Well, I’ve already started getting my game back in shape this year with a third place finish in the my first home tourney of the year. I should probably have locked up first with the chips I had, but my cards went cold when it got down to five and I lost too many chips trying to make moves. Nothing feels worse than getting called down with queen high.
I did implement my plan and pushed marginal edges much less than I usually do at these games. I can read some of the players pretty well and know when the flop has missed them. Unfortunately, I was still getting called down by trailing hands a lot of the time, so I wound up getting bumped from the tournament when people hit their draws. I know I’ve got a large edge on most of the field, so I’ve been choosing my spots far more carefully to stack the odds even further in my favour.
This week some buddies of mine got together for an impromptu H.O.R.S.E. ring game. It was only five of us, but it was old time boys who have been playing in the game for three years now. And they have all latched on to H.O.R.S.E. as a way to avoid the monotony of a night full of hold’em without resorting to any wildcard games. But short-handed play can really alter some of these games. In the case of this week’s game, it was some very peculiar Omaha and Omaha/8 hands. I was surprised by the number of pair or 2-pair hands that one the pot. But the most peculiar hand came in Omaha Hi where we had three 4s up in the middle. I was expecting a full house, but of course you need to play two cards from your hand and since no one had a pocket pair, the pot went to ace high, even though other players had paired the board. Understandably, the guy who folded AK to the river bet was upset that he didn’t realize the strength of his hand. In the end, I managed to nearly triple my buy-in playing some decent poker and capitalizing on other’s mistakes.
Of course, I followed up a night of solid poker with some pure gambling at the end of the night where I managed to throw all my profits away. I keep figuring that I’m due for some luck playing a little high card, which has almost become a tradition at the end of a night of poker, but somehow I keep flipping twos. Ah well, Doyle says you have to give action to get action. I can justify it that way, right?