Harrier's Blog - Mixed Games & Mixed Drinks

What went right...

1. Sports

Sure, my personal fitness is trailing way behind pre-Covid levels, but there was plenty of butt-kicking on the gridiron this year. Me and my American football team became regional champions with a perfect winning record, and even a perfect defensive record until some lapses in the last game, and we went on to just barely make it through the play-offs in order to be promoted back to the national level. I may not have played a huge role on the field this season, but I got my plays, and I made it through a whole season without cutting any corners, and that has to count for something.

Next season will be tough, of course, in the national leagues. I'm not getting any younger, and this will very likely be my last season, if I even make it through it at all, but for now, there are no plans of quitting yet. Let's keep going!

2. Poker (again)

Yes, it was a negative point before, but there are some good things to report as well. As I mentioned, there was a nice recovery after my abysmal first few months. I also learned a brand new format from scratch (Open Faced Chinese Poker) and finished with a profit, despite being almost on the brink of bankruptcy on that poker site for a while before. Moreover, I re-introduced Five Card Draw this fall, with promising results overall so far that exceeded expectations, although there was a bit of a slump recently.

Also, despite the lack of poker income that I mentioned earlier, there have been some cash windfalls from a poker room and a casual gambling site ceasing operations and paying out my bankroll, which helped out. Mahjong was tried once again, and dropped for the usual reasons (low traffic, low edges, high variance), but finished with a small profit this year. And let's not forget that we introduced the Troll Challenges this year, so Prim and I can keep having competitive fun even after TitanPoker and their weekly “Troll Freeroll” for German players shut down for us.

3. Spreadsheets!

It may seem like a minor point, but I think it's worth pointing out. When I started with my own poker tracking in 2020, rather than having to rely on online services which may not always give me the statistics I'm looking for, I spent a lot of time working on one single tracking spreadsheet, needing a lot of help from Vorpal because of my lack of experience. This year, I have significantly expanded on all of that, not only having prepared a bunch of elaborate spreadsheets with more advanced statistics that are easily adaptable to new game types, but also having gained a lot of experience with them so that I can much more easily work on them.

By now, MTTs of every known poker format are supported, and I've designed additional spreadsheets for cash game and SNG tracking. They are easy to use once they are implemented and yield all the stats I could ask for, many of which wouldn't be found using any external services. This gives me a much better picture of where I am going with my games, which allows me to make better decisions about my grind.

Also, before I forget... let me a give a big thank you to my dear friend Primrose on the forum for always being there for me during these tough times.

Things weren't always easy in 2021, and there will be many more challenges next year, but you had my back, and I had yours. Together, we'll be able to handle everything 2022 throws at us on and off the felt - and continue to have a lot of fun, of course. It's always important not to let your spirit down, no matter what happens.

Aaaw, how cute! Thank you, Harrier!

Now that we did our recap on 2021, let's take a more detailed look at the poker stats:

Those are the overall statistics (for MTTs, at least). As you can see, they leave a lot to be desired in comparison to last year, but at least we finished in the green.

My old "Overall" graph may be a bit obsolete by now, since I eventually expanded into non-MTT games and ended up playing almost only Badugi in the evening grind, but here it is:

You can see some more details in the candlestick charts:

Badugi tells a similar story:

Notice in the weekly graphs that the profits from the last few months, which went well, were mostly due to short-term successes in certain weeks. This is not unusual for MTTs.

Apart from that, you know the story. Terrible start, nice save in June, decent results ever since. My monthly and weekly profit charts show that quite nicely too:

The monthly records were a profit of $141.30 in July and a loss of $84.67 in April. Weekly, it was $128.83 in week 31 (July 26th - August 1st)and -$53.14 in week 15 (April 5th - April 11th). Also notice the gaps in the weekly chart, I took more and longer breaks this year than usual. Partially because I was exploring other games like OFC, partially because I needed to get away from it all at times.

More stats for individual games:

Not the results I was hoping for overall (I remember having been disappointed with my two figure ROI% in 2020... :f_ugly:) but after the terrible start, it was a nice recovery.

