Category Archives: 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo

Hate To Say I Told You So — April/May 2025

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It’s been a busy couple months here at Mutant Poker, even though my playing volume is still so much lower than it used to be and I don’t have any plans to go to Las Vegas this summer because of real-life stuff. Things to be happy about, though!

The Poker

First off, the past couple of months have been profitable, if not enormously so, which is always an accomplishment for someone who plays tournaments almost exclusively. I played just 25 tournaments (5 in April and 20 in May), with only two of those live (more on these types of numbers later).

No live poker at all in April, just a couple of small online home games and three in an online poker league. I bricked the first three (two Stud/8 tournaments and a NLHE Bounty), then won a single-table PLO tournament and a 21-entry 8-Game Mix that saved the month.

Just 6 of the 20 tournaments in May were NLHE (one live). I took first in two of the online home games. I was on a roll from the start in the live home game—nearly knocking out two players on the second hand—right up to the bubble when a player who’d clawed his way up from nothing at first lost a flip against me on the flop then hit a set on the turn and left me gasping for air and the booby-prize of less than half a buy-in.

The rest of the games were PLO/8 and PLO/8 Bounty (5), PLO (1), 8-Game Mix (3), HORSE (1), Stud/8 (3), and O/8 (1). I cashed in half of them and won the PLO, a PLO/8 Bounty, an 8-Game, and a Stud/8. The buy-in’s aren’t huge, the fields aren’t particularly big, but it’s great to be able to play something other than NLHE so regularly.

This would all theoretically hearken well for a WSOP trip, but no.

The Stats

May marks 14 years since I started keeping track of every real-money poker event (cash and tournaments). I built my own primitive online tracking tool just after Black Friday and a shift to live poker put a kibosh on automatically recording everything with Poker Tracker. At the time, I also had some ideas on how gauge the future profitability of tournament poker players who can be good even if they’re underwater financially.

Here are some stats on the local rooms I’ve played in in that time:

  • 452 events at The Final Table Poker Club
  • 448 events at Encore Club (that’s not going up any more)
  • 431 events at Portland Players Club (same)
  • 160 events at Aces Players Club / Aces Full Poker Club
  • 99 events at Portland Meadows Poker (looking forward to that third digit)
  • 21 events at The Game
  • 17 events at Cowboy’s (briefly underneath Aces)
  • 11 events at The Last Frontier 
  • 8 events at Claudia’s
  • 8 events at Oak Tree Casino
  • 4 events at Ace of Spades 
  • 4 events at Deuces Players Club
  • 2 events at Rialto Poolroom
  • 1 event at Big Stack Poker Club (does that put me at 100 with Brian Sarchi?)
  • 1 event at Trio Poker Room

The bulk of that was in the years between 2011 and 2016, which is one of the reasons the Meadows number is so low, relatively. I went to work at the WSOP in the summer of 2016 after being mostly unemployed for years (hint: not the best time to pick up poker as a hobby unless you’re good at it) and came back to a job offer that took me off the streets during the weekdays when I had been frequenting Final Table, PPC, and Encore.

When I posted this in the NW Poker group on Facebook the other day, I got queries about some of the other fine rooms that have existed in the past 15 years. There are places I just didn’t get to. Sorry.

The Tracker

One of my projects the past month has been to update the software I use to track my poker playing. I wrote a crude system back in the spring of 2011 using mySQL (online database software) and PHP (a scripting language) but I’m a hack programmer. While I’ve been working with and programming computers since the days when we used paper tapes and punch cards, my formal programming training ended before any of the modern languages were even developed and more than a decade before the birth of the World Wide Web. Event the languages I did learn in depth (and wrote books and articles about) are long-dead. It’s been more than 20 years since I wrote my last book. So what I created was pretty unsophisticated but it did most of what I wanted it to do, which was to sort events by start and end dates, cash and/or tournaments, venues, minimum and maximum entrants for tournaments, and min/max buy-ins. Plus, it showed running totals for cost, payouts, and profits over the selected time period, median ROI for profitable tournaments, and the value of a metric I came up with called Tournament Performance Index, which is derived from a ratio of percentage of tournament cashed and the median ROI.

