Courchevel’s like that one wild friend, always a blast, rarely shows up, and when it does, chaos guaranteed.
Meanwhile, PLO8’s the responsible cousin: still splits everything in half, but at least shows up on time.
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Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I keep forgetting courchevel
It's a great game
It isn't running right now — i'm playing a 3.30 PLO8 instead
I like the one that is running at 18:19 my time. It's a $4.40 PKO, much like Badugi. Late reg is longer than I would prefer (1h 40m), but it has 10 minute blinds, so you should be able to afford waiting for good hands.
To this day, I'm still not really sure what to think of Courchevel. I keep coming back to it over the years, but tend to give up quickly too. I have had success in the past, but it was always short-lived.
Originally posted by pisiattu
Courchevel’s like that one wild friend, always a blast, rarely shows up, and when it does, chaos guaranteed.
That does sound a bit like me. 
Both of you seem to have some experience with this game, maybe we can collect some ideas?
So far, I try to stick to the basics: Look for hands with potential in both directions that interact well with the window card, and hope not to get trolled by the board. Wheel draws are good, especially protected. Broadway draws can be good if the window card is high. Potential flush draws around the window card are good too, but even more so than in Omaha, non-nut flushes are dangerous, so you want those aces. High predraw sets are good too, but especially the lower ones are vulnerable.
Basically, I am mostly looking for rundowns, flush draws and nut low draws around the window card, with as much protection as possible. If these conditions are met, I play, and if I hit either a nutty hand or a good draw for one, I pull the trigger.
Badugi was scrambling to the rescue tonight, but this is all we got. I was in 2nd place when I got out, getting into a cooler spot against the big stack that was pretty much impossible to get away from, no matter how much you saw it coming.
It lessens the blow from all those other games a little, but we have a lot more of catching up to do.
No poker side games today. Razz is the big tournament of the day - who would want to play that?
Today's Time: 10:00 Minutes
Instead, I hit the pool. No Trollympics this time, but I should start preparing for longer distances. Let's begin modestly by upgrading from 200m to 400m freestyle.
10 minutes flat (10:00.44 exactly, according to my wrist watch, but you inevitably waste a tiny bit of time until you can hit the button). This is not a good time. The Trollympic distance is 800m, and I would need 19:15 for Gold, so even keeping the pace for twice that distance wouldn't be enough. At least I should be expected to do much better than last year's shameful 24:26.
Plenty of room for improvement. SwimmingLevel's "Novice" time for men my age would be 9:38, btw.
Let's shoot for this time, then. You may remember Primrose swimming an excellent 8:38 at last year's Trollympics. I won't go for such a lofty goal yet, but yeah, 9:38 should be doable.
Mega Blooper!
This is a situation I have often feared would happen, causing me to sometimes obsessively double-check my hands, but in my nine years of grinding Badugi, I think this is the first time it really happened to me...
I thought I had a predraw 9-Badugi here. That's right, I thought so, and played it accordingly. 
Not sure which card I misread for what, but I didn't realize what I actually had until shortly after standing pat on the last draw.
PokerStars, $3.92 + $0.48 - Badugi Pot Limit - 100/200 - 6 players
Hand delivered by CardsChat
UTG: 3,000 (15 bb)
MP: 2,800 (14 bb)
CO: 5,088 (25 bb)
BU: 21,034 (105 bb)
SB (Hero): 5,005 (25 bb)
BB: 6,300 (32 bb)
Deal: (300) Hero is SB with 5♦ 6♣ 9♠ 5♥
1 fold, MP raises to 400, 2 players fold, Hero 3-bets to 850, 1 fold, MP calls 450
Draw One: (1,900) 5♦ 6♣ 9♠ 5♥ (2 players)
SB (Hero) stands pat, MP draws 1
Hero bets 950, MP calls 950
Draw Two: (3,800) 5♦ 6♣ 9♠ 5♥ (2 players)
SB (Hero) stands pat, MP draws 1
Hero bets 1,900, MP calls 1,000 (all-in)
Draw Three: (6,700) 5♦ 6♣ 9♠ 5♥ (2 players, 1 all-in)
SB (Hero) stands pat, MP draws 1
Total pot: 5,800
Showdown:
SB (Hero) shows 5♦ 6♣ 9♠ 5♥ (a 3-card: 9,6,5)
MP shows 2♥ 6♠ A♣ 7♠ (a 3-card: 6,2,A)
MP wins 5,800
I was in the bathroom when I played this hand - could that be an excuse?
