Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

Some good news to report tonight: Badugi went well, and I finished 3rd for $44.39 including bounties. Could have done better, but I'm pleased with the result for sure.

The bad news is that tonight's OFC/P session went even worse than the last one I posted about, with me finishing ₮3.40 down. I've had some good sessions in between, recouping all my previous losses and then some, but after tonight, we're back to break-even again. Very demoralizing, and probably lethal to any future prospects of this game getting a good place in the grind. It doesn't seem like I have any decisive edge over there at all, at least on that site.

I will keep playing there for a while, if nothing else because it is a new room with a brand new bankroll to build up, but I predict that I'll be exclusively back to "conventional" poker within a month or two.

This happened shortly after regging today, early in the tournament. Normally, high Badugis are very vulnerable with their bad reverse implied odds, but my opponent's behavior in early hands suggested that he was very loose aggressive, so I decided to put him all-in after he was drawing two.

As it turned out, he didn't improve at all, not even to a 3-card hand, which means that my decision was correct - you are in very good shape with a pat Badugi there. If he goes on to hit like that, though...

Despite that, he only lasted a couple of hands more. I managed to get a bit closer to breaking even after rebuying by securing a 2nd tier cash with three minimal bounties, which I suppose is a decent result after such a start.

OFC/P continued to go poorly enough to make me consider dropping it, but I made an observation: I seem to do a lot better in heads-up situations there compared to full 3-player tables. I'm not quite sure why that might be... I already explained the "all or nothing" character that many hands in this game have, and their possible snowball effect, for better or for worse, thanks to the "Fantasyland" bonus. Both of this is significantly amplified with an extra player, so maybe it's just a case of variance increasing and me being unfortunate enough to be on the losing side of it so far.

Whatever it is, I figured that it might be a good idea to mostly stick to heads-up games. Whether I'm truly doing better at them or not, at least it is much easier to stay in control in them compared to 3-player games.

Thing is, on that Tether site where I'm now usually playing, there are no dedicated heads-up tables for OFC/P, and tables tend to fill up relatively quickly once one of them is going, at least at those limits. I could leave as soon as a third player joins, but I don't know... it seems a little rude. Besides, I wouldn't be able to play all that much, since the tables usually fill up so quickly, as I explained.

That bitcoin site does offer some heads-up tables, though - but not at the lowest limit. This means that I would have to join the next highest one, where each point corresponds to 1 µBTC, which means that I could potentially win or lose 100 µBTC in one round. With my current bankroll of around 560 µBTC... it's quite risky. Still, I feel somewhat confident playing heads-up, so I thought I could try it, and maybe pull the rip cord after losing 200 µBTC, which would still leave me with a suitable bankroll for the smallest limit.

I managed to get two games going, and they both turned out the same way: Great winnings in the beginning, then similar losses later on, but with me still finishing with a slight profit both times. I total, I gained about 20 µBTC, already providing a tiny cushion. By quitting earlier, I could have had some very nice winnings, but that's not how poker works - we're not playing roulette where we can be lucky to win every once in a while and should quite while we are ahead, we are grinding and should only quit when we feel like we can't perform well enough to have a positive expectation anymore.

I think I will continue with that focus on heads-up games, despite the high risk of ruin on the bitcoin site.

Originally posted by Harrier88
That bitcoin site does offer some heads-up tables, though - but not at the lowest limit. This means that I would have to join the next highest one, where each point corresponds to 1 µBTC, which means that I could potentially win or lose 100 µBTC in one round. With my current bankroll of around 560 µBTC... it's quite risky. Still, I feel somewhat confident playing heads-up, so I thought I could try it, and maybe pull the rip cord after losing 200 µBTC, which would still leave me with a suitable bankroll for the smallest limit.

Bad idea, I had record losses tonight. Not quite the 200 µBTC which I mentioned as my absolute limit, but maybe around 170. That's about 30% of my bankroll gone up in smoke.

When it comes to points, I'm actually still ahead for this year, but not when it comes to money, thanks to my incompetent bankroll management. Time for a shameful retreat to the lowest stakes. It's true that they don't feature any heads-up tables, but with traffic being this bad over there, it shouldn't make much of a difference.

