If you really, really wanted to call it poker

I suppose you could, but it would be a stretch only allowed by the fact that the game was played with chips representing fictional dollars, cards, and by the end of seven cards, the best five-card hand won. In any other sense what I played last night was not poker.

On the up side, I did very well at bingo last night. I may have played as poorly as I have in my life in a winning session, catching ridiculous cards and issuing bad beats to my friends at such a furious pace that it stopped being funny after a while. It's hard going on a rush 5-handed in a home game, because it probably means that someone you like is getting kicked in the balls by the deck. Over and over again.

But I'm not complaining, I booked a win on nothing but pure luck, so I'll take it. I started off on a horrible slide, playing way too loose and bleeding away, as no one seemed interested in playing big pots early. If I'm gonna play 5-handed, I'm probably gonna play exceptionally loose preflop, and tighten up (i.e. look at my cards) only after the flop, and usually only after some aggressive action is taken. It's not like I have any fold equity preflop anyway, since half my opponents assume I have the hammer every hand, whether I've raised preflop or not. So I limped in a bunch, and called some stupid preflop raises, and then issued some sick beats.

I think the worst was probably what I did to BG. I called his preflop raise with 4-2 off suit, thinking that if I called, everyone else would call. Yeah, I forgot that Nate and Jim weren't with us, so that was a bit of a misread. The flop came down crappy cards, with a 4. At this point I called his overbet of the pot because I had a pair. And because 8 out of 10 hands he'd c-bet the flop if he raised preflop, and 6 out of those 8 I'd folded, so I figured he could be firing with almost any holding, and there was about a 20% chance my pair of 4s was actually ahead.

No, I didn't take time to think about the fact that there was probably only a 10% chance that my pair of 4s would hold up if in fact they were ahead. I'm not really very bright.

The turn brought another 4, and I called one more time, because this time I was pretty sure I was not only good, but was going to stay there. The river was inconsequential, and I think he checked and I bet. Or he bet and I raised. Either way, he called and I showed my stupid hand, and took a bunch of chips. I don't have any idea what he had, but given the level of disgust he evidenced, it must have been decent. I actually issued a worse beat later, but he admitted that even against a donkey like me he should have realized he wasn't good there. I called a preflop raise with 4-5 off suit, because that's how I was rolling. Flop came down A-2-x and I raised BG with my gutty. Yeah, not a long-term +EV move, but if you're gonna play crap, you may as well play it strong. I picked up my 3 on the turn, and fired again. On the river BG led out, I said "raise" and before I counted out my whole raise (which was going to be 3x his bet, which would have left him pretty committed) he said "All-in." I called, he turned over A-2 for flopped two pair. I tabled my wheel, and he reloaded, saying "He did everything but tell me he had a set or a straight." Which was what I was thinking, but I didn't really want to rub salt in the wound right then.

Today is a different day, so I'll rub salt on the interwebs for the whole world to see. It's not like I did anything particularly well, I played like crap. This time I just got rewarded for it. Last weekend I actually played pretty well and got rewarded for it. We've got another game coming up Saturday night, so I wonder what the mix will be? It's not like I intended to play like the world's biggest donkey, it just kinda ended up that way. Glad I decided to put off "create a tight table image" until my 2009 Resolutions.