Maybe I really should get back to searching for a good eye doctor.
Boogie satellites tomorrow - hopefully with less of the above.
Originally posted by Harrier88
Mega Blooper!This is a situation I have often feared would happen, causing me to sometimes obsessively double-check my hands, but in my nine years of grinding Badugi, I think this is the first time it really happened to me...
Lucky You!
I did some colossal blunders live on stream
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I did some colossal blunders live on stream
I don't think I remember any off the top of my head, but it has been a while.
Speaking of which... I know I have discussed a possible stream many different times before over the years, and never got around to it, but... once again, what do you guys think? Harrier stream, yea or nay?
And if you are in favor of the stream, what would you like to see there, and what would be the best times for you to tune in?
Originally posted by Harrier88
And if you are in favor of the stream, what would you like to see there, and what would be the best times for you to tune in?
Definitely yay, but the problem is that you need to set your stream time to match when the games are available.
That would likely be evening for you, so morning for me.
Most days that is my ideal viewing time, do double yay
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Definitely yay, but the problem is that you need to set your stream time to match when the games are available.
That would likely be evening for you, so morning for me.Most days that is my ideal viewing time, do double yay
True, my standard MTTs would narrow down my possible streaming times quite a bit, I didn't even really think about it yet.
The tournament grind tends to be pretty light anyway, so I am still open to suggestions for other kinds of streaming material to supplement it. Crypto poker including OFC could be an option, possibly some non-poker card/board games as well, maybe even some casual video gaming. Primrose and I have even been in the brainstorming phase for a video gaming channel on YouTube earlier this year, though that idea has been put on hold for now.
Other than that, my current vision would be a basic stream, just a few poker tables, audio commentary and streaming-friendly background music. Ideally, I would like to get Prim as a guest commentator on at least some streams. I may add a webcam as well and do a face reveal, but Prim definitely won't do it, because her work prohibits it.
Maybe we can collect some ideas over the next one or two weeks, and then get something going.
No luck in the Boogie satties, btw. Good runs, including a final table, but no seats or cashes. Just didn't get the hands when I needed them.
UPDATE: Thank you very much for creating the poll, Vorpal. 
Any lurkers are more than welcome to cast their vote, so I can get a better idea on how even our occasional readers feel about this, including the non-active ones, which are of course welcome on the blog as well. Still, if you guys have anything to add, I would be interested to know.
Freerolling like a queen!
Today, our bankroll queen Wendy O´Koopa was very busy. Guess she wanted to show us, how to play poker? 
We played a lot of freerolls on 888: some 200 $ freerolls, 50 $ freerolls, the 450 $ Freebie Freeroll and the Fabulous Spinner Winner. In most of them we came ITM and placed even 10th in one of the 200 $ freerolls (meh. final table bubble!). The hard work paid off! We reached the 10 € mark, even managed to exceed it! We won +3,05 €!
BR on 888: 11,09 €
Baby Peach cashes too!
We played the 0,33 $ PLO (15 $ Gtd.) and a Free to play PLO (but no winning there) on Party. Today seemed to be our lucky day. We hit many good hands and esecially on 888, we got pretty lucky! That´s why there were lots of ITMs, but not only for Wendy, but also for Baby Peach. We placed 8th in the 0,33 $ PLO MTT (a final table bubble again! Oh man!) and won 0,67 $. While the first half of the tournament went very well, our luck began to wane in the second half. We got ITM, but were card-dead afterwards. A desperate push with 87AKds didn´t get there - and didn´t bring us to the final table. Anyway, a nice result.
And a GREAT hand of the day:
Amazing job by Primrose today, including a sick Hand of the Day - fully paid even, thanks to her opponent's supposed "nut flush".
I had another minor success myself tonight in Badugi, with a bountyless 4th place finish worth $12.72, though I believe it does little to change the momentum of the ongoing downswing. Also, after yet another bubble finish in today's satellite, I don't think Stud Hi-Lo and I will become friends again any time soon.
Instead, I will try to keep grinding Badugi and see if either Courchevel Hi-Lo, 2-7 Triple Draw or possibly even 2-7 Single Draw could have a chance as a possible side game.
Applied Mathematics
I mentioned a while ago in the IDC-thread - which, sadly, now seems to be largely abandoned after having been the breeding ground for many enjoyable forum memes in the past - that I had a problem around the house that finally found some use for sine, cosine and tangent, which are things many people probably thought they could easily ignore after being done with math class.
