Double Trouble with Prim and Harrier - Poker, Sports, Cooking, Gardening, Mixed Drinks and more

Better than nothing .....

We just busted out of the Big Quarter Final. We pretty much had no chance. We started with a 59 BB stack. We were totally card dead until we got 33 while a shorter stack min-raised. Of course we were happy to call, along with two other players. The flop came A-K-3 and we were happy to raise the flop and get it in on the turn. Well: Turn was a K and river an A, Villain showed AK. :facepalm::rage: As Villain was shorter than us, we were left with a 16 BB stack - and card-dead. Blinded down to an 8 BB stack, we were happy to shove 88 from the BB against CO´s 2,5 BB raise. CO calls, BTN calls as well and we loose to A4s from BTN, CO had JJ! No chance! That was it! No bounty, nothing.

Well, not nothing, to be honest: We won 21,21 $, that´s 10,5 CG-stacks. Actually not bad, but we wanted more. Ok, we had qualified for free, we got ITM and won 21.21 $ - so ........... yeah: Better than nothing.

Stats Galore!

It is time, at least when it comes to MTTs (I still didn't get to SNGs and satties). I have collected and partially harmonized some data from old spreadsheets, so now we can, for the first time, take a look at graphs for my long-term stats ever since I started keeping track of them in 2020.

First, let's start with the profit for each week of the 2,192-day period, the dotted line represents the average. You can see some definite outliers, the most notable one being Week 134, from July 25th 2022 to July 31st 2022, which earned us $415.87 in MTT profit. The worst one was Week 18, from April 27th 2020 to May 3rd 2020, costing us $67.98 at the tables.

It's a bit more balanced when it comes to months, but not surprisingly, July 2022 earned the most, with $478.96 in profit, in no small part thanks to the outstanding week mentioned above. Despite partially featuring the biggest ever losing week, April 2020 was otherwise quite solid, with $286.15 in profit, even making it the best month so far at that point. The "honor" of the biggest losing month instead goes to August 2020, where we lost $89.99.

I was also interested in how well I did in each season, which, for the sake of simplicity, are defined by their meteorological cut-off dates at the beginning of their corresponding months, ignoring the more accurate astronomical dates. I have some interesting and surprising data about this later on, but for now, let's just note that Spring 2020 was the "hottest" season based on MTT profits, with $$879.83 earned. Things didn't go so well next spring, with $125.28 lost during that season in 2021.

You can see some slightly different results if we divide the year into fiscal quarters instead (they are not called a "quartal" in English? Too late, I already made the screenshots, I'm not fixing it now). Q2 2020 is still the best, with $881.29 in profit, while Q1 2021 lost us $46.76 as the worst quarter.

I already presented some line graphs about my annual profit, but you can see it visualized in the same way again here. 2020 was the best with $1,537.92 earned, 2023 was the worst, but still earned $148.25, at least.

Another thing I mentioned before is that we may get a different answer if we define our most successful year in terms of ROI instead, now making 2022 the best one, at 76.52%. 2023 is still the weakest, with 16.85% in ROI.

But that was only the beginning, I still have a lot more stats to get to...

How do things look like if we add up the results from each month every year? I have often spoken of a "summer slump" after bad results at the tables, but is that reflected in my results?

My cumulative profits suggest otherwise, with July being the most successful month, earning $821.05 in total over six years, or $136.84 on average. August, on the other hand, is legitimately quite bad, with $51.45 earned in total and $8.58 on average. There is only one overall losing month, December, with $76.68 lost in total and $12.78 on average.

Taking a look at the seasons instead, it is indeed summer which is the biggest earner, with $1,391.20 in total and $231.87 on average, beating fall ($1,280.44 in total, $213.41 on average), spring ($738.61 in total, $123.10 on average) and winter ($414.80 in total, $69.13 on average). Therefore, while there may be literal dry spells, there seems to be no signs of an actual "summer slump" in my overall results, at least.

Things look quite different in the fiscal quarters. Note that Q4 mostly contains fall months, which perform well overall, thereby offsetting my December losses.

Note, however, that these are profits. We already saw with my annual stats that things can look quite differently in terms of ROI. Is that also the case here? I looked into it, and I will present my findings in my next post.