(Note: $1.10 tourneys in the evening only. The few $11s I tried in afternoon sessions would have had too big an impact on the stats.)

Decent overall... I stopped playing because the guarantee got cut to $100 this year, which was pointlessly small.

Some promising tournaments both in 2021 and 2020, but never enough to secure a profit in the end.

Always cut soon in both years due to the length of the tournament, but at least we continued to be in profit.

I generally consider myself a losing player in HORSE, but this time, we finished in profit, thanks to a 2nd place during one of our Troll Challenges. (should have made 1st, though...)

This also includes the Troll Challenges we played together on Friday afternoons. No good results, but we may get back to it next year.

Wow, look at this. Tiny volume both years, but I did finish with a profit both times...

This takes care of the MTT statistics for 2021. Non-MTT Five Card Draw stats will be coming up shortly...

Here's how it looks like when it comes to Five Card Draw cash games and SNGs, which were introduced in October:

Not too bad. Check out the overall graphs:

You will surely notice the declining results and the break in late December. How did it go exactly?

It all started to go downhill in week 50, which started on December 6th (though the losses didn't happen until Wednesday, December 8th). Since then, it has been my first downswing of sorts, with my first losing weeks to report, but as you can see from the monthly graphs, we still finished with a profit in December. I honestly expected things to be worse. If anything, the fact that losses didn't occur until that time is a good thing.

More detailed graphs:

As for our SNG positions, we did fall below 50% ITM, unfortunately. At least the 1st places still make up the biggest percentage.

Some more numbers:

This should take care of all the stats for 2021, then. Doesn't look too bad overall, the 5CD downswing was not nearly as bad as I expected, and I think we can achieve some good results next year.

And with all of that out of the way... I will see you guys in 2022!!

All in all, your graphs and results look very, very good.
Sure there are down spots, but

Best wishes for 2022 — in poker and in everything else!

Thank you very much, Vorpal! ♠_drink: Best wishes to you too!

You're right, poker was going fine overall since June, the first five months were just tough to overcome - but let's be glad that we did overcome them.

Five Card Draw is going well too, just a minor slump recently.

I should be back at the tables next week, I think.

Spreadsheets too strong...

Well, I just wanted wanted to update all of my spreadsheets for the new year and announce my plans for 2022, but as usual, those complicated statistics spreadsheets are extremely prone to crashing. And that's what they were doing yet again, they kept crashing all night long, and the fact that they take quite a while to load didn't help matters.

They should be all done now - at least the poker spreadsheets, I have some other ones for other uses too, of course. I'm pretty tired now, though, so this will all have to wait until tomorrow...

All right, belated Happy New Year to everyone! The picture above is from our little "fireworks show" in the backyard, except that fireworks were still banned from being sold over here, and we didn't have any old ones left this time either, so we were using some handheld sparklers instead. Also, as it has been custom for three years by now, we did not do the main fireworks right after the arrival of the new year, as people usually do, but at around 7 PM on January 1st, in honor of my father who passed away due to cancer around that time on New Year's Day 2018. R.I.P. Volker, thank you for everything you have done for us. We miss you, and I will continue to pray for you.

By now, even the most resistant spreadsheet of mine has been tamed and made ready for the new year, and I too am ready the recommence the grind. What exactly are the plans for 2022?

The absolute minimum goal, of course, is to hit my bankroll target of $2,500 on Pokerstars, as I intended to do last year already. We are almost at $2.3K by now, so failing to meet such a modest goal in one year without a very good reason would be a massive failure that could be worthy of quitting poker over. Depending on what other plans may come up, I might consider building my bankroll up even further after reaching that target, rather than going back to withdrawing everything in excess of it.

As for how to do it, I will continue with the standard PL Badugi MTTs, together with my current Five Card Draw grind, which I would like to expand beyond FL cash and SNGs into MTTs and NL cash, if possible. FL Badugi cash may be an additional option, maybe I'll give it a few tries, but I'll be careful with it and pull the ripcord soon if I notice that it won't work out.

