Poker: the Reading years

Poker
Poker is life (according to googlism.com). We love it. Here you'll find a list of players and corresponding number of wins and 'Lasts' between October 2003 and September 2004, together with a marginally more sophisticated 2004-onwards table. We've also put a couple of our own Poker variations on here, so we don't forget 'em. History will record us as the most Rule-sussed, on-the-ball, memory-enabled group of Poker players ever, I'm sure. Especially once we've learnt the crib sheets off by heart.
Before you get too involved, though, be advised of the words of Jesse May in his book, Shut up and Deal: "Poker is combination of luck and skill. People think that mastering the skill part is hard, but they're wrong. The trick to poker is mastering the luck. That's philosophy." If you prefer the views of someone more saintly, try St. Thomas More, who wrote "Think of the demoralizing games people play - dice, cards, backgammon, tennis, bowls, quoits - what are they but quick methods of wasting a man's money, and sending him straight off to become a thief?" (Utopia, Trans. P. Turner).
On the other hand, Sir Tom didn't get the opportunity to have a job researching computer poker!!

As well as the graphs below, don't forget to check out the histograms page.
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Purity hits the headlines again: 19th April 2007: to look at the graph, you wouldn't know that Alan had played. In fact, he became the first person to exactly break even. He wasn't the first person to play and have a flat line, though. That dubious honour goes to Trips, who's 15 pence in March was not enough to make a pixel.
Unprecedented!!: November 2006: graphable chips for card-showing scandal!! Purity spent twenty pence to see Ed's last card, when he'd already lost. And the rest of us got to see the card for free!!
Also unprecedented!!: Cards were shown for free on Andy's last regular capitalist night. Oh sweet moment, when after crumbling and folding, Purity found he had the better hand.....
Charity Poker
The first Charity Poker night was played on 19th December 2005, with the winner to decide which charity was to benefit. There was a knockout Texas match and a knockout seven-card-stud-high-lo match. The Wildman was the first to fall at Texas, after just ten hands, with lots of successful all-in action following that. Then Upside-down, Ewan and Laura were knocked out in the early twenties, and Ed was finally defeated in the 25th hand. The chip lead only ever really was with Ed or Alan, but Purity won out in the end.
The Wildman took and early chip lead in the stud game, but couldn't hold out. Trips went out after just three hands, The Conner on five, Upside-down on 15, followed by the Wildman and Five-Hawks, leaving Purity to win yet again.
More importantly (no, really...) we had lots of nice booze and food and Christmas cheer, and raised sixty quid for Oxfam. The money would have gone to Gamblers Anonymous, Purity's first choice, but they don't accept donations.
The results from this and subsequent Charity nights are used to create a tournament league table
The third charity poker night had two simultaneous tables, with the top half of each table going on to the final table, and the two bottom halves competing for the lower half of the final ranking.
The final charity poker night before Andy's departure - in April 2007 - nearly saw him win. The style was a bit different: instead of knockout, it was simply the chip leader at the end of then night that won.
The graph (20th May 2004 to May 2007)
Values indicate the running total balance for each player, initialised in Jan 2004 (unfortunately earlier data points were not kept), so that the first point shown is the 20th May 2004.
Factoids (now outdated): 40% of the time evolution of the Berator's ledger can be accounted for by assuming that she will perform as well, or as badly, as Texas.
June 2005: The Wildman makes 7.7 pence per day from poker. This average accounts for over 70% of his ledger (over the period of the graph). The Berator looses 6.9 pence per day, and Acid Man looses 0.8 pence per day. What a coincidence: the Pelly household funds my poker addiction. El Borracho, incidentally, makes 6.8 pence per day. At that rate, if he started saving today, he would be able to buy a litre of 15-year old Macallan from The Whisky Shop in three years, two months and twenty days' time (approximately). Purity's performance recently has been very worrying - nearly 40 pence a day on average. If he carries on like that, then by the time Robin gets his whisky, Purity will have amassed over 470 pounds.

The normalised graph (20th May 2004 to May 2007)
Circles show means, stars show medians.
Up and down triangles show max and min values.
Black is for global quantities (covers both positive and negative).
Blue is for negative quantities only.
Red is for positive quantities only.

