Category Archives: 8-Game Mix

Knock Knock — May 2026

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We’re in the run-up to another Poker Summer Camp in Las Vegas. It was 10 years ago when I worked at the World Series of Poker as a live reporter. Fifteen years since my first time playing in Vegas. I haven’t been there every summer, and skipped several years since working there entirely. Missed last year, and it’s going to be a stretch to find the time to get down this summer, even after a couple of decent cashes this spring. At least my most recent game there was a win! I’ve got some ideas…

Online

My Chainsaw experience continues to be mostly negative. Not because I’m not enjoying it, but because the player field includes a lot of people who are actually good at mixed games. I thought I was—and around Portland that may have been true at one point—but throw me in the water with people who’ve won bracelets and maybe not.

I stepped up the pace a bit this month after the cash in April’s PKO. 20 tournaments, which started off with a nice second place in a Limit Hold’em. Then it was 19 more tournaments (Pot Limit Omaha, 7-Card Stud, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo (2), 7-Card Stud Hi- Lo (2), 8-Game Mix (5), 5-Card Pot Limit Omaha, HORSE (3), Limit Omaha, more Limit Hold’em (2), Limit Omaha Hi-Lo) with only a single cash from a small LHE game and four stone bubbles. That was painful.

Because I was stepping up my non-home game play this month, I only participated in one of the Beaverton Quarantine games, placing in the middle of a single-table PLO Bounty tournament.

Live

My former work colleague Ben—who’s made a couple of trips to Las Vegas with me—is back in Portland and wanted to get together to play a little poker. We headed to Milwaukie’s Stadiums Sports Bar, the remaining outpost of the One Good Hand Oregon Poker Club for their Friday night $50 No Limit Hold’em tournament. We had a couple beers before joining in, then I lasted about two-and-a-half hours before busting halfway through the field. Ben made it to 4th place, though!

Portland Meadows Poker Classic

Middle of May was the Portland Meadows Poker Classic.I popped in for Monday’s 5-Seat Guaranteed NLHE Main Event Satellite, pumped in a couple of buy-ins, then missed one of the 9 tickets by three places. I regmaxxed the PLO Double Board Bomb Pot tournament on Tuesday and only lasted 35 minutes but with all of the early rebuys still ended up in the top half of the field.

Since I didn’t win a satellite seat, I bought in directly to the series’ $100,000 Guaranteed NLHE Main Event. I’d entered the time into my schedule as noon but realized things had started an hour earlier when Devin Sweet looked at me disapprovingly, so I sat down in the middle of action. Not long after I sat down, owner Brian Sarchi looked up from a conversation and called over that he’d just been talking about not having seen me for a while (we had a nice talk ourselves during a break later) and I’m attributing everything after that to good ju-ju from this incident.

I’d played against one of the table young guns (at this point, almost everyone is a young gun compared to me) before and had noticed how he battered at early betting pre flop with massive raises, so when I called a small opening raise with 5x 5x and he raised to 10x, once the original raiser had folded, I made the call. The flop came 4x 4x 2x, there was a chunky c-bet, then it went check- check on the 3x turn and 2x river. He showed Ax Kx, my fives took the hand and he seemed a little annoyed, but that might just be me.

A couple of hands later, he opened from seat 8 with a normal raise, got called, then the player who’d opened in the previous hand (seat 2) 3-bet, the young gun 4-bet, and the guy who’d called him (seat 9) shoved all-in. Seat 2 re-shoved, and all three players got it in pre-flop with kings (seat 2) vs. tens (seat 8) vs. jacks (seat 9). The flop was Tx 8x 8x, and it’s luck like that you need to have to win.

A couple hours after I registered, I was moved to one of the upstairs tables. I’d never been upstairs at the club—it’s not usually opened up to the public—but people came from all over the Pacific Northwest for this tournament, which promised to have one of the largest prize pools in region for the year (hey, it’s why I was there!). With only three casino venues in Oregon and Washington running tournament series these days, there are just a handful of events per year this big. Anyway, the upstairs is everything you might have been expecting—and more! Seriously, though, I did hear a couple of people saying they missed the hubbub of voices and clatter of chips in the first floor space where there were more than 20 tables.

By the end of hour four, the prize pool was more than double the guarantee, and there was still half an hour of registration. After a couple levels of stagnation, I was slowly starting to climb, especially after getting someone to call an overbet on the river when I held ac7c and there were four clubs on the board. I was up to three times the starting stack (about 150% of the average) at six-and-a-half hours in, with more than half the field gone

Our table upstairs broke at the seven-hour mark. Got aces in the small blind and squeezed over a raise from Tam Nguyen and a call. Showed it to establish a little table cred. Then I lost a significant chunk drawing against him when it was a big blind defend I should have just tossed.

