be able to do anything right in this game type. I now play SNGs only occasionally, at a very low buy-in, and I'm struggling to find a strategy that works. This is perplexing to me. I do reasonably well in multi-table tournaments and can't understand why my results are so bad in single table tournaments. At the moment it's a work in progress.
My preferred online games now are multi-table freeze-out tournaments (no rebuys or add-ons). There's one on 888poker during the middle of the day that I sometimes play on the weekend. I did well enough last year that I thought I could move up a level and have been playing at this new level for the last few months. However, because of the number of live games I'm now playing, I only play in this online tournament a couple of times a month. I try to play in at least 3 poker session a week. I already play in two weekly pub/club games. Then I also have two monthly live games I play; the Interclub game and the $50 Deep Stack Tournament. So I usually end up playing online on the weekends when I don't have a live game. But that's fine with me. It's nice to have so many live tournaments available.
For most of the last five years I've been maintaining a graph of my total profit/loss from playing poker, which I update every second month. It was around the time I first starting writing this blog that my bankroll started taking its first stuttering steps over the break-even line. All through 2012 my graph flirted with the base line but then in 2013 it started to move up and it's been trending upwards ever since. Of course there have been periods when the line has dipped down but it always recovers eventually and starts to climb again. The worst of these dips lasted almost a year; I started losing money in late 2014, hitting a low point about four months later, climbed a little, then levelled out for nearly six months before returning to a positive trend late in 2015. I am currently in another levelled out phase but I'm confident that the upwards trend will return in time. Being able to look at a graphic depiction of my poker results is a very useful thing and shows me that I'm on the right track regarding my poker play and game selection.
I've also been doing a fair bit of study of poker theory in an effort to improve my game over the last few years. I've read a few poker books, including a couple of classics and found them reasonably helpful. But most of my information has come from websites and video clips. I found Poker School Online to be particularly useful and also School of Cards on YouTube. There is a huge amount of information on poker available online but not all of it is worthwhile. Googling a particular topic brings up a huge variety of links and the trick is to sort through it all and find the good stuff.
I think my game has developed pretty well over the last five years. Some of this is due to the study I've been doing but I think a lot of it is due to just putting in the game time. There's really no substitute for experience. I've worked out a basic game plan for poker tournaments based on my stack size compared to the blinds; ie, the number of big blinds I have.. As my stack size changes, my playing style changes. I go from the green zone where I basically play it like a cashie, to the much tighter yellow zone, to the 'push the action and steal the blinds' orange zone and then finally the red zone; the all-in or fold level. This basic plan seems to work pretty well for me for most games. However, the one exception is the Friday night tournament.
The Workies tournament has always been a very loose game but lately it seems to have become ridiculously loose. I'm not sure why this is, but it has become a major preoccupation of mine over the last year or so to find a way of beating this game. Raising with decent starting hands pre-flop becomes completely pointless because massive raises will still get called by at least half the table, significantly reducing the chance of your one pair hand being the winner after the flop. And then the pot odds are so huge that it's impossible to bet enough to stop the chasers from drawing to the next card. I'm still trying to work this one out. I'm sure there's an answer somewhere, but I'm yet to find it.
So five years on, that's where I'm at now; playing three poker sessions a week, most of them live games, building my bankroll and constantly looking for an edge. As for the next five years, who knows, but I did at least set myself some goals to achieve for this year. I've already achieved a couple of these, having revived the Landmark game and also got the $50 game moving in the right direction. But I've had to rethink a couple of the other goals that I set for myself in February. I no longer think that it's practical to play 4 poker sessions per week. I do have a life beyond poker and I just don't think I have the spare time available for that 4th session. So I no longer need to try all the other available games in order to find the right one to play. I'm just sticking to my current regular tourneys for now. Even though the Friday-nighter is no longer an optimal game for me there are other factors that come into play. Most importantly, this is the weekly night out for my wife and I, so it's not just about the poker any more.
That leaves two more goals for me to achieve this year. One is to read 'Harrington on Holdem, Volume Two' which I haven't done yet but will be doing soon. The other is to play in the Sky City Casino $1/$3 ring game (a new turbo-style cashie that started recently). I'm actually getting very close to having enough in my bankroll to be able to afford to play in this game. Another couple of hundred dollars in the kitty and I'll be off to try my luck in the 'Poker Zone'. Once that happens, well I'll just have to set some more goals won't I? Maybe I'll try to figure out how to win at Omaha. No, just kidding.
Monday, 13 February 2017
2017
Last year I played in the Waitangi Weekend Deep Stack Tournament at the Sky City Casino after winning a couple of satellite events. I was hoping to play my way into this $1100 buy-in tournament again this year. However, the casino have changed the schedule so there are no longer any low buy-in 2-stage satellites to the main event. But there is a regular $80 tournament with multiple prizes of $550 each. And there's also a $220 satellite to the main event. So I headed up to the casino in mid-January, hoping to win a prize in the first game, which would have given me me two shots at the Deep Stack Tournament. But it wasn't to be. I played for about 2 hours in a field of 43 players but got knocked out in 22nd place, having gone all-in with AQ and coming up against AK. That's poker.
Getting into the Waitangi Weekend Tournament was the first of my goals for 2017. I have a few others for this year and hopefully I'll be able to actually achieve these ones. As it's mid-February already, I thought I'd better list them now:
Try all available games. In my unending quest for the perfect game I have decided to try out all the available local live games (except the NPPL craps-shoots) to see if I can find a good one to add to my poker schedule. There are a lot more pub games available now than there used to be and I intend to check them all out. I've already tried the Saturday game at Maverick's Bar, the Tuesday game at the F Bar and the Thursday game at Ye Olde Bailey. Each of these venues hold games on several days of the week and there are plenty of other pubs and clubs to try out. I figure that if I try one game per week then I might have tried them all by mid-winter. Then all I have to do is decide which one I want to play regularly.
Promote the $50 game. The monthly $50 tournament at my local club has struggled along for a few months now. Each time we've had barely enough entrants to play a single table game. But I really like this tournament because it's the sort of game I want to play in. It's played on a Sunday afternoon at a very convenient location and the buy-in is just right. So I'm determined to do everything I can to make it work. I was able to persuade the organiser to make a few changes for the January event that I thought would make it more attractive. I also advertised it as much as I could. In the end we got 15 players; our best result yet. So I'm pushing the advertising for the upcoming game this weekend. Our organiser won't be able to play this time so it's going to be down to me to run the game on the day. Hopefully we'll get at least two tables and then I can continue working on making it an attractive game that lots of people want to participate in.