The “design” of the old tracker was pretty minimal, but it did use different backgrounds on tournaments and cash games, with varying shades for profitable events and unprofitable events. Despite the fact that part of my actual job is implementing the design for web sites, I didn’t put a whole lot of time into making it look nice, because I was the only person who was going to see it; I never had any intention to make it into a product—I’m not that kind of guy (i.e. a good businessman).

I’ve been wanting to do a revamp for a long time, and there were some features I wanted that were just too much of a hassle to add for just myself, but a recent evaluation of Codeium’s Windsurf Pro AI coding aid led me to do a complete rewrite of the PHP backend (API or Application Programming Interface that communicates to the database) and front-end. The front end was originally written in PHP, returning an HTML web page to the browser. My goal was to do something more modern, with a front end written in React, a JavaScript variant that does its work in the viewer’s browser. I’ve done a fair amount of work in React over the past five or six years, but most of it has been making data look pretty, not on actually fetching and slicing and dicing the data. If I was doing that for work, it’d be one thing, but any time I spend on tracker development is time I could be playing poker.

Windsurf certainly didn’t do the job instantly. Nor did it execute instructions with perfection. I found that with some tasks, once a component had been built, it was at times far more difficult to refine the component to get it to do what I wanted than it was to throw it all away and start over, knowing where I’d run into problems on the prior attempt. But with a couple of days of work, the basics of the tracker had been completely rebuilt. With a few more days poking at it, it was on a par with the pool I’d built up in dribs and drabs over 14 years, and even had a few new twists. Plus, it was going to be far easier to add new features.

At the heart is a simple form where all of the content should be obvious except for consortium which was a long-ago plan for a few of the guys in our home game to share a portion of our winnings, which—apart from me paying out $300 for the first $10K GTD I final tabled at Encore Club back in 2011—never saw any other money transacted. I could probably get rid of that column but it’s in the database.

I can filter events by date, name, buy-in,, and number of entries, and can show or hide by venue. I’ve been taking photos of tournament screen when I bust out for almost 15 years now, so it’s pretty easy to keep track of that info even if I don’t feel like entering it in right away. Believe it or not, I’m more likely to forget to take a photo when I’ve cashed than when I’ve busted short of the money.

Individual events have their own row with the date, event name venue, event type (T here for three tournaments). A number after a T indicates the number of tournaments in a row without a profit (thankfully just 1 here). An identifier for the venue. Basic financials, placement, cumulative financials, notes under the number on rebuys, addons, and payouts (if I take them). And a little graphic indicator to indicate the number of minutes played in the event (one full circle for each hour).

Yes, I only lasted 5 minutes in the game in the middle. It was a max late reg!

Up near the top are some tournament stats. As I said earlier, I’ve been running hot the past couple months, at least in my very minor-league circles.

Finally, some charts. As a big believer in data science and poker–let’s call it Moneychip–I’ve made a variety of charts over the years to try to figure out what, if anything,I was good at, and just how good “good” was. Aside from the standard cumulative cost, payout, and profit line chart at the top, the radar chart below it shows me where I’ve finished in tournament fields as a percentage of the field. As I mentioned, it’s been a good couple of months, with the upper-right quadrant of the Tournament Placement chart showing 1st-place finishes in more than a quarter of the events over April and May (I was first out in several events, as well). My version of the chart has grid lines at 90% (the old standard for payouts in larger fields) and 85% (the standard at the WSOP in most events). but smaller events often pay higher percentages, if barely.

So. That’s it for this edition. I’ve got more charts to make. Maybe some poker.

