Saved by zero

Last night, I had a spin and go gorge-fest. I played 18 of them. I can safely say that I've had my fill of them for the foreseeable future. My spin and go balance is now exactly zero, and it's a telling number. I've played 102 spin and gos in my career, and it's clear that if I can't make a profit in that number of tournaments, I'm never going to make a profit. So you could say I've been "saved by zero" from losing money on spin and gos :-)

This is an excerpt from my September 26, 2016 post. When I looked at the breakdown of my 2025 results by style and flavor this morning, I had another "saved by zero" moment.

    delta  count  style  flavor
=========  =====  =====  =============================
       $0    232  MTT    No Limit Hold'em
 $-29,000      8  MTT    Limit Razz
 $-45,000      3  MTT    Limit 7 Card Stud
$-117,000      8  MTT    Limit Stud Hi/Lo
$-175,000      7  MTT    Limit Triple Draw 2-7 Lowball 

The verdict? The only flavor of MTT I should ever play is NLHE.

style flavor    buy_in  entry entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     298   72    74        0
MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     381   99    99    67000
MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     307   72   120        0
MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     316   81   179        0

delta: $-133,000
2025 balance: $-366,000
2025 blue distance: $366,000
balance: $15,931,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.26 (1364 of 3306)

Preemptive immediate service

First, here's the definition of immediate service (from my blog post of September 20, 2015):

One of my favorite poker commentators is Nick Wealthall. He provides commentary for online tournaments on PokerStars. One  phrase I really like which he uses quite often is "immediate service"; it refers to hitting a straight or flush draw as soon as possible, in other words on the turn.

With that in mind, preemptive immediate service is immediate service which comes on an even earlier street, i.e. on the flop.

This is an excerpt from my April 25, 2019 post. In the last tournament I played yesterday, I hit the rail very early on. On my final hand, I was dealt pocket queens, and called a preflop bet which put me all in. My opponent turned over A7o (ace seven offsuit), and I was a sizeable favorite to win the pot, with a 71% chance. Unfortunately for me, my opponent received preemptive immediate service on the flop, pairing both his ace and his seven. I was now an underdog, and had only an 8% chance to win. My opponent's two pair held up, and I was gone in a New York minute.

style flavor    buy_in  entry entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     239   63   106        0
MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     332   81    41   131000
MTT   NLHE       44000   6000     209   54   157        0

delta: $-19,000
2025 balance: $-936,000
2025 blue distance: $936,000
balance: $15,361,303
MTT NLHE ITM pct: 41.26 (1333 of 3231)