I did have a decent day at the Tether website - where I also tried some higher stakes, figuring that heads-up ₮0.05 games may bear about as much risk as 3-handed ₮0.02 games. At least today, it went somewhat well.

Badugi and 5CD on Stars were not successful either. It once again confirms what I have already suspected last year, that Saturday evenings are simply not a good time for my grind, for whatever reason that may be. Apart from fun stuff like some tournament for a Troll Challenge with Primrose, I should really take a poker break on those days. I'm sure that my bankroll will thank me.

Okay, a couple of takeaways here...

1. I'm taking the game waaaaaay too personal! FFS, it's a card game... Sure, we're gambling money, it needs to be taken a bit seriously to a degree, but dang... this subconscious "poker is war" attitude I seem to have won't help my mental game when I'm picking up a relatively new format, at least not in the middle of a session. I guess it's a good attitude to have when you're studying strategy, but it won't help to get all dramatic while you're playing, as much as we all hate to lose.

2. I should remind myself that the key point in picking OFC back up this year was to collect some stats about my results to see how I might be doing over some time. The point wasn't to be a crusher right away or to find the hottest new game for my grind from the get go. I should really give it some time. I should properly review my performance on both sites (that's another point of all this, I want to compare my results against both player pools) at the end of the month, and then probably play through February too. By then, I should have a pretty decent idea how it stacks up to other games like Five Card Draw, and then I can move on and go for more efficient formats.

3. It's true that my results so far have been modest at best, but first of all, is that a surprise? I needed some time to find my sea legs in Badugi too, for example. Secondly, I need to take all the factors into account. On the bitcoin site, for example, I am now officially in the red, but if we look at my profit when it comes to points alone (think of them as big blinds, if you're not familiar with OFC scoring), I am still at a somewhat respectable overall profit of 238 overall, 13 per session and 34 per day - and all of this takes rake into account, so the actual numbers would be higher. The overall loss occurred because my worst session just happened to be at quadruple my usual stakes, and as foolish as that was, I was doing okay there before too.

Besides, do I really want to give up on that game when there are opponents like the one with the trip Jacks on top here? (Name removed)

Triple trips are always a welcome sight when you make it to Fantasyland. Being able to put trips on top not only gives you a virtually unbeatable hand on that line that is sure to earn you some nice royalties, but it also allows you to repeat Fantasyland in the next hand. It can be tempting to place all those trips right away, ideally in combination with a full house or two, but as I read in my OFC articles that I went through again the other day, you need to take your time to find the best moves. Take a look at the hand above, what else can we do with it besides triple trips?

We received no pairs along with them, so full houses are unfortunately not possible. We do have 6 diamonds, so we could make a flush and should still have two trips left, meaning that we could use one for the top line. But take another look, all three of our trips include a diamond, so we couldn't make a flush without breaking two of them, since we only have six diamond cards.

The solution I went for, which should be the optimal one, was to break one of the trips to make a straight instead, which still allowed me to use the two remaining cards as the pair for a full house with one of the remaining trips. Best of all, it allowed me to put the strongest trips on top: Trip aces, the absolutely best hand you could possibly have there. As you can see, it earned some fat royalties. The 22 points you get for trip aces on top are almost as much as the 25 points you'd get for a Royal Flush at the bottom.

In this situation, it was probably easy to spot, with the cards for the straight being right there next to each other, but in some situations, especially those where you may want to break quads to make room for good trips on top, it requires some more care.

Overall, while there have been some successes, I'm still pretty annoyed with the 3-handed games on that site. Whether I'm just on the losing end of the significantly increased luck-factor there or genuinely bad at them compared to heads-up, I just don't like them, and they tilt me. Problem is, a third player tends to show up pretty quickly when you're playing heads-up, so my only choice is to keep jumping tables if I want to avoid 3-handed games - which then makes me look as if I was bumhunting or something.

The worst thing happened this evening when I joined a single player on the next highest stakes, intending to leave as soon as a third one shows up - and then the third player just snuck in at the last second right after I confirmed my participation in what I thought was a heads-up game. Now I had no choice but to play it until the end, and it dragged on for quite a while, which is another thing I dislike about playing 3-handed. Losses weren't too bad, at least for those stakes, but it was still annoying.