Revive the Landmark game. I've really enjoyed playing in the Wednesday night re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. It is played at a convenient time and place for me and I've also had a lot of success playing in this game. But at the end of last year the game organiser announced that he didn't want to do it anymore. A couple of the regulars put their hands up and volunteered to take over but I haven't seen any action yet. I've been down to the Landmark a couple of times but no-one seems to know anything. I also met one of the volunteers on Friday but he was rather vague about what was happening. So I'm headed back to the pub on Wednesday in an effort to get some answers. Having found a game that ticks all the boxes, I don't want to lose it. I'm going to do everything I can to get this tournament running again, even if I have to run it myself.
Play in optimal games. Once I've tried out all the available games I have to pick the one that I want to play on a regular basis. Assuming I can get the Wednesday game back, I'll be playing in two live tournaments a week; Wednesday and Friday nights. I'll also be playing in an online tourney once a week. My goal is to play in 4 poker games a week. As I'm also playing in the monthly Interclub tournament and the monthly $50 game, that leaves 2 games a month that I have to find. Once I've decided on my optimal 4th game, I'll start playing it twice a month. That's the plan anyway.
Read Harrington, Volume 2. During the holidays I bought myself a Christmas present: Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 1. This is one of the titles on my list of the ten best poker books. I've been reading it over the last month or so and it's absolutely fascinating. I particularly like the 'problems' section at the end of each chapter where you get to test yourself on what you've learned. So I'll be ordering volume 2 soon and working my way through it.
Play in Sky City Cashies. I would very much like to have a go at the ring games at the Auckland Casino. The problem is, they're a bit too expensive for my bankroll. I don't want to play in a cash game that costs more than 5 percent of my bankroll. Last year I figured that, with the blinds at $2/$4, if I bought in for 50 big blinds it would cost me $200. This meant that I'd have to come close to doubling my bankroll to be able to afford it. I thought that might be possible, but then I discovered this year that the blinds had gone up to $2/$5. That put the Sky City cashies further out of reach. But I learned recently that there is now a lower level 'turbo' game available. This game has blinds of $2/$3 and a 15 second time limit on all action. I've spoken to a couple of people who've played in this game and they both say that the time clock is not really a problem. So I only have to increase my bankroll by about 30 %, something that is definitely achievable. So I'll be keeping one eye on my poker bankroll and if I can hit that magic number then I'll be headed up to Sky City to try my hand at the turbo ring game.
Looking back at my previous posts, I see that it's five years since I set myself some goals for the year. That time I failed to achieve the last two. This time around I'm reasonably confident that I can tick off all of these goals. I'm certainly going to give it my best shot.
Getting into the Waitangi Weekend Tournament was the first of my goals for 2017. I have a few others for this year and hopefully I'll be able to actually achieve these ones. As it's mid-February already, I thought I'd better list them now:
Try all available games. In my unending quest for the perfect game I have decided to try out all the available local live games (except the NPPL craps-shoots) to see if I can find a good one to add to my poker schedule. There are a lot more pub games available now than there used to be and I intend to check them all out. I've already tried the Saturday game at Maverick's Bar, the Tuesday game at the F Bar and the Thursday game at Ye Olde Bailey. Each of these venues hold games on several days of the week and there are plenty of other pubs and clubs to try out. I figure that if I try one game per week then I might have tried them all by mid-winter. Then all I have to do is decide which one I want to play regularly.
Promote the $50 game. The monthly $50 tournament at my local club has struggled along for a few months now. Each time we've had barely enough entrants to play a single table game. But I really like this tournament because it's the sort of game I want to play in. It's played on a Sunday afternoon at a very convenient location and the buy-in is just right. So I'm determined to do everything I can to make it work. I was able to persuade the organiser to make a few changes for the January event that I thought would make it more attractive. I also advertised it as much as I could. In the end we got 15 players; our best result yet. So I'm pushing the advertising for the upcoming game this weekend. Our organiser won't be able to play this time so it's going to be down to me to run the game on the day. Hopefully we'll get at least two tables and then I can continue working on making it an attractive game that lots of people want to participate in.
Revive the Landmark game. I've really enjoyed playing in the Wednesday night re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. It is played at a convenient time and place for me and I've also had a lot of success playing in this game. But at the end of last year the game organiser announced that he didn't want to do it anymore. A couple of the regulars put their hands up and volunteered to take over but I haven't seen any action yet. I've been down to the Landmark a couple of times but no-one seems to know anything. I also met one of the volunteers on Friday but he was rather vague about what was happening. So I'm headed back to the pub on Wednesday in an effort to get some answers. Having found a game that ticks all the boxes, I don't want to lose it. I'm going to do everything I can to get this tournament running again, even if I have to run it myself.
Play in optimal games. Once I've tried out all the available games I have to pick the one that I want to play on a regular basis. Assuming I can get the Wednesday game back, I'll be playing in two live tournaments a week; Wednesday and Friday nights. I'll also be playing in an online tourney once a week. My goal is to play in 4 poker games a week. As I'm also playing in the monthly Interclub tournament and the monthly $50 game, that leaves 2 games a month that I have to find. Once I've decided on my optimal 4th game, I'll start playing it twice a month. That's the plan anyway.
Read Harrington, Volume 2. During the holidays I bought myself a Christmas present: Harrington on Hold'em, Volume 1. This is one of the titles on my list of the ten best poker books. I've been reading it over the last month or so and it's absolutely fascinating. I particularly like the 'problems' section at the end of each chapter where you get to test yourself on what you've learned. So I'll be ordering volume 2 soon and working my way through it.
Play in Sky City Cashies. I would very much like to have a go at the ring games at the Auckland Casino. The problem is, they're a bit too expensive for my bankroll. I don't want to play in a cash game that costs more than 5 percent of my bankroll. Last year I figured that, with the blinds at $2/$4, if I bought in for 50 big blinds it would cost me $200. This meant that I'd have to come close to doubling my bankroll to be able to afford it. I thought that might be possible, but then I discovered this year that the blinds had gone up to $2/$5. That put the Sky City cashies further out of reach. But I learned recently that there is now a lower level 'turbo' game available. This game has blinds of $2/$3 and a 15 second time limit on all action. I've spoken to a couple of people who've played in this game and they both say that the time clock is not really a problem. So I only have to increase my bankroll by about 30 %, something that is definitely achievable. So I'll be keeping one eye on my poker bankroll and if I can hit that magic number then I'll be headed up to Sky City to try my hand at the turbo ring game.
