The seventy-per-cent solution

This blog post title was inspired by the title of a novel I read years ago. In the post I wrote on November 29th, 2010, entitled "The seven-per-cent solution", I explained the connection:

Fans of Sherlock Holmes and of the writer Nicholas Meyer will recognize in the title of this post the title of Meyer's first novel, which starred the famous fictional detective and Sigmund Freud. In Sherlock's case, the solution was a mixture of water and cocaine ...

In my current case, the solution is what I consider to be the ideal percentage of days (or rather, nights :-)) to play poker. Since I started recording my poker data on March 24th, 2009, and including tonight, 2,459 days will have elapsed. Out of those days, I will have played poker on 1,737 of them. Friends and neighbors, that amounts to 70.64%.

Last night, I got temporarily sidetracked on my quest to play 8-game when the lobby showed me a nearly full sit and go no limit hold'em 18 seater as I logged in. I jumped on, and had a chance to make the money, but unfortunately squandered it when I got engrossed by a chess video I was watching and didn't notice when the PokerStars software automatically sat me out. I eventually got blinded off, finishing in sixth place. I then registered at an 8-game, and ended up coming in first an hour and a half later.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands place winnings

SNG   NLHE     9000  1000       9    43     6        0
SNG   8-Game    900   100       6   120     1     3510

delta: $-7,490
Sit and go 8-game balance: $565,420
balance: $10,148,549