A Different Bubble

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

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

Rock Fish

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

Pull up, pull up!

   Winter is over, the weather is getting warmer the spring flowers are in bloom and I've finished working on my winter season poker summary. The results however, are not great. It appears that I'm still in the middle of a massive downswing and my poker bankroll balance continues to drop faster than a gannet diving on a fish. So I figured that I'd better take a closer look and see if I could find some sort of clue as to what is going on. I went back into my records over the last six years and crunched a few numbers and then distilled the numbers down into a few simple conclusions in an effort to make some sort of sense of it all. Here's what I came up with:
  * I showed a small (2%) loss in 2015 but 2014, 16 and 17 were all profitable years. 2018 was the first year that showed a significant loss.
  * There were 3 negative seasons out of 16 in the four years from 2014 to 2017, then 5 losing seasons out of 7 in the last two years.
  * The biggest contributors to losses over the last two years have been live tournaments, casino ring games and live re-buys.
  * In spring 2018 and winter 2019 all game types were showing losses.
  * Of all the online game types I've played over the last six years, only the low buy-in tournaments have shown a profit, along with a few seasons of micro stakes cashies.
  * Live tournaments were mostly a winning game type up until late 2017/early 2018, when they became mostly losers.
  * Live re-buy tournaments were doing okay in 2016, then became 50/50 propositions at best in 2017/18.
  * All short-stack casino ring game seasons were in the negative.
  * The downswing started in August 2017 and continued through to August 2019 with two short upswings between. In this period my bankroll dropped by nearly half.
   Looking at this, it seems obvious that something drastic happened to my poker games some time in 2018 and has continued to this day. There are three possible explanations for this. Either I really am experiencing the mother of all downswings, or I've somehow changed my game for the worse, or the opposition is getting better. The trick is to figure out which of these is the most likely.
   The Friday night live tournament is the one that I've been playing the most during this period, playing every week, 45 weeks per year for many years. It's fair to say that I have made a few changes to my game plan over the last couple of years, but I don't believe these adjustments have been significant  enough to change my outcomes so drastically. Over the last year or so I've started following a policy of playing the 'big four' (aces, kings, queens and AK)  much harder and faster in an effort to combat the extremely loose calling frenzy that you get in this game. I've also dropped the threshold at which I start playing a tighter game, giving me a little more time to play ABC poker in the early stages before I have to tighten up. I don't see either of these changes affecting my game negatively and besides that, they are both relatively recent adjustments that were begun long after my bankroll started its downhill slide.
   As for the possibility of the opposition getting better, I don't think so. There are still about ten regulars who have been playing this game for years along with a motley crew of casual players who come and go as the whim takes them. The table dynamic is still much the same as it a has been for the last six plus years: one or two tight players who play a decent game with the rest of the table generally consisting of chronic and persistent calling stations. I suppose it's possible that some of the regulars have come to know my playing style and found ways to exploit it but the opposite is also true; a lot of the time I have a pretty good idea of what these guys are doing and where I am at in a hand.
   The other live game that I play on a regular basis is the $20 re-buy tournament at the Landmark Bar. I usually play in this game twice a month, although the frequency dropped off a little this year because of my failed experiment with playing ring games at the casino. Although I've cashed occasionally at the Landmark over the last couple of years I haven't actually won this tournament  outright for 36 games. Yes, that's right: 36 games! Bearing in mind that there is a maximum of 18 players in this tournament, this is an appallingly bad record. Looking at the stats, the results for this game are not nearly as bad as they are for the Friday nighter, but they have still definitely taken a turn for the worse in recent times.
   There is some possibility that I'm now up against tougher opposition than previously at the Landmark. The regular player base has certainly changed and I think it's true that at least some of the new regulars are more solid players. But it's also true that the bulk of the players are still the usual assortment of casual loose-passive calling stations. Maybe it's just a matter of perception; as this is a turbo style re-buy tournament the variance is bound to be higher. I think, in balance, that my loss of form is most likely the result of a bad run of cards but there is always the possibility that I'm also getting outplayed to some extent.
   That brings me to the Deep Stack Tournament, which is played once a month. Not only do I play in this tournament, but I also run it, which is an important factor. Unfortunately, I have lumped the results for this tournament in with the Friday night tournaments, so I don't have separate statistics available. But I do know that cashes have been few and far between over the last couple of years and I haven't had an outright win for a very long time. I went back and had a look at previous results a few months ago and noticed that my best results came a few years back when I was still only getting one table of players. Cashes dropped off noticeably once I started getting larger fields of players.