Looking back at my previous posts, I see that it's five years since I set myself some goals for the year. That time I failed to achieve the last two. This time around I'm reasonably confident that I can tick off all of these goals. I'm certainly going to give it my best shot.
Tuesday, 10 January 2017
2016
Last year was a busy year for me poker-wise, so here are some edited highlights.
JANUARY. At the start of 2016 I decided that my primary online game would be Texas Holdem tournaments. The year before I'd performed poorly in ring games so I figured it was time to try something different. However, while I was still on holiday I decided to try a Sit and Go marathon session. I spent about 6 hours playing in a total of nine $3.50 games. I managed one second place and two thirds in this session, coming out with a loss of US$13.20. This served to confirm that my Sit and Go mojo was well and truly lost.
FEBRUARY. As chronicled elsewhere ('The Deep Stack Tournament', 26/02/16) I played in the Sky City Casino Waitangi Day Tournament. I played for 6 1/2 hours on day 1A, then managed another 2 hours on day two before being eliminated, finishing in 53rd place out of 105 players. Getting knocked out halfway through was disappointing but I was very happy with the fact that I managed to finish well enough in two satellite events to get a ticket to the main event. It was great to just be involved in a $1,100 buy-in event and I'd love to play again this year. Unfortunately, they seem to be running things differently this year and there don't seem to be any reasonably cheap satellites that I could afford to play in.
MARCH. This was a very good month in terms of results. I had a couple of good cashes in the micro stakes online tournaments. I came in 1st out of 85 and 2nd out of 76, collecting US$145 in total. There were also a couple of good live tournament finishes: 2/23 for +$85 and 1/18 for +$230. I also won a bit in two ring games this month. So I was able to make a withdrawal from my 888 Poker account and I was able to deposit some more into my bankroll bank account.
APRIL. A ring game usually starts up towards the end of my regular Wednesday night tournament. This is usually a limited dealer's choice game, the choice being between Holdem, Omaha and Crazy Pineapple. On the 13th I played in this game and lost $20. The loss itself was no big deal but it got me thinking about the nature of these kinds of post-tournament ring games. They are usually structured in such a way that you don't have enough time or a deep enough stack to play a proper ring game strategy. In the end I decided that, despite a couple of wins the previous month, the variance was just too high. So that was the last time I played in a short-stack ring game.
MAY. This is the month when I decided to look back at the last 12 months of live tournament results. I was interested to find out how often I actually cash in live tournaments. It turns out I'd played in 71 tournaments over the last year. I cashed in 24 of these, or one in every 3. Of these, 6 were wins, giving me a win rate of 1/12. I was pretty happy with a 1 in 3 rate for cashes but figured that I need to do some work on getting more first places. That is still an ongoing project.
JUNE. Early in June I went to the Clubs NZ North Island Poker Championships in Hastings (see 'The Big Weekend', 12/07/16). After 11 hours of play I came in 14/155, just off the money. I was pretty happy with this result. Two years previously I finished 9th, and the year after I made it about halfway through the field. So I'm usually in the hunt. It's also great to get out of Auckland and meet some new people and see some new places.
JULY. I'd been going through a bit of a slow patch in terms of results over the last few weeks. On Friday 29th I broke the drought and cashed in a live tournament profiting by $30. My last live cash had been on the 20th May, when I'd picked up +$170. As it happens, both of these were re-buy tournaments. Maybe re-buys are my best game?
AUGUST. The winter season (June, July, August) didn't go well overall. My ROI (return on investment) for this 3 month period was -25%. I was looking at overall losses for all my regular live tournaments and a miniscule +US$13 overall for online tourneys. My best result for the winter period was a $70 profit in live ring games; this was the result of a single game played during the Queen's Birthday weekend trip. Winter seems to be my worst season. I don't know why.
SEPTEMBER. The Onehunga Workingmen's Club held the first of a series of monthly deep stack tournaments with a $50 entry fee. Although we only had enough players for a single table, it was an enjoyable event, especially as I came in second and pocketed an $80 profit. Subsequent games also ended up being single table events and I continued to cash on a regular basis. These games were played on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, which was very convenient for me.
OCTOBER. I started playing in the occasional micro stakes big field tournament on Poker Stars in the previous month. I had my first cash in this type of game this month, coming in 127th place out of 5093 players. As the buy-in is only US$2.20, I didn't make much, but it was an encouraging start. I've continued playing in these big field events from time to time, but haven't had any more cashes yet.
NOVEMBER. One Friday night the regular tournament at the OWMC was cancelled as the organiser had a prior engagement. So some of the regulars played a ring game instead. I ended up running it as everyone knows I'm 'the cashie guy'. So I did blinds of 25c/50c, Texas Holdem only, with buy-ins up to $50. A good time was had by all. Although I came out of the game with only a small profit it was great to be able to play in a proper ring game for a change.
DECEMBER. I came 5th on the overall points table for the Auckland Inter-club Poker this year. Although only the top 3 players win cash prizes I was looking forward to the prize-giving day at Tuakau because the poker tournament on that day had no rake taken out of the prize-pool; it was all paid out. But in their infinite wisdom the organisers decided to pay out the top 18 finishers, rather than the usual top 9. So even though I came in 7/54 I only collected $40 for my troubles, a measly $20 profit. Oh well. Thems the breaks.
JANUARY. At the start of 2016 I decided that my primary online game would be Texas Holdem tournaments. The year before I'd performed poorly in ring games so I figured it was time to try something different. However, while I was still on holiday I decided to try a Sit and Go marathon session. I spent about 6 hours playing in a total of nine $3.50 games. I managed one second place and two thirds in this session, coming out with a loss of US$13.20. This served to confirm that my Sit and Go mojo was well and truly lost.
FEBRUARY. As chronicled elsewhere ('The Deep Stack Tournament', 26/02/16) I played in the Sky City Casino Waitangi Day Tournament. I played for 6 1/2 hours on day 1A, then managed another 2 hours on day two before being eliminated, finishing in 53rd place out of 105 players. Getting knocked out halfway through was disappointing but I was very happy with the fact that I managed to finish well enough in two satellite events to get a ticket to the main event. It was great to just be involved in a $1,100 buy-in event and I'd love to play again this year. Unfortunately, they seem to be running things differently this year and there don't seem to be any reasonably cheap satellites that I could afford to play in.