Beat down another Tam open with queens in the small blind, then Ax Kx on the button against the table chip leader who called my 3-bet got me back up to 200k.

Blind vs. blind, I open-called Kx 8x from the small blind. The big blind raised to just over three big blinds, and I came along to see a Jx 7x 4x flop. We check, and it’s 8x on the turn. I bet about 3bb, he called, and a Kx on the river gave me two pair. I opened with a bet of 6bb, he quickly called and shows 8x 4x, then says “Wow”. Will it stop him from raising that hand on the big blind again? I doubt it.

Halfway through the ninth hour of the tournament, we’re down to 72 players, with half of the remaining field getting paid.

A player from out-of-town who’d been at my upstairs table with a lot of chips had had some things happen since I’d last seen him, and he shoved his short stack after seeing a A♥ Q♥ 6x flop. one of the big stacks at the table made a large re-raise, and the biggest stack shoves, with the other big stack calling all-in. The biggest stack has a set of sixes, the other large stack has K♥ J♥ for both Broadway and nut flush draws. It’s a Tx on the turn, and more than half a million chips transfer between the players, making what I think is one of the first million-chip stacks in the tournament.

My caution gets the best of me sometimes. A player on my right shoved for almost all of my chips, I fold 8x 8x with four to act behind me, including the monster stack, who calls. Ax Tx for the all-in player, Tx Tx for the big stack, flop of Ax Jx 8x, and I missed a chance to triple up, but it was the right play.

Opened J♣ 9♣ and got a couple of callers with a flop of K♣ Q♣ Qx that got checked through to a T♦ turn and even better 6♣ river (though the T♣ would have been nice). For comparison to the big stack, that got me to 345k. Oh, and I got aces next hand.

By the time we were hand-for-hand a little more than eleven hours into the tournament, I was just below the 25bb chip average. Hand-for-hand lasted about 40 minutes, I was under 20bb by the time we got there. I managed to double up in the next half hour Ax Qx vs. Kx Jx to 27bb.

At the 13-hour point, I picked up Kx Kx and shoved my sub-average stack, managing to get called by one of the larger stacks holding Tx Tx and doubled up to over a million, with 21 players remaining and just about 14M chips in play. Three-quarters of an hour later, we were down to two tables. The pace picked up a little, and we lost six players in 40 minutes.

It was on the final table bubble where I made my big mistake. An active player with a big stack immediately to my right raised and I just called with Jx Jx when the right thing to do with my average-sized stack was to shove. I started the hand with just over a million in chips, the big blind was 60k, I had less than 20bb, but I was in early position and was cautious of the folks behind. With a 3x 3x 2x flop, I thought I might be safe, and as the player was fairly aggressive, I just called on the flop and turn, then he put out a bet of almost 10bb on the river and I called that, too, because I had an over pair to the board. As it turned out, he had pocket threes, and I was dead from the flop (well, technically, the turn, but…) Anyway I was out in 10th place a couple hands later shoving less than 10bb and just missing out on the final table photo and the potential of another $40K that went to first place. Congrats to everyone who made it.

Photo from Portland Meadows Poker Club Facebook.

Final Table $10K GTD NLHE (x2)

I haven’t played a lot of the Friday night $10K GTD NLHE tournaments at Final Table Poker Club since I poker-retired (I played 20 of them in 2018), preferring to save my poker hall passes for the First Friday $20K GTD, but since it’s late May, the run-up to the World Series of Poker, I decided to hit the last two weeks.

Friday after the $100K at Meadows, I late-registered about 90 minutes in (roughly a half-hour before the end of reg). Shoved Ax Kx on my first hand and got a fold from the original raiser (starting stack was around 50bb at that point). Then I lost a big hand to the same player for more than I’d won on my shove. A few hands later, I raise 6♠ 6♣ and Dave Tragethon in seat 1 limp-calls the raise. The flop is 8♣ 7♣ 5♣. The turn is inconsequential, and Dave puts me nearly all-in. I shove my open-ended straight-flush draw, he calls with J♣ Tx and gets the better flush with Q♣ on the river. I rebuy (there’s a single live rebuy in this tournament, you can’t leave the table and re-enter).

