One Hand to rule them all

Looking at the bar chart of my stack size over the course of last night's session, one hand stands head and shoulders above the rest. On hand 102, I won a pot worth $66,939, $41,126 of which was other people's money. The next largest positive delta clocked in at a mere $10,302. That means that the ratio of the largest positive delta to the next largest was 3.99. Just for fun, I wrote a utility to calculate this ratio for every cash game no limit hold'em session, then sort the results in descending order. The 3.99 I hit last night only makes it to number 88 on the resulting list; the top dog is a whopping 68.00, which I achieved on February 25th, 2012.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 103 hands and saw flop:
 - 13 out of 14 times while in big blind (92%)
 - 7 out of 14 times while in small blind (50%)
 - 33 out of 75 times in other positions (44%)
 - a total of 53 out of 103 (51%)
 Pots won at showdown - 5 of 10 (50%)
 Pots won without showdown - 9

delta: $46,361
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $5,021,218
balance: $7,378,171

Shot from guns

An incontrovertible proof of my advancing age, aside from more wrinkles and more gray hair, is the fact that as time goes by, I'm in an ever diminishing pool of people who can remember advertising slogans from sufficiently long ago. One which sticks in my mind is "Shot from guns". This was an ad campaign for a cereal. I confess I had to google the slogan just now to make sure I got the brand right; it was Quaker Puffed Rice.

Can the slogan be applied to poker? Easily. It means that it's a good thing to come out of the starting gate quickly, and win the very first hand of the session. If you can do that, you get a jump start on a winning session. Last night, I was shot from guns. As it turned out, I was never underwater. I just did some research and discovered the following:

- I've played 573 sessions of cash game no limit hold'em poker
- in 120 of them, I won the first hand, for an average of .209424; that's well above the expected average of 1 in 7 (since I invariably join tables with 6 players seated at them), or .142857
- of those 120 shot from guns sessions, I've won 92, for an average of .766667
- of the remaining 453 sessions, I've won 297, for an average of .655629

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 23 hands and saw flop:
 - 2 out of 4 times while in big blind (50%)
 - 1 out of 2 times while in small blind (50%)
 - 8 out of 17 times in other positions (47%)
 - a total of 11 out of 23 (47%)
 Pots won at showdown - 2 of 3 (66%)
 Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $10,134
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,974,857
balance: $7,331,810

High floptane

The higher the octane of gasoline, the more power is delivered when it is combusted. The more flops you see in poker, the better your chances of flopping a hand which can power your stack into the stratosphere. I call sessions where you have a high seeing-the-flop percentage high floptane ones. Last night, by any standard, I had a high floptane session. I saw the flop 77% of the time. That turns out to be my eighth highest floptane ever for a winning session of at least 50 hands.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 57 hands and saw flop:
 - 10 out of 12 times while in big blind (83%)
 - 7 out of 11 times while in small blind (63%)
 - 27 out of 34 times in other positions (79%)
 - a total of 44 out of 57 (77%)
 Pots won at showdown - 5 of 10 (50%)
 Pots won without showdown - 7

delta: $28,593
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,964,723
balance: $7,321,676

The land of the fours

Last night, I won my third session in a row. Sad to say, that's a pretty big deal these days :-) It's been almost a month since the last time I accomplished that. One good thing about my extended slump is that it's totally changed my attitude toward profit-taking. Now, whenever I achieve a profit of $10,000 or more, I'll have no compunction about quitting early. That's what I did last night, after only 9 hands. Since I won 4 of them, my winning average was .444444..., aka the land of the fours :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 9 hands and saw flop:
 - 1 out of 1 times while in big blind (100%)
 - 0 out of 2 times while in small blind (0%)
 - 4 out of 6 times in other positions (66%)
 - a total of 5 out of 9 (55%)
 Pots won at showdown - 2 of 2 (100%)
 Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $26,090
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,936,130
balance: $7,293,083

Teenagers

It's funny how often the things you know must be true turn out not to be true at all. Case in point: teenagers. That's my slang for sessions which are 13 to 19 hands in length. Before looking at the numbers, I knew what I would find - that the vast majority of teenagers would be winning ones, and that the sum of the deltas of the winning teenagers would dwarf the absolute value of the sum of the deltas of the losing teenagers. I was wrong on both counts. Here are the cold hard facts:

- of 64 teenagers, a slim majority of 33 were winning ones
- sum of winning teenagers: $1,059,117
- sum of losing teenagers: $-1,751,600

On Friday night, I had my second winning teenager in a row. I'm aiming for no more than 30 hands tonight.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 14 hands and saw flop:
 - 2 out of 2 times while in big blind (100%)
 - 1 out of 1 times while in small blind (100%)
 - 4 out of 11 times in other positions (36%)
 - a total of 7 out of 14 (50%)
 Pots won at showdown - 4 of 4 (100%)
 Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $64,272
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,910,040
balance: $7,266,993

7 1/2

If I'm remembering correctly, Fellini's film "8 1/2" was so named because he made it in between his eighth and ninth movies, as a sort of unforeseen in-between movie. I've always liked the title, so I thought I'd steal a little of its panache when it came time to dream up a title for this post. What am I referring to here? The number of big blinds I lost last night. Other than the unusually small size of the losses, the really interesting thing was that each big blind, and the half big blind, were all lost on separate hands. Of course, that means that the most I ever lost an a single hand was one big blind. I'll go out on a limb and claim that this is the first time such a thing has ever happened to me. I'll check it out soon, and 'fess up if I'm wrong.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 13 hands and saw flop:
 - 1 out of 2 times while in big blind (50%)
 - 1 out of 2 times while in small blind (50%)
 - 6 out of 9 times in other positions (66%)
 - a total of 8 out of 13 (61%)
 Pots won at showdown - 1 of 1 (100%)
 Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $47,456
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,845,768
balance: $7,202,721

My 2013 poker year by the numbers

On New Year's Eve, I had another losing session. Here's a look back at 2013, poker-wise:

      311 sessions

   23,932 hands
   13,750 flops seen
  57.4545 flops seen percentage

    3,651 showdowns
    1,823 pots won at showdown
  49.9315 pots won at showdown percentage

    1,955 pots won without showdown

 $108,809 January
 $275,758 February
 $294,748 March
 $305,529 April
 $-59,384 May
$-110,262 June
  $-4,258 July
  $90,249 August
 $124,364 September
 $401,667 October
$-271,740 November
$-379,517 December
=========
 $775,963

 $140,537 largest single session net gain (03/03)
 $230,261 largest single session net loss (06/13)
 $121,394 largest single hand net gain (hand 78 on 10/18)
  $97,932 largest single hand net loss (hand 53 on 06/13)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 98 hands and saw flop:
 - 14 out of 15 times while in big blind (93%)
 - 9 out of 14 times while in small blind (64%)
 - 36 out of 69 times in other positions (52%)
 - a total of 59 out of 98 (60%)
 Pots won at showdown - 2 of 8 (25%)
 Pots won without showdown - 5

delta: $-48,467
cash game no limit hold'em balance: $4,798,312
balance: $7,155,265