MARCH. This was a very good month in terms of results. I had a couple of good cashes in the micro stakes online tournaments. I came in 1st out of 85 and 2nd out of 76, collecting US$145 in total. There were also a couple of good live tournament finishes: 2/23 for +$85 and 1/18 for +$230. I also won a bit in two ring games this month. So I was able to make a withdrawal from my 888 Poker account and I was able to deposit some more into my bankroll bank account.
APRIL. A ring game usually starts up towards the end of my regular Wednesday night tournament. This is usually a limited dealer's choice game, the choice being between Holdem, Omaha and Crazy Pineapple. On the 13th I played in this game and lost $20. The loss itself was no big deal but it got me thinking about the nature of these kinds of post-tournament ring games. They are usually structured in such a way that you don't have enough time or a deep enough stack to play a proper ring game strategy. In the end I decided that, despite a couple of wins the previous month, the variance was just too high. So that was the last time I played in a short-stack ring game.
MAY. This is the month when I decided to look back at the last 12 months of live tournament results. I was interested to find out how often I actually cash in live tournaments. It turns out I'd played in 71 tournaments over the last year. I cashed in 24 of these, or one in every 3. Of these, 6 were wins, giving me a win rate of 1/12. I was pretty happy with a 1 in 3 rate for cashes but figured that I need to do some work on getting more first places. That is still an ongoing project.
JUNE. Early in June I went to the Clubs NZ North Island Poker Championships in Hastings (see 'The Big Weekend', 12/07/16). After 11 hours of play I came in 14/155, just off the money. I was pretty happy with this result. Two years previously I finished 9th, and the year after I made it about halfway through the field. So I'm usually in the hunt. It's also great to get out of Auckland and meet some new people and see some new places.
JULY. I'd been going through a bit of a slow patch in terms of results over the last few weeks. On Friday 29th I broke the drought and cashed in a live tournament profiting by $30. My last live cash had been on the 20th May, when I'd picked up +$170. As it happens, both of these were re-buy tournaments. Maybe re-buys are my best game?
AUGUST. The winter season (June, July, August) didn't go well overall. My ROI (return on investment) for this 3 month period was -25%. I was looking at overall losses for all my regular live tournaments and a miniscule +US$13 overall for online tourneys. My best result for the winter period was a $70 profit in live ring games; this was the result of a single game played during the Queen's Birthday weekend trip. Winter seems to be my worst season. I don't know why.
SEPTEMBER. The Onehunga Workingmen's Club held the first of a series of monthly deep stack tournaments with a $50 entry fee. Although we only had enough players for a single table, it was an enjoyable event, especially as I came in second and pocketed an $80 profit. Subsequent games also ended up being single table events and I continued to cash on a regular basis. These games were played on Saturday or Sunday afternoons, which was very convenient for me.
OCTOBER. I started playing in the occasional micro stakes big field tournament on Poker Stars in the previous month. I had my first cash in this type of game this month, coming in 127th place out of 5093 players. As the buy-in is only US$2.20, I didn't make much, but it was an encouraging start. I've continued playing in these big field events from time to time, but haven't had any more cashes yet.
NOVEMBER. One Friday night the regular tournament at the OWMC was cancelled as the organiser had a prior engagement. So some of the regulars played a ring game instead. I ended up running it as everyone knows I'm 'the cashie guy'. So I did blinds of 25c/50c, Texas Holdem only, with buy-ins up to $50. A good time was had by all. Although I came out of the game with only a small profit it was great to be able to play in a proper ring game for a change.
DECEMBER. I came 5th on the overall points table for the Auckland Inter-club Poker this year. Although only the top 3 players win cash prizes I was looking forward to the prize-giving day at Tuakau because the poker tournament on that day had no rake taken out of the prize-pool; it was all paid out. But in their infinite wisdom the organisers decided to pay out the top 18 finishers, rather than the usual top 9. So even though I came in 7/54 I only collected $40 for my troubles, a measly $20 profit. Oh well. Thems the breaks.
Thursday, 29 December 2016
Sticky Fingers
The basic principal that is at the heart of poker theory, the point at which all poker primers start, is the two types of poker hands: made hands and drawing hands. Pre-flop, any big pair is a made hand and I would also include any two big cards, although some might argue that these are only drawing hands. I include them because hands like AQ and AK are probably the best hand pre-flop and have the potential to make top pair on the flop. You should always raise hands like these for two reasons: for value and to isolate your opponents. So you are raising to get more chips in the pot while you are ahead and also to reduce the number of callers.
The reason you want to reduce the number of callers is because these sorts of big pair hands are vulnerable to being drawn out on by players holding drawing hands. For example, if you have pocket aces and are up against one other player, the probability of having the winning hand on the river (against any random hand) is 85%. But against 8 other players, your aces have only a 35% chance of winning at showdown. This principal applies to any big hand and that is why it is vitally important to protect your big hands by raising pre-flop.
Conversely, if you have a drawing hand (suited connectors, medium connectors, small pairs, small suited aces), you want to play in a multi-way pot. This is because most of the time you are going to miss your straight, flush or 3 of a kind and end up folding. So when you do hit your monster hand you want a big pot with plenty of players involved so you can extract maximum value and recoup all those previous losses and then some. This is the basic strategy that is at the heart of every poker game. Players with big starting hands are trying to make it too expensive for others to chase their draws. And players with drawing hands are trying to get in as cheaply as possible so they can hit their monster hands.
The live games that I play in are typically very very loose. Most players will call a pre-flop raise with a ridiculously wide range of hands and if they hit any kind of draw, or any part of the flop they will hang on like grim death and call all the way to the river. This makes it extremely difficult to protect big pair type hands, as many of these players will only be deterred from calling by an enormous raise. I'm now used to this kind of play and have resigned myself to the fact that I'll be sucked out on a lot. The thing is, the play at my Friday game seems to be getting even looser than usual. Maybe it's because some of the tighter players are no longer coming to the game, or maybe it's just my perception of the games, but those calling hands just seem to be getting more and more absurd. This has led me to take another look at my basic strategy to see if I can find a better way.
I don't play ring games much these days but I have a basic pre-flop strategy for these games that is based on principals taught by Poker School Online. If I have a hand that's playable from early position I open raise to five times the big blind (5x BB). If I have a hand that I think is playable from middle position I raise 3x BB plus 1 BB for every player who has limped in to the pot. If I have a playable hand in late position I raise 2x BB plus 1 BB for every limper. This is a simple enough system that seems to work well enough in most situations, although it can always be modified to suit particular circumstances.