Five Card Draw isn't going very well right now, I guess I haven't yet really put my mind back into this game. At least Badugi final tabled tonight, for a 6th place finish for $20.27 including bounties.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Take a look at the hand above, what else can we do with it besides triple trips?

Do both 5-card hands score the same?
If not, wouldn't it be better to put the full house above the straight?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Do both 5-card hands score the same?
If not, wouldn't it be better to put the full house above the straight?

No, this is one important rule about Chinese Poker (Open Face or otherwise), the bottom hand must beat the middle hand and the middle hand must beat the top hand.

This is also where most of the risk in the game itself comes from. You want to make good hands, of course, but you're running the risk of not getting the cards you need in the end, leaving you with an invalid hand that automatically loses if you fail to make a bottom hand that beats the middle one and so on. This is also one of the big advantages of Fantasyland, where you receive all cards at once.

Your middle hands do score double the amount of the same hand in the bottom position, precisely because it is harder to make them there due to the requirement of needing to have a better hand below it.

Stats Time

I wanted to wait until the end of the month until I posted some stats, but the results have been so bad lately that I'm seriously considering dropping those games right away. Let's take a look at what we have so far.

On the Tether site, we have now played 42 sessions (which can be anything from a couple of minutes to several hours) over 11 days, and after some nasty games today, we are in the red. As of now, we are down 16.5 points (again, think of them as big blinds) and ₮1.95.

I haven't jumped stakes all that often, so my graph for points earned looks very similar.

On the bitcoin website, things went a little differently. Excluding the 2-7 games, which were consistently losing, we are down the equivalent of $0.84 now over 23 sessions on 9 days, which is close to break-even - but we are still in profit when it comes to points, at around 218.70. This would mean an average profit of 9.51 points per session and 24.30 points per day.

This time, the graph for points earned looks very differently.

The sample is very small, of course, but does it look like I have a decent edge in this tilt-inducing and variance-heavy game?

I was thinking about what kind of winrate could make these games worthwhile. Let's say we'd make around 100 points on average per week. If I were ever to play on stakes where one point would correspond to around $0.10, this would still be only around $40 to be expected every month - not a whole lot. On the bitcoin site, I would be on track for such a winrate, but I'm quite a bit away from that on the Tether site, which sports much better traffic. Also, I would have to grind quite a bit in order to make it to such stakes to begin with on both sites.

With both this winrate and these stakes being a considerable distance away from me, it really makes me doubt if I should even bother. Maybe if I could double that winrate, or at least increase it by 50%, and make it to even higher stakes, then the games could really be worthwhile. But it is very doubtful if I could ever achieve this.

Seems to be that there are better options for the grind, but what do you guys think so far?

Actually, nevermind, I've made my decision: I'm so done with this game!

I played tonight again after my Badugi tournament (9th place for exactly $21 including bounties), and it went like it usually does: I play heads-up for a while and it goes well, I'm hundreds of points up, then a third player joins, and decide that I may as well stick around, since it's going pretty well so far. Then it goes like shit, I commit to good live draws only to watch my outs go to all of my opponents instead, while they make the craziest one-outers and backdoors. Some losses in the first few rounds, and I always stick around for "just one more", reasoning that I'll surely have more luck this time. Maybe I even had a decent hand near the end and got encouraged by it. And eventually, I hit one of those rounds were nothing works out and I end up losing significantly more than I won playing heads-up before, when it was going so well. Tonight, I'm not ashamed to admit that I rage quit my table before the game was even over.

If I were to track my statistics for heads-up and 3-handed games separately, I'm sure that it would turn out that I was doing all right at heads-up, considering that I was still almost breaking even overall, after blowing so many hundreds of points in those 3-handed games. But aside from the fact that heads-up games are usually joined by a third player fairly quickly, this alone already suggests that this format is not really the best choice for me, if I have to narrow it down that much.