Blinds are up to 300/600 with a big blind ante. Starting stack is 20K, so I’m starting the second bullet with 33bb. On the button with aces. Dave starts to put out a raise from seat 1 before seat 9 has had a chance to act, then 9 puts out a raise of 2700. Dave calls. I shove my brand-new stack. Seat 9 calls, Dave folds and shows sixes. Seat nine has jacks. The flop is 6x 8x 9x and Dave would have made the set; the turn: 7x, and, of course, the river is Tx. So my rebuy lasts one hand. At least I’m out before the add-on.

The next Friday, tables are turned for a while as on the fourth hand of the night while we’re still 200bb deep I get it in with queens against aces and flop a queen. I’ve already won a hand, so the other player is covered and does not rebuy.

There was a kind of wild hand at the table that I wasn’t involved in where two player got all-in pre flop with 9♦ 9♥ vs. A♣ A♠. The flop was J♦ 9♠ 7♣, flipping the script, but then the turn was A♥, which had everyone wowing and winded by the time the 9♣ landed on the river. It’s stuff like that that makes poker such a great game.

Final Table $10K GTD quad nines vs aces over nines - 29 May 2026

The rest of the tournament’s unremarkable, I call a shove for half my stack and lose a flip, then get cut down to half a starting stack, work my way back up to start, and make it to the end of registration. Got the add-on and after some consideration the re-buy, so I start the next session with slightly fewer chips than I would have if I’d max late-regged and just bought all that I could.

Four hours in, I was down to 10bb and shoved Ax 8x from the hijack. The blinds were in an animated World Cup discussion and the small blind says “Call” but just puts out enough chips to call the big blind, who just checks. The dealer points out there’s an all-in and asks if small blind wants the floor after the big blind folds. Small blind looks at my meagre stack and shakes his head, turning over 8x 4x. There’s a four on the flop.

This is poker.

Final Table $10K GTD bustout screen - 29 May 2026

Inspection Wise 1999 — March/April 2026

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For whatever reason, the games I tend to find myself in in the Chainsaw Poker online tournaments tend to be barely more than a single table, but the first week of March, there were a couple that made it into the low 20s for entries. Not that it did me any good, as I was in the bottom half of all five of them: a couple 7-Card Stud Hi-Lo, HORSE, Pot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, and a smaller 8-Game Mix.

That was followed up by chops in consecutive Beaverton Quarantine games on the same Friday (No Limit Hold’em and ot Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Bounty. Week 2 of March concluded with another couple of losses on Chainsaw Poker (both 8-Game).

The Home Game went off on its usual Monday but I flamed out in fifth of eight after a couple hours. Then there were three more Chainsaw 8-Games, one of which I min-cashed in (just 73% ROI) and the other two where I was in the bottom half again.

Week 4 was empty up to the day I went down to the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic. I’d been hoping to make some of the non-Hold’em tournaments mid-week, but my work schedule did not cooperate, so I was locked into heading down for the $225K Guarantee NLHE Main Event on Saturday. I showed up just after the event started and made it about five hours before I flamed out. They blew out the guarantee, which was to be expected after a successful week where most of the fields leaped over last year.

After busting the Main. I walked over to the cash games to play some Big O at the table with my roommate for the night, Brad P. On the very first hand, I doubled up after a guy at the far end of the table called off against my nut-nut hand. Then I lost most of it to the guy next to me with a questionable call of my own just a few hands later. I didn’t get up, though, and ground my withered stack back up to a 33% ROI after 90 minutes. Brad stayed on at the table, I went to the room and played an online 8-Game where I ended up only 5/7.

The next day, I hung around to play the last event of the series, the $5K GTD Limit Omaha Hi-Lo/7-Card Stud Hi-Lo. Made it to within sniffing range of the money, though I was short a lot of the last hour. It only paid 5 places; I made it to 14th of 46.

My last tournament of the month was another min-cash at Chainsaw Poker, 112% ROI for 3/13 in Stud/8.

April started off much the same as March: bottom of the stack finishes in online HORSE, NLHE Bounty, Omaha/8, and another NLHE Bounty in the first couple of weeks. I’d slowed down a bit because I was sort of saving myself for some live games at the end of the month.

Portland Meadows ran a brief Bounty Series in mid-April, with a $400 buy-in NLHE Progressive Knock-Out Bounty as the main event.

I was down to half my starting stack after the first half hour before I started to catch some wind. I was back over start by the end of the second level (30 minute levels) after a guy with a flush draw shoved into my top pair / top kicker and didn’t make it. Doubled again by the end of level three after flopping a set of kings and my opponent caught a set of jacks on the river. Both of us were a little cautious because of a monochrome flop, but I still called his river bet.

