Sunday post-tournament report
(see my previous entry for pictures relating to this entry)
So after everyone busted, we settled down to an evening of various home game poker. MrSmokey1 and Gavin were playing online hearts and they were apparently dominating their competition to the point where they were being accused of cheating. Zach, thorladen, jucifer and Bushman were playing Indian poker (put one card on your forehead, etc) — I joined that game after the first few rounds. Jackie and Ginger were watch TV/DVDs.
So anyway, onto my homegame experience. After I finished what I needed to do online, I went downstairs to see what was going on. Naturally, I was invited to join the $100 Indian poker sit and goes that were running. Despite not know anything about the game, I accepted. Here’s how you play:
The blinds and button are just like hold em. But you pick one card out of a muck pile (we used two decks for the muck pile) and put it on your forehead. You can’t see your own card, but you can see everyone elses. So there’s a lot of “bluffing” against top hands to try to get them to fold so you can get isolated against a bad hand who raised. Remember, if you open raise and you hold a two, you’re going to get attacked by someone. So someone might re-raise just hoping to have a good enough card on their head (maybe a T) to get the bigger hand to fold. After all, more often than not, a T will be a better hand than what you have on your forehead. Then again, people started seeing these steals and picking them off. Then it goes one level deeper, etc. Anyway, it’s a game where I knew nothing about basic strategy whatsoever and I was out within a few minutes. thorladen and jucifer were pretty much owning the sit and goes though.
So after that, I decided to try to get them to play a game that I actually know a little bit about: 8 card omaha hi/lo regular. Bushman, jucifer, thorladen and I play a $100 sit and go (paying $300 and $100). Not only did I run hot the first sit and go, they played awful. I made a few nice laydowns too, but I was flopping the nuts in both directions on multiple occasions. It only took a few minutes for me to get HU with Bushman, then I basically won in two or three hands (maybe it was one, I can’t remember).
Naturally, they wanted a re-match. So we went upstairs to the kitchen table — the basement floor isn’t comfortable, but it was the only place in the house where people wouldn’t be able to see their own card playing Indian poker. The structure was the same as before… around 150 in chips, 1/2 blinds (increase when someone goes out), $100 buyin, $300/$100 payout. Little did we know what a freaking marathon this thing was going to be. I THINK we started around 1 AM. Maybe someone else knows better, but that’s my best guess. It started off typically enough, with Bushman getting quarter in large pots where he was playing crappy hands. I was running pretty bad in the beginning of it and I got the reputation as a nut peddler because I played so few of my first 20-30 hands. But if you get 44468JQK in that game, trust me, you should fold preflop even if you’re getting 10-1. It’s that bad and you really can’t even catch up. So anyway, jucifer took an early chiplead.
A few hours later we were still four handed. Then in the middle of nowhere, everything went black. At first I thought some of the other guys were playing a prank where they turned off all the lights at once, but that wasn’t the case. In fact, thor’s power had gone out. So there we were in the middle of the hills of upstate New York with no power, about four candles and no flashlight (thor later found one, but not for awhile). The Chicago crew was immediately suspicious of foul play. They thought someone cut the power lines with the intent to rob all of the cash-rich poker players, then kill us and dump the bodies in the woods. I’m really not sure what cutting the power would do to help that plan, but the idea quickly morphed into a variant theory, which was that thor was behind the whole thing with the plan to hack all our accounts and do the whole killing/dumping thing. Either Zach or Kyle (I’m not sure who, it was dark) was actually walking around with a knife. I can’t say I ever bought into it (I was sitting at the table trying to get everyone to re-start the sit and go via candlelight), but it was entertaining. An interesting side note is that MrSmokey1 and Gavin were still playing online hearts… and they got disconnected at the same time due to the power outage. So after being accused of cheating, being disconnected at the same time probably didn’t look good. But, in fact, they were playing honestly.
Eventually we got back to the game under candlelight while others just went to sleep on the couches, etc. I won a few big pots off of jucifer and Bushman while jucifer was rivering thor over and over, so I built a huge chiplead. For a good portion of the rest of the sit and go, I had between 350 and 400 chips with only 600 in play. I played a pretty tight big stack as I thought it was correct considering the game and my opponents. Basically I’d wait for A2 or A23 or A34 hands with some other potential, then just quarter them over and over. I don’t think I even got quartered until I got in with A23TJJxx with two hearts on a KhQhJx board … so I had the nut low (remember, it was regular, no qualifier), the nut straight, bottom set jacks and the nut flush draw. Of course, thor had A2KQxxxx and he hit a K on the turn (I wasn’t as far ahead as it looked, nut boat draws are pretty powerful even compared to my holdings). So it took that to quarter me. But I eventually knocked out Bushman when I got in with the nut low, top two, a gutshot straight draw and an average flush draw against Bushman’s non-existant low and a better flush draw. He hit his flush on the turn and I hit my two pair redraw on the river (it was a one-outer considering what was left in the deck, but remember that when playing four handed 8 card and dealing the river, it’s a lot different than a 1/40-something chance — seen 8+8+8+8+4, so it’s like 1/16). But anyway, we played three handed for a long time before jucifer and I combined to knock out thor when I hit a 23 nut low holding A23455JJ and jucifer hit a good high of 888AA (holding A8) and thor couldn’t beat either end. By the time that happened, it was past 7 AM, the electicity was back on and it was light outside. So I chopped heads up with jucifer with a 2-1 chiplead (we did a chip count chop). I ended the night up $230 or so. I think thor, jucifer and I won about equal amounts, with Bushman being stuck for the evening. Not like he cared, he knew he was donking it up.
I woke up the next day at 3 PM, wandered around the house for a bit, ate two bowls of cereal at 5 PM, then was reminded by thor that we had a big dinner coming up at 6:30 PM. Oops. So I basically showered, then hung out until dinner at a Mexican restaurant in “downtown” Andes. thor had reserved the whole place for the group of us, which included his wife Liz. The food there was awesome and there was way too much of it. I don’t think anyone was remotely hungry when they brought us the menus for the main course. And there was a lot of drinking going on as well, but I decided not to participate. I’ve never been a huge drinker, but I’m still feeling pretty sick from Turning Stone and my headache/other cold symptoms would not mix well with a lot of drinking. I eventually got a little fed up with the drunkeness, mainly due to my headache and not feeling good at all… so I just kinda separated myself to wait it out until the night ended. After that, we went back to thor’s house and hung out for a bit before every had to go to sleep because they were going into NYC early this morning. I slept in a bit, then hung out with thor and Gavin all day. I’m going to Ithaca as soon as I wake up tomorrow. Thanks to thor and the rest of the group for a great couple of days, sorry I was so sick and blowing my nose non-stop. Allergies suck.
(remember to look below for pictures)
Related posts:
- Sunday at thor’s house
- Bunch of pictures, commentary to come later…
- Sunday tournaments
- More home game, more winning by N 82
- Another comment on the JOE FRASER hand
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