The Lightwood bells

As I've had occasion to mention before, Charles Dickens's "Our Mutual Friend" is my favorite novel. As I've also previously said, it's at least two books rolled into one, but more likely three, or even four. One of the books is about the friendship between Mortimer Lightwood and Eugene Wrayburn, two lawyers with very few clients. Mortimer worries about Eugene's growing affection for Lizzie Hexam, a poor girl he can't seriously contemplate marrying. Mortimer sees that Eugene doesn't know his own mind, and also that he doesn't fathom the depth of his affection for Lizzie. He tries to help Eugene by asking him three questions:

'Ah, Eugene!' said Lightwood, affectionately, now standing near him, so that they both stood in one little cloud of smoke; 'I would that you answered my three questions! What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?'

Eugene can't answer a single one of these questions, which forces Mortimer to keep asking them, at intervals throughout the novel. Somewhat later on in the narrative, Eugene makes light of Mortimer's persistence:

'"Eugene, Eugene, Eugene, this is a bad business." Ah! So go the Mortimer Lightwood bells, and they sound melancholy to-night.'

What do the Lightwood bells have to do with poker? The answer is pretty simple, once I reveal to you that I have aspects of both of these characters in my personality. The Eugene part of me is able to fool himself into thinking that there are no consequences to playing any kind of poker that I like, whenever I like. The Mortimer part of me realizes that the Eugene part is only fooling himself.

'What is to come of it? What are you doing? Where are you going?'

Looked at in the cold hard light of day, I'm going to wrack and ruin, poker-wise, playing sit and go no limit hold'em. I need to stop playing it, period. There will be no Movember to save me this time. The ugly truth is that the tournament entry fees, small as they might seem, turn profit into loss. Let's take a look:

In this 2016 poker year, here are my sit and go no limit hold'em place counts:

1     87
2    121
3    104
4    101
5     69
6     42

     524

I have a net loss of $420,260 playing them. However, the entry fees for these tournaments added up to a whopping $3,073,600. If there were no entry fees, I would have made a profit of $2,653,340. This provides stark proof that playing sit and go no limit hold'em is a fool's errand. It's like trying to win at three card monte; the odds are utterly stacked against you.

So my resolution, as of now, is to play no more sit and go no limit hold'em. I'll still play some SNG 8-game, and some MTT NLHE, but to make any real profit, I'll have to return to my old frenemy - cash game NLHE.

It's a little ironic that I made this decision after a very successful session where SNG NLHE figured prominently in the profit, but the Mortimer in me knows that it's the right thing to do :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands entries paidplace winnings

SNG   NLHE    44000  6000       6    51       6    2    2    92400
MTT   NLHE      870   130       9   100     828  216   85     2449
SNG   8-Game  44000  6000       6   162       6    2    2    92400
SNG   NLHE    44000  6000       6    83       6    2    1   171600

delta: $207,849
Sit and go no limit hold'em balance: $2,190,840
balance: $9,879,847