Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

I think it's cool (or should I say frosty?) that you got 3 unique items included.

Best wishes for a very Merry Christmas,
VS

Hope you guys had a great Christmas. Can't complain about mine.

There will be a short session tonight. After that, I will take it slow for the time being, do some reading, and hopefully be ready to crush within the first one or two weeks of 2021.

I will also have some spreadsheets to get ready for the new year, maybe I can use this opportunity to update my poker statistics for this year and present them here.

In the meantime, I will leave you with the classic (and Prim-approved) Christmas cocktail that I came up with last year, called Knecht Ruprecht or Santa's Little Helper, which was served on Christmas Eve again.

30 ml of triple sec
30 ml of Frangelico
30 ml of amaretto

Shake and strain into a martini glass.

I cant wait to see the cocktail recipe's Good luck!

Any plans for New Year's Eve?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Any plans for New Year's Eve?

Not really, it's not like there's a lot to do anyway, with the curfew and all. There aren't even any fireworks to be sold this year...

I usually prefer to take it slow on New Year's Eve in any case. The fireworks thing still sucks.

What's up guys? First of all, best wishes for a peaceful, prosperous... ah, whatever, this year is going to suck too.

As before, there has been very little poker, but at least I made the one Badugi tournament I played this Saturday count and finished 5th, though without any bounties.

It's funny how just like last year, I planned to take a big break from everything over the holidays, and just like last year, I found so much stuff to do instead that I ended up stressing myself out even more than usual. Last year, it was the purchase of this new laptop that needed some time and effort to be set up just the way I wanted it. This year, it's that flash preservation project I mentioned, which does feel a lot like a real job, especially when my perfectionism kicks in or when I push myself to add that many more things before calling it a day.

However, I also worked on preparing my poker spreadsheet for the new year tonight, and it's going to be huge. I found a way to dramatically simplify the copy-pasting of formulas using the "Find & Replace" function, which saves a ton of time and allows me to work on many more features. I plan to finish it over the next few days to get ready for the grind again, but for now, I just updated the final statistics for 2020.

Let's start with the new overall profit graph, which should now include every game that I've been grinding for a non-negligible amount of time (at least a week, or so).

Please excuse the weird formatting, I can deal with it later when the new spreadsheet is properly set up with all intended features.

Horizontal lines usually mean that the game just hasn't been played at all during this period.

Badugi was nice and steady for the most part, but had some long bad stretches too. Five Card Draw had an outstanding run early on, but peaked early and then started freefalling until I pulled the plug. 2-7 Triple Draw went well overall, but was super swingy. The 8-Game graph might be dwarfed by the others due to the low buy-ins and prize pools, but it has been on a relatively steady rise overall. Courchevel had a nice recovery after being picked up again in November, but quickly plateaued. HORSE was pretty crap. Stud had a promising start which quickly turned to dust again.

There are some additional graphs for the overall progress in 2020 (all games combined).

Strong progress in Spring when everything was locked down due to the pandemic, possibly resulting in many quarantine gamblers, especially in the draw games that ran so hot at this time. Big slump in the summer when I had to miss many sessions due to work, and wasn't too focused on the ones I could play either. Things were starting to pick up again in Fall, until December, when I increasingly shied away from the tables again.

More stats in the spoiler.

That is most impressive.
Especially the graphs.

I love graphs...

Spreadsheet bonanza

It took a long time, but the 2021 poker spreadsheet is finally done.

The final version weighs 864 KB and comes with 39 worksheets, though two of them are only placeholders. It supports 16 different game types, including some I don't have any plans on playing any time soon or which aren't even running at the moment. It even supports some truly strange stuff like No Limit Hold'em. Each of those are set up to yield all relevant statistics and data for line graphs as well as monthly and weekly bar and candlestick charts without requiring any manual input besides the returns and buy-in from each tournament. Contrast that to my old 2020 spreadsheet, which only had automated statistics and accessible graphs for up to three games, everything else had to be put in manually (though the calculations were still automatic, of course).

I have also included the stats from last year so I could gauge not only how well I'm doing in 2021, but also how things are going overall ever since I started keeping track. The spreadsheet should also be reasonably "future-proof", requiring only one cell to be changed to adjust the dates on all 39 sheets in coming years. Leap years will still require some work, and some cells for the weekly statistics will also have to be adjusted by hand every year. I'm sure it would have been technically possible to somehow automate that too, but it would have been very complicated and most likely more trouble than it's worth.

