I told him I just lost in the World Series of Poker, but surely this 6 pack of watered down domestic brew would help. He asked how much I lost... I told him $10,000.
He looked at me a little funny, grabbed his chest, and said "Ouch man... that hurts". I don't know if he was talking about me or him. Probably my wife.
In addition to my crappy Miller Lite, I ordered what promises to be terrible pizza from the only place that delivers past midnight on a Sunday in Las Vegas. Ok, well, I'm sure there are other places, but this one looked particularly bad.
At any rate, as I wait for my crappy pizza drinking my crappy beer reflecting on my crappy day, I decided to do some statistical analysis. I mean... what else do you do after 1am in Vegas if not statistical analysis?
Here's what I've got - and I found it somewhat interesting.
For starters, we have to identify what's a good hand... and this is easier than it sounds, a number of different people/books/webpages have differing opinions. For the purposes of consistency, I used Wikipedia. Wikipedia highlight the Sklansky/Malmuth approach and groups starting cards as such:
Tier 1: AA, KK, QQ, JJ, AKs
Tier 2: TT, AQs, AJs, KQs, AKo
Tier 3: 99, ATs, KJs, QJs, JTs, AQo
Tier 4: 88, KTs, QTs, J9s, 89s, AJo, KQo
Tier 5: 77, A9-A2s, Q9s, T8s, 97s, 87s, 76s, KJo, QJo, JTo
Now... I would argue with a lot of this - for example, one other webpage declared 89 suited should get folded consistently. But I need to use something for comparison, so this is it, even if I disagree with many aspects of it.
The point is, I complained about bad cards all day this year... but I do that every year! However, considering this year was the only one where my cards were so bad I basically gave up out of frustration, just how bad were they? Well, I charted the last 4 years against the Wikipedia chart:
| Tier | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 |
| 1 | 4 | 6 | 7 | 5 |
| 2 | 3 | 9 | 6 | 8 |
| 3 | 6 | 5 | 4 | 4 |
| 4 | 4 | 4 | 7 | 4 |
| 5 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Total | 18 | 27 | 27 | 27 |
Evidently tracking all my hands for the last 6 years' worth of world series play can come in handy for something... if you count postmortem statistical analysis at two in the morning as something.
Ok, so if we say our top 5 tiers are our "playable hands", even thought I might not play some, we can see that I pretty consistently got a playable hand 27 times in the first 5 rounds for the previous 3 years. This year I got 18 in the same amount of time (Minus 4 hands). So, basically, if we take what I had this year... 18... I essentially got 50% more playable hands each of the last 3 years. An extra 9 playable hands may not seem like a lot, but when you only have 18, it is.
But even more so than that was the dearth of premium hands, Figure tier 1 hands are premium hands. Tier 2 aren't far off. My entire game play is based on maximizing these hands... but while I had 13 in 2013... and 13 in 2014... and 15 in 2015... I had 7 this year. Seven. And I had less truly premium hands this year than any other year.
So when I lost my mind with my pocket kings in round 4, that's why - I was getting significantly less playable hands than I normally do, less super premium hands than I am used to, and 50% of my four super premium hands went for a loss when that idiot in seat 3 chased my top pair top kicker with second pair second kicker and chopped with a straight on the river and that stupid ace hit the flop against my kings.
Moreover, of those 18 playable hands from today... 7, almost half, came in round one when I won a lot of blinds with less than a full table. Whereas I averaged 5 - 6 playable hands per round in the last three years, I averaged less than 3 in rounds 2 - 5 this year.
Even still, I'm going to wake up tomorrow and hate myself for going on tilt so badly, but at least I feel slightly... ever so slightly... vindicated that I was, indeed, truly getting a cold run of cards. But that's part of the problem with not playing poker regularly and only playing in 5 hour tournaments with friends - a cold stretch can seem even worse than it is.
Any which way, I'm going to wake up tomorrow, read about playing far too many 6 8's and K 3's and be beside myself upset about how I played. I can't believe I'm out on day one... after they raised it to 50,000 in chips no less.
We'll see if I do this again - I am now officially losing money on the World Series of Poker. And as spelled out in the first post, I have significantly more responsibilities than when I started this endeavor... and no time to play poker during the year. And, actually, I could overcome most of that for 2017, except I didn't even have fun this year. I mean, I had a little fun when I got drunk and won a pot for 3 minutes, but other than that, this was a pretty challenging trip filled with a lot of stress and remorse for ditching my wife and kid.
Anyway, I'm off to bed...
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