Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

Despite a disappointing run earlier in the Troll Challenge, tonight's games quickly showed some promise. FL Five Card Draw cash was swingy as usual, but ultimately finished a few big bets up. 8-Game looked promising too, until I ran KK into AA a few places before the bubble in the NL Hold'em part. Badugi began with some very nice bounty hunting early on, and my stack was doing pretty well throughout most of the run too.

This run lasted all the way to the final table, which eventually shrunk down to an all-Russian group of four known opponents who all did a very good job not only playing the cards, but also playing each other. I believe this group lasted for over an hour, until I personally managed to bust out two of them in quick succession. After that, it didn't take long until the aggressive opponent to my left busted out the other remaining player too, and it was time for heads-up.

Stacks were deep and almost even, so you may have expected a similar mind game as before with 5 players remaining. In reality, though, we only traded a few pots until the game came to a coolerific end:

PokerStars, $3.92 + $0.48 - Badugi Pot Limit - 2,000/4,000 - 2 players
Hand delivered by CardsChat

SB (Hero): 240,295 (60 bb)
BB: 284,705 (71 bb)

Deal: (6,000) Hero is SB with 4♣ A♦ 3♦ 5♠
Hero raises to 8,000, BB calls 4,000

Draw One: (16,000) 4♣ A♦ 5♠ 6♥ (2 players)
BB draws 2, SB (Hero) draws 3d
BB checks, Hero bets 10,667, BB calls 10,667

Draw Two: (37,334) 4♣ A♦ 5♠ 6♥ (2 players)
BB draws 1, SB (Hero) stands pat
BB checks, Hero bets 20,000, BB raises to 58,667, Hero calls 38,667

Draw Three: (154,668) 4♣ A♦ 5♠ 6♥ (2 players)
BB stands pat, SB (Hero) stands pat
BB bets 154,668, Hero raises to 162,961 (all-in), BB calls 8,293

Total pot: 480,590

Showdown:
SB (Hero) shows 4♣ A♦ 5♠ 6♥ (a Badugi: 6,5,4,A)
BB shows A♥ 6♣ 2♠ 5♦ (a Badugi: 6,5,2,A)
BB wins 480,590

That... is pretty damn sick...

The extra $50 or so for 1st place surely would have been a very welcome addition to my bankroll, but after a stretch of only modest returns, I'm quite happy with $79.71 including bounties that I got for 2nd place.

I suppose that's a nice way to end things as we start into the final football week, where poker will take a backseat one last time.

16th place in the 8-Game for $3.44, my best result since re-introducing it 1-2 weeks ago. Badugi had a minor cash too. FL Five Card Draw cash was really unlucky this time and lost a little despite a good start, but still a slightly profitable day.

Other players on Stars may have noticed that there will be a quick MicroMillions series starting Thursday, and there are some tournaments I might try. 8-Game and Five Card Draw especially come to mind. There is a Badugi on Saturday too, but unfortunately, I will not be able to play it due to commitments for my final football match.

"Final Battle"

Tomorrow will finally be the day. Harrier and his Golden Dragons will travel to Pforzheim (about 200 km) to have their final football match of the year, which will decide whether we will play on a national or regional level next season. It's simple - win or draw, and we get promoted; lose, and we stay at our current level, being stuck trying to merely defend our regional championship title next year.

Our previous opponents from Ingolstadt, for whom the season is already over and who already secured their place in the national leagues, won quite convincingly against Pforzheim last weekend without letting them score once, so under normal circumstances, I'd say that we are a slight favorite. The truth is, though, that we are down quite a few players due to injuries, sickness or other commitments, including some key players. Considering all of that, I'd say this game could go either way.