Another thing I would like to retry is Open Face Chinese Poker. I have had mixed results with it last year, but now that I have improved tracking methods, I would really like to give it another try to see how exactly it works out over time. I have already prepared an extra spreadsheet for it which I would love to test out - it may take a few games to find out what stats are relevant and therefore should be included in the sheets. The problem is still to get a game going at all... I did not succeed with it when I sat down at the tables tonight, next to that known player that sits at every low stakes table but never plays a hand - at least not against me.

There is another crypto-based poker room where I created an account at last year which also offers OFC with better traffic from what I can tell, which I won't name, in accordance with forum rules. Thing about this one is, I have never deposited and their selection of freerolls is extremely limited, normally only offering long splashy shallow-stacked ones which pay out not even money, but tickets to low buy-in tournaments. However, they did introduce some proper freerolls as a holiday promo for a short time, though still with an hour of late reg. Despite them being Hold'em, I came very close to cashing tonight before I ran TT into AA... and late reg was still going at that point. Maybe late regging into the money could be a thing here?

Apart from that, I only played a few hands of $0.10/$0.20 FL 5CD cash while waiting in vain for my OFC/P game to get started. At least they went well, I finished $2.78 up in such a short time.

What other poker-related things could I get started on this year? Maybe streaming? I should have some decent enough lighting in my usual grinding spot now (that would be the kitchen), so I don't see much impeding me, if I would like to do it. How would everyone else feel about it?

In any case, I'd say the stage is all set now when it comes to poker. All that's left to do now is to go get those chips!

Originally posted by Harrier88
By now, even the most resistant spreadsheet of mine has been tamed and made ready for the new year, and I too am ready the recommence the grind.

Pesky spreadsheets! Did this require a large hammer?

Originally posted by VorpalF2F

Originally posted by Harrier88
By now, even the most resistant spreadsheet of mine has been tamed and made ready for the new year, and I too am ready the recommence the grind.

Pesky spreadsheets! Did this require a large hammer?

Luckily, it required neither a hammer nor getting hammered, but it did take a lot of patience.

First day of the grind is done now, and all things considered, there is not much reason to complain yet. The bad things were bricks in Badugi and the one 5CD SNG I played. Wasn't all that lucky there this time. FL 5CD cash turned a small profit again.

OFC started with a disappointment too, when I lost 19 µBTC playing the lowball version, because no hi only tables were available, as usual. I was ahead after the first few rounds, but didn't quit in time, I guess. However, I did get some OFC/P hi only tables started, and they went better, we got 26 µBTC back to finish with a profit after all.

As for getting games started, I did usually enjoy taking over the tables of that known bumhunter by simply sitting down and waiting until he is forced to leave because he doesn't have the stones to play me. For a while, I thought that he might just open those tables and forget about them, but tonight, I clearly saw him re-entering my tables as soon as I left, or starting up new empty ones when I tried to sit down at his. Clearly, he is specifically avoiding me, so I guess I'll just take the hint now and stop bothering with him. It's still pretty scummy behavior, I think - if you don't want to play, then don't keep sitting at those tables.

About that other crypto site with the promo freerolls, it turns out that it is not quite as easy as simply late regging into the money - while late reg does last well until the tournament is down to the ITM ranks, I found out the hard way that late reg automatically ends there as soon as the first player busted out in an ITM position. This makes it a bit difficult to time it right, because other players are still free to join until this point, so it's not just a matter of waiting until you are one or two players away from ITM, more people will reg and then you are more places away again. Do it too early, and the high blinds will eat you up before you cashed. Do it too late, and registration closes, meaning you missed your chance at some easy free money.

Nevertheless, I did get some cashes, so I'm now sitting at ₮0.90 in my bankroll (that would be Tether, or USDT). It's supposed to be tied to the dollar, so that should be $0.90. Think that's pointlessly small? Maybe it is, but they do have some OFC/P tables with a ₮0.02 value per point... all I need is a buy-in to get started, maybe that's already enough? Would be pretty cool to run it up from such a tiny amount.

The freeroll promo lasts until Sunday, and since possibilities to gain some free money on that site are otherwise almost non-existent and I don't have any appointments this week anyway, I think it's worth wrecking my sleep schedule trying to get some pennies together for a free startup bankroll. I'll try to join as many freerolls as possible, and as late as possible. When it's done, I'll see what I can do with the funds.

Oh, and I even played some mahjong tonight, even though I didn't have plans for it this year, but I was waiting for one of those freerolls and no poker games I liked were running, so why not... I won $3.26 there.

Also, about those OFC tracking spreadsheets, they are for the most part done now. The way I'm doing it, I'm mostly tracking the amount of chips (that would be µBTC) won or lost, and then having my spreadsheet convert them into points (that is, the value points you'd get for your hands, independent of the stakes) and USD. The chip amounts already take rake into account, so the amount of points gained that is displayed will be considerably lower than it really is, but that's okay with me, you need to beat the rake anyway.

The USD value is dependent on a cell where I put in the current value of µBTCs, which needs to be updated manually. Currently, that should be $0.05, so I would have won $1.32 at OFC/P, and lost $0.95 at OFC/P 2-7 today, for a total profit of $0.37. It's interesting how this is the only part of my poker results which is dependent on something completely unrelated to my poker performance. It should also be interesting to compare those amounts to the rest of my poker games once I have collected some long-term results. Last year, OFC winnings were kind of in their own bubble for me because of the whole crypto thing. Being able to make such a comparison is one of the reasons why I wanted to get restarted with OFC in the first place this year.

Some major trolling with those crypto freerolls... I missed a bunch of them because the ITM ranks increased all of a sudden due to the amount of players, thus having everyone ITM at once and ending late reg, or in another one because late reg was already over super soon due to some freak accident, where people were already on the final table by the time late reg was supposed to end. No idea how it happened, I just got out of bed for that game.

In the games I did reg in time, I had some major "I looooooooooooove Hold'em" moments where I first busted out with QQ vs A8 and A6 who both got their ace on the river, then in another game with QT vs Q3 who flopped a 3, and then finally with AK which ran into QQ and didn't hit. All of them moments before ITM was reached, and in the case of QT vs Q3, even right on the bubble, I believe.

I won't complain about it any further, though, because today, it finally did pay off that I set my alarm to 8 AM (well, it's early for me). I hit the sweet spot on my registration and not only secured ITM almost instantly, but even ended up shipping the freeroll outright for ₮25, and therefore around $25. Not bad at all, considering that I was just aiming for a couple of cents to hopefully run up.

This already gives me a decent startup bankroll, which was more than I dared to hope for - I just wanted to get a buy-in or so to get a chance at a potentially bankroll building miracle run. No need for that anymore, we got a proper bankroll already, so we can play for real - and we got a brand new room to play at, which may be the best possible place for OFC/P games, at least in terms of traffic. How beatable the player pool is compared to that other crypto site remains to be seen. In any case, it significantly broadens our grinding options for this year, which is superb.

I will continue to play those freerolls while they are still being offered, and already secured a few more cents through another 2nd ladder cash, but I will no longer force myself to get up early or stay up late for them.

We're sitting on ₮27.20 now, after some more small cashes. Other than that, it was all OFC in the last few days, no other poker.

I tried some higher stakes, possibly too high for my current bankroll (this is the other room, with the bitcoins). Fortunately, it went well. We made around 80 µBTC, bringing my bankroll there comfortably over 500 µBTC again - which should be more or less as much is the ₮27.20 on that other room. I continue not to do well in the 2-7 version, though. I think I should better avoid it entirely from now on, too bad the traffic at the hi only version is even worse, but there isn't much I can do about it.

For some highlight hands, here is a straight flush I managed to get... which didn't get paid off, because the rest of my hand wasn't good, but my opponent's hand was:

And on a more positive note, here's a full house on top of quads, topped by a respectable pair of queens too - and it did get paid off nicely:

I haven't played there in ages.
I used to play there when I was bored, but lately I've been reading instead

Originally posted by VorpalF2F
I haven't played there in ages.
I used to play there when I was bored, but lately I've been reading instead

I've had another good session there tonight, so the results have been promising lately. If I stay disciplined and avoid the lowball version, I may be able to get something going.

I'm also curious about the other crypto room, where I plan to test the OFC/P tables next week, after the freerolls have ended. Right now, I'm in that experimental stage, where I try to figure out which games should be included in my grind, as well as when and where to play. If things continue like they did in the last few days, OFC may become a serious contender for a spot in the poker grind, like Five Card Draw and MTTs, all of which have been showing promise.

It's a good situation to be in, having a bunch of decent options to choose from and trying to figure out which one is best. It surely is a stark contrast to the first few months of last year, where everything was going like crap and I couldn't think of any better formats to replace my games with.

Yesterday's OFC/P session was an absolute rollercoaster ride... It went from being terrible, to break-even, to okay, to good, back to break-even, then bad, break-even again, bad, terrible and finally bad. Something like that. I finished with a loss, but huge swings in both directions all day long.

The variance in this game is something else. Keep in mind that the amounts to be paid are determined by the strength of the hand, not by how much the players decide to put into the pot. This, compared with the "Fantasyland" bonus, which gives you the big advantage of having all of your cards available in one deal, and which is unlocked by getting QQ or better in the top hand, means that big losses and big winnings may be a hair apart in any hand.

There were many hands and situations worth posting about, and one has already been added as my Hand of the Day. First, check out this guy: I don't know what happened, but he seemed to get those early trips like it was nothing, and then continued to draw even better. Look at this hand, where he already had me beat by a wide margin and already had Fantasyland in the bag too:

THIS was his draw...

Next, check out this other player, who had previously already trolled me in our session with back to back straight flushes. Another pretty good starting deal for him here:

Will he risk going for yet another straight flush? No need, he just got it on the very next draw...

Pretty bad situation for me, but I decided to risk putting Queens on top, hopefully finding a way to unlock Fantasyland, at least. I was working on a flush in the middle hand (which could potentially be abandoned in favor of trips or a two pair), so I would normally put the Q♣: there, but this would cut my outs for the (committed) flush draw at the bottom, which needs to beat my middle hand.

It worked out pretty nicely on the next draw, but I still had to complete that club flush, all while dodging A♣: and K♣:

Oh my word... Look what I got...

Yes, I was able to nail those kinds of draws too every once in a while. And now my opponent had to pay pretty big - while having a straight flush!

Truly a wild game... and one where I need to constantly remind myself that for better or for worse, the "long run" can be pretty long indeed when it comes to results. As of now, were are still nicely up for the year, at least.

All right, so the freerolls are over on that Tether Crypto site, and we are left with a starting bankroll of ₮27.45, comparable to $27.45. That super lucky 1st place was a real game changer, now we don't need to go YOLO and bring the entire bankroll to the tables, we can properly grind.

I was curious about how OFC/P is going there, and joined my first games. First of all, the traffic is so much better than on the bitcoin crypto site, it's not even close. Looks like you can actually get a game going at most times whenever you want to play, like with "normal" poker variants - no need to camp at one table for hours, only to have your opponent show up while you're in the bathroom or something. This site is definitely the place to go for OFC/P.

As for the skill level of the players, I expected them to be a bit better than on the bitcoin website, but during my first few sessions, I felt like the opposite was the case. After having played deep into the night yet again with less impressive results, though... maybe it was just beginner's luck once again after all. I guess I did my part to reduce the overall skill level of the player pool during those hours.

Results overall were still good, however, so I finished with a profit of ₮2.18, which isn't bad at all for one evening of playing at those stakes, where every point is worth only ₮0.02. It would correspond to 109 points gained, though the actual number would be higher, since rake is already applied to my profit.

The software also features a couple of "quality of life" improvements over the bitcoin website, most notably the option to display your discarded cards to yourself (but only yourself), giving you a better idea of dead outs. I don't even get why this is only an option, who would not want to take advantage of it? Also, the software has some more eye candy in terms of animations and effects, which makes the game a bit more fun to play, but also slightly slows down the pace of the game.

