Poker last night was fun. Lee hosted, which meant we spent some of the evening trying to seduce his cats (and then trying not to get clawed or nipped by his over-stimulated cat).
I had a blah evening on the poker side, never being down or up more than $4 at a time (we play with 5¢/10¢ blinds). We did play with a new wrinkle, giving each of us a special randomly-select hand – from cards no higher than an 8 – and if we showed down the winning hand with it then we’d win 10¢ from each other player. Mine was 8-3, and I managed to win one pot with it. Watching people play crappy hands makes for some very strange play, since it’s not clear why they’re playing so weirdly, when it turns out they’re just trying to see a showdown with their pair of 3s.
Otherwise I decided to make a few wacky plays, but ended up missing the flop too often to make it worthwhile. And most of my best hands got folded to preflop. So it was basically a grind-’em-out evening for me.
Bex had the most dramatic evening, losing her buy-in and then coming back to almost even by the end of the night. Moreover, she made a downright heroic call of Andrew’s all-in on the turn in one pot, showing A-K against Andrew’s A-T on a Q-J-x-x board to win. Andrew couldn’t believe she made that call. She was getting 2-to-1 so it was a good call if she thought he might be bluffing 1 time in 3. Moreover, she had a chance to hit her straight or top pair, so really he needed to be bluffing only 1 time in 4 or even 5 for it to be a good call.
Of course, I wouldn’t think Andrew would be bluffing there 1 time in 5, but that’s me. I’m not the one who won the huge pot!
We also tried to come up with peoples’ “indian poker names” (a la Dances With Wolves). A few we came up with:
- Folds to Pressure
- Calls Too Often
- Raises with Nothing
- Grinds For Hours
The fact that there was whiskey available to sample may have had something to do with this silliness.
But silliness is half the point of social poker anyway!