The Kowhai trees in my neighbourhood are a riot of yellow blossoms and the All Blacks have put the Rugby Championship trophy back in the cabinet, so I guess it must be springtime. A good time to look back at my winter season of poker games. So first up, a quick review of the results.
    Typically winter is a bad season for my poker bankroll but this year I've actually managed to come up with a positive result, showing an 18% return on investment for the months of June, July and August. My best result came from one particular one-off game I played in August. As far as my regular games go, I came up with a healthy return from my weekly Friday night freeze-out, something that is mildly surprising to me as I had the feeling that I wasn't doing all that well in that game. Most of the other regular games I play were hovering around the break-even point. The worst result came from the online Tournament that I play on most weekends, showing an ROI of -43%. Although this looks bad, the buy-in is significantly lower than it is in the live tournaments, which is why I still managed to make a profit overall.
   Most Wednesday nights I head down to the Landmark Bar to play in the $20 rebuy tournament. 'Rookie', the new organiser has been doing a good job but player attendance has been inconsistent. Usually we get two tables of players but we don't always get the full $500 maximum  into the prize-pool. It all depends on how many players turn up and how willing they are to re-buy. There are still about 5 or 6 regulars, myself included, and then a colourful assortment of semi-regulars, occasional visitors and newbies. Although I showed a loss in this game type, it only amounted to one buy-in, so that's okay. Looking back at my records, I can see why this is the case; I haven't won a game outright in 17 games. That's a long time between drinks.
   When I gave up running this tournament last year it was my intention to play at most, twice a month in this year's games, staying home and playing online the rest of the time. But Rookie thwarted my plans by introducing a points scheme. Players accumulate points based on their finishing positions over a 13 week season and then the top 8 go into a playoff game. $20 comes out of the prize-pool each week and then that cash is used to boost the prize-pool of the Top 8 game. I found this too tempting, so I decided to play 3 weeks out of 4 in an effort to qualify for the Top 8. Of the two seasons played so far, I've managed to qualify for both, usually just clawing my way into 7th or 8th position. Considering that I've played fewer games than all the other qualifiers I'm pretty happy with the fact that I've still been able to make it into the Top 8 Tournament not once, but twice.
   In August I went to the last game of the current season knowing that I had to make at least 4th place to have any chance of qualifying. As it happens, I did very well and ended up heads-up vs Rookie at the end of the night. He got first prize and I came second, and I ended up qualifying 6th for the Top 8 Tournament. This is a single table tournament where the 8th qualifier gets 10k chips, 7th gets 10.5k and so on up to the top qualifier who gets 13.5k. To complicate things further, players get 2/3 of their stack at the start of the game and then the remaining 1/3 as an add-on at the first break.
   I usually play freeze-out tournaments so I felt I had a bit of an edge over those who normally play only in re-buys. Sure enough, some of those with the high risk playing styles got knocked out and I managed to cruise into the money without too much trouble. In the end I was heads-up with Rookie again but this time the cards fell my way. So I made a nice collect but, more importantly, I was awarded the fabulous Top 8 Trophy. This is a gold (coloured) card protector inscribed with the words 'Tournament Winner'. It probably cost about $2 from some online emporium but it's worth a million in bragging rights. So I'll be putting my trusty $1 casino chip back in the drawer and using this as my card protector on Wednesday nights from now on.
   The other one-off tournaments I played in this winter were at the annual Clubs New Zealand North Island Poker Championship. This was played at the Petone Cosmopolitan Club in Wellington and about 8 members of my local club took a trip down to play. We flew down on Friday and this time we were staying in a motel about 10 minutes walk from the club, which was very convenient. We all played in the Friday night 'Welcome Tournament' but I got ABSOLUTELY DONKEYED by someone who called my massive pre-flop raise with K 5 offsuit and (of course) hit two pair on the flop. But Ham, one of our crew, ended up winning the whole thing and got around $600 for his trouble. Nice. This was the first time I've ever played in a bounty tournament and it's always interesting to try a new format, even if only for less than an hour.
   Like the other clubs I've been to outside of Auckland, the Petone Cossie is pretty flash and also had ample room to accommodate a field of 192 poker players from around the North Island. I had a bit of trouble in the first qualifier on Saturday, so had to wait around for the Second Chance Tournament later in the day. We still had 141 players in this group but I managed to crawl across the bubble and make it into the last 24 qualifiers after about 4 hours of play. So once again I managed to qualify for the 'Main Event', which makes for a 5 out of 5 record so far. I'm pretty happy about that.
   Four of my group qualified to play in a field of 72 on Sunday while the others went into the consolation event. I was knocked out after 3 hours but some of my club-mates went deeper. One of these, Ros, made it onto the final table and ended up coming third. The final table was set up in a different room, with spectator seating and a video viewing screen, similar to what the Weymouth Club had done the previous year. This set-up worked better than the one last year although it definitely still needs refinement. In the end it was a player from one of the other Auckland clubs that won the prize. It was yet another great weekend event and I'm already looking forward to next year's tournament, which is in Hamilton (only an hour's drive from home).
   Meanwhile, I keep playing in the Friday night freeze-out tournament at my club. Player numbers have picked up a bit recently and we always get three tables now and even occasionally have four. For years I've had a basic 'Green Zone/Amber Zone/Red Zone strategy in place to help me decide at what point I have to change my playing style based on my relative chip stack. I've been tinkering with this a little recently, partly as a result of reading about Dan Harrington's 'M' concept. But it was starting to get a little too complex, so I came up with a more simplified version and I've been using that through most of the winter. I intend to  keep following this scheme for the foreseeable future, provided nothing dramatic happens to my results.
   The other game that I regularly play up at the club is the monthly Deep Stack Tournament. As the organiser of this tournament I've been trying to get the player numbers up all year. Usually we have only two tables (up to 16 players) and in June we were playing with just 9 entrants, leaving me to wonder if it was worth continuing. Then I guess my advertising of the game finally started to pay off. In July there were 24 entrants, then 19 in August, then we hit an all-time high with 32 players last month, allowing for a nice healthy first prize of $600. Now my problem  has become managing the pre-game tasks such as registration, setting out the chip stacks, allocating seats etc. It's become increasingly obvious that I'm going to need more than just my wife helping me out before the game starts. I may even have to put an upper limit on the allowable number of players so that the game doesn't run too late. Still, it's a good problem to have.
   I haven't cashed in this tournament for a while and I'd like to be able to blame the fact that I'm concentrating too much on organising the game, especially with all the extra players. But I don't think this has that much effect. Although it's true I've been away from the table a fair bit in the early stages, I still get to see the majority of my hands and I'm a pretty tight player anyway. Once I get some help organising things should get easier anyway. After coming up with a positive ROI for the winter period, having the Deep Stack Tournament finally come together is definitely the highlight of the season for me. Fingers crossed it continues.