This is simply over, there's no getting around it. I was a fool to think OFC/P could be a good addition to the grind. Even though I didn't have to pay for this failed experiment out of my own pocket, considering that I bankrolled it through freeroll winnings alone, of which there are still plenty left, it's kinda hard for me not to take it as a personal loss, if nothing else because I put so much energy into it and attached so much hope to those brand new games. I probably got a little too invested in poker in general recently. I should get that back in check, and also put my efforts into other formats when it comes to poker.

OFC won't be completely gone, I will probably stick around for a few casual games every now and then, but it will only be on the level of mahjong, for example - even that one would be a better choice for the grind, and I already discovered how slim my edge tends to be in there. And no more 3-handed games, at least on that Tether site, under any circumstances!

Originally posted by Harrier88
Actually, nevermind, I've made my decision: I'm so done with this game!

That is OFC — right?
Perhaps just play it heads-up?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
That is OFC — right?
Perhaps just play it heads-up?

Yes, I was talking about OFC, not poker in general. Badugi has been going well this year so far, for example.

As I mentioned before, playing OFC exclusively heads-up is a bit tricky, at least on the Tether crypto site, because they don't have any dedicated heads-up tables for it, and their regular tables tend to fill up pretty soon with a third player. Restricting myself to playing heads-up only there would require a lot of table jumping.

I will stick around to some degree, but I have no ambitions of properly grinding it anymore, it should be a better idea to focus on other formats to expand into. I will still play casual OFC games from time to time.

Originally posted by Harrier88
Actually, nevermind, I've made my decision: I'm so done with this game!
!

That's a pity. I find it a fascinating game and I would love to play it. However, OFC was a favorite pastime of high stakes tournament players for about twelve months about seven years ago. That ended fairly quickly when they realised they couldn't gain an edge. I wouldn't be surprised if OFC has a bigger game tree than other FL poker games.

I still have some coins on sWc that I have been planning to use on OFC and probably still will as their real money MTTs are crap.

Originally posted by Lazza61
That's a pity. I find it a fascinating game and I would love to play it.

I will still play it every now and then, it seems like a decent choice for the late hours, when my standard MTTs are over and not much else is running. It just won't have a solid place in my grind anymore. I personally like to focus on a few games with high returns rather than grind large volumes with a marginal edge, and it seems clear to me now that OFC offers no significant edge to me, if any - not to mention that traffic is bad, so large volumes wouldn't be an argument for me either even if I did care for it.

Feel free to join me for a couple of games on SwC, I will probably focus on that site more now when it comes to OFC. I believe their MTT offerings are good in theory, since they offer some very interesting formats that are not found anywhere else (11-game and Badeucy, for example). The simple problem about it is that basically no one is playing them. And also that most buy-ins are pretty high.

With my good friend Prim visiting today, I tried making some new mixed drinks that I wasn't yet familiar with. For the grindette herself, I planned to make one called "Sex with an Alligator".

This one involves some layering, which can be achieved by carefully pouring one of your ingredients on top of an inverted bar spoon that is held above your glass.

First of all, you need to simply mix 15 ml of Midori melon liquor with 15 ml of sweet and sour mix (1/2 part simple syrup, 1/2 part lemon and lime juice). I shaked it with ice, as usual.

Then, you would add 15 ml of raspberry liquor via the bar spoon method - which is then supposed to sink down to the bottom for a chromatic effect like the one with the grenadine in a Tequila Sunrise. Mine didn't. Some recipes call for Chambord, with which I assume it would work, but I was using a different kind. Oh well...

And finally, you would float another 15 ml of Jägermeister on top. I was using an off-brand one again, but it worked as intended.

So normally, you would get a nice looking effect of red at the bottom, yellowish green in the middle, and brown on top. This one didn't have the intended order, which made it look less spectacular, but it was still fine, and the grindette enjoyed it.

To the left of it in the photo is a similar drink which I had myself. This one is called a "Masturbating Butterfly", which consists of 20 ml each of Midori, sweet and sour mix, lemon-lime soda and vodka, with another 20 ml of Jäger floated on top again. And no, I'm not the one who comes up with those names...

Both drinks were very sweet, not necessarily my thing, but I should keep them in mind, especially for the summer time.