Here's the situation: The roof above my balcony is just barely big enough to cover the whole thing, if even that. This means that depending on the wind, it is likely that quite a bit of rain would land on the balcony floor.
That's a bit of an inconvenience already, but it wouldn't usually be a big problem, if it wasn't for one additional factor: My balcony has a leaky floor. What's more, my mother lives downstairs from my apartment, and her bedroom happens to be right underneath that balcony. Hit a rainstorm at night, and she may be in for a rude awakening. Hit a rainstorm at any other time of the day, and the bedroom won't be such a cozy place at night either.
My grandfather was the one who built the house in the first place back in the day, and when this issue came up, he solved the problem by installing an additional roof extension, which worked nicely. Unfortunately, the extension had to be removed a few years ago when some handymen needed to work on the roof, and my grandpa has passed away since. My mother and I are the only residents left in this house that was originally meant for two families, and while we can handle basic tasks, neither of us is confident enough in our skills to tackle such a construction project.
Our attempts to seal the floor only led to short-term success, so we had to set up this contraption to at least solve the immediate problem of rain leaking through:
It solves that issue, but it's not nearly ideal, since it makes most of the balcony unusable. You can still step out the door for a breath of fresh air, but you can't really sit down there anymore, there isn't even any room left for a table and chairs. What else can you do?
We recently came up with a new idea, that should be suitable for our limited skills. Previously, we set up those tomato shelters in the garden, made of wooden beams and commercially available connector pieces:
How about we set up a similar construct on the balcony, slanted in the other direction, and big enough to cover the whole width of the balcony so you could walk underneath it? It's what we're trying to do, so we measured things up, which led to some missing variables. That's the point where geometry will come in... in my next post.
All right, so the width of the balcony is about 1.25 meters, and the height of our new construction could be up to 2.15 meters, as we found out when we did our measurements on site. So we know how long the wooden beams for those parts need to be, but what about the slanted piece on top? Or the other piece on the shorter side of it?
Geometry to the rescue. We can use the tomato shelter for reference, since our construct will use the same connector pieces. The part at the top could be seen as a right-angled triangle, with the bottom part being imagined.
We know the length of the imagined part at the bottom, since it will be identical to the width of the balcony. We also measured up the angles, and know that the α angle is 75°, which means that the β angle must be 15° (the angle of the shelter itself would be 105°, so we can subtract 90 to get the angle that's part of the imagined triangle. Alternatively, the angles of a triangle always add up to 180, so we could find β by subtracting α and γ from that number too).
Let's see if I can still get this right... Remember the sine function?
sin α = a / c
Well, we know a, and we know α, and c is what we want to find. So we would need to multiply sin α by c...
sin α * c = a
...and then divide a by sin α to get the result we need.
c = a / sin α
We know a to be 1.25, and sin α (75) would be 0.965926.
c = 1.25 / 0.965926
The length of c should therefore be 1.294095. Will that fly?
Let's try to calculate b as well, using the tangent function:
tan α = a / b
Again, we know a and α, so let's speed things up a bit:
b = a / tan α
The result is 0.334936. We can now use Pythagoras' theorem to add up (1.25)² and (0.334936)², which would be 1.674682. And indeed, the square root of 1.674682 would be just about 1.294095. Things seem to work out.
So we can finally subtract 0.334936 from 2.15 to also find out the height of the shorter end of the construct, leaving us with these values:
1.815064 m is a little short for me, but I wouldn't have to go all the way to the edge anyway.
Let's see how it turns out in the end, I will keep you guys posted. If all goes well, we will have solved a long-lasting problem around the house by nerding out about geometry, enabling me to spend some relaxing moments on the balcony again... and maybe sip some maple pecan lattes with Prim there on a rainy autumnal day, wearing our coziest sweaters. 
We can dream.
No trigonometry required in tonight's Badugi. But I did need some lucky draws earlier on.
This one had "brick" written all over it for much of the game, I'd say, but things heated up after I sneaked my way to the final table, and eventually, I was in a position to "play the players" a bit more, including throwing in a couple of snows.
I think the chip graph largely tells the same story:
That was worth staying up for, but now it's late and there are still dishes to be done, I'll talk to you guys later.
Originally posted by Harrier88
This one had "brick" written all over it for much of the game, I'd say, but things heated up after I sneaked my way to the final table, and eventually, I was in a position to "play the players" a bit more, including throwing in a couple of snows.
That was worth staying up for, but now it's late and there are still dishes to be done, I'll talk to you guys later.
I'd love to see a couple of the snow hands.
Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I'd love to see a couple of the snow hands.
