Historic drubbing

Last night, something highly unusual happened - I hit the felt five times. That's never happened to me before. In part that's because I'm a good player and in part that's because when I'm playing badly, I usually have the good sense to quit when I hit the felt for a third time. Why didn't I quit this time? There are several reasons:

1. the maximum starting stake at the table was small ($2K)

2. since I'm new to deuce, I decided to treat hitting the felt as a necessary learning experience

3. I'd made the original mistake of joining a table which had some really big stacks, who were playing the bully effectively

4. I compounded this mistake by reupping at the same table every time, instead of joining a different table with players with smaller stacks

My theory that deuce is a back-loaded betting game is officially debunked. Tonight, I need to be much more choosy about which hands I decide to play. I think a good rule of thumb for playing deuce to the seven is to treat it as if "deuce to the eight" is your minimum requirement - that is, avoid going to showdown with hands where your high card is higher than an eight.

During current 2-7 Triple Draw session you were dealt 44 hands
Pots won if drawing - 6 of 30 (20%)
Pots won at showdown - 5 of 16 (31%)
Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $-10,000
balance: $2,010,147

Stairs

The bar chart of my stack size over the course of last night's session resembles stairs climbing to the right. I won three big pots, evenly spaced; on the other hands, I either won or lost negligible amounts. I've never had a bar chart quite like that before. It bodes well for my deuce career; it indicates that deuce betting is back-loaded, which benefits players like me who are better "after the flop". Of course, there's no flop in deuce, but the concept still applies; "after the flop" players are those who play better the more information they have, whatever the delivery mechanism of that information is.

After winning the third big pot, I got a bonus from the poker gods - an unmistakable signal to end my night, in the form of an unplayable hand. I was dealt Kh Jc Qc Jh 6c, which is a very decent 5 card draw hand but a horrible deuce hand.

During current 2-7 Triple Draw session you were dealt 17 hands
Pots won if drawing - 5 of 8 (62%)
Pots won at showdown - 4 of 5 (80%)
Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $5,650
balance: $2,020,147

Deuce had me at hello

On Saturday night, I played my first session of deuce, and it had me at hello. I won the second hand I played. The game just felt very familiar for some reason. The only blemish was a rookie mistake I made on hand 11, which took me to the felt. I saw that my high card was an eight, saw that I had no pairs, and went all in, believing I had a very strong hand. What I failed to notice was that what I had was an eight high straight, which is death (of course) in a lowball poker variant. To add insult to injury, I only used my first draw, standing pat on the second and third. Hitting the felt didn't faze me a bit, though; I just mentally chuckled at my stupidity, reupped in place for another $2K, and kept playing. I did very well from then on, and made a nice profit on the night.

During current 2-7 Triple Draw session you were dealt 76 hands
Pots won if drawing - 15 of 29 (51%)
Pots won at showdown - 6 of 12 (50%)
Pots won without showdown - 9

delta: $865
balance: $2,014,497

The root of all poker

Last night, I fully intended to play my first session of deuce to the seven triple draw. The thing was, I'd been checking out various flavors of poker on the PokerStars site during the day, and forgot that the last one I'd looked at was 5 card draw. Like all good software, the PokerStars client returns you to where you were before when you reload it; consequently, I was in the 5 card draw section of the site instead of the deuce to the seven triple draw section. Being so eager to begin playing, I failed to notice this, and blithely joined a table and started playing. I soon realized my mistake, but decided to go with it. Possessing no actual facts to back me up on this, it's my contention that five card draw is the granddaddy of them all - the original version of poker from which all the variants spring. The root of all poker, if you will. One could do a lot worse than brush up one's skills in the root of all poker; it's experience that certainly won't go to waste.

I'd joined a limit table. As I've mentioned before, in limit poker, the maximum starting stack size is not terribly important; a big stack can't bully smaller stacks in the same way it can in pot limit or no limit. For this reason, the PokerStars software sets an arbitrarily high maximum starting stack size for limit games. At the table I'd joined, the maximum starting stack size was a cool million play dollars. I set my initial stack size to a reasonable size for a $5/$10 table - 200 times the big blind, or $2,000.

