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)

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 :-)

style flavor buy_in entry players hands place winnings

Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    43     3        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3     6     1    20000
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3     2     3        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    32     3        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    30     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    21     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    18     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    16     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    11     3        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    12     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    20     3        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    14     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    45     1    20000
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    53     1    20000
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    13     2        0
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    21     1    40000
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    37     1    20000
Sp&Go NLHE     9000  1000       3    19     2        0

delta: $-60,000
Spin & Go no limit hold'em balance: $0
balance: $9,703,034

Saved By Zero

Once again, I've chosen the name of a song for the title of a blog post. "Saved By Zero" was released by The Fixx in 1983, the year I started my software engineering career. Last night, my session was saved by zero; that is, I survived in large part by not betting when I was given the opportunity not to bet. My stack took a huge hit on hand 30, when an opponent hit a 4 outer on me; I had been a 90% favorite after the turn. I lost $40,942 on the hand, and was left with only $3,667. A common reaction to such misfortune is to try to win chips back too quickly, but I refrained from reacting that way. With patience and luck, I was able to end the night in the black. What do I mean by the opportunity not to bet? Simply, those times when I wasn't in either the small blind or the big blind. Tonight I wrote a program to calculate a new poker statistic, which I'm calling the zero bet percentage; it's the percentage of the time zero is bet on a hand when it's possible to bet zero on it. It turns out that I set a personal best in this statistic last night. Here are my top ten zero bet percentages for sessions of at least 10 hands:

0.657895 (25 38) 2013/04/18
0.629032 (39 62) 2013/02/26
0.622642 (33 53) 2012/11/23
0.619048 (13 21) 2013/01/11
0.615385 ( 8 13) 2012/05/06
0.611111 (22 36) 2013/03/23
0.604651 (26 43) 2012/11/12
0.600000 ( 6 10) 2013/03/21
0.591549 (42 71) 2012/11/11
0.583333 ( 7 12) 2011/11/02

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 55 hands and saw flop:
 - 3 out of 7 times while in big blind (42%)
 - 5 out of 9 times while in small blind (55%)
 - 14 out of 39 times in other positions (35%)
 - a total of 22 out of 55 (40%)
 Pots won at showdown - 6 of 8 (75%)
 Pots won without showdown - 6

delta: $2,160
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,731,524
balance: $7,180,932