I've been in a knife fight of a poker game for a little over four years with some guys who are heavy hitters, and this is the record of how I've done.

2005 had been pretty successful, but 2006 turned out to be barely profitable. Then 2007 ended up being a solid, if not a great, year. It seemed that a pattern had developed: Good years were followed by bad years, which were then followed by good years.

How, then was 2008? Regular readers of my website will have noted that I did a less-than-stellar job of updating my weekly poker results, something that I had done nearly every week for the three preceding years. How less-than-stellar? I never got around to actually starting 2008’s version of The Grand Total. And it wasn’t that I was keeping a record and never getting around to posting it. I never kept the log. I would record each week’s game results on a piece of hotel notepad paper, but that’s as far as I got. When I finally got it together enough to try to get my log in order, I had to look for those pieces of paper in a few different places for a few weeks.

As the year had progressed, I had known that it had not been going well. I had had a vague sense that I hadn't been up or down very much in terms of the grand total and that I hadn't been having too many more winning sessions than I had been having losing sessions, but, again, that was only a vague sense.

So I finally finished running the numbers today, 7 February 2009, and the news is not good. Not terrible, certainly, but not good.

But we’ll get to that in a second. There was much about the year that was of note.

I had a four-game losing streak starting at the end of April, which was not pleasant, but then, starting on 29 August 2008, I topped that (if topped is the right word) with a five-game losing streak that cost me about $283. I hadn't had a losing streak of that length since the one that began on 1 September 2006, which means that I hadn't played so consistently poorly in almost exactly two years. It’s great to know that, as in all things, I haven't gotten any better, that, again, as in most things, I have actually gotten worse.

But I immediately erased all of those losses with a six-game winning streak that netted me a little over $329. That was my second-longest winning streak ever, second only to that great nine-game run that I had at the end of 2007. This six-game streak run got me within striking distance of having a profitable year, something that had seemed out of the question in early October.

So here was the situation: It’s the beginning of December, which means that we’ll probably play four more games in 2008. I was only down $7.50 going into those last four games. If I average $1.88 a game, I make it. I can even lose a little bit at three of the games as long as I have one barely decent night.

Instead, I start off the month by having my worst game since 11 April 2008. I’m now down $139.00 with only three games to go, so I’ve now got to average $46.34 for the last three games to make the slightest of profits. Considering the big bangers with whom I play, that’s not very likely.

But then I make $111.75 the very next Friday, so now I’m down $27.25 with two games to go. A $13.75 average for the last two Fridays gives me a profit of a quarter. A profit’s a profit, and I’m not proud (having to live life sort of strips you of pride, if you know what I mean), so I’ll take it.

As in all things in my life, however, I find a way to make everything harder on myself. Instead of making money, even the slightest little bit, I manage to lose $43 straight, putting me at a deficit of -$70.25. I know that that doesn’t sound like much, and I’ve won over that amount on a good number of occasions, but the guys with whom I play, as I stated previously, are all heavy hitters, so it’s not going to be easy to make that much at the last game of the year, especially not when nobody is going to want to close the year out with poor play or a massive loss.

With about half an hour to go in 2008’s last poker game, however, I’m actually up almost $100. I’m up almost $100, not too many bad things have happened to me, and it’s going to be quite difficult to lose very many of those chips.

And then that which was quite difficult proved to not be impossible, and the bad things that hadn't happened all night happened all at once.

I lost three big hands in that last half hour. The cruelest one, and the one that in retrospect proved to be the hand that cost me the opportunity to have four winning years in a row, was in a game of Omaha High-Low, when Ice hit a seven on the river to both make a better low than the one that I had turned and to make a better full house than the one that I had flopped. That seven, because Ice held a pair of sevens and because I held a seven of my own, was the only remaining seven in the deck, the only card that could possibly have given Ice a better high hand than mine. He hit a one-outer. 45 to 1. 2.17 %.

That hand cost me the $30 that I had invested in it, not to make mention of the money that had been invested in the pot by other players. Probably right around $70, but just getting the money that I had invested myself back would have been enough.

