All In!

Tonight we were blessed with an extra hour because of the adjustment back to Standard Time. And I spent that hour driving home after having my first live experience playing Texas Hold'Em poker. This is a very popular game, and seems to be on TV somewhere all the time if you look hard enough. The first few times that I saw it played, I recall thinking, "What's the big deal about this?" I can tell you that once you actually get into the game, you can understand why some people would find it addictive. The luck/skill ratio is skewed more toward the skill side in Texas Hold'Em than in any other type of poker. There are so many head games going on, and much of that you bring upon yourself. It was a really enjoyable experience.

Since I had never played the game before, I logged onto one of those online poker sites to try practicing. I had intended to play for about a half hour or so to get my feet wet, but ended up playing for nearly two hours. Crack cocaine has nothing on this. The ironic part of this experience was that I didn't really learn a whole lot. The problem was that there was one person playing who went in on every hand. This was bet-limited game, and she had somehow accumulated a whole lot of chips over time, so she would use them to call or raise at every opportunity. She ended up losing a ton of chips during the time I was playing. But because of the way she played, bluffing was impossible, so the betting was almost always based on who had the better cards. But I got comfortable with the mechanics of the game, and I felt ready to play in a live setting.

There were five of us in total for this game, and it was a friendly setting. We played with a $20 buy-in, in which everybody received 60 chips. There was unlimited betting with those chips, and we played until somebody ended up with them all and won the $100 pot. We played five games, and I won one of them, so I broke even on the night. I made it to the final pair in another game, but was done in by a serious chip count disadvantage and a bad break on a river card. In another game, I was out on the third hand. Overall, for a novice going against experienced players, I was satisfied with the result.

I'm not a big-time gambler, but I got a bit of a rush from this experience. I'm certainly not going to play every day or every week, but I can see why some people do. I think I'll stick to my day job - and blogging, of course. It's only a matter of time before you'll start seeing an organization called Bloggers Anonymous.