It was the best of times...

A tale of two home games...

So Friday night I rolled south to G-Vegas to play with Bad Blood, the recently un-retired from poker G-Rob, Otis, Lee Jones, Gucci Rick and a host of other degenerates. Over the course of the evening I managed to uphold one goal - to not get my money in bad more than once per orbit. That didn't stop me losing three buy-ins, but given the fact that I may actually have been a slight favorite (still behind, but a slight favorite) for at least half the last pot I lost, I think my PLO game might actually be improving by the most incremental of degrees. At this rate by 2020 I'll be a break-even PLO player.

So my love of PLO dims a bit whenever I pick up a big hand in early position, because I can't raise enough to get anyone to fold. So when I pick up AA72 with one suit under the gun, I can only make it $5 to go (1/1 PLO with a straddle). Several callers come along, but Lee makes my dream move and re-pots it. I'm fairly short already, and with aces and the hammer, I ship it in. Everyone else folds and we're heads up.

Of course he has the other two aces, and he's suited in clubs to my diamonds (or vice versa, but we each had one suit). Rainbow flop, no flush on the turn, but my hammer makes trips on the river to double through. Hammer good! That got me back to even for buy-in #2, and I don't remember how I lost the rest of it, but I'm sure I was overvaluing two pair chasing the boat or something equally inane. So let's fast forward to the end of the evening, in what became a pretty interesting hand. Otis raised it up preflop, and several of us called, including myself (10-10-J-9 with two crubs) and Bad Blood.

The flop came down with about everything I could ask for in a board - 8-9-4 with two clubs. I didn't have the open-ended straight flush draw, but I did have the open-ender and a decent flush draw. We had switched to PLO8 by this point, so I was less than thrilled about the two low cards on the board, but I led out anyway. My recollection is a little fuzzy, but I think I moved all in on the flop, Blood called and Otis moved all in over the top. I may have led out with a pot-sized bet, Blood called, Otis shoved, and Blood and I called. Either way, all the money ended up in the middle. I showed my crub flush draw and straight draw, Otis showed A-A-3-5 with the 3 and 5 of clubs, and Blood showed A-9-rag-rag for a silly call that I asked him about the next night. He didn't really defend it other than mumbling something about Grey Goose. EDIT - Mr. Blood has reminded me that he had A239 for top pair, nut low draw, so he made a good call for 25% of the pot :).

I had a pile of outs for half the pot, which I think made me around 60% to chop and around 20% to scoop. But the turn and river didn't bring me a 10, 7, Q or a club, and I was done for the night.Otis scooped the pot with his unimproved aces to get himself unstuck for the night. I think it was one of the less bad moves I made all night, but of course, I was working on a fundamental theorem of poker that proved to be faulty - crubs always get there.

The next night the degeneracy moved to my house, and it might be the fastest I've ever seen Nate blow through 5 buy-ins (at $60 per). I stacked him once in the first orbit when my flush got there on the river to bust his turned straight. Brian the Red stacked him later when his flush got there on the flop to crack Nate's pair (or maybe it was a smaller flush). It was actually kinda gross to watch as he just turned over second-best hand after second-best hand, which gets expensive in short order.

I had a rare evening at my home game where I bought in just the once, and built a ridiculous stack early, but bled off some of it late in the game. It was a jovial game, and great fun for all but probably Nate, who was busto by 10PM. I thought that in the absence of Special K and Jim the Knife that the game would play smaller, but every chip I had under $20 was on the table by 8:30, and I don't think we've ever had that many black ($20) chips on the table before. So it was a fun game, and I made back 2/3 of what I left in G-Vegas, so that's always helpful. I don't really remember many hands, but my reads were at least as bad as they usually are, and I resorted to suckouts on more than one occassion after I decided to call with crap because I was sire somebody was raising light preflop. They weren't, and I had to get lucky to win, but since I've given up on being good, I'll take lucky whenever I can get it :).