   It seems to me that I may be a victim of my own success regarding this tournament. For years I was trying to get the player numbers up and now I have finally succeeded, getting an average of 20 players each month. But some of these new players come from outside the pub/club scene and are actually pretty good at the game. As well as that I am running this tournament single-handedly while also playing, which means that I'm not able to properly concentrate on my game, especially in the early stages. As if that wasn't enough, my bankroll has now dropped to a point where the $50 buy-in for this tournament is now outside my maximum buy-in level. In short, the Deep Stack Tournament is no longer an optimal game for me.
   This year I've also been playing a few short stack ring games up at the casino. I was trying out the Short Stack Strategy, buying in for 25 big blinds and playing super tight and looking for a good opportunity to get all my chips in the middle. Although there was one occasion where I made a bad decision and lost all my chips as a result, I don't think I can ascribe my lack of success in this game to playing badly. Most of the time I was just following the SSS plan; basically playing by the numbers. The fact that I lost money in nearly every session can only mean one of two things: either the Short Stack Strategy just doesn't work, or my losses are part of the Great Downswing. The latter seems more likely.
   Looking at my overall results, the losses in the casino games have definitely made a difference to my bankroll balance. But the cashies were never responsible for the primary loss in any season. So if I hadn't played in these games I would have been better off, but I still would have been looking at a loss. As it happens, I always had an exit strategy in place for these games if they turned out to be losers, so the door is now closed on these casino ring games (well, almost closed).
   As for my online poker games, it's harder to find patterns from these games. That's because I've played a variety of different games over the last six years and it's hard to know whether I've played enough games to be able to draw conclusions. I certainly believe that online games are tougher and as a consequence I generally play at the micro stakes level. Looking at the figures in more detail I can come to a few conclusions. Sit and Go tournaments have been just plain awful. The ring games I played 5 or 6 years ago had more negative than positive seasons but the ones I've played this year have been slightly better. Most of the tournaments I've played in the last three years have shown negative results, but the lower buy-in games I played in 2016 were actually pretty successful.
   Those results in 2016 suggest that I should go back to the low buy-in tournaments on 888poker. At the moment I'm playing in micro stakes ring games, playing a minimum stack of 40 big blinds. I'm deliberately keeping the buy-in low to minimise any losses. At the end of this year I'll take another look at online games and make a decision. Unless I start showing some spectacular results from the cashies the message is clear; I should go back to the micro tournaments.
   After all that, what conclusions can I come to? Well, I don't believe that conditions at my main live games have changed significantly enough to affect my overall results. I would say that I'm still 60% confident that I am in the middle of a downswing rather than a sudden and catastrophic loss of form in these games. But as far as the Deep Stack Tournament goes, I think this game is no longer optimal for me so, reluctantly, I need to stop playing in it. However, as I'm the organiser, I'll at least have to play out the last two games for the year. Then, next year, I won't be running it and even if someone else  takes it over, I'll still be giving it a miss.
   The more I think about it, the more I come to the realisation that it doesn't really matter whether I'm being toyed with by the gods of chance or whether I've somehow lost my poker mojo; the solution is the same. If I'm on a downswing then all I can really do is keep playing the game as well as I can. And to make sure that I am doing that, I need to keep analysing my game. I need to keep looking at sample hands and determining whether I am making the correct decisions, regardless of the results. And if I'm on a downhill slide as a result of bad play then the same applies; keep looking at my game and checking that I'm making correct decisions. In other words, analyse, analyse, analyse. It's something that I've been trying to do more of anyway and this just makes me realise how important it is to keep analysing my game.
   I've been reading a bit of advice on handling downswings recently and one of the commonest pieces of advice is to take a break from poker. I tried this when I had a rough patch a few years ago and it seemed to work. But I'm not contemplating doing that this time, at least not in the immediate future. This is mainly because of the Friday night tournament. Firstly because this is mine and my wife's regular weekly night out; it's more than just a poker game. The other reason is the yearly points prize. I figure I still have an outside chance of getting my points up and getting close to the $1000 top prize, or at least the $500 for second. So I plan to keep playing poker to the end of the year, regardless of the results.
   Having said that, the Friday nighter usually has a break of a few weeks over the holiday period so, if my bankroll has continued to decline at that point then I will probably take the opportunity to take  an extended break from all poker. A few weeks lying on the beach or firing up the barbecue instead of looking for the next game to play could be just what I need. Come to think of it, maybe I'll do that anyway, regardless.