In addition to that, I updated my alcohol intake spreadsheet which should come in really handy to manage my consumption in a year that might be very difficult to swallow while sober. I also prepared a new mahjong spreadsheet which now includes a few extra features like a calculation for daily profit and a calendar like in my poker spreadsheet, making it easier to see how well mahjong is going compared to poker.

With all of the clerical work out of the way, I'm now all set to hit the tables whenever I see fit.

Originally posted by Harrier88
The final version weighs 864 KB and comes with 39 worksheets, though two of them are only placeholders. It supports 16 different game types, including some I don't have any plans on playing any time soon or which aren't even running at the moment. It even supports some truly strange stuff like No Limit Hold'em. Each of those are set up to yield all relevant statistics and data for line graphs as well as monthly and weekly bar and candlestick charts without requiring any manual input besides the returns and buy-in from each tournament. Contrast that to my old 2020 spreadsheet, which only had automated statistics and accessible graphs for up to three games, everything else had to be put in manually (though the calculations were still automatic, of course).

I've heard of that.
It'll never catch on though -- it is an obscure variant played mainly in Texas.

Nice graphs there, I'm glad to see your foing wel✌

Originally posted by Primrose6789

Is that a lab? How cute! My beagle and lab have always been my lucky charm in poker. I love them so much!

I just couldn't help myself, could I? I've been working on spreadsheets for most of the day yet again, this time focusing on my aforementioned alcohol spreadsheet. Originally, I just wanted to fix one calculation that I forgot to update yesterday, but then "feature creep" set in yet again...

It's all done now, though, with additional data for line and column charts about my intake over time, as well as the weekly and monthly amounts of pints and shots consumed. I also included some pie charts to gauge how much of my overall alcohol intake, measured in units of pure alcohol, stems from beer and how much from liquor.

They say "drink responsibly", but acting like a statistics geek while you're at it is an extra option.

Now I should really be done with this, though I still have plans for a spreadsheet that helps me oversee my groceries and what expires when. But this will have to wait until next week.

Maybe I will eventually start a spreadsheet to keep track of the amount of time I spend working on spreadsheets.

But sure enough, having drinks is a lot more enjoyable than doing accounting on them, and it has been ages since I posted a mixed drinks recipe here.

It may not be cocktail season right now - not that that ever stopped me - but I do have some old pictures left from last year which I didn't get around to posting yet. One of them is called a San Francisco, and while it is officially Prim-approved by now, I originally started making it last year because it happened to be an old favorite of my mother, who liked to order this drink at a bar on the Greek island of Kos when she spent a vacation there with my (now deceased) father, a few years before I was born, I believe. They would both visit this one bar pretty much every evening, and my mother would order this drink every time because she liked it so much.

Now, until I looked up that recipe, she thought that this cocktail may have been a house special of sorts and that it's maybe not even really known anywhere else. It didn't help that I found a few different versions with the same name too, including this one, but another one that matched her description better could be found here. And indeed, she confirmed after I made it that it tasted exactly like she remembered.

Here it is:

You need 25 ml each of vodka, grenadine and banana liqour. Put it all in a highball or Collins glass (about 300 ml) filled with ice and top it up with orange juice. Give it a good stir and feel free to garnish it with an orange slice and maybe a cocktail cherry. As usual, I didn't bother.

I tried a little sip and decided that it's not necessarily for me, but if you like sweet and fruity stuff, you can't really go wrong with this one. Even in the midst of winter, you'll be able to get a little taste of summer with it, even if it doesn't come attached with pleasant memories of past holidays for you.

Now that we've had our mixed drinks, when will the poker continue?

The answer is: Tomorrow. There should be a normal sized session with an additional Hold'em freeroll for certain trolls. I'm not sure yet what games will be included exactly, but at least Badugi and 8-Game should be there.

As for today, I already got my feet wet in some mahjong games, which will continue to be a side project to the mixed poker games. I'm actually excited to see how they compare to each other, now that I got some additional statistics for each.

