The importance of a good poker face

A little lesson in poker.

The joys and risks of poker

I had a few of my team-mates from the Division 4 team of St. Declan’s basketball club round for poker last Friday night. As well as the intrinsic joys of gambling, drinking, smoking cigars, and verbally abusing each other, the night was also a fundraiser for the club, with half of the money going to our permanently indebted treasury department.


I used to be involved in a regular poker game a while back, but we used to play 5 card draw. Friday night was No Limit Texas Hold-Em, which is an entirely different animal. It’s a lot more expensive to play each hand as there are more rounds of betting, and you can go ‘All-in’ at any time, pushing all of your chips into the pot. I decided it was a good idea to do this on the second hand of the night, with a full house. So I went ahead and lashed all €40 into the pot. Unfortunately, a certain team-mate who will never be forgiven had four 2s and called my bet in a hot second. So I was the first to crash out after 12 minutes of play.

Luckily there was an option to buy in a second time, so I had the opportunity to stay in the game and squander more money. I managed to outlast two people (out of 7 of us) before I went bust for good. Not much of an achievement, but I’ll get them next time...

I really enjoyed the game and I'm itching for another one. The following night I called over to a friend's gaff, and we called in on a neighbour of his and interrupted a poker session. There were about 8 lads sitting around a purpose built table, with little drink holders and chip holders and a green felt tabletop. It all looked very inviting, I must say.

I've set up an internet account, and I play a little online Hold 'Em every so often. I'd like to play a few more live games though. I have mixed results playing on the internet - I usually buy into a table for around €30, and I have often doubled my money. But my problem is that if I start losing, I compound it by keeping playing (and losing), instead of quitting and living to play another day. On Sunday night I stayed up till all hours, blowing €70 in the process.

I thoroughly enjoy the poker but it remains to be seen whether this little hobby is going to be in my own interest or not. It could so easily go horribly wrong... But fuck the begrudgers. I could become an expert and turn pro - and bid farewell to the Monday to Wednesday* grind...

By the way, a few times (usually with alcohol involved), I played a crazy variant of poker apparently called 'Indian poker'. It's mad stuff altogether. You whip a card quickly from the top of the deck, and hold it facing forwards atop your own forehead. You can see everyone else's card, but not your own. You then make bets on who has the highest card, basing your reaction on the expression on your opponent's face, I suppose. In my experience, it's generally difficult to judge their expression as s/he tends to be convulsed in laughter. It's good craic, but not one for the purists...




* the joys of worksharing... Heh, heh...

Poker

Last week, I hosted a poker session in my house. There is a group of us that play poker together every so often. We hadn't played for a while, and I wanted to have a game before going back to college, so I decided to host the evening. It's more suitable during this time of year anyway, when the evenings are darker and the weather's getting worse.

We basically all sit around a table and have a few beers, an occasional cigar, and play some cards. We have a pool of about ten players, but there's always one or two who can't make it, so we usually play with six or seven. On this night there were six of us. One of the missing regulars is my brother Alan, who is travelling at the moment (alanbaynes101.blogspot.com).

We play with chips rather than cash. The thinking is that people can't lose more than the amount of chips they buy in, so it means that everyone can keep track of their liabilities and nobody ends up betting more than they can afford. Basically, everybody buys in €30 of chips, and we play cards. But on this night, there seemed to be lots of people buying in extra chips, so there was a fair bit of money on the table - more than €250. (They aren't huge stakes, but most of us are lowly civil servants...)

I didn't manage a Royal Flush...

I think this probably was due to the fact that we played for half an hour or so with only five players, because one guy was late. With only five players it was difficult to get openers (if you don't know, google it), so the pot kept building and building. This cleaned a few people out quite quickly, as there was some lunatic betting on some huge pots in the early stages. This created quite an imbalance in the chip distribution. For a while, one corner of the table housed the 'superpowers', who had huge piles of chips from winning these big pots, and the other side of the table was populated by the bankrupt 'axis of evil'. (I was briefly one of these superpowers).

In the final analysis, I just about broke even (I finished with €23 in chips). I wasn't getting good hands throughout most of the dealing, so I didn't get much of a chance to bet. But the few good hands I did get I made quite good money out of, so I was happy enough with that. I got a four of a kind at one stage, which was the best
hand of the night. I also had the 'Dead Man's Hand' at one stage - two aces and two eights - which is supposedly the hand that Wild Bill Hickok was holding when he was shot dead. That must have been a bad omen for me, as I lost a few bob on that hand.