Badugi isn't going too well recently, with no cashes or bounties to report from the last three games. Luckily, 5CD has picked up the slack a bit, with an upswing in the SNGs. Those will probably be my main side game now that OFC is largely out of the picture. Other games I intend to try out are FL Badugi cash and Stud8, probably in SNG form, just to develop an understanding of it. This is the game that will require the most studying for me.

Originally posted by Harrier88
With my good friend Prim visiting today, I tried making some new mixed drinks that I wasn't yet familiar with. For the grindette herself, I planned to make one called "Sex with an Alligator".

This one involves some layering, which can be achieved by carefully pouring one of your ingredients on top of an inverted bar spoon that is held above your glass.

First of all, you need to simply mix 15 ml of Midori melon liquor with 15 ml of sweet and sour mix (1/2 part simple syrup, 1/2 part lemon and lime juice). I shaked it with ice, as usual.

Then, you would add 15 ml of raspberry liquor via the bar spoon method - which is then supposed to sink down to the bottom for a chromatic effect like the one with the grenadine in a Tequila Sunrise. Mine didn't. Some recipes call for Chambord, with which I assume it would work, but I was using a different kind. Oh well...

And finally, you would float another 15 ml of Jägermeister on top. I was using an off-brand one again, but it worked as intended.

So normally, you would get a nice looking effect of red at the bottom, yellowish green in the middle, and brown on top. This one didn't have the intended order, which made it look less spectacular, but it was still fine, and the grindette enjoyed it.

To the left of it in the photo is a similar drink which I had myself. This one is called a "Masturbating Butterfly", which consists of 20 ml each of Midori, sweet and sour mix, lemon-lime soda and vodka, with another 20 ml of Jäger floated on top again. And no, I'm not the one who comes up with those names...

Both drinks were very sweet, not necessarily my thing, but I should keep them in mind, especially for the summer time.

Howdy y'all,

Reminds me on trying the irish flag when working in the Irish Pub in Koblenz, but I'd prefer the Irish Car Bomb.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/irish-flag-shooter-recipe-759704
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Car_Bomb

Originally posted by wickus
Reminds me on trying the irish flag when working in the Irish Pub in Koblenz, but I'd prefer the Irish Car Bomb.
https://www.thespruceeats.com/irish-flag-shooter-recipe-759704
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Car_Bomb/blockquote >
Looks nice, and I have all the required drinks at home, so I may try them some time.

In the past, though, I've had some trouble getting the Grand Marnier to float on top of the Irish cream liquor, for some reason. This was the closest I got when I tried making a B-52 about three years ago:

A variation of it, called the B-55, which substitutes absinthe for the Grand Marnier, worked much better:

Maybe I could try that one again too, now that I'm a little more experienced.

I also once made a red white and blue shot with a similar idea for 4th of July.

try it with chilled Bailey's and room temp Grand Marnier
Me? I just drink the stuff

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
try it with chilled Bailey's and room temp Grand Marnier

That could be the problem, I neglected to chill my Bailey's back then. The bottle I currently have has been stored in the fridge ever since I purchased it, like it's supposed to.

I guess I know what I'll have tonight...

Very tough day... had an unlucky early exit in Badugi, and my second bullet was off to a bad start too, as I got drawn out despite a solid hand in a 3-way pot later. I was still in, and even made a pretty nice recovery, but couldn't get anything more than a $1 bounty out of it. Five Card Draw bricked too, even though I built a good stack early on. A short attempt at FL Badugi cash didn't go too well either. And some heads-up OFC resulted in a new overall record low in there as well.

It was bad luck for the most part, especially in Badugi. Even in the cash game, most of my table died before I got a chance to get into the game, so I had to play 4-handed for the most time, which is tough without the right cards. 5CD could have gone better, though, I made some bad calls, I believe.

Also, even after following Vorpal's advice, my B-52s still look like this:

I suppose the one on the right looks somewhat decent, but I still can't get it to look like in the pictures I typically find of it:

I can't even blame it on the wrong brand - I do use Grand Marnier and Bailey's, though I use Giffard instead of the usually recommended Kahlúa for the coffee liquor, but that one stays where it's supposed to be.

I don't think I'm pouring the booze in too quickly either. Really not sure what I'm doing wrong.