I didn't save any hands, but the most effective snow probably happened early in the heads-up phase, setting the tone for the rest of the encounter. It wasn't such a spectacular hand (I didn't snow quad Queens, or anything), I just felt that my opponent would fold easily and that my chances of winning the hand that way were better than by drawing, though I already had a three card hand (a bad one, if I remember correctly). It was on the third draw, after already having built up a good pot.
I don't think you can really rely on dead cards for snows like you can do in lowball, where you know that everyone is drawing to the same hand. In Badugi, even a facecard can potentially have tremendous value for your opponent in some situations, as long as it has the right suit - and you have no way of telling which suit they are going for. It works a little better in Five Card draw, where you can at least assume that high cards tend to be useful, but both there and in Badugi, a good snow mostly just requires the right opponent and the right situation, the dead cards don't tell you a lot. And even in lowball, they should just slightly increase your chances of succeeding.
No cashes in the last two days, I ran into some bad coolers both times, where I was unlucky to make my hands. On Monday, I at least collected $3 in bounties to almost break even, while today, I even took a rebuy (perhaps foolishly) for a two buy-in loss. Better luck next time.
25m Freestyle (Speed)
Bronze: 35.00 seconds
Silver: 26.50 seconds
Gold: 18.50 seconds
Not an Olympic event.
Olympic Record for 50m Freestyle: 21.07 seconds by Caeleb Dressel (USA) at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, August 1st, 2021.
World Record for 50m Freestyle: 19.90 seconds by Jordan Crooks (CYM) at the World Aquatics Swimming Championships in Budapest, December 14th, 2024.
Trollympic Record: 19.06 seconds by Primrose6789 (PS) at the 2024 Trollympics, July 5th, 2024.
Harrier's time: 18.81 seconds
NEW TROLLYMPIC RECORD!
I didn't mean to spoil it yet, but yes - Primrose's record has just been "dethroned"! ♠_grin:
My goal was just to get sub 20, and when I did my first and what I presumed to be my last attempt for today, I got a time of 20.28 seconds, just marginally behind my old PB of 20.01. I wanted to leave it at that, but the friendly pool attendant gave me a couple of pointers. She especially noticed me slowing down towards the end, mostly because of exaggerated arm movements when I surfaced for air.
We discussed it a little, and then I just had to put it into practice, after swimming some casual lanes to recover and chilling at the edge of the pool for a few minutes. I paid more attention to my stroke, and amazingly, managed to crawl through the whole 25m without having to surface a single time for air. This alone may have been enough for a huge improvement on my time, with the aforementioned 18.81 - just barely behind the Gold time of 18.50, possibly within the margin of a timekeeping error.
Very happy with my time. 
But watch out - Primrose has a lot of room for improvement on last year's time too. Keep in mind that she did her attempt right after finishing her incredible 8:38 minutes 400m swim, and also, she only got a push start of the edge of the pool, while I dived in from the starting block. Under similar circumstances, Prim probably would have annihilated my time already... but let's see, maybe she will be back to take her rightful place as queen of the pool again. 
For now, though, today's time of 18.81 stands as the new Trollympic record - and you can be pretty sure that I will return as well, trying to take down my first aquatic Gold. Like a shark, I have smelled blood... ♠_evil:
New "Medal Table":
3,000 Meter Run (Stamina): Gold
Medicine Ball Throw (Strength): Silver
Standing Long Jump (Strength): Gold
100 Meter Dash (Speed): Silver
25m Freestyle (Speed): Silver
Current Progress
Stamina: Gold (3,000 Meter Run) - 3 points
Strength: Gold (Standing Long Jump) - 3 points
Speed: Silver (100 Meter Dash) - 2 points
Coordination: -
8 points in total, 11 points are required for Gold.
We had another unlikely success away from the swimming pool today. This is from the WCOOP Boot Camp 47-L $5.50 2-7 Triple Draw, which I regged criminally late after only finding it by accident.
Check out that short spike in the chip graph near the end. I managed to get a lucky triple up which enabled me to fold into the money, but then decided only one or two hands later that I won't do it. I entered with a one-card draw and called a raise from a player who ended up standing pat. By that time, I already hit my 8, and chose to make my opponent bet into me rather than showing aggression, thus ensuring that I still have some chips left when I lose. I did lose, because my opponent had a pat 85432. I was very lucky to still sneak my way to a mincash after that.
Badugi looked a little better, but as you may be able to tell from the chip graph, I didn't do too well at the FT this time.
