It’s Friday and to get you in the mood for the weekend I thought I’d share a poker joke with you, content permitting I’ll put one up about this time every week.

This one has done the rounds but is still good for a laugh. If you’re the original author (and can prove it) let me know and I’ll make sure you get the credit.

You Know You Play Too Much Poker When…

1. You start classifying people on your life as “weak-tight” or “loose-passive,” even when they’ve never set foot in a poker room.

2. You use the phrase “bad beat” when lending a sympathetic ear to a friend.

3. The guy on TV didn’t win the lottery, he had the “nut ticket”.

4. It’s been more than 24 hours since the first time you told yourself “Just one more round and then I’ll get some sleep.”

5. Your two ATM cards and five credit cards have all reached their maximum cash advance for the day.

6. You figure if your family leaves you that will give you more time and money and you can move up to a bigger limit.

7. You have 12 games on your computer, solitaire, minesweeper, and 10 poker games.

8. Your kids are named Check and Raise.

9. Your bathroom library consists of Card Player and Poker Digest.

10. The only reason you go to your in-law’s for christmas is for the 5c piece game after dinner.

11. Or because they live closer to the casino.

12. You are having such a bad day at hold ‘em that you decide to take a break… and play Omaha.

13. Your sweetie gets a certain look in her eye and you think it means that she wants to go to the cardroom.

14. You have nightmares about your cards changing during the hand.

15. You have a poker chip in your pocket right now.

Last night night I got my first chance since I started putting this page together to get onto Poker Champs and play some poker.

I ended up playing full ring cash games (2c/4c), one or two tables at a time depending on the number of available tables and how full they were (at the moment I’m preferring to play on a full ring table with at least 7 players seated and playing).

All in all I think I played a solid game, got some unlucky beats early but managed to fight back to finsh the session in the black (ok, so it was only 45c in the black but it still counts!!).

It was a fairly short session (around 90 minutes) so I didn’t play that many hands, here’s a few that stood out:

Hand #1 - Bad Beat?

Position: Middle
Hole Cards:
:Qc::Jh:

The action is folded around to me and with only 4 players remaining to act (the blinds, dealer and person directly to my left) I decide to check and see what the flop brings. My idea here is that I can easily throw these cards away if the flop is not kind.

All remaining players call/check and we see a flop.

Flop:
:9c::Qs::Jd:

Lovely flop but it has it’s dangers, the possible straight for KT and any number of straight draws.

Action is checked around to me and I bet half the pot, everyone folds except the dealer who re-raises me double my original bet.

Now at this point I look at our stacks and note that I have him out stacked by about 3 times, this is a good thing as it means I’m not going broke on this hand. Next I think about what hand he could possibly have, the only hand that’s beating me right now is KT and the chances of him having it are remote. I decide to push and due to his small stack size I bet enough to put him all in.

He calls without hesitation and flips up :Ad::Qh: for TPTK, I smile at my computer screen and flip up my cards to show him my two pair. Beautiful. Of course at this point I have forgotten about those pesky turn and river cards…

Turn:

River:

Ahh the river, a two-faced beast. One day it’s your friend, the next it’s stabbing you in the back.

Hand #2 - Unlucky

I won’t go into as much detail about this one, got :6c::6s: preflop on the button and limped in, blinds checked and we saw a flop:

Flop:
:6d::Jh::2c:

I hit my set and decide to slow play as nothing about the flop is overly scary (no likely straight or flush draws), so I check. The turn brings a 7 and I decide to make a half pot sized bet to see if I get any bites. All fold except the big blind who flat calls. River comes a 9 and with no flush or reasonable straight on the board I look over to my opponents stack and place a bet to put her all in, after some consideration she calls and shows me her pocket J’s. She’d flopped the higher set from the beginning.

I’d love to be corrected but I really don’t see any way I could have gotten away from this one??

Hand #3 - Retribution

A different table to the above two hands with a couple of maniac players battling it out (lots of big raises/all-ins with very questionable hands preflop - your stereotypical micro-limit table). So, anyway, I was riding it out waiting for some cards when the poker gods smiled on me and I looked down to see:

:Ad::Ah:

I was first to act and decided to put in a weakish raise of 1.5BB, the table folds around to the dealer and I start to worry that no one wants to play, at this moment the dealer calls, the SB folds and the BB (maniac) goes all-in for about 3/4 of my stack. With the dealer still to speak I decide to re-raise all in in an attempt to get him out of the hand, he calls.

Unfortunately the cards flashed by quicker than I could write them down so I can’t tell you exactly what everyone had but I can tell you it was pretty mediocre. My aces held up and I scooped up quite a nice pot.

I’ve gotten used to seeing plays like this from my opponents at these mico-limits, I expect as I move up the limits I won’t see this kind of play as often… although from some of the stories I’ve read I shouldn’t expect too much ;).