In a ring game, if I was faced with a table full of 'no-foldem' players, I would adjust by increasing the size of my raises for premium hands. And in a situation like this, if I had top pair or an over-pair on the flop, I would bet half the pot or more to ensure that anyone with a draw didn't have the correct odds to call, even if that meant pushing most of my stack into the middle. The way I see it, in a cash game you make what you think is the correct move, even if it involves risking most or all of your stack. If you get drawn out on, then so be it; you either reload or go home in the knowledge that in the long term that was a profitable move and the next time, or the time after that, you will drag in all of some-ones chips. As long as you play the odds you will win in the long run, regardless of the results in one particular game.
Maybe it's a mistake on my part, but I think of tournaments differently. To me, tournaments are all about survival. My strategy is to try and pick up enough chips in the early stages to keep ahead of the increasing blinds and then get more active and aggressive in the later stages to put myself in a position to make the money. Maybe this is the wrong approach, but it seems to work reasonably well so I'm sticking to it for now. The only time I'm willing to risk most or all of my chips is where I know I have a significant edge (for example pocket aces or kings pre-flop). I don't usually want to risk my tournament life on a move that has a small positive expected value long term. In short, I'm much less inclined to risk my chips in a tournament than I would be in a ring game.
In the early stages of a tournament, when the stacks are reasonably deep, I play a basic ring game strategy but with one exception; I don't increase my bet sizing to compensate for the super-loose calling crew. So if I raise 5x BB in early position with KK and get 5 callers, then so be it. Or if 6 players limp in when I have AJ on the button, I raise to 8x BB and usually end up watching 3 or 4 people call. As a result, it's not unusual to see me raising pre-flop them checking or folding on the flop if my Ax misses or my medium pair is facing a flop full of big cards. And a continuation bet in a no-foldem game like this is just pointless; you're always going to get called, usually by multiple players.
In the middle stages when the blinds are getting bigger I reduce the size of my pre-flop raises. I usually just bet a standard 3x BB regardless of position. As the blinds increase further I'll drop down to 2.5x BB raises or less. Even although this size raise is likely to be a significant proportion of a caller's stack at this point, I still find that there are multiple players who are apparently unable to let go of their hands. It's not until the final stages of the tournament when the blinds are really big and most of the players with sticky fingers have been eliminated that I start seeing folds to raises. However, there are usually a couple of 'loosies' who have amassed huge stacks and are happy to keep on calling with rags.
The thing about playing in these super-loose tournaments is that one of the essential elements of the no limit game is diminished. The power of the pre-flop raise is severely compromised and post-flop play becomes much more important. The way that these games end up being played remind me of fixed limit games. I played in fixed limit ring games a few years back and found that I wasn't very good at them. It was virtually impossible to protect a big starting hand as it was so cheap to call a raise. These games were very much about what came on the flop and it took considerable skill to negotiate the intricacies of post-flop play where pushing an opponent off a hand was not an option.
So why bother with pre-flop raises at all? There are a couple of players in the Friday game who are incredibly passive pre-flop and yet they have both done very well over-all, coming first and second on the yearly points table. In a game where pre-flop raises do not achieve the aim of isolating opponents, why bother with them? Well, the thing is, pre-flop raises still achieve the aim of getting chips in the middle. The way I see it, although all those callers greatly reduce my chances of winning the pot, big pairs still sometimes hold up against multiple callers, and they sometimes improve. And when they do, they win monster pots. So I still figure that all those times I end up raising pre-flop and then folding the flop are compensated for by the times when I rake in a huge pot that sets me up for the rest of the tournament.
I guess you could say that the live tournaments I play in are hybrid games. Pre-flop play is much more like fixed limit than it is no limit; you just have to accept that you're going to have a lot of callers no matter what you do. However, you still have the ability to bet enough post-flop to ensure that at least the first couple of players won't have the correct odds to call with their drawing cards. And when you reach the turn? Well, the pot will be so big that you'll probably end up all-in just to protect your hand. Then again, play is usually so passive that you could probably just check to the river and hope that no-one hits. But of course the problem with this is that you're probably already pot committed. At this point you have to just play the hand correctly and take your chances.
One of the great things about poker is that there are so many different types of game and so many different playing styles within each game type. The most important thing is being able to adjust to these different styles. No-foldem games are no different. On balance, I think my strategy for these super-loose games makes some sort of sense.
Playing no limit no-foldem is kind of like dancing your way through a minefield. On a roller coaster. Blindfolded. What fun.
The reason you want to reduce the number of callers is because these sorts of big pair hands are vulnerable to being drawn out on by players holding drawing hands. For example, if you have pocket aces and are up against one other player, the probability of having the winning hand on the river (against any random hand) is 85%. But against 8 other players, your aces have only a 35% chance of winning at showdown. This principal applies to any big hand and that is why it is vitally important to protect your big hands by raising pre-flop.
Conversely, if you have a drawing hand (suited connectors, medium connectors, small pairs, small suited aces), you want to play in a multi-way pot. This is because most of the time you are going to miss your straight, flush or 3 of a kind and end up folding. So when you do hit your monster hand you want a big pot with plenty of players involved so you can extract maximum value and recoup all those previous losses and then some. This is the basic strategy that is at the heart of every poker game. Players with big starting hands are trying to make it too expensive for others to chase their draws. And players with drawing hands are trying to get in as cheaply as possible so they can hit their monster hands.The live games that I play in are typically very very loose. Most players will call a pre-flop raise with a ridiculously wide range of hands and if they hit any kind of draw, or any part of the flop they will hang on like grim death and call all the way to the river. This makes it extremely difficult to protect big pair type hands, as many of these players will only be deterred from calling by an enormous raise. I'm now used to this kind of play and have resigned myself to the fact that I'll be sucked out on a lot. The thing is, the play at my Friday game seems to be getting even looser than usual. Maybe it's because some of the tighter players are no longer coming to the game, or maybe it's just my perception of the games, but those calling hands just seem to be getting more and more absurd. This has led me to take another look at my basic strategy to see if I can find a better way.
I don't play ring games much these days but I have a basic pre-flop strategy for these games that is based on principals taught by Poker School Online. If I have a hand that's playable from early position I open raise to five times the big blind (5x BB). If I have a hand that I think is playable from middle position I raise 3x BB plus 1 BB for every player who has limped in to the pot. If I have a playable hand in late position I raise 2x BB plus 1 BB for every limper. This is a simple enough system that seems to work well enough in most situations, although it can always be modified to suit particular circumstances.