But win, lose or draw - it will be over after this, there won't be any games until next year and no practice whatsoever for about a month. As I mentioned a few times before, I'm pretty exhausted, and I am definitely looking forward to next week. I urgently need a break after this crammed and high-pressure season. I look forward to being able to take things more slowly, with more leeway in my daily schedule, and more time for both poker and other personal projects, as well as things like cleaning and just plain old relaxing. In addition, I plan to send out a few more job applications to hedge my bets when it comes to other important real life stuff, but also intend to make another effort to get into freelancing, after a rather half-hearted attempt at it a few years ago that saw me returning to seeking employment soon.

I'm still not sure how I am going to continue with this sport in the following years, but I will have plenty of time to think about it after the game. Either way, I want to be able to enter the break with no regrets, so I'll try to mobilize my last reserves. There will be time for everything else later.

Since I will be away all day long tomorrow, I can now consider this month to be complete when it comes to poker too, and the results are satisfactory for the most part. I will post about them next week, though, after I have cleared my head. I'm still feeling a little tense and jittery in anticipation of what's in store for me tomorrow.

I predicted that this game could go either way, and indeed, it was a total nailbiter. Final result: Gießen Golden Dragons 20, Pforzheim Wilddogs 19. It was as close as it can get, and the tiniest difference in any of the plays could have resulted in a different outcome.

So it's all over now, Harrier and his team made it back to the national leagues again, and we even got a cool shirt for it that I'm wearing right now, they had been printed in advance in anticipation of our victory.

And now... I really need to catch up on some sleep.

Poker Update

Now that the dust settles on this year's tough, but successful football season, we can fully focus on poker again, so let's start by taking a look at last month's stats:

Overall, we're still going strong, the upward trend continues. Last month, we only played 15 Badugi tournaments, but we made them count, with $104.57 in profit at an ROI of 158.44%, which brings our overall ROI in this game to to 50.85% this year.

I also introduced FL Five Card Draw cash two weeks ago, in order to practice this format a little. We played 32 tables of $0.10/0.20 over 11 days, and made $13.18 in profit, which means an average profit of $0.41 (or two big bets) per table and $1.20 per day.

I think this is quite satisfactory, so if things continue like this, I could see myself playing these games not just for practice purposes, but also to supplement my tournament grind. From a profit point of view, it definitely seems better than the mahjong games I was grinding earlier this year, which were barely better than break-even.

My tracking spreadsheet for these games was even directly based on my old mahjong tracking spreadsheet, and while I have data for all the same candlestick graphs as for my tournaments, they just don't have a lot to say after such a short time. I do have a simple line graph, though, where every point represents one table played.

It may have been a little stagnant lately, but the overall direction is the right one.

For now, I'm not going to change anything about my grind, it will still be Badugi, 8-Game (not much point showing a graph for the low volume last month either, but we made a $1.11 loss over eight tournaments, at an ROI of -11.21%) and FL Five Card Draw cash. I will continue to carefully consider my options.

Congratulations!

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
Congratulations!

For both the poker stats and the promotion to the national leagues, I assume.

Thank you very much!

The Monkey's Paw?

I know how much I've been looking forward to some weeks off with more time for poker. It's not like it didn't go as I hoped. Poker is going well, in fact - I just made another 6th place in Badugi tonight. I can't say it feels very fulfilling, though. I'm often playing on autopilot without much excitement. At night, I'm frequently looking back at my days feeling unsatisfied at how little I got done.

Be careful what you wish for? I don't know, it's probably not just the lack of scheduled activities that is getting me down, though it's likely a factor. It's also common for people to feel a little down in the month of November in general, mostly due to the amount of darkness outside. I remember having similar feelings towards the end of last year, and even having posted about it. It was a similar situation back then too, with virtually all activities having been cancelled because of lockdowns, and me being stuck at home most days, with dark skies outside my window most of the time. It's not the best influence for your mood and well-being, especially when real life worries have a tendency to haunt you, as it was the case both back then and now.

I trust it's just a phase, and that it will be over within a few days. At least the results are still there when it comes to poker, I'm sure the enthusiasm will soon follow too, and everything else will get in order.

Belated congrats for the win against PF. Meaning you play the Phantoms next season?