Picked up a couple of bounties early (initial bounties were $50 cash, $50 toward your own bounty). I held steady at about 100K (starting was 30K) for several hours, going from 3x average to 2/3 average. The number of tables was never large, there seemed to be a lot of re-entries (total of 140 entries). We were down to 3 tables after six-and-a-half hours.

One hand with kings under the gun ended up with me getting $125 in cash and a bunch of chips, plus, I crippled another player (but someone else got his bounty chips). Seven hours in, I was up to 320K while the average was 200K. 40bb on the bubble (18 places paid).

Nearing the end of the eighth hour and the final table, I raised ace-king against an aggressive player who had a big stack of bounty chips and who’d lost a bunch of chip chips. The flop was KJx and I bet 5bb as a continuation. The aggro player shoved for a total of 8bb, then the chip leader reshoved with a covering stack. I had to call. The smaller stack had a flush draw and the big stack had king-ten, so I was ahead and stayed ahead, essentially tripling up as well as picking up a couple hundred dollars in bounties. Soon after, we were at the final table, where I had a fifth of the chips in play with 55bb.

At the final, I crabbed my way around for a couple of hours, not really picking anything up I could make a move with, drifting down to 12bb after 90 minutes. The average stack was just 21bb when we were 5-handed. My last hand, I open-shoved 9bb with KJ, and made it through to the big blind player who had just a bit more than me and a pair of fours. He flopped a set and got a good pile of bounty chips. My payout was half the amount for the top two spots, plus about $800 in bounties. Just under 10 hours and 400% ROI (after spreading the love with some tips).

Final Table Poker Club opened up in April 2011, simultaneously with the US Department of Justice coming down on online operators PokerStars and Full Tilt on Black Friday. That was my launch into the world of live poker. I’d only been playing in a home game and online for three years (at least since the mid-1980s) but when Black Friday closed down online poker in the US for the most part, I started looking for alternatives, AND BY JUNE I’D FOUND MY WAY TO Portland Players Club at NE 60th & Glisan, Aces Players Club at SE 26th & Powell (each just two miles from my house, though in opposite directions), Ace of Spades on SW Barbur Blvd. (where The Game has been for many years now), and—by late May—Final Table, in their original location at NE 122nd & Glisan.

Over the years, I’ve played more than 425 tournaments at Final Table (one of the things I had to do immediately after Black Friday was to write my own poker tracking app, because I couldn’t just rely oin PokerTracker any more), 83 of them (7 a month on average) in 2016. Back before COVID, I did a revamp of the Final Table web site in exchange for a couple years of free door fees (they add up!), which would have been an even sweeter deal if that hadn’t overlapped with me telling my wife I was ramping back my playing schedule when she retired.

So April was their 15th Anniversary Series, culminating in a $50K Guarantee. You always have (irrational) high hopes coming off a good score like the PKO had been for me. I ended up rebuying in level 1 after making a bad call. Even the post-rebuy was a struggle as I kept losing chips; despite felting three players with shorter stacks by the end of level 4 I still only had 1.5 times the starting stack.

Ten minutes before the end of rebuys, I picked up a pair of kings (K♣ K♦) under the gun, and made a min-plus raise. There were a couple of callers, then the big blind made a large 3-bet. I jammed, the callers folded, the big blind called and showed queens (Q♦ Q♠). J♥ T♠ 9♣ on the flop, the nine paired on the turn (9♥), so I went from winning about 80% of the time to 75% of the time (when he picked up the straight draw), to 85% on the turn until the river Q♣ when I made a straight.

I wasn’t about to take the second (and final) rebuy after that. It was time to go home. Saved myself the add-on, as well. Brad P late registered and lasted longer than I did but busted a few hours later before the money, which was not insignificant for a $200 buyin. Happy 15th Anniversary to Ben May and the folks working with him at The Final Table!

My last two games of April were on Chainsaw Poker. Another bottom-half finish in a Limit Omaha Hi-Lo game, then an outright win in a small Pot Limit Omaha 6-Max where I made it to the money as the overwhelming chip leader, then had to battle my way back in heads-up when the challenger managed to double up a couple of times and surpass me before I finally won. Just 333% ROI, but a nice way to cap off a couple of good months (well April was good, anyway).

Big congratuations to Adam Natress, who made back-to-back first place finishes at the Little Creek Casino South Sound Poker Series in Washington and the World Series of Poker Circuit Lake Tahoe. The Lake Tahoe win was his largest-ever cash (and was the week before the South Sound event). Those cashes put him in a good spot to surpass the million-dollar mark this summer. Adam was interviewed this past week by Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud.