ROI measures not only your profit, but also takes the amount of buy-ins into account. I may earn more profit during a certain time period, but that doesn't mean that my tournaments performed as well in terms of return on investment.

We already know that my overall buy-ins were much larger in 2020 compared to the coming months. Therefore, let's take a look at the breakdown for each month, and then directly compare ROI and raw profits.

Some noticeable discrepancies already. One thing to note is that there were three month with a rock bottom ROI of -100% (November 2023, January 2024 and June 2024), which means that all of my tournaments failed to cash entirely. These, however, were very low volume month, so the actual losses are negligible. Also note that there were two months (December 2023 and March 2024) where no MTT poker was played at all.

Once again, we see different results comparing ROI and profit in the last six years' seasons. Summer 2022, not Spring 2020, is now the best performer. Spring 2020 now only makes 5th place, also being beaten by Summer 2024, Winter 21/22 and Winter 2020 (no data for 2019).

We see a similar picture in the fiscal quarters, but note that the quarters around late 2023/early 2024 look a lot worse in terms of ROI than in profit, thanks to the very low volume during that time, which corresponds to a small amount of buy-ins.

We already talked about the annual data, but I will present it in the same way here.

But what about cumulative profits? I have crunched the data, and there aren't even that many changes in the patterns. Apart from low volume around the changing of the years, the buy-ins don't show a substantial amount of variance for each month if we add the data from all six years up.

Summer is still the best performers. In fact, the gap even slightly increases if expressed in terms of ROI instead of profit.

Similar situation with fiscal quarters. But you do see some changes. Q4 performs the best in terms of ROI, rather than Q2 in terms of profit, but the gaps between the last three quarters were never that big to begin with.

Well, I think we have had some interesting findings. I have also prepared some candlestick charts, but I think this is enough data to digest for now.

Okay, we have a couple more line and candlestick charts to present, then we are done with MTTs, at least. First of all, here is a simple line graph of my overall MTT profit since the beginning of 2020, with each point representing a day.

Nice trend overall, obviously. Since volume has varied wildly over the six year period, there are naturally some stretches without much development in some of the low-volume time frames.

I also have a weekly candlestick graph, which looks hardly distinguishable from the one above due to the large amount of time being covered.

The monthly graph may be a little more interesting.

For a grander scale, I have also prepared charts for seasons and fiscal quarters... or "quartals", as they are incorrectly called here - I can fix it in next year's version.

Finally, there is also a chart for our annual profit.

Not much to say about it, since the overall trend is consistently positive, and the background behind the different playing volumes and profits during certain periods has been discussed in more detail before.

There won't be a lot to say about my Badugi graphs either, because this game makes up such a large portion of the overall MTT grind, therefore the progress looks mostly similar.

Other games may show some different patterns, so we will take a look at them next.

Other Games

Five Card Draw had a more than promising run early on for a short time, making it look like a very worthy supplement to Badugi, but fizzled out just as quickly and got dropped soon, with short-lived attempts to re-introduce it several times. The line graph demonstrates it quite clearly, and the grander scale candlestick charts elaborate further on it, showing that the best attempt at a revival happened in summer 2024, with much of its progress being undone in the following season.

8-Game wasn't quite as short-lived, but suffered a similar fate, after early successes, later failures, and eventual revival attempts that didn't last. Check out the annual graph - 2022 was quite a battle.

For an example of a game that was played more recently, we have Courchevel. The candlestick charts especially show how quickly it was picked up and given up again time after time. It is hard to even read an overall trend into it. Because the progress has been so erratic, I have also included the weekly graph this time.

Finally, there is Stud Hi-Lo, which saw some more attempts in the last two years. You can see how quickly the progress came undone every time, which always posed a challenge. Again, I have included the weekly graph.

Woah, hold on derr partner, you ain't no mixed games player! You a filthy Badugi pro ain't ya?

I can't believe it! I thought we was boyz. I even showed you my kitty! And all this time you mained a game?!

Those are really steady numbers Harrier!
Well done!

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Those are really steady numbers Harrier!
Well done!

In Badugi, at least. The charts for some of the other games can make it look as if it's more of a market for day trading.