I rediscovered what I'd found out before - in limit games, it's hard to win a lot of money and also hard to lose a lot of money (provided you play with a modicum of skill). Over the course of a very long session, my stack hit a maximum of $2,270 about a sixth of the way through, almost equaled that again about halfway through, then went on a slow and steady decline down to $1,500. I called it a night at that point. I found it very relaxing to play 5 card draw - since the maximum number of players at a table is six, the pace of play is much faster than at 9 max tables. Limit 5 card draw is a grinder's delight; however, you'd have to grind an incredibly long time to amass a million play dollars. One thing I realize about myself after playing poker almost 3 years is that I'm not a limit player; I'm a pot limit player and a no limit player. Limit poker has limited thrills; pot limit and no limit have unlimited thrills. I'm a thrill seeker at heart.

During current 5-Card Draw session you were dealt 200 hands
Pots won if drawing - 29 of 136 (21%)
Pots won at showdown - 25 of 57 (43%)
Pots won without showdown - 5

delta: $-500
balance: $2,013,632

Say it with rockets

Last night, I hit the $2 million play money milestone - and did it with rockets. Interestingly, I didn't win the main pot on the hand, but did win two very lucrative side pots. It was very fortunate for me that the opponent who won the main pot was short stacked at the start of the hand, and that two other opponents were willing to gamble in a big way.

The title of this post is a snowclone; the original phrase, of course, is "say it with flowers". There's a wonderful publishing house named "Hard Case Crime" which publishes new noir crime novels and republishes old ones which have been long out of print; at some point, I intend to read the Hard Case Crime title "Say It With Bullets", which was out of print for 50 years.

I hit the $1 million milestone on August 24th, 2010, almost exactly a year ago. My next goal is to hit the $3 million milestone within the next calendar year. As I mentioned before, I'm now going to try my hand at deuce to the seven triple draw. Poker players live and die by hunches, and I've got a hunch I'm going to be very good at deuce.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 19 hands and saw flop:
- 3 out of 3 times while in big blind (100%)
- 2 out of 3 times while in small blind (66%)
- 6 out of 13 times in other positions (46%)
- a total of 11 out of 19 (57%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 2 (100%)
Pots won without showdown - 1

delta: $45,000
balance: $2,014,132

The lastmin ratio

Tuesday night, I hit the felt quickly at the first table I joined, after only 16 hands. The table had shown a lot of willingness to gamble, so I decided to reup in place for the max. My newly replenished stack tumbled quickly to $20K, then kept falling, albeit at a slower pace, to $2K. This was obviously well below the Lazarus line, but I got the strangest feeling at that point. I felt that if I could just avoid hitting the felt, my fortunes would turn around, and I'd end up winning some big hands and come out on top for the night. Of course, your options are severely limited when your stack is only $2K; I needed some luck to avoid the felt. I got it on hand 59, when I was dealt a big slick, ended up going all in, and won a pot worth $9,900 with two pair, sevens and deuces. That gave me just the breathing room I needed. The rest of the session saw my stack trend upwards, culminating in a hand where I won a monster pot worth $141,800 with two pair, aces and tens. Afterwards, I checked the records and found it was the second biggest won pot of my poker career.

The lowest my stack descended after I reupped was to $1,900. When I quit the table, my stack was at $153,600. The bar chart of my stack size makes a remarkable picture. It inspired me to come up with a new poker statistic - what I call the lastmin ratio. The lastmin ratio is the ratio of the amount of your stack when you quit (or last, for short) to the amount of your stack at its lowest point (i.e. minimum, or min). My lastmin ratio last night was an astonishing 80.84! For comparison's sake, the highest lastmin ratio I'd achieved prior to last night was 28.68. Last night's recovery was truly Lazarus-like.

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 130 hands and saw flop:
- 5 out of 15 times while in big blind (33%)
- 7 out of 17 times while in small blind (41%)
- 51 out of 98 times in other positions (52%)
- a total of 63 out of 130 (48%)
Pots won at showdown - 9 of 12 (75%)
Pots won without showdown - 2

delta: $73,600
balance: $1,969,132

Kings beat donks

Last Friday night's session was short and sweet. On the fifth hand, I was dealt a pair of kings, and a donk with an ace two offsuit went all in. I called, then another donk who had a king six suited called. My two pair of kings and threes won a pot worth $130,600. Of course, if I'd lost, I would have been the donk :-)

During current Hold'em session you were dealt 6 hands and saw flop:
- 1 out of 1 times while in big blind (100%)
- 1 out of 1 times while in small blind (100%)
- 2 out of 4 times in other positions (50%)
- a total of 4 out of 6 (66%)
Pots won at showdown - 2 of 2 (100%)
Pots won without showdown - 0

delta: $91,900
balance: $1,895,532