Loss portfolio

One of the best reasons to keep good poker records is so that you can build up a really impressive loss portfolio. It may seem odd, but there's a really good reason to have such a portfolio - it can cheer you up when you need it most :-)

This is an excerpt from my March 3, 2017 post. I failed to make the money in all three of the tournaments I entered yesterday, extending my money-less streak to 5 straight tournaments. This got me a little down, so I consulted my loss portfolio and discovered that I had a 25 tournament money-less streak in the summer of 2023. I feel better now :-)

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     323   81   183        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     378   99   162        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     297   72   110        0

delta: $-150,000
2024 balance: $2,924,000
2024 blue distance: $371,000
balance: $15,733,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.50 (1225 of 2952)

Jilted by an old girlfriend

The hand I have the most intense love/hate relationship with is the stealth two pair. That's when you're dealt a non-pair and then pair both your hole cards on the flop. It's hard not to fall in love with a hand like that, but your heart can easily get broken.

This is an excerpt from my December 29, 2021 post. In yesterday's second tournament, I hit the felt when I was jilted again by this same old girlfriend. I was dealt KJo (king jack offsuit), and paired both cards on the flop. I got all my chips into the middle, but lost at showdown to a set of sevens. Watcha gonna do?

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     340   81   121        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     220   63    95        0

delta: $-100,000
2024 balance: $3,074,000
2024 blue distance: $221,000
balance: $15,883,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.54 (1225 of 2949)

Pocks to the rescue

In the second tournament I played yesterday, two hands tied for the most memorable. In one I was dealt pocket sevens, and in the other I was dealt pocket rockets. I don't remember which hand came first, but it doesn't really matter; I won substantial pots with both. Without these hands, I wouldn't have made the money. Pocks to the rescue :-)

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    88000  12000       9     227   63   130        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     200   54    50    79000

delta: $-71,000
2024 balance: $3,174,000
2024 blue distance: $121,000
balance: $15,983,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.57 (1225 of 2947)

You were never shovelier

The shorter your stack gets, the wider your shoving range becomes. A hand you would never shove with if you had a healthy stack can be almost obligatory to shove with when your stack is sickly. Why? The reason is simple. When your stack is small enough, your only legitimate actions are to fold or to shove. If your hand is halfway decent, you must shove.

This is an excerpt from my July 18, 2020 post. Last night I was in just such a situation. I was short-stacked, and two hands away from being in the big blind, which would eat up all my remaining chips. I was dealt A2o (ace deuce offsuit), and called a bet which put me all in (note: I consider call ins to be shoves). I paired my deuce on the flop, and got lucky and hit trips on the turn. Winning that pot made my stack much healthier, which enabled me to play an orbit or two longer, but I still missed the money by a country mile.

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     212   54   100        0

delta: $-50,000
2024 balance: $3,245,000
2024 blue distance: $50,000
balance: $16,054,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.56 (1224 of 2945)

My blue heaven

The largest my overall balance ever reached was a stratospheric $451,830,953. That was on July 24, 2022. The remainder of 2022 was catastrophic; in that period, I lost $442,046,050. I still had a positive overall balance, but I'd lost nearly 98% of my peak balance. This gargantuan loss meant that I would never again get back into the blue. This sad fact caused me to change my definition of being in the blue, so that I could get back into it again. Sort of cheating, if the truth be told, but needs must :-) Last night, my 2024 balance got back into the blue, and all is right in my poker world again.

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     227   63    14   149000

delta: $99,000
2024 balance: $3,295,000
2024 blue distance: $0
balance: $16,104,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.58 (1224 of 2944)

Dredging the session for a silver lining

I find mediocre sessions the hardest ones to write about, whether they were winning or losing. If they were winning, I often struggle to find anything exciting, new, or relevant to say. If they were losing, I often struggle to come up with a silver lining to highlight. When I'm really stuck for a silver lining, I have to resort to finding some inconsequential statistical factoid to try to prove that my session was worth more than a bucket of warm spit :)

Yesterday's session was both mediocre and losing. Here's the statistical factoid I found: in each of the tournaments I entered, I managed to achieve a percentile of at least 50. That bucket of warm spit is looking better and better :-)

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     234   63    96        0
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     385   99    77    91000
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     258   72   108        0

delta: $-59,000
2024 balance: $3,196,000
2024 blue distance: $66,000
balance: $16,005,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.56 (1223 of 2943)

A 1 in 270,725 occurrence

If you play poker long enough, you'll see freaky things you never believed you'd ever see. That's one of its appeals, at least for me :-) There's essentially no cap on the number of times you'll see something you've never seen before, no matter how long you've played. That makes poker forever young!

I've played online poker for 16 years. In that time, I've played 4,413 sessions. I don't know the precise number of hands I've played, for two reasons:

1. I didn't start keeping track of the number of hands I played right away

2. some years ago, PokerStars removed hand histories from the data they make available for play money tournaments

Nevertheless, I can calculate a ballpark figure for the number of hands I've played. The average number of hands per session for the sessions where I have the hand histories is 114.84. To be conservative, I'll assume the average number of hands per session for my career is 60.  That means I've played roughly 264,780 hands in my career.

Now for the freaky thing that happened yesterday: in the first tournament I entered, I was dealt pocket rockets on one hand, called a shove made by an opponent on the flop (which put me all in), and didn't win the pot. The freaky thing was not that I didn't win the pot. The freaky thing was why I didn't. I didn't because I chopped it, and I chopped it because my opponent also had pocket rockets! Such an occurrence is very rare - the chances of it happening to you are 1 in 270,725. It never happened to me before, but I plan on playing for many more years, so there's a decent chance it'll happen to me again :-)

style flavor buy_in  entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     339   81    71    89000
MTT   NLHE    44000   6000       9     235   63    12   175000

delta: $164,000
2024 balance: $3,255,000
2024 blue distance: $7,000
balance: $16,064,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.56 (1222 of 2940)