 
   
 

Highs and Lows

   I started my dedicated poker bankroll in October of 2008, more than 10 years ago now. I guess that more or less marks the point at which I started taking my poker games seriously. Since then there have been many high and low points. Here are a few examples:
   Biggest win. A few years ago I played in a cash game at Sky City Casino. I bought in for $100 and came out a few hours later with about $600. However, this was a casual game, not played using my poker bankroll, so it doesn't really count. My best bankroll result was from a tournament played during the Clubs NZ North Island Championships. I won $620 after splitting the prize pool with one other player. The buy-in was $40 so that makes for a tidy $580 profit. This is way ahead of my other big cashes, which mostly sit at around $200 to $300.
   Biggest loss. Most of the games I play in have a reasonably modest buy-in so the potential losses are limited. But I tried my hand at a few casino cash games a couple of years ago, buying in for $180 each time. I had mixed results from these games but the worst result came in the very first game when I busted out and lost my $180 buy-in with top pair/top kicker against a flopped two pair.
   Biggest lesson. I've done a lot of reading about poker over the last ten or so years but the most important lesson  has come fairly recently. On reading Dan Harrington's books on tournament and cash game strategy I've finally realised how important the odds are in making decisions. In the end it all comes down whether or not the pot odds are better than the odds being offered. In other words whether you are facing a positive expected value situation or not. It's taken a long, long time but I've finally realised that you win at poker by taking bets where the odds are in your favour and by making bets that give your opponent unfavourable odds.
   Longest downswing. Taking a look at my profit/loss graph for the last ten years I see that I've had a number of downswings that have interrupted the otherwise upward flow of the line. There was one that started in October 2014, recovered a little early the following year, then levelled out until August before starting to climb again. This was nearly a year of poor results. But the worst drop is the one that I am currently experiencing. My bankroll decreased steadily from August 2017 through to June 2018. This was followed by a brief increase then another steeper drop until February this year. So that amounts to nearly 18 months of losses. I had a small increase in April but then it started dropping again. I'm about 78% sure that this is a temporary state of affairs, but only time will tell.
   Biggest hand. The biggest hand I've ever had was a long time ago. This was at a home game of Texas Hold'em where I hit a ten high straight flush. The only other straight flush I've ever had was a couple of years later at a pub game where I had one that was five high. After thousands of hours of play since then  the best I've been able to manage is to hit quads from time to time.
   Most Memorable Bad Beat (subtitle: 'My best bad beat story'). This happened a couple of years ago in a live tournament. I raised pre-flop with AK and got a couple of callers. The flop was A K 7. I bet a significant amount and was called by a notorious calling station. The turn was a 2 and we both ended up all-in. She turned over 7 2. She'd called my pre-fop raise with the worst hand in poker, then called my flop bet, almost certain that she was behind, with bottom pair and no draw. You know how this story ends, right? The river was a 2.
   Worst game type. I've tried a number of different game types over the years but no-limit Texas Hold'em tournaments and ring games have been the only ones that I've had any success in. It's hard to say which of the others has been the worst to play. Sit and Go tournaments started out well but they have now descended into the realm of poker unplayability. Fixed limit ring games and pot limit Omaha were both pretty awful games to play. But I think that Seven Card Stud takes the prize. No matter how hard I tried I just could not get my head around this game. The six months or so I spent playing this game was a massive waste of my precious poker-playing time. Never again.
   Dodgiest live game. Playing in pub and club games that are run by amateurs has its problems. Some of them are run in a less than professional manner and a few don't appear to be entirely honest. There's a club here in Auckland that runs regular games and some of their procedures can be lacking in transparency. At least one person has told me that he's seen players end up with more chips than they should have after the colour-up. But the worst example of crooked dealings I've seen was in a local NPPL game where the organiser coloured up and members of her family who were also playing ended up with suspiciously large chip stacks. I've heard other stories about this same person from time to time. She now runs a game not far from where I currently play on Friday nights. Needless to say, I'll never play in that game.
