Runner runnered

There was a time, about 6 years or so ago, when I didn't believe there was such a thing as a bad beat. Silly me :-) Not only is there such a thing, but there's a whole menagerie of them; some are much worse than others. Perhaps the very worst of the lot is the runner runner bad beat. That's when the underdog improbably hits running cards on the turn and river to win the pot. I was runner runnered in the MTT NLHE I played last night. After the flop, I was a 92.32% favorite. After the turn, I was a 90.91% favorite. After the river, I was out of the tournament.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    93    1084  279    71     3281
MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    38      52   12    22        0

delta: $-2,719
MTT NLHE massive balance: $23,943
balance: $10,060,677

The Janus hand

As I've had occasion to observe before, memory is a funny thing. What I remember best from last night's session is that I got dealt pocket rockets twice in the second MTT NLHE I played, won the first time I got them, and hit the rail the second. That gave me the idea for this post's title. Pocket aces are truly the Janus hand; they can break you just as easily as they can make you. Looking over the hand histories tonight, however, I discovered that I was wrong in every particular but one :-) I was only dealt rockets once in that tournament, but did hit the rail. Remarkably, I hit the rail in the first tournament I played with the very same holding. Somehow I remembered that lost hand as a win, and put it in the wrong tournament.

I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever had what I call "aces out" twice in a single session. My consolation is that at least I made the money the second time :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    20     978  243   384        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       6    46     741  192   117     1934

delta: $-66
MTT NLHE massive balance: $21,662
balance: $10,063,396

The golden percentile

I've brought up the subject of golden ratios many times in this space. Tonight I want to introduce the concept of a golden percentile. It's specific to MTTs. All MTTs on PokerStars reserve money positions for a little under one quarter of the entrants. That means that in order for a player to make the money, he or she must outlast just over three quarters of the entrants. In other words, the player must fall into the 75th percentile. Not surprisingly, that's the number I'm picking as the golden percentile. What I claim is that if you can manage to make the golden percentile in the aggregate, you're guaranteed to make a profit. How do you compute aggregate percentile? I can think of two ways:

1. take the ratio of the sum of players outlasted to the sum of the number of entrants
2. take the average of the percentiles

I'm going with the second method. Running the numbers, my aggregate percentile for MTT NLHE massive tournaments is currently 73.23. Close enough for government work :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    27     101   24    37        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    28     964  243   420        0

delta: $-6,000
MTT NLHE massive balance: $21,728
balance: $10,063,462

Under the lights

Last night, I got under the lights again. That is, I made the final table of an MTT once more. I've been having a nice MTT 8-game run lately; earlier this month, I made the final table in 3 of 6 consecutive tournaments, my best six stretch ever. My MTT 8-game balance is almost back in the blue. Lately, I've been watching Amazon Prime movies while playing poker; I now know enough to pause them if I get under the lights :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6   163      84   18     5    23750

delta: $18,750
MTT 8-game balance: $324,690
balance: $10,069,462

Flushed away

The poker gods have nothing if not a sense of humor. Mirthfully they giveth, and mirthfully they taketh away. In the first MTT NHLE I played on Friday night, I got flushed away. On my final hand of the tournament, I got all in preflop. I hit an ace high flush on the river, but was drawing dead to an opponent who'd made a full house on the turn. The poker gods had faked me out so thoroughly in this instance that I was raising my right arm in jubilation even as the PokerStars app was shipping all my chips to my rival :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    50    1043  279   297        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    33     885  216   278        0

delta: $-2,000
MTT NLHE massive balance: $22,728
balance: $10,050,712

Lilliputian blue

Last night, my MTT NLHE $1,000 outlay (buy in plus entry fee) balance returned to the blue, for the first time since last October. That balance is now at $24,728. Given the size of my other balances, this one is truly Lilliputian. Ironically, I'm going to call it my MTT NLHE massive balance, since the fields attracted by the low buy in MTT NLHE tournaments on PokerStars are massive. I think I've finally found my poker niche on PokerStars, after all these years. Massives won't make me much play money, but I unquestionably find them the most enjoyable form of poker.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9   100     949  243    46     3550