But thanks.

Originally posted by nsavov
Woah, hold on derr partner, you ain't no mixed games player! You a filthy Badugi pro ain't ya?

I can't believe it! I thought we was boyz. I even showed you my kitty! And all this time you mained a game?!

Badugi has pretty much always been the "main game" to a degree - at least if by "always", we mean ever since I started picking up Badugi more or less by accident some time in spring 2016, after having previously officially given up on poker and then deciding to mess around in some exotic games for fun, and unexpectedly discovering some strategies that appeared to work.

Shown below is my current Sharkscope graph, with the earliest registered tournament in 2016 being highlighted. I must have started playing mostly Badugi a few games after that point. Before that, it was mostly Hold'em.

The question of what else to play has been with me to some degree ever since then, because I always thought that only one Badugi tournament per day was a little sparse.

While I'm not a pro in any way, I definitely do play for profit, none of the games would be interesting enough for me to be enjoyed for their own sake while breaking even or worse, let alone playing for play money or something. I therefore have high standards for my games and often use Badugi as a benchmark, which is one of the reasons why the other games end up being cut so quickly when they fail to deliver.

The most dedicated non-Badugi "mixed games" grind happened in 2020, which is why the amount of buy-ins has been that much higher during that time. In recent years, I was glad when I even got a decent Badugi grind going at all, so the side games question was less of an issue. Maybe it will come up again this year, but I'm not sure which games could be a good choice. Most of the draw games seem too variance-heavy, and 8-Game doesn't have the best schedule for me.

We will see, but first I have to get back to the tables at all.

Another little CG-stack for the Cash Queen!

Baby Peach cannot only driver her Bobby Car to victory in Mario Kart, she can play PLO8, too - and play her way to a nice little winning. 2nd place in the 0,22 $ PLO8 (15 $ Gtd.) which gives us another little CG-stack (2,65 $)!! Our Cash Queen Pom Pom is happy! Meanwhile Bowser jr. faced a couple of frustrationg moments in NL Holdem: Qualified for the Phase II freeroll satty for the Big Quarter, worked his way up from a 3 BB stack to 23 BB, but then.....card-dead! When finally ATs came, we lost against A8o, who got some random str8.

Too bad, the prizes are not really attractive anymore in the "Free to play"-freerolls, we played one anyway and Junior got us a 0,11 $ ticket. Well, not exactly what we wanted but played that 0,11 $ satty anyway, where we busted by loosing a flip. Just let´s wait until the "Free to play" offers attractive tournament tickets again. Until then, we can afford to play some regular MTTs, we got the BR now, even though I´m not a huge fan of MTTs and not a big MTT player. :f_biggrin::f_ugly:

Okay, I´m not an "MTT-tiger" like Harrier, but I got this little graph, This one here is ONLY from the Koopa-freeroll-challenge (completed!) and the Koopa MTT rumble:

This is my "old" graph, altogether:

I do not grind MTTs, it´s just to grab myself (and Cash Queen Pom Pom) some CG-stacks for my main grind! :f_biggrin::f_ugly:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
Okay, I´m not an "MTT-tiger" like Harrier, but I got this little graph, This one here is ONLY from the Koopa-freeroll-challenge (completed!) and the Koopa MTT rumble

Not bad at all, Prim. Looks like there's something that can bring out the "MTT-tiger" in you as well.

My serve is GREAT without that sugar bomb! So:

I normally have overnight oats for breakfast with curd (=like greek yoghurt) and own-grown (canned) fruit.... just for the case anymore cares :sifflote:... but I think this is the wrong thread

Originally posted by Primrose6789
My serve is GREAT without that sugar bomb!

Well, at least they are part of - or adjacent to - a complete breakfast.

We have dealt with some cold, hard stats, and there are still some formats that we need to cover, but until then, there are more pleasant things to talk about.

Despite the generous length of my winter vacation, I previously thought that I didn't get a lot out of it, but this changed when Primrose came to visit on Friday. We made sure to do a "classic" meetup with as much unscheduled time as possible, though we did do a quick swimming trip to take advantage of the more convenient opening hours of my local indoor pool during the school holidays. Originally, we considered having lunch in a nearby town and then walking back home through the forest if there was still plenty of snow around. In the end, we only had a bit of snow left, it was a little sludgy by that point, so our swimming trip was some kind of middle ground to still get some winter fun in.