   Biggest field in a live game. Most of the tournaments I play in involve 20 to 30 players but I've occasionally played in bigger fields. The Interclub tournament that I play every month now has a field of around 40 but it used to be higher. We used to have up to 11 tables so there must have been at least 70 players involved. But the biggest tournament I've been involved in is the annual Clubs New Zealand Tournament. The most recent one was just a few weeks ago in Hamilton. The Friday night game featured a field of about 144 players, then on Saturday there was a total of 200 players involved.
   Best Website. I've looked at plenty of poker websites through the years but I've tended to drift from one to the other taking advice on particular topics wherever  I could find out. But the one site that really stood out was Poker School Online. It has a wealth of information on poker strategy set out in a step by step format that appeals to me.
   Best YouTube channel. Honourable mention goes to Gripsed.com's tournament tutorials but I really enjoy watching the School of Cards videos. They cover a variety of topics mostly to do with the psychology of poker. Highly recommended.
   Best Book. I've read a few poker books but for me the books by Dan Harrington really outshine the rest. The two volumes of Harrington on Hold'em go into great detail on tournament strategy, from the opening stages through to heads up play, covering hand selection, calculating pot odds, blind/stack ratio and a whole lot more. The sample hands at the end of each chapter, where the reader is invited to make decisions as an actual hand unfolds, are particularly useful. Sometime soon I'm going to get a copy of the third volume, which consists entirely of sample exercises, and work my way through that. The two books on cash games are written in a similar way and are also recommended reading.
   Best article. The best article on poker strategy I've ever come across was when I was looking for advice on coping with my recent downswing. There was an article on the Poker Listings website called 'How to Win at Poker: It's About Decisions, Not Results' by Arthur Reber. I found this article to be incredibly useful, so much so that it's bookmarked on my phone and I've re-read it multiple times.
   Goal not Achieved. It would have been nice to have been able to get into a strip poker game with Jessica Alba but that was probably not a realistic goal. So that leaves winning Sit and Go games as my goal yet to be achieved. These games have been bugging me for years. It wouldn't have been such a problem if I hadn't had such good results early in my poker career. But since then it's just been a long downhill ride with this game type, despite my best efforts. So Sit and Go tournaments are on the back burner now; in fact they may have fallen off the back of the stove.
   Goal Achieved. From time to time I've listed my poker goals in this blog. Of those goals that I've managed to achieve there are three that stand out. Opening up a dedicated bank account for my poker bankroll was one; a step that confirmed my competence in playing the game. The second was playing in the Sky City Casino Deep Stack Tournament a few years back. Although I'd listed playing in a big buy-in tournament as a goal, I never realistically expected it to happen, so that was a big achievement for me. But as good as that was, I'm happiest about the fact that I've managed to turn the 50/50 tournament at the Onehunga Club into a viable event. I've been trying for a few years to kick-start this tourney and now it's reached the point where I'm regularly getting three to four tables of players. Even though I haven't cashed for a while, this is exactly the type of tournament I like to play in, so I intend to keep running it for the foreseeable future.
   Biggest Disappointment. The one thing that's missing from my poker schedule is live ring games. I just love to play in cashies but the only ones available to me are the $300 buy-in games at the casino. I have tried playing short-stacked in these games a few times recently but with a notable lack of success. The other option would be to find a local game at a lower buy-in but the only ones I know of are Omaha games and the Texas Hold'em players only want to play tournaments. Oh well, maybe one day.
   Light Bulb Moment. There have been a couple of times when I've adopted some aspect of overall strategy that has turned out to be crucial to my success. The first of these was when I adopted Chris Fergusson's bankroll management plan. I've been sticking to these rules for years now and they have proved very effective in keeping me on the right side of the profit/loss ledger. But I think that adopting game selection principals has been even more important. Over the last few years I've been regularly checking my results and using that information to decide which games I should be playing and, even more importantly, which games I should be dropping. Nothing is more important than game selection. Nothing.
 
