Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

I Saw Three Ships - Day 11

Some sub-steps again for the blue faction:

Fits nicely in the back:

We add a few more pieces there too:

And also a few pieces in the hull, as well as a map and chalice to see where we are going, and to mix some drinks along the way.

The red ship also adds some minor pieces to the hull - you might not even be able to tell which ones they are.

Some more pieces in the back too. Another small step, it looks like this faction started out quickly, but then slowed down.

Current progress:

I Saw Three Ship - Day 12

The blue faction is building a new piece for the front of the bow:

There it is:

More minor pieces in the hull:

And some more noticeable pieces in the stern. Check out those little yellow columns in the back.

Meanwhile, it looks like the red faction is building a little wall around the bow.

We also keep building on what seems to be the cabin in the back.

Looks like the red ship is longer, while the blue ship is wider. Current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 13

I hope the pics will all be working. As I pointed out in the Troll Challenges blog, my image hosting site seems to have some problems.

The blue faction is building this contraption:

It goes right in front of the bow.

More interestingly, we are adding a big mast piece, as well as other minor pieces in the bow.

There is some action in the stern too. Check out our new windows:

And look, the red faction is building a mast too:

Once again, also some new pieces in the stern.

We're getting somewhere. This is our current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 14

Poker? Still nothing, we'll talk about it some other time. But we carry on with the ships.

The red faction is building something that we may see more often with both of those boats:

It's the rigging for the sails. We attach it, and also add a platform on top.

The blue faction, meanwhile, properly attaches the weird contraption we built yesterday, and also builds a little wall around the bow.

They too add a platform to the top of the mast.

And the cabin in the back gets a nice ceiling, among other things.

Current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 15

Images powered by imgur now, hopefully they will work a little better.

The blue faction is getting the rigging ready now as well.

Check out this cool yellow bird piece that got added to the bow today. I think this one is pretty rare. I have had a quick look on eBay, and this piece alone is currently being sold for €17.99, excluding additional shipping costs. It doesn't seem to be an outrageous price either - 49 pieces have already been sold.

Another piece gets added on top of the mast, and this one is still attached to a string and some other pieces that would eventually go with it. Once again, I decided to just leave them on.

More pieces in the cabin section in the stern... which is starting to look more like a normal deck after all.

Sorry for the horribly blurry picture, I considered simply discarding it... but as you can hopefully still see, the red boat added another piece of rigging, this time in the back of the mast.

Current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 16

More new rigging for the blue faction.

This other mast piece also now gets attached to the bow. The front sail is not yet supposed to be there.

More progress in the stern.

The red faction, meanwhile, has quite a project, with many sub-steps. I'm going to skip a few of them to simplify things.

Look at this compass that got attached to the top. I think it is actually functional, though it takes a while to re-orientate itself after being shaken. Still, I'm surprised it is working at all, and not just a decoration.

This steering wheel gets attached to the side, with a few more pieces at the end. I did not know yet what they were for.

After installing the whole thing, it started to make sense. Remember when we built the rudder, with its inexplicable long bar at the top, which I thought was just supposed to limit the movement range? It turns out that those pieces work together, so you can actually make the rudder move by turning the steering wheel. Very impressive, I did not expect such a mechanic.

A few more pieces...

And we even install rope ladders on the sides of the mast already.

Current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 17

More rigging. For both ships, with slightly different design, but close enough.

This is for the blue ship, pretty high on top. Maybe it is the last one.

I like the little fence-like thing in the stern.

The red ship added a little pole where the flag will soon go, also a saber and a musket near the steering wheel, so we are ready for any unwelcome guests on that ship.

Their rigging goes all the way to the top.

Current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 18

The blue ship came with the rope piece still attached, the red ship didn't, so I have to do it myself. If only I remembered the knots from my firefighting training... well, it holds together for now.

The string is led through those little hooks at the top of the mast.

Down below, it gets weaved through this front sail.

