If You Can't Beat 'em...

Well, it's been a while since I last posted. Over the last few months I've been playing in the usual assortment of  live games and (mostly) turbo Sit and Go Tournaments on Party Poker. The SitNGos  have worked out pretty well for me so far. As for the live games: not so much. I'm still struggling to find a winning formula in these super loosey-goosey tournaments.

 

 Over the years I have had various strategies set out for these games, all of which were based on basic ABC tight and aggressive principles. None of these seemed to work. So I've been thinking a lot more about what sort of strategy might actually have some chance of winning at a donk-fest game.

   The thing about these games is, it's almost impossible to protect a good starting hand without committing a massive pile of chips. Everyone wants to see a flop, and everyone wants to chase any kind of draw. In short, although they are no-limit games, they play more like fixed-limit. The players are also very passive and it's not uncommon to be chased down by someone who has been check-calling while sitting on a monster like Queens or Kings. So, after a certain amount of thought I've come up with plan D, especially tailored for live pub and club tournaments.

   For a start, I've simplified the standard 'traffic light' system down to two zones. If I have 30 big blinds or more, that's the 'let's all see the flop' stage. Basically, I'm playing Queens, Kings and Aces very hard and fast. Everything else is a drawing hand. I'll limp in or call a min-raise with pocket pairs, Broadway cards, suited Aces and a couple of the higher suited connectors and see what develops on the flop. If I hit top 2 pair or better on the flop, I'll play it hard and fast. Anything less I'll play conservatively and with extreme caution. I'll chase draws if I have the correct pot odds. Otherwise, it's folding time.

   If I have fewer than 30 BBs (but still above the 10 BB 'push or fold' level), that's the 'tight is right' or  super-TAG stage. I'll only play TT or better and AT or better, in position and  always raising enough to isolate one player. At this stage I'm playing top pair or better hard and fast, and if I'm first to act with a good draw, I'm pushing all-in. Anything less and it's back to Mr Conservative. At all times if a bet I'm making amounts to 1/3 of my total stack, I'm just shoving.

   The third stage is the final table; the last 10 players. At this stage there are often a number of very short-stacked players, so things get a bit more tricky. Basically, if I have 20 BB or more, I'll be playing ABC late stage poker. So I'm picking on the small stacks, playing position, C-betting tight players, playing stack sizes. This is the style of play I like, but it's actually quite rare to have this stack size at this stage of the game. If I have fewer than 20 BB I'll revert to the super TAG game. If I have 10 BBs or less, it's push or fold.

   As for the hands I'll push all-in with at this final stage, I have been doing some research on this but haven't come up with any startling new conclusions. In recent times I seem never to be winning these confrontations, often finding that I'm dominated. But I just don't see any obvious way of avoiding this. I've done a little tinkering with my hand ranges for pushing, but it's one area that hasn't changed much since adopting Plan D.

   I put this plan into effect a few weeks ago for my weekly Friday night tournament. So far it hasn't yielded any significantly different results, but it's still early days. Only time will tell if it makes a difference to my results. I've been plugging away with my ABC poker strategies for years with indifferent results. It's definitely time to make some significant changes to my game and see where it leads. After all, I don't see how these changes can make things worse than they have been. Let the chips fall where they may.

 Party Party

   Well, here in New Zealand we had 102 days with no community transmission of covid 19 and then we hit a speed bump. Somehow it got back in and the city of Auckland went back up to Level 3; only essential retail outlets open, limits on gatherings, social distancing etc. So my brief window of live poker came to an end again and I had to go back to the online games. As it happens, this worked out quite well for me.

 Back in July, when we were still at Covid Level 1, I'd been surfing around on some poker websites when I came across something interesting. It was an article that claimed that the easiest Sit and Go tournaments around were to be found on Party Poker. According to this article Party Poker has been trying to make itself more attractive to recreational players. One way they were doing this was by running ring games where the participants were 'anonymised'. Players'  user names don't get listed, which makes it impossible for other players to use tracking software to gather information on their opponents. In other words, Party Poker was trying to discourage the grinders. This sounded like great news to me, so I went to Party Poker and signed up.

   However, when I went looking for these juicy ring games, there were none available, at least not at the micro level. They were listed, but no-one was playing. The only games available were 6 max tables, so I gave them a shot. I figured that to adjust to a short handed game I needed to play more hands more aggressively. I tried that for a couple of sessions, but with a singular lack of success. After that I had a look around the site and realised that all the game types were structured in such a way as to encourage lots of action. So I decided to try out a few of these games, just for fun. And once the covid restrictions kicked in I had plenty of time to check out what Party Poker had to offer.