In a ring game, if I was faced with a table full of 'no-foldem' players, I would adjust by increasing the size of my raises for premium hands. And in a situation like this, if I had top pair or an over-pair on the flop, I would bet half the pot or more to ensure that anyone with a draw didn't have the correct odds to call, even if that meant pushing most of my stack into the middle. The way I see it, in a cash game you make what you think is the correct move, even if it involves risking most or all of your stack. If you get drawn out on, then so be it; you either reload or go home in the knowledge that in the long term that was a profitable move and the next time, or the time after that, you will drag in all of some-ones chips. As long as you play the odds you will win in the long run, regardless of the results in one particular game.
Maybe it's a mistake on my part, but I think of tournaments differently. To me, tournaments are all about survival. My strategy is to try and pick up enough chips in the early stages to keep ahead of the increasing blinds and then get more active and aggressive in the later stages to put myself in a position to make the money. Maybe this is the wrong approach, but it seems to work reasonably well so I'm sticking to it for now. The only time I'm willing to risk most or all of my chips is where I know I have a significant edge (for example pocket aces or kings pre-flop). I don't usually want to risk my tournament life on a move that has a small positive expected value long term. In short, I'm much less inclined to risk my chips in a tournament than I would be in a ring game.
In the early stages of a tournament, when the stacks are reasonably deep, I play a basic ring game strategy but with one exception; I don't increase my bet sizing to compensate for the super-loose calling crew. So if I raise 5x BB in early position with KK and get 5 callers, then so be it. Or if 6 players limp in when I have AJ on the button, I raise to 8x BB and usually end up watching 3 or 4 people call. As a result, it's not unusual to see me raising pre-flop them checking or folding on the flop if my Ax misses or my medium pair is facing a flop full of big cards. And a continuation bet in a no-foldem game like this is just pointless; you're always going to get called, usually by multiple players.
In the middle stages when the blinds are getting bigger I reduce the size of my pre-flop raises. I usually just bet a standard 3x BB regardless of position. As the blinds increase further I'll drop down to 2.5x BB raises or less. Even although this size raise is likely to be a significant proportion of a caller's stack at this point, I still find that there are multiple players who are apparently unable to let go of their hands. It's not until the final stages of the tournament when the blinds are really big and most of the players with sticky fingers have been eliminated that I start seeing folds to raises. However, there are usually a couple of 'loosies' who have amassed huge stacks and are happy to keep on calling with rags.
So why bother with pre-flop raises at all? There are a couple of players in the Friday game who are incredibly passive pre-flop and yet they have both done very well over-all, coming first and second on the yearly points table. In a game where pre-flop raises do not achieve the aim of isolating opponents, why bother with them? Well, the thing is, pre-flop raises still achieve the aim of getting chips in the middle. The way I see it, although all those callers greatly reduce my chances of winning the pot, big pairs still sometimes hold up against multiple callers, and they sometimes improve. And when they do, they win monster pots. So I still figure that all those times I end up raising pre-flop and then folding the flop are compensated for by the times when I rake in a huge pot that sets me up for the rest of the tournament.
I guess you could say that the live tournaments I play in are hybrid games. Pre-flop play is much more like fixed limit than it is no limit; you just have to accept that you're going to have a lot of callers no matter what you do. However, you still have the ability to bet enough post-flop to ensure that at least the first couple of players won't have the correct odds to call with their drawing cards. And when you reach the turn? Well, the pot will be so big that you'll probably end up all-in just to protect your hand. Then again, play is usually so passive that you could probably just check to the river and hope that no-one hits. But of course the problem with this is that you're probably already pot committed. At this point you have to just play the hand correctly and take your chances.
One of the great things about poker is that there are so many different types of game and so many different playing styles within each game type. The most important thing is being able to adjust to these different styles. No-foldem games are no different. On balance, I think my strategy for these super-loose games makes some sort of sense.
Playing no limit no-foldem is kind of like dancing your way through a minefield. On a roller coaster. Blindfolded. What fun.
Saturday, 3 December 2016
Playing by the Rules, Part 2
I play in two or three live poker tournaments every week. These games are played at pubs or clubs and all are run by amateurs who are usually also playing in the tournament themselves. In the last post I detailed how this situation can lead to controversies over the rules and the way that they are applied. And because these are amateur-run games there are often no actual written rules to refer to. In the end it comes down to common or accepted practice. And common practice in these situations can deviate a lot from what is considered to be standard practice in more formal games.
The organisers of some of the games I regularly play in have recently adopted the Tournament Directors Association Rules as their standard, which is a step in the right direction. However, adopting these rules wholesale is not necessarily a good idea for relatively informal games, and there is a tendency to enforce some rules and not others. In other words, we are still essentially operating by the principal of: 'the rules are what the Tournament Director says they are'.
In addition, because they are designed for use in tournaments that have professional dealers, the TDA rules don't cover the procedures for dealing or the responsibilities of dealers. For example, some of the clubs I play at have now introduced a 'no poking' rule. The normal procedure for player-dealt games is for the deck to be passed to the player on the dealer's right, and that person then cuts the cards, leaving the cut card at the bottom. Up until recently what happened was that the dealer held out the deck, the other player then poked the cut card into the deck and the dealer then moved the top half to the bottom and proceeded to deal. Now we've been told that we have to place the deck and the cut card on the table and the 'cutter' then moves the top section of the deck onto the cut card, then the remainder of the deck, then passes the deck back to the dealer. Personally, I don't have a problem with poking, but if that's the way they want it done, that's okay. The only problem is, poking is standard practice at my Wednesday night game and if I place the deck on the table the cutter wonders what the hell I'm doing. I guess I just have to remember which game I'm at and whether it's okay to poke or not to poke.
Another thing I occasionally come across that would never happen in a game with a professional dealer is the 'pot counter'. On my Wednesday night game there's a particular player who sometimes counts out the chips in the pot to see how much is in there. Presumably he does this to help him decide how much to bet. Now, the dealer (not the player) is actually allowed to do this in a pot limit game, but it's definitely not allowed in a no limit game. The most a dealer is allowed to do in no limit is to spread the chips out a bit so you can get a better view, but that's all. But the person who habitually does this also happens to be the game organiser, so there's not much point in complaining about it.
Because of the informal nature of these games you tend to get a lot of hands in the pot. People usually take change out of the pot themselves, usually before the betting round is completed, which tends to lead to a certain amount of confusion when someone then raises. Then there's the 'pot tidier'; the player who just can't stand to see an untidy pile of chips and has to put them all into neat stacks. And of course, on the other end of the spectrum there's the 'pot splasher'; the player who, instead of placing his bet in front of him just chucks the chips in the general direction of the pot, leaving the other players to guess at how much has been bet.
