Why I Am Getting Married

Creasy: Forgiveness is between them and God. It's my job to arrange the meeting.

”Man on Fire”

It’s been a poker filled weekend, with another new live game going. One of the new players for our regular home games has another game going with his cricketing buddies. I was invited and decided to see what the action was like, along with one other player from our regular game.

They play spread limit holdem, which meant that for the first two rounds of betting, you could only bet between 40c to $1. In the last two rounds of betting, it could only be between 80c-$2. I guess basically it was $1/$2 limit game where you could under-bet. Either way, $20 was the normal buy in and I had a bit of a dilemma.

You see, I love poker, and I love finding new games. I truly believed I could make some money in this small game, even before I even knew about anybody there. I just felt good about this one. Unfortunately, my entire bankroll is tied up online, and the distraction and I had only $40 to our name until pay day sometime this week. I couldn’t go to the game with just one buy in – if I lost in the first hour where would I be? So I took the entire $40 into a poker game. Man, you see why I am getting married to this girl? Our last $40 and she lets me put it on a poker table.

Anyway, the game gets going on a ping pong table, which added to the charm, and on the very first hand a player in middle position flops quad jacks. We would see quad jacks again later in the night (and I suspect quad jacks hit a third time but the winning hand was not shown) and also quad tens. Man, live poker is so rigged.

I was up about $5 then down about ten after my first pocket pair, Cowboys, went up against Aces. I wasn’t hitting any hands but wasn’t loosing much ground so it was ok. The action was very loose passive – pre-flop raises were common but the re-raise was extremely rare and 4-5 callers to the turn were also common. This meant that if I played tight but aggressive with my hands, I only needed to pick up a few pots to get ahead, which is what pretty much happened.

Firstly I had Q7 in the big blind, and got to see a flop with Q7x, with a flush draw. I never took the lead in the hand but let the others bet it through to the river when the flush never came. There was also a King on the board, so my hand wasn’t really a monster but I had a feeling that two pair might be enough. I called one last bet on the river and with four to the showdown, two pair was indeed good. This got me thinking – these guys are a little looser than I had expected. The player who invited us was pegged at our home games as a rock almost immediately, and I expected this game to be a rock garden. How wrong I was – and you could see why the rock played the way he did. He ended the night up about $50.

I had JJ hold up twice, once where I lead the action all the way and hit nothing, only to be called by Ace-high. The other time was pretty much the same where I thought I was up against a bigger pair that missed, but he kept calling. I thought I was in trouble bet fired off a final $2 on the river, and he called with an under-pair that hadn’t hit. At least he knew it was a bad call. My final hand was A4h with 2 hearts on the flop. I admit, I chased to the river when my flush came through to cracked AA.

We tallied up our chips and I walked out $42 richer. I guess my distractions faith in my was rewarded.