The table (1st Jan 2004 onwards)

Player Played Won Last Running balance N+ N-

Andy 'Wildman' Challinor 63 23.5 10 +206.20 43 20

Alan 'Purity' Geer 49 13 6 +58.40 28.5 20.5

Robin 'El Borracho' Hogan 35 6.5 6 +06.15 17 18

Jason 'Acid Man' Pelly 24 4 6 -06.00 8 16

Jo 'The Berator' Pelly 23 4 4 -21.35 9 14

Frances 'The Hustler' Warneford 23 1 6 -59.90 5 18

John 'Texas' Holden 20 3 1 -12.05 8 12

Laura 'Trips' Davies 18 1 4 -43.00 6 12

Marianne 'Five-Kings' Field 16 0 5 -17.90 5 11

Ed 'Five Hawks' Hawkins 14 3 1 +01.90 9 5

Manuel 'El Loco' Pulido 12 2 2 +11.85 8 4

Ewan 'The Conner' O'Connor 8 1 2 -8.55 3 5

Stu 'The Gentleman' Privett 8 0 2 -40.60 1 7

Charlie 'Humble' Williams 8 0 2 -34.30 2 7

Shahrzad 'ReRaise' 3 0 1 - 8.55 1 2

Hilary 'Twenty-pence' Spence(r) 3 1 1 - 5.90 1 2

Jo 'Upside-down' Brown 3 0 0 - 3.60 1 2

Emily 'Norty' Mcgregor 1 0 0 -2.65 0 1

James 'No-nonsense' Mcgregor 1 0 0 -8.25 0 1

Mike 'The Dealer' Dent 4 0 2 +0.70 2 2

Varje 'The Barge' Lahiry 1 1 0 +7.00 1 0

Wilf 'Jack-down' Matos 1 0 0 +1.25 1 0

Jason 'Flush' Kennelly 1 1 0 +9.50 1 0

Dirk 'The Vocalist' Haubrich 1 0 1 -4.50 0 1

Mark 'The Dark' Dixon 1 0 0 + 2.30 1 0

Helen 'The Baker' Dacre 1 0 0 - 8.15 0 1

Hugh 'The Maker' Mortimer 1 0 1 - 9.50 0 1

Gav 'Chips' Ramsden 1 1 0 +9.20 1 0

Carole 'Dark Horse' Peubey 2 0 0 + 2.00 2 0

The Games

We play the usual games: Texas Hold 'Em, Draw, Stud etc. Info on thse poker basics
can be found in many places. We also play a growing number of variations:

Lagoon: Created by 'El Borracho', this is sort of a cross between Texas Hold 'Em and Draw. One (or two) card(s) per player are placed in the pool, half of them face-down and half face-up. Each player in turn (anti-clockwise; opposite to betting direction) burns up to two cards by placing them face-up in the pool and taking from the pool. Alternatively, the order of card exchange can be decided by bidding: the bids are all revealed simultaneously, the chips go into the pot, with the highest bidder burning cards first. For equal bids the order is clockwise from the dealer. Betting, as usual, occurs at every opportunity.

BLG (Better to be Lucky than Good): Draw with one optional first burn, followed by a compulsory four-card burn. Only the Wildman could invent a skill-less game like this.

Acid House: Draw again. Each player gets two piles of 5 cards face down (maximum 5 players). The remaining cards are placed in the centre of the table, forming the beginning of 'pot' of cards. The players take one of their two piles and bet using the unseen five-card pile. The winner takes the pot of cards, and everyone makes the best hand they can from the cards in their possesion (some of which will have been seen if they chose to bet in the first round) and discard the rest. Betting (with chips!) then proceeds as normal.

Home and Away: Stud with a difference. Choose to use 0, 1, or 2 cards from any single other players up-cards in conjuction with a selection of your up-cards. If a player folds, their cards stay face up....