delta: $2,550
MTT NLHE massive balance: $24,728
balance: $10,052,712

Mini streak

My best streak of making the money in MTT NLHEs is 13 straight. That one's going to be hard to touch. Last night, I won my third MTT NLHE in a row. Baby steps :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    71     776  189   144     1741

delta: $741
MTT NLHE balance: $7,108
balance: $10,050,162

Third best career MTT NLHE percentile

Last night, I rose above the crowd in an MTT NLHE again, finishing 21st in a field of 755. That put me in the 97th percentile, my third best percentile ever. I got there mostly by just hanging in, doing a lot of folding. It's amazing how far you can ladder up simply by having more patience than the average player :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    19      79   18    48        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9   108     755  189    21     4348

delta: $-1,652
MTT NLHE balance: $6,367
balance: $10,049,421

Raked over the coals

You can think of an entry fee as a kind of rake. I just realized that PokerStars has upped their entry fees on MTT 8-games and MTT NLHEs from 10% of the total tournament outlay (i.e, the buy in plus the entry fee) to 13%. That's raking their players over the coals! Yet again, PokerStars seems to believe they have every right to bite the hand that feeds them. Not a viable business model, by any stretch of the imagination. One of these days, someone's going to come along and eat their lunch.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    35      77   18    33        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    45     638  162    73     2386

delta: $-3,614
MTT NLHE balance: $3,019
balance: $10,051,073

Going like sixty

To make the money in an MTT, you need to outlast roughly 75% of your competitors. Outlasting less than 50% of them would clearly be a failure. However, is there some percentage you could outlast, and still be able to consider it a success of sorts, even though you failed to make the money? I think there is, and I'm pegging it at 60. By this criterion, the first of the two MTT NLHEs I played last night was a success, since I outlasted 61.68% of my opponents :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    34     856  216   328        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       6    30     670  168   273        0

delta: $-2,000
MTT NLHE balance: $1,633
balance: $10,054,687

A funny thing to be proud of

You'd think, after winning more than 10 million play dollars playing online poker, I'd be pretty proud of that. The funny thing is, it turns out to be quite hard to be proud of what you consider to be the normal course of events. For all intents and purposes, I've never not made a profit playing online poker. How proud can one be of something which comes so easily? However, the bulk of the profits was from cash games. MTTs are another story entirely. Making a steady profit playing MTTs is the hardest thing I've ever tried to do, poker-wise, and I'm not there yet. The very fact that it's so hard to do has made me proud of minutiae :-) Believe it or not, my proudest poker achievement to date is making the money every other time I enter an MTT NHLE. Whenever I make the money, I feel the euphoria of being above the crowd. That's actually worth more than any play money windfall.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    54     958  243   182     1858

delta: $858
MTT NLHE balance: $3,633
balance: $10,056,687

The story of this year's WSOP

Every year, I keep an eye on what's happening at the WSOP  in Vegas. A truly remarkable thing has happened this year. Poker pro Jason Mercier has come in 1st, 2nd, and 1st in three consecutive $10,000 buy in tournaments. The odds against anyone achieving this are astronomical. Kudos to him!

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    19     100   24    48        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    33    1016  279   400        0
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9    55     879  216   173     1682

delta: $-5,318
MTT NLHE balance: $2,775
balance: $10,055,829

Too frisky in deuce

Last night, I was well on the way to making the money when I had an attack of friskiness. The poker flavor in rotation at the time was deuce. I lost all 2,643 of my chips on a 9 high, which is really a piss poor deuce hand. One contributing factor was that I was heads up after the first betting round. Another was that my opponent had a big stack, and my read was that he was trying to bully me. I've said it before, and I'll say it again - as a poker player, you have to go with your reads. Je ne regrette rien :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    48      89   18    26        0