 
 

Then and Now

   I started this blog in May of 2012, almost exactly seven years ago. At the time I was playing online on an old desktop computer and I had a dial-up connection so there were occasional disconnection problems. In fact my first few posts were concerned with my difficulties with managing software updates. I was playing exclusively on 888Poker back then. I'd originally started playing on Full Tilt but then after Black Friday when Full Tilt was shut down I moved on to 888. There were no live games available so I was playing online games only, two or three times a week.
   Back then I was playing three game types on 888. I was continuing to play in multi-table tournaments, the format that I'd had the most success in playing the previous year. I'd also started playing in fixed limit Texas Holdem 6-max ring games, a new game type for me. This was part of my plan to try a different game type every year. In addition, I was also playing occasional Sit and Go tournaments as a fill-in game for when the others were not available. SitNGos were going pretty well for me at the time and were showing a healthy profit.
   I'd been playing in regular $10 rebuy tournaments at a local pub during 2011 but those games had come to an end and I had no other live options. There were some National Pub Poker League games around but these were free entry games played for bar tab prizes and by then I was only interested in money games. So it was online poker only in 2012.
   I had recently adopted poker pro Chris Ferguson's bankroll management plan, so playing in the low buy-in games available online made it easier to follow this plan. This was because my poker bankroll was sitting at around $500. About $350 of this was cash that I had paid in, leaving only $150 of actual profit. Even so, I was happy to just be in the black. I'd only moved from a net loss to a net profit the year before, then dropped back into the red and then struggled back into profit in May. So that was my poker situation back in 2012, after about 560 hours of play.

