February 13, 2006
Jo’s Home Game
Yesterday I played in a friendly home game hosted Jo, a poker playing friend of mine.
As is tradition with these games it was a low buy in tournament with the emphasis more about getting together and playing cards rather than the money and with 6 players we decided on a $5 buy-in no-limit hold’em tournament, with $20 awarded for first and $10 for second.
So how did I do? Well, it was up and down … mostly down. I decided to stray a little from the usually tight game I play at these tournaments (being only 6 handed I figured I could get away with it) and while it worked early (I doubled up after my K7o flopped two pair and Matt my opponent went all-in with a bluff) it failed miserably later (lost quite a large pot playing K9o when Suse’s K4o hit two pair on the flop :)) then on the bubble it was catastrophic:
:Ac::9c:
With only the blinds left to play (blinds were $50/$150 at this point) I decide to try a steal and pushed all-in. My thinking here is that four handed A9c is a strong hand and if I don’t get the blinds I’ll likely get a call from a king or a queen. Of course you know what they say about the best laid plans, Jo in the SB folds (so far, so good) then Suse in the BB asks “How much is that?” although what she meant to say was “Bad move, sucker!” and flips over:
:As::Qh:*
Just to tease me the flop came two clubs, the turn was a Queen and my third club never came. I was out in fourth.
Jo was next out in third (sorry I have no memory of this hand, amazing how quickly you lose interest after being knocked out :)) and we went into heads up play, Suse vs Vaughano with stacks about even.
Things were progressing rather slowly when Suse was dealt AA in the big blind, Vaughano called and the dealer (in a moment of extreme stupidity) dealt a flop before Suse had a chance to respond!
* Crowd gasps in horror, there is much murmuring about the best way to kill the dealer *
Needless to say I wasn’t popular (yes, I was responsible for this atrocity!) to make matters worse, Vaughano had:
:Jh::3c:*
On a jack high flop, which some might say put Suse in a nice position. That is until the turn:
When Suse proceeded to move all-in only to see a river:
Giving Vaughano the full house and chip dominance and making me the most unpopular person in the room (except, of course, with Vaughano). After this hand there was a fair bit of debate one, about how to dispose of my body without arousing suspicion and two, about the correct procedure for dealing with this kind of dealer error. Some argued that the whole hand should be re-dealt (including hole cards) which would clearly put Suse at a disadvantage given her huge preflop advantage, others argued a re-deal of the flop which again didn’t seem fair to either player (Suse was still in a good position after the flop). It seemed to me at the time that allowing the hand to continue was the fairest option for both players, though I wanted to investigate it a little further so that we’d know how to handle dealer errors correctly in the future. Searching the web I came across this:
“If cards are flopped by the dealer before all the betting is completed, the entire flop is taken back and reshuffled. The burn card will remain and no additional burn card will be used for this flop.”
Which in hindsight is fair enough and I propose we use this rule for future dealer mistakes (which are bound to happen, none of use are professional poker dealers).
In the end though, my life was spared as over the next 10 hands or so Suse played some of the best short stacked poker I’ve seen in a while (ok I’m sucking up a little… really sorry about the whole AA thing Suse!) to get back even with V. Then a few hands later, they were both all-in preflop:
Suse:
:Ks::9s:*
Vaughano:
:Jd::Jh: *
Flop:
:Jc::Tc::5h:* the third card may not have been a 5, but it was an insignificant rag.
Turn:
The river was a rag and Suse had her revenge and took first place with an unlikely, though well deserved, straight!
Final Standings:
1. Suse ($20)
2. Vaughano ($10)
3. Jo ($5 - We allowed one rebuy after Matt was knocked out early)
4. Me
5. Jono
6. Matt
Congratulations to all the money winners, I look forward to the next game soon!
* = Don’t remember the exact suits of these hands