delta: $-5,000
MTT 8-game balance: $320,150
balance: $10,061,147

MTT sandwich

I love MTTs, even though it's hard to make a lot of money playing them. My favorite type of MTT is 8-game, followed by no limit hold'em. The average field size for an MTT 8-game is just over 50 players; the average field size for an MTT NLHE is well over 700 players. For that reason, I've nicknamed MTT NLHE tournaments "massives" :-) There's never a shortage of massives to play, due to the extreme popularity of NLHE. MTT 8-games, however, are much fewer and further between. I've struck upon the ideal way to maximize my MTT enjoyment during a session - to make an MTT sandwich :-) The bread in the sandwich is composed of MTT NLHEs, and the meat in the middle is an MTT 8-game. Last night, I made the money in one of the slices of bread tournaments and in the meat tournament.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE      870   130       6    15     959  240   354        0
MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6   118      96   18     6    18790
MTT   NLHE      870   130       6    54     647  168    93     2251

delta: $14,041
MTT 8-game balance: $325,150
balance: $10,066,147

Another funny funny money MTT

The irony of losing money while "making the money" in an MTT is never lost on me. It happened again last night. I call this situation "funny funny money". The inner adjective refers to the fact that the winnings are in play money. The outer adjective refers to the fact that the play money won oddly fails to cover the cost of the buy in and the entry fee. So far in my MTT 8-game career, I've had nine "funny funny money" tournaments, losing an aggregate of $3,690. The good news is that these tournaments still count towards my "made the money" average, which is currently 36.67% (55 of 150).

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    78      86   18    16     4860

delta: $-140
MTT 8-game balance: $311,360
balance: $10,052,106

13 New York minutes

Guesstimating a New York minute to be on the order of 50 seconds, last night I lasted a mere 13 New York minutes in the MTT 8-game I played. It was, to use a phrase I'm fond of, near perfect futility. I didn't even outlast the late registration period, which is truly shameful. I started playing at 10:11pm est, which is 10 to 15 minutes earlier than I usually start. I won't make that same mistake tonight :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    19      70   18    53        0

delta: $-5,000
MTT 8-game balance: $311,500
balance: $10,052,246

Worst to first to third

Last night, I played my first sit and go 8-game in nearly six months. It was a bumpy ride. About halfway through the tournament, no one had hit the rail yet, and I was in last place. Shortly afterwards, I won a big pot to leap into first. The final quarter of the tournament saw my stack falling steadily, and I eventually hit the rail in third place.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands place winnings

SNG   8-Game  44000  6000       6    95     3        0

delta: $-50,000
Sit and go 8-game balance: $625,210
balance: $10,057,246

Doubling down on 8-game

I played my first sit and go 8-game tournament on February 13, 2014, five and a half years into my poker career. I played my first MTT 8-game tournament on December 19, 2014, more than six years in. Both selections were happy accidents. I won my first two sit and go 8-games, and have never been underwater in this poker style and flavor. I've won nearly a million play dollars playing 8-game, combining the sit and go balance with the MTT one. It's time for me to double down on 8-game. I'm going to try to play only sit and go 8-game and MTT 8-game for the remainder of the year.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    64      80   18    12     7480

delta: $2,480
MTT 8-game balance: $316,500
balance: $10,107,246

Doppeltournament

Friday night's MTT 8-game was virtually a carbon copy of Thursday night's, right down to the third place finish. It marked the first time I'd ever made the final table in two consecutive MTTs. I'm doing a lot right lately, poker-wise, in addition to being on the receiving end of a lot of luck :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6   199      75   18     3    42410

delta: $37,410
MTT 8-game balance: $314,020
balance: $10,104,766

Epiphany

I had an epiphany last night. Briefly stated, it's that I really don't like playing cash games. I've had this epiphany before, but every time I have it makes it that much harder to return to playing them. At some point in the future, I'll probably swear off them completely. The ironic thing is that I've made more play money playing cash games than I have playing any other poker style. If I stop playing them, my yearly profits will drop, and dramatically. However, there's more to life than play money :-)