My first game was pretty embarrassing, to be honest, it was easy to see that I hadn't done this in a while and I made some bad mistakes, resulting in a $2.29 loss. However, I managed to get myself together a bit in the next few games and also started running a little better, and after six games, I was up $3.65, which is a decent result for my first day of playing after a long break.

I'm playing the $2/$4 games, meaning that you buy in for a $2 stack and an extra $2 will be paid by the player finishing 3rd (i.e. last) to the winner, making the maximum amount to be lost per game $4 in case you completely bust out. Note that mahjong is normally played with four players, but this is a special three-handed version.

While noting down those results, I also happened to get some ideas for additional mahjong graphs... but forget about it, I've been working on enough stuff like this for now and it's sabbath tomorrow - which is an actual custom I adopted a few months ago. It's not identical to the original Jewish version, but inspired by it, with some more lenient rules. I'll explain it some time.

Originally posted by Harrier88
I just couldn't help myself, could I? I've been working on spreadsheets for most of the day yet again, this time focusing on my aforementioned alcohol spreadsheet. Originally, I just wanted to fix one calculation that I forgot to update yesterday, but then "feature creep" set in yet again...

One way to combat feature creep is to use versioning.
When your spreadsheet(s) are working more-or-less as you want them too, then make a copy, and rename it with a version number.
Then you continue to develop on the main line.

Doing it the opposite way works too.
Give the new version the new name, and just continue using the old until the new is ready.

If you do this a lot, using version numbers like 9.10.13 allows you to adjust the third place for minor changes, the middle place for additions or removals and the first place is for complete re-writes.

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
One way to combat feature creep is to use versioning.
When your spreadsheet(s) are working more-or-less as you want them too, then make a copy, and rename it with a version number.
Then you continue to develop on the main line.

I rarely make additional copies, unless I'm either changing something that was working before, or I'm adding something that could impact the functionality of another part. In this case, I usually just add a "2" or a "b" at the end of the file name (or subsequent letters or numbers, of course - sometimes both). I've been doing similar things when I'm doing audio editing, which can get quite messy in some of the more complicated projects, which may eventually require extra folders just for the alternate/previous versions.

Usually, though, I'm only adding some extra stuff to my spreadsheet which could easily be cut if it doesn't work out the way I planned it, so there's no real need for different version numbers. And even when I'm adding/changing something that could have an impact on the other functions, I usually do it in small enough increments so I could save what is working and discard what is not.

Still doesn't change the fact that I keep thinking of new stuff to add, no matter how firmly declare that I'm "done".

At work we used GitHub for versioning.
It works, but it is massive overkill for personal projects.

So I basically had my first "real" session today, though it really wasn't any different in scope to the one last Saturday, just Badugi, 8-Game and that one Hold'em freeroll. I still found it difficult to keep my focus throughout the whole thing, but it wasn't terrible. 8-Game bricked, but a mincash (just before laddering up) plus $3 bounties in the Badugi made me finish just above break-even.

And what about that freeroll? Well, let's say there was a certain troll at my table as we were approaching ITM, someone who is also on this forum and who already has plans to personally visit me in less than a week, and I happened to go pick up KK and go all-in against this troll, who then ended up showing me AA, and I somehow managed to hit a straight on the river and bust this troll out...

Thing is, I didn't even realize it when it happens. I had some other tables open and only watched that board from the corner of my eye, thinking that the only way to win was to get a set of Kings. When I saw that there was no King on the board, I was about to congratulate my troll friend for doubling-up, when I saw that "100%" sign next to my avatar and realized what happened. No hard feelings, of course.

I finished 5th for €15 in the end, after encountering another pretty nasty bad beat on the FT myself, when I pushed my top pair of aces against an underpair of 44 on the flop, but my opponent got their two-outer on the turn. Still can't complain about the results.

However, in certain situations, it's best to just let flowers speak.

So, regarding my bad river suckout with KK in that freeroll, all I can say to my good troll friend is...

LOL, that was really funny! I was about to write you "sharing is caring" , because I was shortie when I jammed with my AA and you were the chipleader. And then the community cards came.....

Well, you owe me one, ♠_tongue:♠_cool:

Congratulation for you nice 5th place, good job and good game! ♠_thumbsup:♠_cool:

And...urm...thank you very much for the "nice flower bouquet" :f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly::f_ugly: