The Worst Winner

With major live poker events returning across the globe, it seems that we have finally put the global COVID pandemic behind us. Whether or not it is finished with us is debatable but at the very least we seem to have got bored of it and are moving on regardless.   After 18 months of lockdowns, living like a high tech hyper connected hermit, I thought it would be a good time to reflect on the lessons I’ve learned in lockdown:   Government Policy Before dealing with poker, just putting this out there, I was surprised by the Government’s disregard for the health and well-being of its people. There’s been some kind of ‘lets-try-pleasing-everyone-while-actually-pleasing-no-one’ approach to the pandemic, punctuated with jarring levels of corruption and incompetence.   Live Player Let Loose Online The initial lockdowns closed casinos and with no other options, forced casual and regular poker players alike to compete online, creating a surge of players battling it out on the virt...

Like many others, I have recently been watching ‘The Queen’s Gambit’ on Netflix, if you are unfamiliar with the show, the story follows the ups and downs of an unlikely chess prodigy. As a result of the popularity of the series, interest in chess has surged, and as a result of that, the poker community at large has been asking “where’s the poker equivalent?”. Well actually, I think there is a poker equivalent, it’s just that it’s 20 years old and any influence it may have has faded over time. Rounders, follows a not dissimilar path as an unlikely hero battles the established masters for dominance. While the poker community claim they want more of this kind of thing, even Rounders writer, Brian Koppelman, isn’t even sure we will embrace it. D o we really want this? No wonder we don’t get to have nice things! Following on from this, a few big name players and streamers dipped their toes in the chess waters as recreational fish and haven’t fared as well as they would normally in the...

I am here to champion the Cadillac of, no wait, the Great Game of… no, that’s not it either, the Numpty Fest of Short Deck Poker. Like many others, I recently signed up to GGPoker to play the online WSOP. GG have a “Honeymoon” promotion for new players, which is 30 days of daily challenges, which get progressively more difficult as the rewards for completing them get better. One of the missions was “play 50 hands of Short Deck poker”, so I did.   Short Deck has always seemed to be an unnecessary luxury to me, yet another variation for the sake of variation. In fairness, my knowledge of Short Deck is limited to hearing which millionaire has won an obscene amount of Yen in the latest Triton event. As the wizards are ever closer to solving hold’em, seems like Short Deck (or Hold’em 6+ as it’s also known) has been invented so that the highrollers can blow off some steam, gamble it up or claw back some equity. I dunno, I’m eeking it out on normal hold’em, why on earth would I get involv...

I've been prompted to write this after accidentally regging a €10 satellite and winning a €100 ticket to the Unibet Supernova tournament. I  didn't intend to play the Supernova, so have I lost my €10 stake or made a profit of €90? Could this be a Schrödinger success? I have both won and not won, only opening the box and playing the game reveals its true nature.  As with all poker players, the dream is to go to Vegas and play in the World Series of Poker. Each year I would commit a month or two and a chunk of my bankroll to grinding the WSOP satellites. After 3 "years" of trying,  I was fortunate enough to win a package to the WSOP in 2012. For a while now, I have reassured myself that if I just keep plugging away, keep getting to these bigger target events, then eventually one will coincide with some rungood and success will be mine, at last! A while back someone, probably my wife, suggested I would be better off winning money, instead of tickets. I fobbed it of...

Long before the demise of PKR (RIP) there have been community organised meet-ups far and wide. The PKR community spirit has outlived the ghost of PKR and continues even now. One such weekend of punts and pints took place at the Manchester 235 Casino, where I made many mistakes. Mistake #1 After making the now long standing mistake of drinking far too much on the Friday night and suffering the effects the following day, the £50 buy-in Main Event was scheduled to start Saturday lunchtime. Or at least it was supposed to but there were not enough dealers on hand for our 60+ strong contingent. We were offered a small discount on food and drink to compensate us as we waited for over an hour before the casino staff finally readied themselves but that gesture was quickly forgotten when the tournament director changed the blind structure to reduce the tournament length to offset the time lost. Suffice to say people weren’t happy, the general consensus was it was bad and no-one wanted this...

During a recent interview with Joey Ingram, Barry Greenstein spoke about asking a bunch of recreational players why they play poker and despite all being clearly losing players, everyone says they're in it to win money. Absurd isn't it? But hang on, why do I play poker? To win money, of course. Do I?  A little but at a very poor hourly rate. So why bother? If I really wanted to win, I would do 200% more studying, I would have at the very least tried using a HUD at some point in the last decade and I would certainly be all over solvers right now. But I am not. I read free strategy pieces, some hand histories and occasionally go old school with some good old fashioned book reading, just enough to keep the pocket money coming in but not enough to win serious cash. And yet, I want to win serious cash, so what am I waiting for?  People are always asking pros "what do I need to do to become a great player?" like there's some quick "oh you should be 3betting ev...

"Oh my god, what's wrong?" b ooms a beautiful bubbly blonde.  Confused by the grim scene she finds in front of her.  She turns to her friend but he doesn't know either, so she approaches the poker table. "What's wrong?" she asks.  Her question is met with silent stares. "I just saw your face as I came in, you look really angry." she says to me.  Bemused, I shrug, not sure what to say, I manage to raise a little smile in her direction.   "Oh my god,  why does everyone look so serious?" I look around me, and she's right. After a night of solid poker, we're one player away from making the final table an yet we look more like we belong in the dentists waiting room.  "You all look pretty sad" I laugh. No-one else joins in though.   "Why does no-one look happy?" Her effervescence is failing to spread.  The line of questioning isn't doing much to lighten the mood.  She watches on, tr...

For many years, PKR was my home of poker. From time to time I might flirt with stints here and there on other sites but eventually, I would always return home to PKR. With the recent death of PKR, I find myself homeless. The slow death of PKR has been a protracted and painful ordeal. Since Black Friday, national segregation of player pools and the Global Financial Crisis (remember when it was the innocently titled "Credit Crunch"?) player pools and disposable income shrank. Player numbers went down, guarantees went down and the community began to shrink. Much of this was outwith the control of those at PKR, and every other site, but the bigwigs at PKR just seemed to make poor decision after poor decision. While other sites have survived, evolved and even grown in recent years, PKR could not stop it's decline. Rather than focusing on PKR's unique selling point, what made it great and what made it unique, no not the 3D graphics but the community, PKR concentrated on st...

I am such a fucking nit, a nd it's ruining poker.  It's not my play at the tables that's the problem though,  my problem is I am a bankroll nit. My desire not to lose money has shackled my ability to win money and destroyed my enjoyment of the game.  It wasn't always this way, back when I started I had more disposable income than I knew what to do with (part of the reason I started playing poker), losing meant nothing but winning big could have meant everything. The first couple of years wins and losses yoyo-ed erratically, but overall the pattern was a fairly consistent downward trend. After a while I got my shit together, started studying, reading books and forums, turned my game around and began climbing back towards the land of profit. At one point, I had a pretty nice win for a few hundred dollars, made all the more significant because it marked my return to the break even point. Only it wasn't.  I hadn't been keeping track of wins and losses, not ...