The other end of the rope remains unattached for now. This little piece of rigging at the side is new too.

We also add this flag to the pole where we attached the string. Awesome.

The blue ship does not yet have a steering wheel, but we are about to fix that. I simplified some of the sub-steps again.

This mast piece gets attached to it as well. The string is not supposed to be added until tomorrow. Also check out the rope ladder, which is going down the middle of the ship this time, rather than at the sides.

Again, the front sail is not yet supposed to be there, but now that the rope is in its place, I decided that we can properly place the front sail too.

Not much left now. Current progress:

I Saw Three Ship - Day 19

We are almost there... and we will have a word about poker soon enough, but first, let's finish this.

The rope of the blue ship now gets fastened on both ends.

We also add two minor pieces of rigging, and two poles on top, where we will add some flags soon, I believe.

The red ship adds these lanterns in the back. Hey, who's that behind it? Those are actually the plushies I got Primrose, who was visiting, for Christmas today. She thought that they would look cute in those pictures. As you can see, we stayed young at heart.

We even add two cannons, complete with shots. The cannons do work.

Is this the sail I was supposed to attach today? It's hard to tell - the pages in the PDF of the manual that I am using are split in the middle. It's only one more step after that, though, so we will be done tomorrow either way.

Current progress:

I Saw Three Ships - Day 20

This is supposed to be the final day, but I missed the daylight hours with my photos, so we have some weird lighting. Let's do it again tomorrow, shall we, and then also add the crew members and take a closer look at our boats.

In the meantime, this is today's step. We add the sails to the blue ship:

And add the cannons in the hull too. Note that despite having four slots, the blue ship still uses only two cannons, much like it's red counterpart. You could add a few more if you like, of course.

On the red ship, I was actually supposed to attach the rope at the other end yesterday already. Let's just do it now, and also add the flag. The instructions are quite murky on how and where to attach the string, so I'm mostly winging it. It's holding together now, I hope it still will when my nephews will eventually play with it - and I hope that it will be reasonably easy to untie again too.

We add the main sail as well, of course.

That's how things look like right now - we are technically done, but let's take some more photos tomorrow.

I still have a few minor pieces left... there is a chance that I forgot something, but oh well... let's just add them to my personal reserve. If anything turns out to be missing, I can always add it later.

Poker?

Yes, what about poker? Honestly, I haven't played any in about two weeks by now. I got out of the swing of things on Pokerstars, and while I was enjoying the OFC games at that crypto website, the technical difficulties have persisted.

Here's what happens: The client continues to fail to update and load, the uninstaller does not work properly, and after downloading a new installer, I get a warning about that file by Windows Defender. It's probably a false positive, but all these things combined turn this into an issue that is not easily resolved, and with plenty of other things to deal with during this time of the year, I therefore didn't get to it yet.

In general, I do miss poker, whether it is OFC, Badugi, or any of those other non-Hold'em games, which I sometimes falsely refer to as "mixed games", though genuine mixed games may also be part of it. At least nothing should be in my way when it comes to the games on Pokerstars, apart from me being a little rusty by now.

I don't know if I will get back to them this year, but I do plan to get back in January at the latest. I will spend a lot of time over the holidays with my family, of course, and the time I would have for poker next week is probably better spent on collecting stats for this year and preparing spreadsheets for next year. Besides, I should give myself plenty of time to just relax a little, because I know that I did not do a very good job with this last year around this time.

In conclusion, we should get back to poker soon, but it will surely take until some time in January for things to really get rolling again.

I Saw Three Ships

All right, back to the shipyard one more time. Our work here is finished, as of yesterday, so let's review it all together, and also place the minifigs.

The blue ship is manning the steering wheel, under the watchful eye of their commander.

Two other sailors are in the hull, getting ready to use the cannons, if need be.

The red ship's crew is a little more varied, with one sailor, one soldier, one officer and one commander. The blue line-up makes more sense, with three sailors and one commander, having more people at the lower end of the hierarchy rather than having an even split.

