Does anybody else have a "nickname" for your regular poker club/crew that you would like to share. Based on our street name, we call ourselves "The Glenn Place Rounders". Needless to say there are plenty of attempts at very bad John Malkovich/Teddy KGB impressions !

I was too tired to think of that last night, but if it ever happens again I'll have it ready. Of course, I hope it never happens again.

Note to self, make sure Schmendr1ck gets no sleep one night at the HPI, video the results, and post to Home Poker forum....

;-)

I'll be keeping my title this year so obviously I'll have more than him.

Well, jz might beat me for most sleep during HPI.

Probably not. You're like my wife, sleep more in a few days than I do in a week.

My Tuesday night group calls itself "9-2 Poker" because one of our long-time members has a rep for loving this hand and won a couple of big hands with it a long time ago, a la Doyle's 10-2.

Here's how I expect it to work:

Thursday: I'll start off okay but get progressively spewy as I drink way too much.
Friday: Thanks to my massive hangover, I'll accidentally shoot Breich in the leg at the gun range. We'll start a small afternoon game where I'll blind off my stack while napping at the table, then I'll run like God himself and clean house in the evening game, sending everyone back to their hotel rooms broke and dejected about 5am.
Saturday: I'll get up two hours earlier than everyone else to get the house and poker room ready for the tourney. The lack of sleep will show in my tourney play, and I'll bust out very early. I'll take a short nap while the tourney continues, then tear through the cash game again. Finally, we'll have a huge flip at the end of the night - jz will dial in from Chicago and win it, and I'll come out dead even for the weekend.
Sunday: I'll find mariettabull and wesrwood sleeping on my lawn, call the police and have them escorted out of the neighborhood, then sleep for about three days to catch up.

I don't have the sweet RFID/webcam setup that Pali has, but I might be able to set up a public video Hangout for folks who want to pop in and watch the main table.

Just got home from an interesting short-handed dealer's choice (orbit + 1) game. Five and six-handed most of the night, mostly flop games (NLHE through PL "Australian SOHE"—break up hands on the flop—and pretty much everything in between), plus an orbit each of stud, razz, NL 2-7 single draw, and PL 5-card draw. Lots of PLO, PLO8, and Tahoe.

Tonight's theme could be "Jim should wear his nit hat when he plays PLO." Came out +410 BB on the night on a single 250 BB buy-in, but really should have come out more like +1,000 BB. One big, embarrassing hand in PLO cut me down more than any other.

Board's Q9x with two hearts. I've got QJT9 (double suited I think, but it didn't end up mattering). I don't quite recall preflop details, but pot got to ~40 BB at a table where that's pretty normal, with effective stack between me and Villain ~600 BB or so. Villain seems experienced and aggressive, not afraid to gamble but not a degen either. It goes pot-pot-400 BB, Villain effectively all-in. I hem and haw and get it all in. Villain has QQAx with two hearts, top set and the nut flush draw. Run it twice, goes KK and then heart-whatever to scoop me.

Just silly. And I know better than to get starry-eyed over two pair, not to mention playing raised pots with second-best makers like QJT9 with losing flush possibilities. I know not to bother with most straight draws in PLO, never mind in this kind of spot. I guess I just ****ed up, and that's all there is to it.

Pity. Could've been a much better night than it was. But I retained about half of my stack and chiseled another ~100 BB off the table without getting involved in any more giant pots before I left.

Definitely a good time. As much as I enjoy any form of poker, I especially like playing a bunch of them in a row. I think we got through 13 unique variants, including one we just made up. Suicide pineapple: pineapple without a discard, and you may play 0, 1, 2, or 3 of your hole cards.

Well, if you had the double flush draw (though I hate to get too excited about a less than nut flush in PLO), and some also less than nut straight draws, I can see where you had to play this hand. But keeping the pot small would have been a good idea.

We've been going by the NO MA'AM Poker Club since we started about 7 years ago, as homage to Al Bundy's legendary club from the TV Show Married with Children. I even tried to get T-Shirts with a custom logo printed for everyone but that didn't pan out.

The National Organization of Men Against Amazonian Masterhood, right?

Totally enjoyed jzpiano's micro-stakes throwback kitchen table game on Saturday. Learned some new games like Solitaire, the Price is Right, and Pass the Trash, and enjoyed some games from my youth such as Baseball and Woolworth's. Any night that I and others call Banco is full of win. Another player and I shared the BBJ -- we both lost with quad Kings but shared the bounty because we couldn't recall his kicker. We're going to have to do this again.

#tl;dr

Played in some casino 10/20 O/8 half kill on Thursday, followed by $1/$2 NLHE at our house Friday.

10/20 O/8:

Fairly loosey game. Adrian and I went up to the Winstar in Oklahoma for a little getaway. I got 2 hours of poker in. Played 6-8 players the time I was there, nobody that was particularly good. Flash forward to an hour into the game: new dealer sits and I go to call a bet on the turn. Now, at every place I've played, I take a stack of 12-16 chips, move them beyond the bet line, count off the chips needed, and bam, I have a bet. I go to do this and the dealer announces 'raise' after I put four chips out. I go 'lolwtf' and he says because I put more than half the next bet beyond the line, it was a raise. I am confused and he just gives me a warning. Note that this is the right ruling, but in my experience I've never seen this been called--even at the hollywood aurora, where poker goes to die.

Flash forward a few hands with the same dealer when this happens:

Kill pot, big blind has the kill button

Hero, CO: A 6 6 7

Folded to hero. I raise. SB and BB call.

Flop: 6 6 5

SB checks, BB donks, I call, SB calls.