It would have been enough because I ended up making only $40.50 for the night, which means that I got within $30.00 of making a slight profit. Which means that I lost $29.75 for the year.

But I didn’t know any of that above until I finally gathered all of the data together. $29.75. As soon as I ran the numbers and saw $29.75, all I could think about was the last half hour of the year. Goddamn.

Per month, I lost about $2.48. Per game, that works out to about -$0.62. I don’t even want to do the hourly on that because it would be too embarrassing. It turns out that for the year, I lost a little over a small blind per night.

Again, embarrassing, but at least I did manage to have a winning record for the year—25-23—which gave me a winning percentage of 52.08%. Not much about which to be pleased, and I’m not pleased, but at least it’s something. No, not really. Let us not fool ourselves. It was nothing.

4 January 2008    --    -92.25    --    -92.25    --    0-1
11 January 2008    --    +0.25    --    -92.00    --    1-1
18 January 2008    --    +72.25    --    -19.75    --    2-1
25 January 2008    --    +157.75    --    +138.00    --    3-1
1 February 2008    --    +206.00    --    +344.00    --    4-1
8 February 2008    --    -186.75    --    +157.25    --    4-2
15 February 2008    --    -109.50    --    +47.75    --    4-3
17 February 2008    --    +9.50    --    +57.25    --    5-3
22 February 2008    --    +86.25    --    +143.50    --    6-3
29 February 2008    --    +13.50    --    +157.00    --    7-3
7 March 2008    --    -38.75    --    +118.25    --    7-4
14 March 2008    --    +31.00    --    +149.25    --    8-4
21 March 2008    --    -99.00    --    +50.25    --    8-5
28 March 2008    --    -53.00    --    -2.75    --    8-6
4 April 2008    --    +61.50    --    +58.75    --    9-6
11 April 2008    --    -116.00    --    -57.25    --    9-7
18 April 2008    --    +92.00    --    + 34.75    --    10-7
25 April 2008    --    -68.25    --    -33.50    --    10-8
2 May 2008    --    -103.00    --    -136.50    --    10-9
9 May 2008    --    -34.50    --    -171.00    --    10-10
16 May 2008    --    -58.00    --    -229.00    --    10-11
23 May 2008    --    +147.00    --    -82.00    --    11-11
25 May 2008    --    +73.00    --    -9.00    --    12-11
30 May 2008    --    -72.75    --    -81.75    --    12-12
20 June 2008    --    -74.00    --    -155.75    --    12-13
27 June 2008    --    +107.75    --    -48.00    --    13-13
3 July 2008    --    +37.25    --    -10.75    --    14-13
18 July 2008    --    -98.50    --    -109.25    --    14-14
25 July 2008    --    +114.50    --    +5.25    --    15-14
1 August 2008    --    -86.50    --    -81.25    --    15-15
8 August 2008    --    +27.00    --    -54.25    --    16-15
15 August 2008    --    -10.75    --    -65.00    --    16-16
22 August 2008    --    +31.50    --    -33.50    --    17-16
29 August 2008    --    -77.00    --    -110.50    --    17-17
5 September 2008    --    -84.00    --    -194.50    --    17-18
12 September 2008    --    -41.00    --    -235.50    --    17-19
26 September 2008    --    -00.50    --    -236.00    --    17-20
10 October 2008    --    -80.75    --    -316.75    --    17-21
24 October 2008    --    +24.50    --    -292.25    --    18-21
31 October 2008    --    +86.00    --    -206.25    --    19-21
7 November 2008    --    +83.00    --    -123.25    --    20-21
14 November 2008    --    +15.50    --    -107.75    --    21-21
21 November 2008    --    +37.75    --    -70.00    --    22-21
28 November 2008    --    +62.50    --    -7.50    --    23-21
5 December 2008    --    -131.50    --    -139.00    --    23-22
12 December 2008    --    +111.75    --    -27.25    --    24-22
19 December 2008    --    -43.00    --    -70.25    --    24-23
26 December 2008    --    +40.50    --    -29.75    --    25-23