Texas Fold ‘Em

So I played my first real game of poker last night, real world after a few months online. I’d played with this lot before, a couple of years ago, but everything was new back then, I didn’t know what I was doing, one of the guys had printed out a cheat sheet for me detailing the hands in descending order – yeah that time didn’t count.

I’d had an opportunity once before, a couple of months ago but I didn’t take it. This time I was bored enough and pissed off enough with the hand of cards life was dealing me to go out and see whether I could actually hold my own against a roomful of guys who had played together before, for years. I expected it to be the kind of bummer that really pissed me off beyond the sucky string of days I’ve been having. Why would I go tempting fate like that? That’s for me to (think I) know and a therapist to figure out.

So I turn up and there are fewer people than I expected. It appeared that some were going to drop out so it could be a smaller game than I imagined.

I know a few of these guys (some of them even know me) and the rest I have heard of. Don’t really know their playing styles, not even sure I would know a playing style if it came slapped me on the face, insulted my unborn children and proceeded to drink the only beer I could afford.

They shoot the breeze for a while (I check in with the missus) and then, when the clock ticks past a mental threshold for some of them, we sit down and play. Texas Hold ‘Em. Alternating packs that get shuffled by an automatic shuffler for a bit (until its batteries die), one thousand rupee buy in, 10 buck ante, raises are 50 each round.

I keep it simple, play the cards, lose a little money, win a little money and then really lose some money. About an hour in, I’ve bought in once more, five hundred bucks, but the guy to my right ins in for a lot more. More players have joined and I’ve shifted one seat in. Not too much further into the game, all the players that will be involved are in, that’s seven. I’m sort of a careful player, even online, but these guys, they raise on almost anything. It’s not going well because I’m either folding (so that I lose a little on every hand) or losing out to hands marginally better than mine. And then, the weird games start. Maybe you’ve heard of some of them, games like The Good, The Bad, The Ugly, Hold ‘Em, But TheRiver is Wild, Omaha (Oh M’Gaw?, couldn’t quite tell), Chase the Bitch, 500 In and Baseball. Variations on hold ‘em most of them, but with quirky rules that sound daunting at first but are quick to get into.

So while the parent game can be a long grind in which one player can work on sucking down all the other players’ chips, these variations are a quick way for someone to go up in a hurry. On one occasion, that someone was me, on a pretty stellar hand of Baseball. I was in to the tune of fifteen hundred over the course of the early hours and when that hand was done I was sitting on twenty-nine fifty. Not bad for a first-timer? I thought so. I also thought about cashing out. But I didn’t. So my stack shortened considerably. But I still walked away with my fifteen, plus an extra hundred from exercising restraint in the dying minutes of the games. So about four hours and up a C-note what did I learn?

The online play got me match ready as far as the theory was concerned. For my first real world foray I thought I didn’t do too badly. I wasn’t confused about what hands were better. The cigar smoke and the banter and the other distractions didn’t throw my game off significantly.

My big mistake? Definitely had to be that I played the cards rather than the players.
This is a fairly tight-knit group and they know their way around each other’s moves. It was easy for them to get a read on the new guy. They read that I was playing my hands fairly straight and any flashy moves I made were based on mistakes (or misreads) rather than any genuine attempt at bluffing on my part. I’m sure I have a tell, apparently even the best players have tells, and I’m certain at least some of those players caught it (or them). Still I gotta say I did a lot better than I thought I might, given the circumstances.

Why am I comfortable blogging about all of this? Because I got a really good experience out of my first time at a poker table; because it made me muster up reserves of strength to type this up at a time when time spent at a computer generates very little joy in my life; and because I don’t plan on making a career out of getting into poker games. I had my Matt Damon-at-the-end-of-Rounders experience last night. Winning was a thrill. Getting out with my principle investment intact was a relief.

The rest I leave to the professionals and the addicts.