Turn: Q

SB checks, BB donks, I go to unconciously call with 12 chips in my hand, dealer announces 'raise', I genuinely go wtf before half a second later, when I realize I've stumbled into the most epic level ever, SB calls, BB 3!s, I cap, call, call, and I'm loling in my head.

River: T

SB BB check, I bet, SB folds, BB calls, I lol, tell BB it honestly wasn't a level, and scoop a $550 pot. Lol.

Ended the game up $300.

$1/$2 NLHE at the house:

Last Monday, I spontaneously decided I wanted to host a game, well, because. I posted the game on Facebook and got only two responses. By Wednesday, I was getting ready to cancel the game, when bam, three more people sign on for the game. So, I'm sitting at 6, which is good enough for a game. Friday afternoon comes around and Adrian and I are just getting back from OK. My phone had died and I didn't have time to charge it or turn it on as I was resting/getting food and drinks for the game. I get home at 6:30pm, plug in my phone, and see that the last two spots filled up! Super excited, and everybody comes over a half hour later to a full table.

Within the first orbit, we had three rebuys, lol. I Ran up a stack to $160 after getting AJ and JJ. Throughout the night I had a great run of situations, taking 2/3rds on two all-ins after running it three times with the equity edge. Then, I got all in on the turn with KK on a XQTT board against a thinking opponent who donk shoved. By the end of the night, I was one of the only winners with $450 in front of me for a $350 profit. With only $1300 on the table, that was a significant take--the group I host for only does $100 buy-ins, hence being short.

Another great thing from the game Friday night was that I got four people interested in playing some limit omaha hi/lo. I'll be looking to host once the new chips come in, the beginning of May. I'll have 600 ones to fiddle with; should I do $3/$6 or $4/$8? Obviously I could also do $5/$10 because the group has played that before, but I'd like to put all those ones to good use.

Could go $3/6 with a kill to $4/8 or $5/10...

Done, kill to five ten. Gives an excuse for both denoms to be on the table.

You got it

FYI - we have had women over to play. But on average, this game is over 90% male dominated (at least over here), and those that came to play never voiced any objections to the name. It only really appears on the FB group page, otherwise you wouldn't even know we have a name.

Well, the rungoot that has been with me since the beginning of the year finally took a nosedive last week:

Tuesday night tourney: 2nd out after a couple of river beats, threw a little tantrum but apologized (see above). Still in first place overall, though.
Friday night at DBKC: -100bb, my first losing session there all year. Was about +80bb a couple hours in, stuck around to take advantage of a couple weak spots at the table and boom, it all fell apart. I stuck around too long chasing losses and playing tired, but I was at least wise enough not to rebuy when I went busto on my only BI of the night.
Last night on Bovada: Decided to pay for a little limit O8 practice. Ended the session down 50 big bets through a combination of cold cards, playing too many bad/mediocre starting hands, and simple inexperience.

Number-one mistake in limit O8. Get involved with mediocre starting hands, and you'll often find yourself chasing hands that were dead from the jump and making payoff calls. In a typical low-stakes, loosey-goosey type of game, all you need to do to win is play only very premium openers and be sensitive to flop conditions. All you want to see as much as possible are the nuts, draws to the nuts, and near-nut big-ranking hands—full houses, quads, straight flushes. Basically everything else is marginal. Tight, tight, tight.

As a general rule, start with dual-possibility hands, with an eye for low openers with redraws. You can go for one-way hands if the pot becomes multi-way enough, and high-only in particular if you can get it heads-up and the flop is cooperative. A lot of players will chase low-only hands to the ends of the earth, even heads-up for only half the pot, and you can profit a great deal when you get on the other end of it. (And obviously, don't chase low-only hands in short-handed pots.)

Also, read High-Low Split Poker for Advanced Players. Indispensable.

Knowing and doing are two very different things.

Exactly right.

Jim, I'm far from a great O8 player but I do understand all the concepts that you describe in your post. TBH, I was playing extremely low stakes (.25/.50 limit) for about 4 hours, and I saw a lot of flops out of boredom and a desire to log some post-flop O8 time to improve my technicals (board reading, out counting). I know that it was sub-optimal play.

FWIW, I still would have lost a good bit even with better hand selection, though probably a lot less than 50BB. Most of the big starting hands that I had either whiffed completely or hit solid draws on the flop that never came in, and the two biggest pots that I won were with junk that hit against a multi-way field. I'm not trying to rationalize or justify my bad play, just saying that results wouldn't have been that much better in this particular session with tighter hand selection.

Sounds like you need to play higher stakes, in a game where other players respect your raises more.

That's exactly what the problem was. Nobody was respecting my raises; I'd get 4-5 callers every time!

</sarcasm>

With a lot of passive, limping players, I play a wide range of hands, dumping only the hands that have one draw. If the table likes to raise preflop, I tighten up quite a bit. But of course, in Omaha and Omaha 8 almost every hand looks pretty good, so I try to be skeptical.

The flop is the key, in my opinion. In a game where a lot of players see the flop, if I am not delighted by the flop, I remind myself that someone else likely is.

Last night playing PLO8, I was on the button against 7 players with QTxx and the flop came J98 with two spades. Now that is the sort of delight I am looking for. SB made it $5 into a pot of about $8. Every players called. Every player. I made it $25, and only the SB called. Now that is some nice dead money to pick up. I don't know what the SB called with. Maybe A2xx, or two pair. But she only had about $18 left and folded the turn when I pushed.

The best part is that my flop bet got the king flush draw to fold, and a rabbit hunt on the river showed a spade. He knew I had QT and the nut flush redraw. I did not show, did not tell, and I'll leave it at that.

I love when people "know" things like that. Oh yes, excellent read, sir!

I do have a rep of only betting big with the stone cold nuts...do you doubt me on this hand?