Outsmarted — February/March 2025

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Another couple of months of light pokering. The Chainsaw Poker league continues to be interesting, though I only had two min-cashes in 14 shots over February and March. So, no profits but I got to play 8-Game Mix, Stud/8, HORSE, PLO/8, and Omaha/8.

In the Beaverton Quarantine league, I only played a couple games during February, then four in March (including two on one night), winning two outright (a NLHE Bounty and NLHE) and ending another NLHE in a three-way chop. The other three (NLHE Bounty, PLO, and PLO/8 Bounty) I was dead last.

The original home game had a get-together in February and I got off to a good start with aces vs. kings in the early levels, pulling into the chip lead early on only to have the whole thing go gunnysack over the course of two hands after the end of rebuys and I ended up in 10th place out of 12.

I wasn’t able to make it down for much of the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic, but I was able to get there for the opening weekend’s $100K GTD NLHE tournament. Got pasted early on and re-entered.

On the next-to-last hand before the end of registration break, I was down to 20bb UTG and opened AA, getting 4 callers. The flop was 964 rainbow; I continued for 4bb and a loose caller across from me plonked in more than my stack. I called, he shows 9T offsuit and the aces hold despite his straight draw on the turn. On the last hand before break, a well-known Portland-area player shoved in late position with a new stack over the same player’s limp. Shover says he’s all-in blind and shows 64 offsuit. The caller shows 63 off, hits a 3 and the shover’s knocked out.

I got another pair of aces against the same player and won another hand after registration closed, then a set of queens put me up about the necessary chip average for making Day 2 (although we were still a long way off).

The winner of the previous fall’s Main Event sat down on my left. She’s a very aggressive player, so there were advantages and disadvantages to that. A player in early position raised to 6bb and I called with TT on the button. She shoved 25bb on a 442 flop and I call. AK against my tens and she hits the ace on the river. My beautiful stack!

Half an hour after my peak and I’m down more than 100K in chips and feeling kind of sick. 36 players to the money (72 payouts) and I was down to 70K.

Got AA again and raised from early position; the former main event champ called and when the flop came K-high, I shoved my last 14bb. She thought for a while and called with KQ offsuit. The Q paired on the turn, but an 8 on the river paired the flop and I made the better two pair for a double up. She toasted off another 125K limping with an over pair and letting the BB make a straight with 64. At 3 to the money, she was very short on the next orbit when I raised QJ suited from the button. She shoved 5bb, I called vs her KK, flopped a gunshot straight draw and hit it on the river, knocking her out just short of the end of the day.

I ended up 43/72 of the players coming back for Day 2, but I was still in.

There were two very short stacks at the table at the start of the day but also two of the top 10 stacks. And one of the guys who used to play in our home game. When I talked to him about why he wasn’t coming any more, he mentioned it was because of one of the other players—and it wasn’t me! Unfortunately for him, he caught a set of nines against a flush draw that hit on the river and crippled him and he was out in the mid-60s.

Got a couple all-ins through without any calls to stay alive while I was in the 10-15bb range. We had some drama when a player got moved to the table and dumps a couple handfuls of chips in front of his seat, then wanders off during a hand before action gets to him to talk to a buddy at the nearby payout table. He came back and rooted through his chips saying he thought he had a 25K chip. One of the floor people finds a 25K chip in the aisle but says he can’t have that one since there’s no way to verify that it was his. That causes some chatter at the table and beyond until Forrest Auel comes over to say they’ve verified that it was his chip. All is well.

Ninety minutes into the day and I’d made enough to pay for both my buyins and my room for the night, so I was happy. Almost half the field was gone, but I was hovering in the 15bb range.

The Mutant Jack (AJ suited) paid off for a double up against 99. I shoved 15bb, hit the jack and a flush draw on the flop, made the flush on the turn, and picked up another jack on the river just for safety. Made it to the first break with 334K at the 10K/15K big blind ante level, so still only 22bb.