Originally posted by wickus
Belated congrats for the win against PF. Meaning you play the Phantoms next season?

Thank you very much! I'm not yet sure how next year's GFL2 will look like, but as far as I know, the Phantoms will still be in it.

Don't Try This At Home...

I already noticed last year that playing too many tables at once is a sure-fire way to flush your whole session down the toilet, and decided that due to the different game types I'm playing, I should usually stick to no more than two tables. It may be easy to add many more tables if you're playing the same game in each one, but for different game types, especially ones that are easy to mix up, it can get really bad really quickly.

Well, due to some additional tables (5CD and an 8-Game satty) from Pye's Mixed Games series that is currently running on Pokerstars, as well as the Courchevel from tonight's Troll Challenge, I got up to four tables after all, despite skipping the $1.10 8-Game this time. Doesn't sound too bad? It does get pretty bad when the games you're supposed to be playing at the same time are Courchevel, Five Card Draw, and the 2-7 Triple Draw part in 8-Game...

I definitely made one very daft move in 5CD once, which didn't even have anything to do with confusing game types, I simply lost track of the betting round and my position after juggling those other tables, so I minraised a small postdraw bet from BB in SB with AKxxx, thinking I was just stealing the blinds... Luckily, it was early in the game and cheap. I didn't catch myself making any other mistakes, but I remember gladly receiving good 5CD hand in Courchevel and vice versa, only to realize it's the wrong game, so it's possible that I made some more blunders without knowing it.

The lesson is: Don't try this at home! It had to be done this one time, but I shouldn't make it a habit. It may not come as a surprise that I bricked all of those tournaments, though I had a relatively good run in the 5CD event and unfortunately bubbled the Courchevel, as I already mentioned in the Troll Challenges thread.

Luckily, the 5CD cash games have been going well, earning over $6 at my $0.10/0.20 stakes so far this weekend, which mitigates the bad tournament results somewhat.

It is funny when playing Badugi and PLO8 at the same time -- you see the Badugi hands on the PLO8 tables and vice versa, but it is rare that it causes a costly mistake.

On the other hand, playing 5-Card Draw and 2-7 Single draw at the same time can be particularly cruel

I use to see nice PLO hands in 5CD.

"Oh, that´s double suited ace and broadways with ..........urm....wait a second!" :f_ugly::f_ugly:

Originally posted by Primrose6789
I use to see nice PLO hands in 5CD.

"Oh, that´s double suited ace and broadways with ..........urm....wait a second!" :f_ugly::f_ugly:

That's exactly what happened last night, except it was even easier to see it like that because of the fifth hole card in Courchevel. I would constantly see "double suited" hands with "good low potential" and so on in 5CD. Meanwhile, my eyes would light up seeing a "pat" straight or full house in Courchevel.

And yes, the additional Badugi table caused some confusion too.

Wow... yes, I've been through plenty of weeks where I haven't been able to spend as much time on poker as I wished recently, and now I've been through a week where I probably spent a little too much time at the tables... maybe we can strike a good balance next week.

At least there was no four-tabling session this time. I played the $3.30 PL Badugi tournament from Pye's series, and now that I was playing around that time of the day anyway, I also decided to add the $4.40 PL 5-Card Draw tournament that Prim and I usually play on Fridays as part of our Troll Challenges. Couldn't get anything going in the Badugi at first, I got few playable hands, and the ones I got didn't hit, so my first bullet in there didn't go too well. Meanwhile, I was doing excellently in Five Card Draw, hitting those hands whenever I needed them. As a result, both tournaments lasted quite long, and 5CD went all the way to FT, eventually finishing 4th for $36.24 including bounties - my best 5CD result all year long, though I didn't play it all that much, of course.

The second bullet in Badugi did much better and I rode it to a 2nd tier cash for $5.33 including bounties. My exit hand was a cooler, but I'd say it wasn't an unavoidable one. I could have gotten away from it for a deeper finish, but I had been grinding for a long time by that point and wasn't fully focused anymore - I don't do too well in those large field tournaments, I much prefer the smaller ones by now.