As expected, the ships are about equal in length:

But the blue ship is a little wider:

Also notice that the red ship doesn't have an anchor, for some reason. At least they have a compass instead, so they can tell where they are drifting off to.

None of the ships has a proper cabin, like last year's pirate ship had, but at least the blue boat has some space under the deck. No doors, but some kind of shelter.

The red ship doesn't have that, because the space underneath the deck is reserved for the rudder turning mechanism, which is something the blue ship doesn't have.

All things together... I guess I slightly prefer the blue ship, but the red one has some interesting features too. They are certainly not very far apart. And last year's pirate ship beats both of them, of course.

As a bonus, here are the alternative building suggestions at the end of the manual for both sets - though the red ship only has one, and instead uses "action pictures" of the set for the other two.

And now, we can rightfully say: I saw three ships. On Christmas Day, in the morning.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Once again, my original Knecht Ruprecht cocktail is a staple at Harrier's on Christmas Eve. 30 ml each of triple sec, Frangelico and amaretto, shaken and strained. Unfortunately, I am out of triple sec now. I had to substitute it with orange curaçao when I made it again today for my brother.

I don't think we will see any more poker this year. I will try to prepare some stats and spreadsheets in the meantime.

I hope you are all having a nice and relaxing final week of 2023 as well.

It has been a very enjoyable winter break for me so far, even though it is one week shorter than what I originally hoped for. Still plenty of time left, though, and I hope you guys are also doing well.

I miss the grind already, but I have already decided that I won't play any more games this year. Instead, as I said in my previous post, I will devote my "poker time" to collecting stats and graphs, and getting new 2024 spreadsheets ready. Luckily, this is a lot easier to do now with LibreOffice, there has not been a single crash so far. I should have made the switch from OpenOffice much sooner.

MTT and SNG stats for 2023 are ready, but I think I will wait until I have prepared the rest before I start posting. I still need to collect OFC, satty and combined stats.

All right, OFC stats and graphs have been collected now. Satties and combined stats are still missing, but they could prove to be a little more difficult, because no graphs have been implemented yet, so I would have to create them from scratch, and may have to add new data sheets for them too.

We have loads of stats already, though, so rather than waiting until everything is done, let's already start with a few of them.

MTT Stats

While MTTs have mostly given way to OFC games in the last few months, they are still considered my main format overall, and this hasn't officially changed yet. How did it look like this year?

Not great, comparatively. Not terrible either, but certainly a big letdown after the very successful 2022 grind, which happened under very unfavorable conditions, no less. 2023 was originally supposed to be a "grinder's paradise" instead, it didn't turn out like that at all, but more on that when I do my big recap, probably on New Year's Eve.

Now to the individual games, starting with Badugi, my big mainstay:

It was the game that mostly carried the MTT grind, but I really needed more out of it. There have been some decent cashes, but not a single 1st place. I wasn't playing it all that much, of course, and motivation has often been lacking. Overall, it was okay at best.

Remember that one? I briefly did a "Pat in Time" experiment, where I would grind those tournaments until my time zone had caught up during the daylight savings time switch. It didn't quite work out, but at least there have been some cashes. Overall, that one big hot run in 2020 still carries us. Note that my 4th place in the MicroMillions last year is not included in these stats.

Looks like there have been some good 8-Game cashes? I don't even really remember them, honestly. Well, every little bit helps.

Courchevel... the game that loves to get my hopes up, only to crush them again in the most cruel manner. Just wait until you see the SNG stats... Anyway, we're still breaking even here, I guess.

Not a lot of HORSEing around once again, but it looks like we cashed a few. I remember shipping a crypto freeroll this year, which doesn't count here, this is Pokerstars only. It only would have been a few cents worth of bitcoins anyway.

One of the more hopeful contenders for me, but this year, it wasn't meant to be once again... I think I had a cash in a bigger buy-in tournament that I sattied into? This one wouldn't be included here, though, I have a satty spreadsheet for that. Maybe we will get to that one later.