   Seven years later things have changed a lot. For a start, I've got a decent computer now, and more importantly, a proper broadband connection. So disconnections are a thing of the past and software updates happen in a few minutes. I'm still playing on 888Poker and also on PokerStars.
   At the moment I am playing one online session every week, divided between two game types. I play a big field tournament on PokerStars, which usually involves around 1000 players. I've also recently started playing in low buy-in no limit ring games on 888. These games replace the SitNGos that I'd been plugging away at for a few years. The good results I was getting in this game type back in 2012 have long since faded into the past.
   These days I have a lot more live game options available. Every Friday night I play in a $25 freeze-out tournament at a local club; a game that I've been playing in for years. I also play in one other live game every week. There's the $50 freeze-out that I run (and play in) every month, the monthly Interclub teams tournament, and also the Wednesday night rebuy tournament played at a local pub. On top of all this I've recently been trying my hand at playing short stack ring games up at the casino.
   The increased number of live games is a big difference between now and 2012. Although a couple of pub poker leagues have recently fallen apart there are still a lot of other games going on now in various pubs and clubs. Even the NPPL is playing tournaments for cash nowadays, or so I've been told. The only thing is, you have to be a little bit selective. Some of the games have strange structures and some are run in a less than ideal way. But I'd rather have the problem of finding the right game among many than to not have any games at all. It's a good problem to have.
   As for my bankroll, it's looking a lot healthier now. The amount in my poker bankroll is substantially more than it was back then; enough to allow me to play in pretty much any of the available live poker games around. In fact I now have a separate poker bank account, as it's a bit too much to have lying around in the bottom of the sock drawer. But the most positive thing is that my overall profit is higher than my bankroll level. This is because I've long since paid back the money I put in and occasionally paid myself a 'dividend' when I've had a profitable season.
   So after 3600 plus hours of playing poker things are looking pretty good. However, over the last year or so my overall results have been poor. After a long period of profit things went into a bit of a decline and I lost a significant amount of money. But I've been playing long enough now to realise that this is almost certainly just a downswing. In fact the last few months have shown some encouraging signs that the profit/loss graph is moving back into its usual upward direction. This is probably the most significant difference between then and now. If this downswing had happened a few years ago I would have been plagued with doubts. I would have been asking that old question: 'am I good player who is having a bad run, or am I a bad player who was just getting lucky for a while?' Now I'm about 98.6% certain that it's the former, not the latter. I'm quietly confident that I'm on the right track for my poker journey. I'm ready for the next 3600 hours.
 

Sixth Street

I was cruising around YouTube the other day, looking at some poker-related clips (as you do), when I came across a link to a very interesting article by Tommy Angelo. It was called 'Reciprocality' (www.tommyangelo.com/reciprocality/) and it was basically about the different ways that you can get an edge over your opponents. It covered a number of different areas but the thing that really stood out for me was the section on 'information reciprocality'.
   The author contended that the toughest poker players he ever came across were those that  knew how to play sixth street well. To clarify; the flop is third street, the turn is fourth street, the river is fifth street, and sixth street is what happens after the hand has ended. This is when many players give away a lot of information that is available for anyone aware enough to take advantage of it. And this is when the best players keep their mouths shut and just listen.

   I have been aware of this basic principal for a long time but came to the realisation that there was a big difference between knowing the theory and actually putting it into practice. In the pub and club games that I usually play, I know that I have been guilty of 'joining in the fun' and utterly failing to keep my thoughts to myself. The players in these games typically have a great deal to say about their and other people's hands both during play and after the hand is over. Even when a hand is still in play people will talk about what they think their opponent has, call for a particular card on the next street, comment on the size of the pot, declare that they are 'chasing' and more. Then, when the hand is over, the full scale post mortem begins and everyone has a go at dissecting the hand while they wait for the next lot of cards to be dealt.
   I have tended to contribute to this torrent of free information far too often. I don't know how many times I've said things like; 'so my ace is no good anymore? or 'how can I not call with those pot odds?' or 'Ace King misses again' and on and on. The worst part about it all is that a lot of the time I'm just showing off. I can't resist the urge to correct someone on some miss-stated poker stat or defend a particular line on the basis of the pot odds offered. And the more I display my superior knowledge of poker theory, the more I reveal my lack of understanding of correct poker strategy. It's time for me to learn how to play what Mister Angelo calls 'Mum Poker'.
   From now on I'm concentrating on not giving away any information about my hand: no more showing cards after everyone folds, no more sighing and muttering when faced with a difficult decision, no more talking about how many big blinds I have left or discussing strategy in any shape or form. It's not that I'm just going to sit there like a rock. I'm perfectly willing to discuss the prospects of the Warriors in next year's competition, the horrors of Auckland's rush hour traffic or the likely winner in the current season of Survivor. I'm just not going to talk about my cards, my chips or anything related to them.
   Some might argue that the typical pub/club player is not particularly aware of what I or anyone else is revealing. However I know that this is not true of at least a few players that I regularly face. But even if it's true of most of these players (and I don't think it is), I don't always play in these types of games. Occasionally I'll play in what might be called 'more serious games'. And in those sorts of games leaking information is potentially very bad. So it's time for me to cultivate some good habits. Time to close the mouth and open the eyes and ears. Time to do some serious information mining. To paraphrase the old World War Two posters, 'Loose lips lose chips'.
 