Let me try to explain what I don't like about cash games. Actually, it'll be easier to explain what I love about MTTs, and how cash games don't measure up in comparison. MTTs are highly structured. They're designed to end within a limited amount of time. The escalating antes and blinds guarantee this. Everyone has to deal with them. In that sense MTTs are much more egalitarian than cash games. When you're playing an MTT, you're essentially a rat in a maze; however, you know you're a rat, and you know you're in maze. Moreover, you know all the other players are also rats, and that they're in the same maze. When you're playing a cash game, it's hard to know who you are, who your opponents are, and where you or anyone else is. It's a bit of a stretch, but I can liken the difference between MTTs and cash games to the difference between rhymed poetry and free verse. Rhymed poetry has rules you must follow, and enforces a structure; surprisingly, though, there's a lot of freedom in the confinement. Free verse has no rules or structure to speak of; it's amorphous, and the amount of open space you have is so vast it can paralyze you.

Last night, I got under the lights again in MTT 8-game; that is, I made the final table. I ended up in third, but made the egregious mistake of sitting out my final twelve hands. Had I played those hands, I might have come in second, or even first. How could I make such a mistake? All unaware, as you might have guessed. I was watching a movie on Amazon while playing poker, and there was a hiccup when the PokerStars software failed to thrust its window to the foreground when it was my turn to act. I was engrossed by the end of the movie, and plain forgot I was playing poker. Pretty stupid, huh? :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6   207      85   18     3    48060

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 71 hands and saw flop:
 - 5 out of 9 times while in big blind (55%)
 - 3 out of 9 times while in small blind (33%)
 - 31 out of 53 times in other positions (58%)
 - a total of 39 out of 71 (54%)
 Pots won at showdown - 3 of 8 (37%)
 Pots won without showdown - 3

delta: $-28,646
MTT 8-game balance: $276,610
balance: $10,067,356

First ever same-session combo

Last night, I did something I'd never done before in 1,884 previous sessions - I played both cash game no limit hold'em and MTT 8-game poker in the same session. Not only that, I played them simultaneously. It made for an interesting combination. I've really been missing the variety of 8-game lately, so I'm going to remedy that by continuing to play this way for the foreseeable future. I'll report separately on each style.

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paid place winnings

MTT   8-Game   4350   650       6    23      91   18    58        0

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 133 hands and saw flop:
 - 25 out of 33 times while in big blind (75%)
 - 25 out of 32 times while in small blind (78%)
 - 35 out of 68 times in other positions (51%)
 - a total of 85 out of 133 (63%)
 Pots won at showdown - 19 of 30 (63%)
 Pots won without showdown - 13

delta: $43,731
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,855,860
balance: $10,096,002

Top 30 rebound

Last night, I had a top 30 rebound. At $109,622, it clocked in at number 25 on my career list of cash game no limit hold'em rebounds. All of the top 30 are of at least $100,000. It's good and bad to have rebounds of that magnitude. The good part is that I was able to have such a great rebound session; the bad part is that the session before it was necessarily horrendous :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 53 hands and saw flop:
 - 5 out of 8 times while in big blind (62%)
 - 7 out of 8 times while in small blind (87%)
 - 14 out of 37 times in other positions (37%)
 - a total of 26 out of 53 (49%)
 Pots won at showdown - 6 of 8 (75%)
 Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $109,622
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,807,129
balance: $10,052,271

Mariana Trench hand

Looking at the bar chart of my stack size over the course of last night's session, I can see that I was swimming in the shallows until the final hand, when the bottom dropped out and I fell into the Mariana Trench. It was the third costliest hand of my cash game no limit hold'em career. Here are the top 5:

$-116,250 Kc 9h 2014-11-06 hand   9
$-112,124 Ks Ac 2015-07-14 hand  63
$-102,590 Qh Jh 2016-06-06 hand  81
$-102,200 Ah Jd 2012-06-02 hand 121
 $-97,932 Qd Ad 2013-06-13 hand  53