Then there was the HORSE as part of our Troll Challenge, at which point I was still playing the Badugi... that was a lot of non-stop grinding, had to fit a quick dinner in there too. Despite a bad start, I eventually rode my 2nd bullet to FT there as well, finishing 4th yet again for $14.87. It wasn't without any of those fatigue bloopers - I inexplicably played Stud Hi-Lo in a regular Stud hand at the FT. Not surprisingly, my opponent was unimpressed by the low only hand with which I kept building what was actually a pretty sizable pot... I was still in after that, though, and got a few pots back to get to that 4th place finish.

In light of that, it was probably a good decision to skip my regular Badugi and 8-Game tournaments this time. Still, some good results today, bringing my bankroll to over $2,100 now for the first time.

But yeah, I should take it a bit slower from now on...

I also cashed the Badugi -- It was OK.
I took to betting my very good 3Cards after the 2nd draw, especially when heads-up vs a player who drew 2 on the previous draw.

That worked out well.
I may try to employ that strategy in the next daily I play

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I also cashed the Badugi -- It was OK.
I took to betting my very good 3Cards after the 2nd draw, especially when heads-up vs a player who drew 2 on the previous draw.

Ah, yes, I originally wanted to comment on that. I saw you were still in the tournament as I made my exit, and later had another look at the lobby, where I saw that you finished in a pretty good position. Congratulations!

And yes, playing good 3-card hands is usually a good strategy, since you have a good chance of being ahead even if you don't improve. I advice to be careful when the stacks are deep, though, due to the bad reverse implied odds in case you fail to hit and your opponent succeeds (or likes to pretend).

It has been a very stressful week. Hardly any poker at all, and the few games I did play went poorly. The damage may be limited after running so hot last week, but I still hope that I will be able to get back on pace in the next couple of days. Maybe I can get back to the tables after getting some stuff in order.

Keep your chin up, guys!

I've been sorting out a lot of stuff and I'm doing much better. Still no success in poker, unfortunately, got pretty unlucky tonight.

I managed to play a longer session of FL 5CD cash, at least, which finished with a slight loss (almost break-evenish considering the size of the session). Regrettably, I got stacked at one shorthanded table with just two other players, which I was hoping would fill up a little. It is very discouraging how poorly I am doing heads-up (the third player soon left), but I'm not sure if I'm doing anything wrong - my opponents just seem to hit their hands against my good holdings so often, tonight I lost with drawn trip aces against a drawn straight.

I think I am back on the right track, though, despite the results, which now put my bankroll slightly below the $2.1K mark again.

Back to SNGs?!?

Those who follow our Troll Challenges thread, which I encourage you to do, since the forum could use some good troll magic, may have read that Prim and I have tried some Five Card Draw SNGs today. I've been grinding them with some success for a few months about 6 years ago (dang... it's been so long really?), and briefly picked them up again a few years later, but dropped them very soon because of their poor traffic and because I felt that I was doing not much better or worse in Hold'em SNGs - which do not have that low traffic problem.

Today, we decided to play some, mostly to pass the time until our MTT was ready. I was not even aware that they were still running, and I was positively surprised by the traffic, which still isn't great, of course, but enough to make me consider those games playable. Whether they would be a good choice for a proper grind is another question, but since I got back into Five Card Draw in general recently and I am looking for ways to practice and develop my strategy, including in the non-FL versions, I thought that those SNGs should be good for that purpose at least, for the time being.

I ended up playing eight in total, and shipped five of them, which of course is a great result, for a $13.75 profit. Sure, I shouldn't read too much into such a brief heater, but it does give some confidence starting out - and remember that the goal is not to make a killing with those SNGs per se, but to develop deeper strategies. It's a good start for sure.

Close to $5 in cash profits at the $0.10/0.20 tables today is another good sign, which makes it easier to forget about the poor MTT results which unfortunately keep persisting, despite a bountyless mincash in Badugi.