 

Winter 2018

     The Kowhai trees in my neighbourhood are a riot of yellow blossoms and the All Blacks have put the Rugby Championship trophy back in the cabinet, so I guess it must be springtime. A good time to look back at my winter season of poker games. So first up, a quick review of the results.
    Typically winter is a bad season for my poker bankroll but this year I've actually managed to come up with a positive result, showing an 18% return on investment for the months of June, July and August. My best result came from one particular one-off game I played in August. As far as my regular games go, I came up with a healthy return from my weekly Friday night freeze-out, something that is mildly surprising to me as I had the feeling that I wasn't doing all that well in that game. Most of the other regular games I play were hovering around the break-even point. The worst result came from the online tournament that I play on most weekends, showing an ROI of -43%. Although this looks bad, the buy-in is significantly lower than it is in the live tournaments, which is why I still managed to make a profit overall.
   Most Wednesday nights I head down to the Landmark Bar to play in the $20 rebuy tournament. 'Rookie', the new organiser has been doing a good job but player attendance has been inconsistent. Usually we get two tables of players but we don't always get the full $500 maximum  into the prize-pool. It all depends on how many players turn up and how willing they are to re-buy. There are still about 5 or 6 regulars, myself included, and then a colourful assortment of semi-regulars, occasional visitors and newbies. Although I showed a loss in this game type, it only amounted to one buy-in, so that's okay. Looking back at my records, I can see why this is the case; I haven't won a game outright in 17 games. That's a long time between drinks.
   When I gave up running this tournament last year it was my intention to play at most, twice a month in this year's games, staying home and playing online the rest of the time. But Rookie thwarted my plans by introducing a points scheme. Players accumulate points based on their finishing positions over a 13 week season and then the top 8 go into a playoff game. $20 comes out of the prize-pool each week and then that cash is used to boost the prize-pool of the Top 8 game. I found this too tempting, so I decided to play 3 weeks out of 4 in an effort to qualify for the Top 8. Of the two seasons played so far, I've managed to qualify for both, usually just clawing my way into 7th or 8th position. Considering that I've played fewer games than all the other qualifiers I'm pretty happy with the fact that I've still been able to make it into the Top 8 Tournament not once, but twice.
   In August I went to the last game of the current season knowing that I had to make at least 4th place to have any chance of qualifying. As it happens, I did very well and ended up heads-up vs Rookie at the end of the night. He got first prize and I came second, and I ended up qualifying 6th for the Top 8 Tournament. This is a single table tournament where the 8th qualifier gets 10k chips, 7th gets 10.5k and so on up to the top qualifier who gets 13.5k. To complicate things further, players get 2/3 of their stack at the start of the game and then the remaining 1/3 as an add-on at the first break.
   I usually play freeze-out tournaments so I felt I had a bit of an edge over those who normally play only in re-buys. Sure enough, some of those with the high risk playing styles got knocked out and I managed to cruise into the money without too much trouble. In the end I was heads-up with Rookie again but this time the cards fell my way. So I made a nice collect but, more importantly, I was awarded the fabulous Top 8 Trophy. This is a gold (coloured) card protector inscribed with the words 'Tournament Winner'. It probably cost about $2 from some online emporium but it's worth a million in bragging rights. So I'll be putting my trusty $1 casino chip back in the drawer and using this as my card protector on Wednesday nights from now on.
   The other one-off tournaments I played in this winter were at the annual Clubs New Zealand North Island Poker Championship. This was played at the Petone Cosmopolitan Club in Wellington and about 8 members of my local club took a trip down to play. We flew down on Friday and this time we were staying in a motel about 10 minutes walk from the club, which was very convenient. We all played in the Friday night 'Welcome Tournament' but I got ABSOLUTELY DONKEYED by someone who called my massive pre-flop raise with K 5 offsuit and (of course) hit two pair on the flop. But Ham, one of our crew, ended up winning the whole thing and got around $600 for his trouble. Nice. This was the first time I've ever played in a bounty tournament and it's always interesting to try a new format, even if only for less than an hour.
   Like the other clubs I've been to outside of Auckland, the Petone Cossie is pretty flash and also had ample room to accommodate a field of 192 poker players from around the North Island. I had a bit of trouble in the first qualifier on Saturday, so had to wait around for the Second Chance Tournament later in the day. We still had 141 players in this group but I managed to crawl across the bubble and make it into the last 24 qualifiers after about 4 hours of play. So once again I managed to qualify for the 'Main Event', which makes for a 5 out of 5 record so far. I'm pretty happy about that.
   Four of my group qualified to play in a field of 72 on Sunday while the others went into the consolation event. I was knocked out after 3 hours but some of my club-mates went deeper. One of these, Ros, made it onto the final table and ended up coming third. The final table was set up in a different room, with spectator seating and a video viewing screen, similar to what the Weymouth Club had done the previous year. This set-up worked better than the one last year although it definitely still needs refinement. In the end it was a player from one of the other Auckland clubs that won the prize. It was yet another great weekend event and I'm already looking forward to next year's tournament, which is in Hamilton (only an hour's drive from home).