I’m writing this Sunday, May 10, which was the last day for long-time PokerStars announcer Joe Stapleton, a staple if I say so myself of my poker consumption diet for more than a dozen years. I’ve watched most of the European Poker Tour and many of the PokerStars Sunday Million live streams presented by Stapleton and James Hartigan. Their Poker In the Ears podcast has always been top on my list of listens (I was a contestant on Superfan vs. Stapes five years ago this month). I always thought he was amusing, anyway.

Looking forward this next week to the Portland Meadows Poker Classic, where I’m hoping to put some of that PKO money to use in the $100K Guaranteed NLHE Main Event as well as a couple of others. No idea yet if I’m going to be able to get away to Las Vegas for Poker Summer Camp, but I’m hopeful this year!

Statecontrol — October 2025 to February 2026

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I have to admit that a lengthy losing streak doesn’t make me rush to the keyboard to update the old blog, not even to celebrate its 15-year anniversary back in December.

October was a complete brick, with eight tournaments (only one of which was live). Then I got heads-up in a live NLHE Freezeout at Portland Meadows for my first game in November but placed in the lower 50% of the next six games, finishing off the month with a two-way chop in a very small online game.

My birthday treat was a miss in the Meadows Big O Championship Satellite, where I made it at least up into the top 25% on my second bullet (after going out on the first hand with my first). Did about the same in Final Table’s Big O tournament just before Christmas, then had a win in a small online NLHE game on Boxing Day to close out my poker year.

I picked up the pace but not the bucks in January with 17 events, hoping maybe The Year of the Fire Horse would prove auspicious. Started off with another second-place finish in a small NLHE tournament, then losses in a PLO/8 Bounty, PLO Heads-Up, another NLHE Freezeout at Meadows (though with a bigger buy-in), an 8-Game Mix, and a NLHE Bounty.

Was leading the field in a HORSE tournament but tripped up on a couple of Razz hands and ended up just in third (but a cash). Then losses in PLO/8 6-Max (2), HORSE (2), 8-Game Mix, Omaha/8, and 7-Card Stud/8. Heads-up in a small, live NLHE, then min-cash in 8-Game Mix 6-Max, and a bottom half finish in Omaha/8.

February started a lot quieter, with a shot at Final Table’s $20K GTD NLHE First Friday (made it into the top third but still a long way from the money), an online 8-Game Mix, another little online NLHE chop, and a fifth of seven finish at the old home game, then 4/5 in a PLO online. But the month finished with two cashes in Chainsaw Poker games: 3/17 in PLO/8 6-Max and 2/14 in 8-Game Mix.

I’m hoping to make some of the Chinook Winds PacWest Poker Classic at the end of March and some of the special events in town (though probably not the $1,000 Heads-Up tournament)!

Find Yourself Another Girl — August/September 2026

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August started out hot. I was going to try to play a game a day. Missed the first couple, then took 2nd in a single-table PLO/8 tournament, played the home game the next night and got sucked out on by a player who’d doubled up twice from nothing, did poorly in online Chainsaw Poker 8-Game and Stud the next couple nights, then finally made it back to the Final Table when I’d spaced out on the fact that the month had started on a Friday, so the 8th wasn’t the First Friday $20K NLHE, it was just a $10K guarantee. That didn’t matter anyway, I went out 60/73 after a couple of hours.

Then I hit a real drought. Xfinity was doing some network modifications in the neighborhood, and all of a sudden my IP address was showing up as if it was across the river in Vancouver, Washington, which caused issues with playing on the PokerStars app because Washington state bans even play money online poker. That took more than two weeks to resolve. I could use my phone as a hotspot for my iPad, but that wasn’t as simple as just picking up the iPad or using my computer. Played a NLHE Bounty that was and busted in the middle of the pack without even getting a bounty.

By the next Beaverton Quarantine event a week later, I was back in good graces with PokerStars and chopped the top spot of a small NLHE tournament. The next night, I got sucked out on on the river twice in three hands in a Chainsaw PLO game and lost 2 buy-ins. That same day was another PLO/8 game where I was the first player out. So that was August. A total of nine events for an entire month.

The Final Table First Friday for September was a short one for me. Just 30 minutes, busting just before the end of the rebuy period. That got me home in time for a Beaverton Quarantine PLO/8 Bounty where I busted just short of the money and took just one bounty.

September’s PacWest Poker Classic at Chinook Winds Casino has always been problematic for me because it’s often straddling my wife’s birthday. This year was no exception, and I didn’t make it down for any events.

The rest of the month was mostly ChainSaw Poker PLO/8 games and a single 8-Game, where I took a min-cash for 3rd place. It was the only cash for the month, though. The month was even sparser with just seven events!

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.

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.