Poker day

It is Poker day for me.  About a month ago I joined a weekly Texas Holdem tournament here and have been loving it.

We play from 11:00 to 2:30.  It's a $4.00 buy-in with $3.00 re-buys allowed until 1:15, so nobody can get badly hurt, but there is enough money going in that I took home $46.00 last week when I won - with no re-buys, so a nice profit.   We pay something for highest hand of the game, and won I that the week before when I also took second place, going home with $16.00 after putting $7.00 in (one re-buy).

But I also had a week where I did two re-buys and won nothing.  I'm well ahead right now, but we'll see what happens in the long run.  There are some very good players and as I don't know all of their habits well yet, I'm being cautious.

My initial impression is that most of them play too loosely.  With 8 or 9 players, you won't find me even calling the blind with K-2 off, but I see that a lot from them.  I've been playing fairly tight because of that observation - I might call a small bet with K-8 off, for example, but nothing worse and I wouldn't do that very often.

But that impression could be wrong.  I won't know until I've played many more hands.

I like the time, too.  I used to play in a game (not Holdem) that ran from 5:00 to 10:00 PM.  That left my wife sitting home alone.  When I go to this game, she has gone out to the malls and doesn't miss my company.  She also gets to pretend that I'm winning every week and can buy whatever she wants :-)

Recap:

Bad first half, had to re-buy.   Started doing better 2d part.  On last hand, Jimmy had over 4,000 chips, I had a bit over 2,000 and the one remaining player had a bit over 1,000.

I could have just folded for pretty well guaranteed second place, as Jimmy would be unlikely to risk first place if the other guy went all-in.   I went all-in after the flop.

The low stack called as he should have - nothing to lose, everything to gain.  Jimmy folded, because be felt he was safe and after i won, he still was.    So, I won $10 for a $3 take over what I had put in.  If Jimmy had a few less chips or the third place guy had a few more, Jimmy might have been forced to call and I would have taken first.

Of course you can't always count on rational decisions.  The low stack told me that he almost didn't call.

That's why I love poker.   You can win with logic, but you can't count on it!