   Meanwhile, I keep playing in the Friday night freeze-out tournament at my club. Player numbers have picked up a bit recently and we always get three tables now and even occasionally have four. For years I've had a basic 'Green Zone/Amber Zone/Red Zone strategy in place to help me decide at what point I have to change my playing style based on my relative chip stack. I've been tinkering with this a little recently, partly as a result of reading about Dan Harrington's 'M' concept. But it was starting to get a little too complex, so I came up with a more simplified version and I've been using that through most of the winter. I intend to  keep following this scheme for the foreseeable future, provided nothing dramatic happens to my results.
   The other game that I regularly play up at the club is the monthly Deep Stack Tournament. As the organiser of this tournament I've been trying to get the player numbers up all year. Usually we have only two tables (up to 16 players) and in June we were playing with just 9 entrants, leaving me to wonder if it was worth continuing. Then I guess my advertising of the game finally started to pay off. In July there were 24 entrants, then 19 in August, then we hit an all-time high with 32 players last month, allowing for a nice healthy first prize of $600. Now my problem  has become managing the pre-game tasks such as registration, setting out the chip stacks, allocating seats etc. It's become increasingly obvious that I'm going to need more than just my wife helping me out before the game starts. I may even have to put an upper limit on the allowable number of players so that the game doesn't run too late. Still, it's a good problem to have.
   I haven't cashed in this tournament for a while and I'd like to be able to blame the fact that I'm concentrating too much on organising the game, especially with all the extra players. But I don't think this has that much effect. Although it's true I've been away from the table a fair bit in the early stages, I still get to see the majority of my hands and I'm a pretty tight player anyway. Once I get some help organising things should get easier anyway. After coming up with a positive ROI for the winter period, having the Deep Stack Tournament finally come together is definitely the highlight of the season for me. Fingers crossed it continues.
   Meanwhile, I try to fit in one online session every week. I've been playing mostly in a low buy-in Pokerstars tournament that typically has up to 1000 players. I've had a few small cashes but, after playing in 17 of these so far, I'm yet to make the final table, let alone score a win. But it's still early days and I plan to keep playing in this game at least until the end of the year.
   The other online game I've been playing over winter is cheap SitNGos, once again mainly on Pokerstars. I came up with a -3% ROI in this game type over winter, which is actually not bad given some of my earlier results. I've been studying articles on how to play these games over the last year and my new strategy is still a work in progress. More on this later.
   So that's been my winter season; a good result overall but still plenty to work on in a number of areas. The work continues and the story goes on.