   The Sit and Go games are all turbos or hyper-turbos. I tried my hand at the turbos, where the blind levels go up every 5 minutes and the whole game usually lasts no more than about 30 minutes. I played these using a basic strategy that can be boiled down to 'play tight and aggressive, let the other guys fight it out then get loose aggressive approaching the money'. Oh yeah and 'pick on the short stacks'. This worked out pretty well for me. There was a lot of action, with many players, myself included, looking for spots to get all their chips in the middle. You can't be messing around with drawing hands in this kind of game. So after years of avoiding turbo games I came away from these sessions with a tidy little profit.

   My next project was the Spin and Go games. These are hyper-turbo 3 player tournaments that typically last about 10-15 minutes. The prize-pool is variable and can be higher than the amount paid in or (more usually) lower. I'd played these before on Pokerstars but hadn't done well. I had better results on Party Poker. I think this is because there are quite a few players who just aren't adjusting to the breakneck pace of this game type. They are often folding way too much and raising way too seldom. As for me, I'm playing nearly every hand and betting a lot, whether I hit or not. Although I did quite well, it could have been better. Unfortunately, because the prize varies, there's not much you can do about it if you lose when the prize is higher and win when it's lower.

   Not content with these two game types, I decided to try my hand at the 'Fast Forward' game. This is a ring game where there is a large pool of players with each player being moved to a new table when they fold. Most sites have this type of game, under various different names. On 888 Poker they are called 'Snap" games. I only played this a couple of times and came out marginally ahead. The one drawback was that they were 6 player tables and if the player pool was small (which it often was) then you might end up playing 4 handed sometimes. I wasn't too keen on that.

   It's interesting working out an effective strategy for Fast Forward games. Initially I was thinking that I should just play premium hands as everyone else was likely to be folding a lot until they hit something decent. So it made sense to be only playing hands that were likely to be ahead. But after a while I realised that if everyone else was making a similar assumption then there was an opportunity for some serious bluffing in position. If most of the players just fold unless they have something really good, then a few good late position bets can often induce other players to give up without a fight. So that's the way I played it; much like the other action games.

   As if all that wasn't enough I also played in a few 'regular' tournaments. Except that nothing on this site is regular. All of the multi-table tournaments I could find (at the micro stakes at least) were progressive bounty tournaments. This was a new one on me and I had to Google it to find out what it meant. So it turns out to be a tournament where half the buy-in  goes to a player's bounty and only half of a won bounty goes to the winning player: the rest is added to the bounty on the winner's head. So as the game progresses the bounties on the remaining players get bigger and bigger. I guess it becomes more and more about busting out players rather than going deep, but I wouldn't know because in the few games I played I never went deep. Yet another action game.

   I never came near cashing in the handful of progressive bounty tourneys that I played, but that's okay. You have to play a decent number of tournaments before you can get an idea of how you're doing, and I'm just not that keen on making that sort of commitment. I'm perfectly happy to keep playing in the other short-run game types for now. My best results came from the Turbo Sit and Gos so that's what I'll be concentrating on for now, with maybe the odd Spin and Go or Fast Forward thrown in for good measure.

   It's ironic really that I came to Party Poker because I was looking for a good ring game and ended up being seduced by the action games that I've always shunned in the past ('You don't know the power of the dark side'). But, even though it's early days yet, the results so far speak for themselves. The long 'tail' of our Covid 19 outbreak looks like it's finally coming to an end, so the live games can't be too far away now. But for now I'm actually enjoying playing online poker. We may be living in difficult times but for me, it's party time.

   

   

The Clare Inn

   Well, here in New Zealand we've been at Covid 19 Alert Level 1 for a couple of months now. So the country is back to some kind of normal, except that anyone entering the country has to go into a two week quarantine Not to mention the massive debt the government has taken on to keep the country going, and the job losses, and the failed businesses... But apart from all that we're back to 'normal', which means that live poker is back. So while most of the rest of the world continues to go to hell in a handcart, I've been getting back into the live poker games.
   However, there aren't as many games around as there used to be. The pub where I play occasionally on a Wednesday night changed management during lockdown and the new manager cancelled the tournament. Meanwhile, the casino re-opened, but not the poker room. I went and checked it out but they are not saying when, or if, the games will re-start. So I went looking for another live game to play in addition to my regular Friday nighter. Most of the National Pub Poker League games have re-started, but I didn't want to go there, so I ended up going to check out the Thursday night tournament at an Irish pub called the Clare Inn.