Highlights from 2004

Jan. A glorious comeback by the Wildman in the first game of the year. Towards the end of the night, fuelled by the power of many malt whiskys, he soared from six quid down to over 5 quid up, in around an hour. He fell short of beating the winner, the recently re-named 'Twenty Pence' Spence by, well, 20p funnily enough.
Feb. Record losses sustained by The Hustler, who was none too happy. Headline reads "Purity must be stopped!"
March: The house can't count!
April. The Acid Man is the first person in history to take BLG seriously, and no-one else wants to be left out. The result: one of the biggest pots of the night. Record losses - the full 1000 - sustained by the Wildman, who was defintely on tilt, and making schoolboys left right and centre. Is it true that he can only win against beginners?
May. ...no, it's not. A Record win (18.15) for the Wildman co-incided with the first recorded defeat for the not-so-aptly-named El Loco, as well as the the smallest recorded defeat for El Borracho (- 10 pence; still goes down as negative on the stats though, Robin).
June: ever since the fall of communism in January, it was inevitable, and on June 1st it happened: the one simple question - "am I allowed to buy more chips?" - may have set a precident. For now we are safe, though. Manuel made a great recovery from over (or nearly) ten pounds down to lose by a more modest amount.
July: night of the weird Italo-Argentine bitter cokey mad drink with Guinness-like properties. I can't remember what it's called. In fact, I can't remember anything about the card game either. Oh yes, except that I lost.....
August: El Loco's swan-song. The Biplane was accordingly invented in his honour. Two airplane's interlocked, with two cards at a time turned over, and four possible boards. Manuel claims to have left because he has a job in Argentina, but we know the real reason: three downers in four games!! This night also saw the first joint win (half a win awarded). If I only I hadn't best that last 5p!!!
September: do airplanes, elevators, biplanes, lizards and tail fins mix?
October: IT'S CALLED BAIZE, GUYS!!!!!! And... It's called a crib sheet!!
December: El Borracho was El Soberano and.... he's up (just) on the sum since records began.

October 2003 to September 2004

Player Played Won Last

Andy 'Wildman' Challinor 19 5.5 5

Robin 'El Borracho' Hogan 15 2.5 3

Manuel 'El Loco' Pulido 15 3 2

Alan 'Purity' Geer 9 2 1

Ewan 'The Conner' O'Connor 8 1 3

Frances 'The Hustler' Warneford 5 1 1

John 'Texas' Holden 5 1 1

Hilary 'No-show' Spencer 4 2 1

Jo 'Upside-down' Brown 3 0 0

Jason 'Acid Man' Pelly 3 0 1

Jo 'The Remonstrator' Pelly 3 1 0

Mark 'The Dark' Dixon 2 0 0

Manoj 'The Joker' Joshi 1 0 0

Claire 'Coucou' Delsol 1 0 0

Helen 'The Baker' Dacre 1 0 0

Hugh 'The Maker' Mortimer 1 0 1

Carole 'Dark Horse' Peubey 1 0 0

New feature for Feb: Meteorologists who should have been professional poker players
This month: Rich Betts.

Player	Played	Won	Last	Running balance	N+	N-
Andy 'Wildman' Challinor	63	23.5	10	+206.20	43	20
Alan 'Purity' Geer	49	13	6	+58.40	28.5	20.5
Robin 'El Borracho' Hogan	35	6.5	6	+06.15	17	18
Jason 'Acid Man' Pelly	24	4	6	-06.00	8	16
Jo 'The Berator' Pelly	23	4	4	-21.35	9	14
Frances 'The Hustler' Warneford	23	1	6	-59.90	5	18
John 'Texas' Holden	20	3	1	-12.05	8	12
Laura 'Trips' Davies	18	1	4	-43.00	6	12
Marianne 'Five-Kings' Field	16	0	5	-17.90	5	11
Ed 'Five Hawks' Hawkins	14	3	1	+01.90	9	5
Manuel 'El Loco' Pulido	12	2	2	+11.85	8	4
Ewan 'The Conner' O'Connor	8	1	2	-8.55	3	5
Stu 'The Gentleman' Privett	8	0	2	-40.60	1	7
Charlie 'Humble' Williams	8	0	2	-34.30	2	7
Shahrzad 'ReRaise'	3	0	1	- 8.55	1	2
Hilary 'Twenty-pence' Spence(r)	3	1	1	- 5.90	1	2
Jo 'Upside-down' Brown	3	0	0	- 3.60	1	2
Emily 'Norty' Mcgregor	1	0	0	-2.65	0	1
James 'No-nonsense' Mcgregor	1	0	0	-8.25	0	1
Mike 'The Dealer' Dent	4	0	2	+0.70	2	2
Varje 'The Barge' Lahiry	1	1	0	+7.00	1	0
Wilf 'Jack-down' Matos	1	0	0	+1.25	1	0
Jason 'Flush' Kennelly	1	1	0	+9.50	1	0
Dirk 'The Vocalist' Haubrich	1	0	1	-4.50	0	1
Mark 'The Dark' Dixon	1	0	0	+ 2.30	1	0
Helen 'The Baker' Dacre	1	0	0	- 8.15	0	1
Hugh 'The Maker' Mortimer	1	0	1	- 9.50	0	1
Gav 'Chips' Ramsden	1	1	0	+9.20	1	0
Carole 'Dark Horse' Peubey	2	0	0	+ 2.00	2	0