We had a wonderful time, one day of meeting up with Primrose is truly worth an entire month of vacationing at home alone. But not only that, Prim even gave me a belated Christmas present.

This is Rouge the Bat from the Sonic series - I don't even know what specific games she is from, but she makes some cameo appearances in some of the spin-off games we like to play. The plushie is really well done, very detailed and high quality. I also heard it wasn't exactly cheap, especially because Prim had to import it from overseas, which is also why we had to wait until after Christmas.

Here's the whole gang. I don't typically have them on display, like Prim does with her extensive collection, which is growing larger every year, but we have now amassed a pretty fair amount too.

Yeah, sorry for the delay, Harrier, but you know how divas are The diva took her time to traval from the USA to Germany. She had to fix her make up and do her hair .... which always takes time. :f_wink::f_biggrin:

Back to the Grind

Not the poker grind yet, unfortunately, though I'm itching to get back to the tables soon. I mean the grind in my regular warehouse job, which I'm obviously less excited about.

Considering how generously long my big winter vacation was, it was a bit of a letdown, I haven't managed to relax as much as I had hoped, and I didn't even get as much clerical and domestic work done as I had planned. Nevertheless, it was a much needed break, and last Friday's meetup with Primrose was a real highlight. It also taught me that true regeneration is more than just spending a few days away from work, it's also a lot about your mindset. Moreover, it's quality over quantity. A valuable lesson to take into the new year, perhaps.

I made my last vacation day count, though, because I took a trip to a thermal bath facility in the nearby spa town of Bad Nauheim, famous for its salt springs. This was actually a Christmas gift for my mother, but I gladly accompanied her to check out that spa for myself, strongly suspecting that this is something Primrose and I would like to visit some time too.

It was very nice, they had several (usually heated) pools with different features, including two outdoor pools, one at a moderate temperature for normal swimming, and another heated outdoor pool for relaxation, which was a great experience in this cold weather in particular. I also remember two small adjacent indoor pools, one extremely hot and one extremely cold, to get the circulation going. There was also an "intensive" brine (that's what this salty water is called?) pool where the salt content was almost high enough to float. This one also seemed to have music playing underwater, you would have to submerge your ears to hear it.

But instead of describing it all, I could just show you this promotional video I found on YouTube, which gives you a nice tour of all the features - and also some very unnatural sounding dialogue.

I definitely intend to visit this town at least once with Primrose this year, so I assume that this is a nice little tour for my co-host too, to see if this is something she would like to do. Knowing her, I have a strong feeling that she would be on board with this facility - but there are other ones available too, maybe we will try a few of them.

Coming up this Saturday ....

...another kind of grind! It´s competition time!! And Villainesses are going to be a big surprise box again! There COULD be beatable ones, but there COULD also be some really though ones. We don´t know. Hard to say who will show up. But there will be no Koopa MTT rumble this Saturday, but Trollette Open! Tennis rakquet and tennis ball instead of cards and chips.

I will compete in women´s singles and women´s doubles 50 plus.

Playing the night away ....

Well, almost! It got late! The matches were hard! In women´s singles, I managed to snatch a clear win: 6:0, 6:1, yeah, looks easy, doesn´t it? But in fact: It wasn´t! I had to fight hard for every single point and it took me about 1,5 hours to get there. But why only one hard match, if you can have TWO? After the women´s singles came the women´s doubles - and my favorite Trollette was there!! Yaaaaay! Finally! I was already missing her and there she was! My favorite Villainesse! She´s good and was playing with my Villainesse from my single´s! And they were good! Really good! What an exciting match!!! And so close!!! Eventually fellow-Trollette and I made it! It was close to midnight and after 2,5 hours of hard play we could take a close win: 7:5, 6:4! What a match, what a party! We were the last ones to finish! But we somehow made it!

What a great Trollette-night!!

The board cards are closed! what is this game?

Oh ... sorry I was still replying about the ai donkey image, I thought those where the lasts posts