Friday Night Home Game - October

After a missing the past few months I finally made it back out to Friday night game last night. I wish I had some better results to report, but at least I got back into a live game.

$2/$4 Limit

We start out with a few hours of $2/$4 limit holdem. I've done well at the limit section of this game the past two times I've played, but not last night. We started out ten handed, and things were going fairly well for my as I was playing aggressively and actually getting some respect for my raises.

I felt a big momentum change early on and after that there wasn't much that went right. I folded A4 off suit in early position. Not a bad play especially since no matter what I did I could expect 4-6 callers, and even if I hit an ace or two pair I wouldn't be confident in my hand. The flop is 44x with an ace on the turn putting a flush draw out there. It was a huge pot and I know you can't get mad when you fold garbage and see that you missed a monster, but that could have set the tone for the night.

The only other decent hand I had was pocket jacks which ran into pocket queens on a very ragged board.

Shortly after that hand we split up into two 6 handed tables, and I got stuck as the dealer. Its real hard to focus on the game when you are worrying about dealing all the time, but I went on a horrendous run of cards where I didn't get anything remotely playable for an hour and a half, as I gradually chipped down by paying the blinds and the occasional hand that I tried to take a shot at.

$50 No Limit Tourney

After the limit poker and some pizza there's $50 no limit tournament with an optional $10 survivor pool where the last one standing takes all and an optional $10 head hunter option where you win $10 for knocking people out. I entered the survivor and head hunter games as well.

I managed to finish in third place out of 13 runners, but it wasn't exactly pretty. In the early going I won just enough pots to pay for the blinds as they came around and barely anything more. We start with $T100 and blinds go $1/2, $2/$4, $4/$8 and then we chip up 10 to 1 and start back at $1/$2. I had ten chips when we combined to one table and chipped up.

A few all-ins with big slick got me up to $T17 and then I just sat there as everyone else busted themselves. The blinds go up real fast and it turns into a shove fest, so if you can get enough chips where you can sit back and wait for an orbit or two for a real premium hand you'll find yourself practically in the money.

That strategy works ok until we got down to three players and while I had a decent amount of chips it was no where near the other two. The first hand three handed was K3 and for some reason I pushed. Big stack called me with QT. I caught a three on the turn, but he picked up a ten on the river and I was out. I offered to deal for the heads up battle which lasted all of one hand as they both pushed with garbage and the chip leader won again.

A third place got me almost back to even for the night. I would have been nice if I could have taken someone out in the headhunter challenge, or won the last longer pool, but alas no.

$50 No Limit

After the tournament we play $1/$2 no limit until eveyone goes home. My run of horrible cards continued as I folded over and over and over. Finally I opted to play A8 and saw a flop of 838. There was a large bet and then a raise ahead of me. I pushed all in, and the raiser called. Finally something was going my way. There's no way he played 83 is there? And he didn't. He had a wired threes giving him the boat. REBUY.

I re bought and folded away my blinds for another few orbits until the two guys I carpooled with went broke and we called it a night.


Despite the fact that my results were less than stellar I still had a blast. I forgot how much fun a poker game can be. And its a good thing because in a few weeks my regular "monthly" game will be getting together for the fourth time this year. That's right in 11 months we will have had four events. And since I'm guessing we aren't going to get anything going for December, that's a pretty poor average.

Originally posted at blog.pokerwords.com