Slid down to about 200K, chopped a hand AK==AK, and finally hit the wall with 99 against AA.

Still less than a 100% ROI (given the re-entry) but it did make me feel better about the quality of my NLHE game.

Maybe too much better, because when I hit the Final Table $10K GTD NLHE on the next Friday, I didn’t even make the point where they posted the payouts, even after a rebuy and add-on.

Portland Meadows ran a late-month mid-week PLO Bounty that sounded like just the thing, but it went very poorly for me and pretty much everyone else at my table as the guy in seat 9 was absolutely crushing everyone. You can see his stack below that was before the end of re-entry (after I blew my second stack with at least a chance of winning against his flopped set). By the time I left, more than half of the 40 bounties in play had been collected and I think he had about 15 of them.

WSOP CIrcuit Maryland Controversy

I’m late to the party on this story, where back at the beginning of March, the wrong player was awarded a pot, in a hand that knocked out a player in third place at the WSOPC Maryland NLHE Main Event. Divyam Satyarthi had Q♣️T❤️ vs A❤️3♠️, there were both flush and straight draws on the board by the turn, and both were completed on the river, after Satyarthi had paired on the flop.

Satyarthi was the short stack by a significant amount, with just about a million chips at the time he went all-in according to Poker.org, compared to more than 9 million each for the other two players.

The player who was awarded the pot, Maurice Hawkins, ended up winning the tournament after having to make a couple of come-backs against Dan Chalifour, and there’s been some shade thrown his way by a number of people (alluded to in the PokerNews Podcast episode covering the story) about whether he knew he’d actually lost the hand and was celebrating his straight as a away of distracting people from seeing the flush.

Most of the controversy about this has centered on whether reporters who see an error like this should speak up, even though in this case, the reporter didn’t see the flush themselves, likely until they were reviewing video to write up the hand.

That video (shared on Poker.org) shows that less than two seconds pass between the time the dealer lays down the river card (at 0:19 seconds into the video, on the left) and the time he kills the winning hand (at 0:21 seconds, on the right). As the river card’s transiting the board, it’s obscuring the suits of other cards; and the Q♣️ in the winning hand is already partially obscured by the fact it’s on the bottom. By the time the hand’s being killed, there’s no way to see the suit of the card that would have made the win. Should Satyarthi have known that he had a club? Maybe, but so should the dealer. Another second or two of delay before the hand was killed would have made a difference.

How much of a difference? Satyarthi got $64,458 for third place. At the time he went all-in, his stack was worth about $72K according to an ICM calculator (with Hawkins’s worth about $115K and $112.5K for Challifour. Doubling up through Hawkins would have given Satyarthi another $7 in equity, mostly coming from Hawkins. He still would have been at a 4:1 chip disadvantage, but there was a point just a couple of hours later where Hawkins himself was down to what Satyarthi would have had if the chips had been awarded properly.

Play Money

Just been practicing my skills on PokerStars Lite.

Declare Guerre Nucléaire — September 2024

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Continuing my streak of low-volume poker months, September inched up just a bit from August, but still only 18 tournaments. September’s always tough, with some family stuff happening right around the fall Chinook Winds series every year, so I didn’t make it down this month. Overall, the month was even.

Old School NLHE

My original home game got back together for the first time in several months, and mirable dictu, there were some new folks, brought in the The Marvelous Kate. It’s been literal years since we’ve had enough for a second table. Started off with 12, I made it through half the field.

The Council NLHE

A chance encounter at the grocery store led to an invitation to a $20 game with some local politics folks. Aside from bottom-level volunteering on a couple campaigns about 15 years ago, my last brush with politics was when I ran for the Oregon Legislature back in 1994, but it was entertaining to listen to the current gossip even if I didn’t know who was the subject. Also, I took 2/13. It would have been 1st, but my 3-bet shove pre-flop with AK got called by KJ and the J hit on the flop. He just barely had me covered after knocking out 3rd place.