But the one thing that really gets to me in these types of games is the table talk. The rules of tournament poker are that you cannot say anything about a hand in progress, whether you are in the hand or not. You can't tell anyone what you folded, you can't suggest what the best hand might be, you can't make guesses about what another player is holding; you can't do anything that might influence the actions of another player. This rule is regularly and consistently flouted in the games I attend, and it can get pretty annoying. I have spoken up about it a few times when it's been particularly bad, but my complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Just last week I had a little hissy fit when someone insisted on pointing out that a player holding a 6 would have the nut straight. When I complained, the person involved couldn't understand why I should care about someone suggesting what I might be holding in my hand. So, the constant babble about the possibilities presented by the flop, or the hand someone would have had if they hadn't folded, goes on, and on, and on.
Some of the irregular rules in these tournaments are the result of ignorance of the standard procedure that is followed elsewhere. For instance, in any professionally run tournament if a player has to be moved to a new table it is the player 'under the gun' (sitting to the left of the big blind) who is moved and they are then dealt in at the new table and take on whatever responsibilities their new seat carries, including paying the big blind. This is a very sensible system as it means that it is usually an advantage to be moved to another table and no-one has to sit out any hands.
For some reason, all the local games run a different system. When someone needs to be moved, it is the player one position behind the dealer (or in some cases, two behind the dealer). But if they move into the blinds or the dealer position they have to sit out until the button passes them. So this sometimes means sitting out three hands. I ended up in this position once, coming into the big blind and having to sit out until the button passed. One of the other players was loudly complaining about how this gave me an unfair advantage. I was more of the opinion that sitting out a number of hands is a disadvantage. But either way, it's rather an odd way to do things. I suspect that this method originally comes from the National Pub Poker League games, as I know that they do things this way. But wherever it comes from, I'm going to try and get the Interclub competition to change to the 'under the gun' system and with a bit of luck it might spread to other games from there.
Another example of ignorance of normal procedure is the raising rule. This is one that doesn't come up very often and when it does, it doesn't make an awful lot of difference to the game, but it illustrates how easy it is to end up following procedures that are not actually correct. All poker rules state that if you raise, it should be a minimum of twice the previous bet or raise. So if there is a bet of 200 and someone raises 200 to make it 400, then a re-raise would have to be to a minimum of 600; the previous player raised 200 on top of the original bet, so the new raise has to be 400 plus the original 200. Nobody does it this way in my local games. They always say that a raise has to be twice the total previous bet, so in this case it would be to 800. I've argued the point on this a couple of times but got no traction whatsoever, so now I just go with the flow and play by the 'double the last bet' rule.
Another rule that I think comes from the NPPL is the forced check. If a player bets or raises out of turn, the players who had yet to act get their turn, then when the out of turn player's turn comes they cannot take aggressive action; they can only check or call. The standard rule is that the 'OOT' player's bet is binding unless the action has changed, in which case they can reconsider their original bet. This is completely different to the forced check rule. In one case the offending player cannot take the action they intended, in the other case they must take the action they intended. It's kind of like an instant penalty for acting out of turn, which seems unfair to me, especially in what is an otherwise pretty informal game structure.
There are a couple of local rules that I've come across that I think are grossly unfair. One of these involves 'blinding out' an absent player. Normally if a player is not at the table their cards are folded and if they are in the blinds then those blinds are paid and go into the pot. But one of the clubs that I play at also rules that if a player is absent for one full circuit of the button, then they have to start paying the big blind every hand. This seems very unfair to me. The absent player has paid the entry fee like everyone else and shouldn't be penalised any more than the normal payment of the blinds in turn. Even if someone leaves the tournament, then putting their big blind into the pot every hand gives that particular table an advantage over other tables. Even though it doesn't come into play that often, I really don't like seeing this rule being used.
The worst of the lot is Bill's 'Big Blind Check' rule. This rule is only played at the Onehunga Workingmen's Club and although it only comes up rarely, it's just plain ridiculous. According to this rule, if a player in the big blind says, 'check' when there is a bet in front of them, it is ruled to be a call. So if you are in the big blind and you miss the fact that someone has raised and you check your option, you just called that raise. I cannot imagine any reasonable justification for having a rule like this. It just seems like a deliberate attempt to trap players into losing their chips.
The creator of this rule, Bill, says that this very thing happened to him one night at the Auckland Casino, and that's why he uses it. All I can say is, if that did happen, then either the casino has a really stupid rule or one of the dealers made a stupid mistake. Either way, there's no good reason to adopt a game rule that is clearly unfair and could result in someone losing their entire stack because of a moment of inattention. Without exception, when visiting players are told about the BBC rule they are astonished. However, Bill refuses to give it up because 'they play it at the casino'.
One of the most important things I've learned as a poker player is that you must be able to adapt. You have to adapt to the stack sizes, the number of players at the table, the betting limits, the type of players and a bunch of other thing. Adapting to the local rules is part of this process. You just have to check out what the local practices are and, like them or not, adapt your play to suit those conditions. So that's what I do. Occasionally I can get the locals to conform more to standard poker procedures but the rest of the time it's just a matter of being aware of what the unusual practices are and adapting to them.
Just remember, if you ever play poker at the OWMC, pay attention when you're in the big blind.
The organisers of some of the games I regularly play in have recently adopted the Tournament Directors Association Rules as their standard, which is a step in the right direction. However, adopting these rules wholesale is not necessarily a good idea for relatively informal games, and there is a tendency to enforce some rules and not others. In other words, we are still essentially operating by the principal of: 'the rules are what the Tournament Director says they are'.
In addition, because they are designed for use in tournaments that have professional dealers, the TDA rules don't cover the procedures for dealing or the responsibilities of dealers. For example, some of the clubs I play at have now introduced a 'no poking' rule. The normal procedure for player-dealt games is for the deck to be passed to the player on the dealer's right, and that person then cuts the cards, leaving the cut card at the bottom. Up until recently what happened was that the dealer held out the deck, the other player then poked the cut card into the deck and the dealer then moved the top half to the bottom and proceeded to deal. Now we've been told that we have to place the deck and the cut card on the table and the 'cutter' then moves the top section of the deck onto the cut card, then the remainder of the deck, then passes the deck back to the dealer. Personally, I don't have a problem with poking, but if that's the way they want it done, that's okay. The only problem is, poking is standard practice at my Wednesday night game and if I place the deck on the table the cutter wonders what the hell I'm doing. I guess I just have to remember which game I'm at and whether it's okay to poke or not to poke.