I'm curious to see how those games could go in the longer run, and how they would stack up to the rest of my grind. I suppose the only way to find out is to keep grinding them from a while - which should now be achievable, with the vastly improved traffic on that site.

As for highlight hands, I could offer you this Fantasyland deal:

Can you spot a good hand? If not, you will surely see it when you see the final layout that I went for:

That wasn't the only straight flush from my session, though, I got another one here (also during Fantasyland), and this one even got paid off much better:

Oh, and I did play some Badugi tonight too. Very nice start, but I eventually found myself losing focus, and also didn't get any decent hands for a while then. A $1 bounty was all I got in the end out of what could have been a promising run.

I was in for a surprise today. As I was aware, the "holiday freerolls" on that Tether crypto site had ended yesterday, and I was very pleased with the bankroll I managed to build in them thanks to my lucky 1st place. But as I was waiting for some OFC/P tables there to fill up, I had another look at the tournament lobby, and it turned out that this was only partly true: The "holiday freerolls" have ended, yes, but the room has simply introduced a bunch of additional freerolls under a different name, which otherwise work exactly as the previous holiday freerolls. Oh, and one of them had less than a minute of late reg left, and was just before ITM...

I couldn't have timed it any better myself if I had tried, so I jumped right in... and guess what, I shipped it again! Maybe I'm not as hopeless at Hold'em as I thought after all. ₮22.50 was my prize, and together with my previous winnings and the ₮3.47 profit I made at OFC/P so far after two days of playing, this brings my bankroll now to ₮53.42. Once again, keep in mind that all I dared to hope for were a couple of mincashes to add up to a couple of buy-ins for OFC/P micro stakes, so this is sensational, really.

This brings up a question about bankroll management in this format. Here's how it works: There are several limits for OFC/P, defined by the monetary value attached to each point you make with your hands. I explained the scoring in detail here, but to sum it up quickly, you get one point for each line you win, three bonus points for "scooping" (winning all three lines), and additional "royalties" for completing hands of a certain strength. These royalties are what really matters for your scoring, and they can potentially range from 2 to 50 for a single line, though they are rarely more than 10. You join a table with the funds to pay for 100 points. If you lose them all, you're considered busted out, so it's impossible to lose more than that in one game. At the end of a round, the winnings and losses are realized, and you would have to join with another 100 points stack yet again if you wish to play another round.

The lowest limit is ₮0.02 per point, so you'd join with a ₮2 stack, the next highest limits would be ₮0.05 and ₮0.10 - it's just like the common micro stakes limits for Hold'em and Omaha, really. But how many buy-ins should I have in my bankroll to take a shot at a certain limit? 20? Maybe just 10?

10 was actually the number I first considered - in which case I would be properly rolled for the ₮0.05 games already. I don't think I'm quite ready for them yet, though. At the very least, I think I should have earned enough profit in OFC/P games themselves to cover one buy-in. But I think that shooting for a 20 buy-ins bankroll might be wiser. Especially because I know that it's easy to get a bit carried away in this game.

I'll just keep grinding for a bit and keep joining those freerolls whenever I catch them, and see what we can build. "Regular" poker may have to take a bit of a back seat for a while, but I'm just really excited to see where this could go - right now, those OFC/P games could still be anything from a disappointing short-lived experiment to my new main game.

Terrible OFC/P session tonight, I lost ₮2.66. There goes most of my profit so far...

To be frank, I was up against some pretty horrible opponents at times, they made some really nonsensical moves - but as long as they hit their one-outers and backdoor draws, and my good draws go to waste... you know how it goes, it's like in any other form of poker, except the impact is usually much worse.

This certainly makes a case for my more conservative BRM of waiting for 20 buy-ins. And again, I should remind myself that the long run really is long.

I played Badugi tonight too, at least that one went a little better with a 2nd ladder cash and a $1 bounty, but nothing great either.