A week by the lake

Here's the quintessential definition of what poker means to me:

Poker is the most relaxing thing I know how to do. Whenever I play it, I'm on vacation. I feel like I'm sitting in an Adirondack chair, with a beer on a table beside me and a novel in my hands, on the shore of a beautiful lake. I just want to stay there and never leave :-)

I've made the money in the last seven tournaments I've entered, spanning the last seven sessions. A wonderful week by the lake!

style flavor buy_in entry players entries paid place winnings

MTT   NLHE    87000 13000       6     117   30    13   488000

delta: $388,000
MTT NLHE balance: $12,529,668
2020 balance: $5,507,343
balance: $67,315,353

A week by the lake

I measure poker time in sessions, not days. A week in poker time is seven sessions, however spread out they are in real time. When I started playing online poker, I was almost as likely not to play each night as I was likely to. That's a rather confusing way of saying I played about every other night. Nowadays, I'm much more likely to play than not. Where am I going with this? Merely to observe that over the course of time, poker time for me has approached nearer and nearer to real time. A poker week in the early days might have taken a fortnight, whereas now it rarely takes longer than 8 or 9 days.

I've come up with a gold standard for a successful poker week. If I can win a quarter of a million play dollars in seven sessions, I know I'm really on my game. I call such a week "a week by the lake". I came up with the phrase by morphing the title of a book by H.E. Bates, changing the time period from a month to a week. However long you stay by a lake, it's damned relaxing :-)

Friday night marked my latest week by the lake.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 108 hands and saw flop:
 - 9 out of 16 times while in big blind (56%)
 - 8 out of 15 times while in small blind (53%)
 - 46 out of 77 times in other positions (59%)
 - a total of 63 out of 108 (58%)
 Pots won at showdown - 8 of 14 (57%)
 Pots won without showdown - 8

delta: $30,407
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,051,625
balance: $7,408,578

A week by the lake

I'm always a little bummed when a winning streak ends. I never talk about them when they're in progress, since I don't want to jinx myself. I have no qualms about talking about them once they're over, though. Last night, my latest winning streak ended. It was nine sessions long, which means it definitely qualified as a week by the lake. I was hoping for a month by the lake, but no such luck.

I invariably look for the silver lining when a winning streak ends. Sometimes it's a stretch, but other times it's easy to find. The silver lining in last night's session was that I played a long time and didn't hit the felt. In fact, I had the highest pots won percentage I've ever had for a session at least 160 hands long. I won 48 pots in 168 hands, for a pots won percentage of 28.57.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 168 hands and saw flop:
 - 27 out of 35 times while in big blind (77%)
 - 25 out of 36 times while in small blind (69%)
 - 64 out of 97 times in other positions (65%)
 - a total of 116 out of 168 (69%)
 Pots won at showdown - 14 of 29 (48%)
 Pots won without showdown - 34

delta: $-11,669
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,880,500
balance: $7,237,453