Another thing I occasionally come across that would never happen in a game with a professional dealer is the 'pot counter'. On my Wednesday night game there's a particular player who sometimes counts out the chips in the pot to see how much is in there. Presumably he does this to help him decide how much to bet. Now, the dealer (not the player) is actually allowed to do this in a pot limit game, but it's definitely not allowed in a no limit game. The most a dealer is allowed to do in no limit is to spread the chips out a bit so you can get a better view, but that's all. But the person who habitually does this also happens to be the game organiser, so there's not much point in complaining about it.
Because of the informal nature of these games you tend to get a lot of hands in the pot. People usually take change out of the pot themselves, usually before the betting round is completed, which tends to lead to a certain amount of confusion when someone then raises. Then there's the 'pot tidier'; the player who just can't stand to see an untidy pile of chips and has to put them all into neat stacks. And of course, on the other end of the spectrum there's the 'pot splasher'; the player who, instead of placing his bet in front of him just chucks the chips in the general direction of the pot, leaving the other players to guess at how much has been bet.
But the one thing that really gets to me in these types of games is the table talk. The rules of tournament poker are that you cannot say anything about a hand in progress, whether you are in the hand or not. You can't tell anyone what you folded, you can't suggest what the best hand might be, you can't make guesses about what another player is holding; you can't do anything that might influence the actions of another player. This rule is regularly and consistently flouted in the games I attend, and it can get pretty annoying. I have spoken up about it a few times when it's been particularly bad, but my complaints have fallen on deaf ears. Just last week I had a little hissy fit when someone insisted on pointing out that a player holding a 6 would have the nut straight. When I complained, the person involved couldn't understand why I should care about someone suggesting what I might be holding in my hand. So, the constant babble about the possibilities presented by the flop, or the hand someone would have had if they hadn't folded, goes on, and on, and on.
Some of the irregular rules in these tournaments are the result of ignorance of the standard procedure that is followed elsewhere. For instance, in any professionally run tournament if a player has to be moved to a new table it is the player 'under the gun' (sitting to the left of the big blind) who is moved and they are then dealt in at the new table and take on whatever responsibilities their new seat carries, including paying the big blind. This is a very sensible system as it means that it is usually an advantage to be moved to another table and no-one has to sit out any hands.
For some reason, all the local games run a different system. When someone needs to be moved, it is the player one position behind the dealer (or in some cases, two behind the dealer). But if they move into the blinds or the dealer position they have to sit out until the button passes them. So this sometimes means sitting out three hands. I ended up in this position once, coming into the big blind and having to sit out until the button passed. One of the other players was loudly complaining about how this gave me an unfair advantage. I was more of the opinion that sitting out a number of hands is a disadvantage. But either way, it's rather an odd way to do things. I suspect that this method originally comes from the National Pub Poker League games, as I know that they do things this way. But wherever it comes from, I'm going to try and get the Interclub competition to change to the 'under the gun' system and with a bit of luck it might spread to other games from there.
Another example of ignorance of normal procedure is the raising rule. This is one that doesn't come up very often and when it does, it doesn't make an awful lot of difference to the game, but it illustrates how easy it is to end up following procedures that are not actually correct. All poker rules state that if you raise, it should be a minimum of twice the previous bet or raise. So if there is a bet of 200 and someone raises 200 to make it 400, then a re-raise would have to be to a minimum of 600; the previous player raised 200 on top of the original bet, so the new raise has to be 400 plus the original 200. Nobody does it this way in my local games. They always say that a raise has to be twice the total previous bet, so in this case it would be to 800. I've argued the point on this a couple of times but got no traction whatsoever, so now I just go with the flow and play by the 'double the last bet' rule.
Another rule that I think comes from the NPPL is the forced check. If a player bets or raises out of turn, the players who had yet to act get their turn, then when the out of turn player's turn comes they cannot take aggressive action; they can only check or call. The standard rule is that the 'OOT' player's bet is binding unless the action has changed, in which case they can reconsider their original bet. This is completely different to the forced check rule. In one case the offending player cannot take the action they intended, in the other case they must take the action they intended. It's kind of like an instant penalty for acting out of turn, which seems unfair to me, especially in what is an otherwise pretty informal game structure.
There are a couple of local rules that I've come across that I think are grossly unfair. One of these involves 'blinding out' an absent player. Normally if a player is not at the table their cards are folded and if they are in the blinds then those blinds are paid and go into the pot. But one of the clubs that I play at also rules that if a player is absent for one full circuit of the button, then they have to start paying the big blind every hand. This seems very unfair to me. The absent player has paid the entry fee like everyone else and shouldn't be penalised any more than the normal payment of the blinds in turn. Even if someone leaves the tournament, then putting their big blind into the pot every hand gives that particular table an advantage over other tables. Even though it doesn't come into play that often, I really don't like seeing this rule being used.
The worst of the lot is Bill's 'Big Blind Check' rule. This rule is only played at the Onehunga Workingmen's Club and although it only comes up rarely, it's just plain ridiculous. According to this rule, if a player in the big blind says, 'check' when there is a bet in front of them, it is ruled to be a call. So if you are in the big blind and you miss the fact that someone has raised and you check your option, you just called that raise. I cannot imagine any reasonable justification for having a rule like this. It just seems like a deliberate attempt to trap players into losing their chips.
The creator of this rule, Bill, says that this very thing happened to him one night at the Auckland Casino, and that's why he uses it. All I can say is, if that did happen, then either the casino has a really stupid rule or one of the dealers made a stupid mistake. Either way, there's no good reason to adopt a game rule that is clearly unfair and could result in someone losing their entire stack because of a moment of inattention. Without exception, when visiting players are told about the BBC rule they are astonished. However, Bill refuses to give it up because 'they play it at the casino'.
One of the most important things I've learned as a poker player is that you must be able to adapt. You have to adapt to the stack sizes, the number of players at the table, the betting limits, the type of players and a bunch of other thing. Adapting to the local rules is part of this process. You just have to check out what the local practices are and, like them or not, adapt your play to suit those conditions. So that's what I do. Occasionally I can get the locals to conform more to standard poker procedures but the rest of the time it's just a matter of being aware of what the unusual practices are and adapting to them.
Just remember, if you ever play poker at the OWMC, pay attention when you're in the big blind.
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