A hopeful, short-lived attempt... but no cashes to report this year.

Mahjong, remember that one? The "Big in Japan" series? It didn't work out, and I didn't get any freeroll cashes either, not that I would have included them here. Still, it's cool that those games are still playable, even though they are entirely in Japanese now. At least that gives me an excuse. I mean, it's enough of an achievement to have simply won a few of those games, despite the language barrier, isn't it?

Graphs coming up next...

MTT Graphs

Well, what can we say... it was going up overall. But it is looking a lot better in those graphs than it really was. There was not a lot money to be made this year.

Now Badugi, the only game that saw at least a somewhat consistent grind:

Same thing here, just a little less variance.

I don't know if the combined graph is accurate, but I included it, for what it's worth. Mahjong is missing, despite being present in the legend.

Here is the profit by month. My records were $48.05 in March and -$13.20 in November. Pretty weak.

My weekly record was much more satisfactory, with $88.04 gained in Week 12. It didn't last long, as you can tell by my monthly graph. Negative record was -$26.50 in Week 16.

SNG stats coming up tomorrow, maybe.

Originally posted by Harrier88
We have loads of stats already, though, so rather than waiting until everything is done, let's already start with a few of them.

MTT Stats

While MTTs have mostly given way to OFC games in the last few months, they are still considered my main format overall, and this hasn't officially changed yet. How did it look like this year?

The colour scheme is wonderfully delicious.
I'll look over the data tomorrow while playing the end-of-the-month freerolls

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
The colour scheme is wonderfully delicious.

Thank you, I mostly just picked it because I liked purple, and I needed another color that is not quite white, so I picked a pale yellow instead of gray.

For the other spreadsheets, I added a greater variety of colors, but we will get to them later. I hope I can finish the new ones today.

Hoooooo boy, that was a lot of work... but I should now finally be done with all the stats and graphs. And there wasn't a single crash along the way, very nice.

Let's get to the rest, then, starting with SNGs.

SNG Stats

I had high hopes for the SNG grind, so this was possibly the biggest poker disappointment this year. The overall profit was virtually nothing. We can take a look at the bigger picture later, but first, let's check out the individual game types:

It was supposed to be the meat of the grind, it fair enough, it had the biggest volume. Profit remains in break-even territory, with an ROI below 5%.

Just like with the MTTs, we couldn't get anything going in Stud8. Good results early on, offsetting my botched start in Five Card Draw, but then it all fell apart.

Courchevel started out on a massive heater, getting my hopes up for a new main SNG type, then reality set in again. It's a cruel game, stay tuned for the graph.

Here's 8-Game for what it's worth. These games rarely run at all, but are usually pretty profitable when they do. Not this year, where I failed to secure a single cash in those three games I played.

Graphs coming up in my the next post...

SNG Graphs

It looked good for a while, then it quickly died down. Eventually, I was hardly playing at all.

The weekly plan shows the swings even more. What happened? We will soon find out, but first, here is the profit breakdown by month:

Records were $32.42 in March and -$26.90 right next in April.

My best week was actually in early January with a profit of $18.72, but it was sandwiched between big losing weeks. The worst one finished at -$19.39 in early April, surpassing my positive record and starting a downward trend from which I could not recover this year. Nasty...

Five Card Draw graphs:

Swingy... barely in profit at all, in the end. At least the long-term graph still looks good:

Courchevel is a doozy:

Yes, early heater, then a complete breakdown. You can see it clearly reflected in the overall SNG graph.

But if you think it's just a drop in the bucket long-term, that's not quite the case. In fact, we saw a very similar story in 2022:

Stud Hi-Lo now...

Same old story... But this time, we couldn't even finish a monthly candle on a high note. At least things are looking better in the long run here:

Overall breakdown:

What a ride... That's all I can say about it, really.

I have some additional SNG stats, stay tuned...