 This game has been going for years and I have played there once before so I thought it might be worth another try. The tourney starts at 8 pm so I arrived plenty early and sat down and tried one of their over-priced beers. I managed to find one of the organisers and paid him my $25 then waited some more. There was a certain amount of faffing around but things eventually got under way at about 8.15 pm. The game is played in a side room and there were three tables set up. On arrival I was given a choice of playing on two of the three tables; the table with the 'young drunk guys' or the 'faster table with the old guys'. Apparently table three was reserved for the regulars. Interesting. Anyway, I chose the 'young drunk' table and grabbed a seat.
   The format of the game is actually very similar to the one I play on Wednesdays, being a turbo-style rebuy tournament. You start with 5k in chips and the blinds start at 25/50 but go up very steeply. One significant difference is that there are extra chips for bar purchases. Players get a tally card and every time they buy something at the bar, the organiser endorses the card. Then you get 1k extra in chips for each purchase, paid out at the first break.
    The other difference is that $5 of the $25 entry fee goes towards a special end-of-year tournament. Players earn points throughout the year and those at the top of the ladder get to play in that big game. You don't have to be a mathematical genius to realise that the prize in that final game must be huge, but of course you'd have to play all year long to have a decent chance at winning that. So for someone like me who is playing a one-off game, it just means that there's 20% coming out of the prize pool.
   We started out with 18 players registered, but two of them hadn't arrived yet so we had two tables of 5 players and one with 6 (the 'regs' table, of course). After a while the organiser, who everyone calls Rambo, decided to condense us down to two tables of 8, which later became two tables of 9 when the late-comers arrived. I couldn't help but notice that there were no women involved in this game at all. It was all men and there seemed to be quite a few English guys and even a couple of Americans. A rather different player profile than what I'm used to.
   Once we got started I found that play was generally tighter and more aggressive than at my Friday night game, but that's a comparison with possibly the loosest game in the known universe. In general terms, it was quite loose and fairly passive. There wasn't much action coming from me as I was getting rag hand after rag hand. There were a few loose all-in calls early on while rebuys were still available but after the rebuys ran out things settled down a bit. By the time we got to the break my stack had dropped a bit, but not too much.
   During the break 'Rambo' (who bore no resemblance whatever to Sylvester Stallone) chipped everyone up and paid out bonus chips to those that had been supporting the bar. When the ten minutes was up I rejoined the table but it turned out we all had to wait around for the regs to come back from their 'smoko' break outside. Earlier, Rambo had told me the tournament could go on until as late as midnight sometimes, and I could see why.
   Not long after the second break I ran into some trouble due to a calculation error. I'd been keeping an eye on my blinds/stack ratio, as I always do and thought I still had more than 20 big blinds left; not great, but still playable. But then I realised I'd miscalculated. Before I could do anything the blinds went up again and I suddenly found myself sitting behind a stack of just 7 BBs. Oops. Drastic action was required so when a couple of players limped in I pushed my dwindling stack all-in with J9. I would have preferred to see everyone fold but I got called by a player with 44. I flopped a 9 and that was good enough to get me out of the red zone at least. One of the players reckoned it was a 'ballsy move' to push with that hand. With only 7 BBs, I thought it was pretty standard and that the call with pocket fours was ballsy, but that's just my opinion.
   I managed to make it through to the final table with a few judicious pushes here and there, but I was just barely hanging on. I found myself sitting next to a player with a monster stack, while most of the rest of the players had stacks not much bigger than mine. It wasn't long before I was deep into the red zone again and looking for a last-ditch hand. With A9 under the gun I had to think for a minute before finally deciding to go with it. I got three callers, including Rambo and the big stack, which wasn't the greatest result. Rambo and Bigstack played it out while I watched on. The flop of 8 9 J didn't look too bad for me but when a Queen came on the turn I figured I was in trouble. Sure enough, Rambo had pocket tens, giving him a straight. Two and a half hours of play, coming in 8th of 18. Not bad, I guess.
   It was quite an enjoyable game to play in but there are a number of factors that make it less than ideal for me. Firstly, there's the bar purchase bonus chips. A lot of bars do this and I've never been a big fan. It makes for an uneven playing field, unless you're willing to spend a lot of extra money at the bar. The second thing is the $5 that goes towards the end of year game. With 20% coming out of the prize pool it means you're pretty much committed to playing all year in order to have some chance of recouping that money. But the biggest problem for me is the late finish. I start work fairly early in the morning and I'm just getting too old to be burning the candle at both ends. on weekdays at least..
   Playing at the Clare Inn was enjoyable enough, but it's not going to be part of my regular poker routine. It looks like my Friday night game is all I've got for the moment. But that's one hell of a lot more than I've had for most of the year. So I'm not complaining.
 
 
 
 

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.