Chainsaw Poker

Sixteen tournaments with this online mixed games group named for Allen Kessler. PLO, PLO/8, 7-Card Stud/8, HORSE, and 8-Game Mix. Four profits and a min-cash in a game I re-entered. Three runner-up finishes (not quite as impressive when the fields are mostly between 10-15 entries). Tried for a satellite ticket into their series of bigger buyins, but no dice.

Coming Up

October is off to a decent start already. Next week is Portland Meadows’ Main Event Series, featuring a Big O tournament Thursday and their $1000 buyin on Saturday. There’s a $30K GTD at Final Table the Saturday after that (the 19th). And the week after that is the High Mountain Emerald Valley Poker Classic in Eugene.

See you on the felt.

Closed For the Season — August 2024

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Final Table $20K GTD NLHE

It’s been a looooong time since I’ve cashed in one of these, and even longer since I had a significant cash in one, which is bad, because of the last 13 events I’ve played at Final Table, 10 of them have been their monthly First Friday $20K (the others were Friday night $10Ks and one special $40K).

I have to go back before the pandemic to May 2018 to an ICM deal to find something other than a min-cash in any of the $20Ks. Didn’t even make it that far in this one, where I was doing well until I got trapped by a guy who looked like an evil Kevmath who got a back-door 2 pair with five-deuce from the big blind to beat my ace-jack top pair in what started out as a raised multiway pot. All downhill from there. 134th out of 207.

Beaverton Quarantine

Five sessions of this home game on the PokerStars Lite platform. All NLHE, with two bounty games. Picked up a bounty but didn’t cash in the first one, bubbled the fourth, then made 2nd of 13 entries in the last one. Not enough to be in the black for this venue, though.

Puffmammy Home Game

The old gang got together for only the sixth time since the pandemic began (with the promise of more soon). I got off to a great start, stacking the same player twice but then ending up as the bubble after his third bullet pulled out aces versus my ace-king, taking a huge chunk out of my stack. I haven’t had a profit in this game since March 2020.

Portland Meadows Wild West Series Omaha Showdown

Probably should have taken the omens on this one seriously. I didn’t pay close enough attention to my Tri-Met Trip Planner and walked to Division instead of Belmont after work, which ended up with me getting to the 6pm game 20 minutes later than I’d planned.The Showdown was a 5-Card Omaha game, alternating between Hi and Hi-Lo. I lasted less than an orbit, flopping top two pair and turning a full house (tens full of queens) but running into queens full of tens. Congrats to Jen Barnard for the win. And to Meadows for their Saturday Pots o’ Gold tournament with nearly $93K in the prize pool for a $400 buy-in!

Chainsaw Poker

The saving grace for the month for me was Chainsaw Poker. Nine tournaments (3 x 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo, 2 x PLO Hi-Lo, 1 x PLO Hi-Lo Bounty, 2 x Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, 1 x 8-Game Mix); 3-way chop in PLO Hi-Lo, wins in Omaha Hi-Lo and 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo.

My last game of the month was one of the Stud Hi-Lo games. It hit 18 entries and by the time we were down to 9, I had a third of the chips in play and a 2:1 lead over the next largest stack. Nobody really got close for the rest of the final table, and heads-up started with me ahead about 8:1.The structures are pretty turbo, there were fewer than 20 big bets in play by that point, and the whole tournament only ran about 90 minutes.

Really loving the chance to play a variety of games in small fields. And that my record here for this month makes up for everything else and puts me in the black the first time in 2024.

Coming Up

Not absolutely sure what’s I’m doing this month, there’s a lot of family stuff coming up. But starting on the 13th, Meadows is running Friday night satellites to their $1K Main Event on October 12th, and there’s the Chinook Winds Fall Coast Poker Classic coming up September 21st to 29th. I might make the beginning or ending weekend, but no way I can take another week off for poker this year and definitely not this month.