I had a pair of queens, and lost to a pair of queens with a better kicker (an ace). I'm not sorry I went all in; I went with my read, and that's what you must do as a poker player. Better luck next time :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 81 hands and saw flop:
 - 11 out of 15 times while in big blind (73%)
 - 10 out of 15 times while in small blind (66%)
 - 15 out of 51 times in other positions (29%)
 - a total of 36 out of 81 (44%)
 Pots won at showdown - 6 of 13 (46%)
 Pots won without showdown - 7

delta: $-139,053
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,697,507
balance: $9,942,649

Silver lining

Whether I win or lose a session, I'm contracted to write about what happened before being allowed to play another. Who drafted such a nefarious contract? Me :-) It's typically easier to write about winning sessions than losing ones. After losing, I often struggle to find the session's silver lining, but that's what I want to write about. I lost last night's session, but found a silver lining fairly quickly. It was this - that I had a nonzero high chaparral count. In other words, when I put the absolute values of my hand deltas in descending order, the greatest absolute value came from a hand I won.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 108 hands and saw flop:
 - 11 out of 18 times while in big blind (61%)
 - 10 out of 18 times while in small blind (55%)
 - 42 out of 72 times in other positions (58%)
 - a total of 63 out of 108 (58%)
 Pots won at showdown - 5 of 12 (41%)
 Pots won without showdown - 8

delta: $-50,762
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,836,560
balance: $10,081,702

The great eight

Since October 12th, 2011, when I turned on the PokerStars feature to auto-save the full hand histories, I've played 62,173 cash game no limit hold'em hands. There's a wealth of data to explore in those hand histories. Last night, I won the biggest cash game pot of my cash game no limit hold'em career - over a quarter of a million play dollars. Not surprisingly, the hand delta, over 175,000 play dollars, was also a career best. This set me to wondering how many times I've had a hand delta which was a career best at the time the hand was played. You'd think, with that many hands, the number would have to be over 100, right? You'd be wrong. Next, you'd think it would have to be over 10, right? You'd be wrong again. The number is astonishingly low - just 8. I hereby dub them the great eight! Here they are:

  $8,200 2011-10-12   5 (5)
 $31,200 2011-10-13  47 (114)
 $44,750 2011-10-14  70 (185)
 $79,100 2011-10-22  66 (588)
$120,250 2011-11-05  71 (1431)
$141,500 2012-06-30  32 (15053)
$145,680 2014-04-11  26 (44890)
$176,647 2016-06-04   7 (62122)

The third column contains the session hand numbers; the final column contains the career hand numbers. As you can see, these career best hands tend to get further and further apart. I can expect the next one any time within the next five to ten years :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 58 hands and saw flop:
 - 3 out of 8 times while in big blind (37%)
 - 1 out of 5 times while in small blind (20%)
 - 19 out of 45 times in other positions (42%)
 - a total of 23 out of 58 (39%)
 Pots won at showdown - 6 of 10 (60%)
 Pots won without showdown - 0

delta: $116,916
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,887,462
balance: $10,132,604

That time of year

Friends and neighbors, it's that time of year again. The earth's revolution around the sun has brought us to the World Series of Poker once again :-) This is a bittersweet time for me, more bitter and more sweet every year. I have it on my bucket list one day to go to Vegas and play in the World Series of Poker Main Event. It's not my birthright, but it something I damn well intend to do, whenever that might be. I owe it to myself. I love poker so much!

Where have I been, you might be asking. A combination of things. One is that I watched a fair amount of the Super High Roller Bowl on television. Highly entertaining! I was pulling for Fedor Holz, but he ended up in second. Another factor is that I was really super busy at work this week. That's certainly better than the alternative :-)

On Thursday night, I started play late and didn't play very long, but was able to achieve a tidy profit.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 35 hands and saw flop:
 - 5 out of 5 times while in big blind (100%)
 - 3 out of 6 times while in small blind (50%)
 - 10 out of 24 times in other positions (41%)
 - a total of 18 out of 35 (51%)
 Pots won at showdown - 3 of 5 (60%)
 Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $11,319
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,770,546
balance: $10,015,688