http://youtu.be/ae5XwkSguNI?t=1m13s


So last night in the free poker league.....(yes, I still play in the free bar league....fun to have a beer with friends I've played with for the better part of a decade, and it is a good recruiting ground for my home game)


We were at the final table-4 handed. UTG raises, I fold junk on the button. The SB folds and the BB calls. Flop is 910Q

BB bets around 1/4 pot, UTG raises, BB shoves, UTG calls.

BB shows- 99
UTG shows- K10

Turn is 9 and BB starts jumping up and down, very excited and says "your drawing dead" to UTG. They all shake heads in agreement. UTG has a sad face, but still shakes his head in agreement. I said J will win it.

River is a low giving UTG a meaningless flush.

As he is dragging the pot BB mentioned again how UTG was drawing dead when he hit quads. I said if the J hit you would have lost. He disagrees and says "four of a kind beats a flush" I said yes it does, but not a straight flush. He still said no he would have won. I am generally a "don't tap the glass" kind of player and say "well played", "nice hand", and "good call" no matter how bad the beat or play was. This was too much for me and I had show my pokerforum-reading-book-studying-poker-nerd side and pull up one of my poker apps that had the hand rankings and show him.

He just said "Huh, I thought four of a kind beat everything"

I smiled, said "nice hand", and the cards came out for the next hand.




I'm sure there are many more stories and "tales from the bar league" please share

A long time ago a lady at the bar league where I met most of my present day poker crew gave me an invite. She said: " Would you like to go over to xxxs house and play in a cash game?" I said: " I would like a change from the Tournaments, sure" She said: " Oh it's about the same only we all put in $20 to make it a cash game." I said: " Oh , yeah, I see, well sure"

Interestingly, there was a time in history where quad Aces beat a straight flush. The straight flush still beat all other quads, though. This was soon after the flush was introduced (straights and flushes did not exist in the earliest versions of poker) and the old timers were so attached to quad aces being the absolute nuts that they didn't want that changed.

I was going to ask if we play in the same bar league as I was part of a similar discussion recently, but I see yours happened last night and mine happened last week.

I try to keep my mouth shut when someone says they are drawing dead against me with the river yet to come and I know they have outs. The poker gods get a laugh when I tell the other player what his outs are and one of them hits.

Took me about a year of explaining that a cash game wasn't a tournament with a "cash" buyin before they got it.

Player:You mean I can just buy more chips?
Me: yes
Player: even if I'm not all the way out?
Me: yes
Player: ohh, cool
Me: $$$

And you have an open invitation to my home game.......

Never fails-when I am in a hand and say "well any ____ that falls will split the pot and if a _______falls you win"

_______falls and they win.

I still play with a weekly $10 tournament group, which is awfully close to "free" poker compared to the cash games I normally play. This group is more challenging than the typical casino 1/2 table, and they're a great bunch of guys that are fun to play with.

I still play bar poker at least a couple times a month and pay for an active VIP membership in the league (5 VIP tournaments a year w/ four of them for WSOP-C ME seats and one for a WSOP ME seat). For me, it's going out to socialize, enjoy dinner, and play poker where I really don't have any concern if my entire stack gets donked off.

Having played for ten years, I do it for the fun now when playing live. I play with another league online and that is for money and advancement.

ok, this happened a while back, I tabled a high flush, and another player said he had a flush also so it's a split pot.

The last bar game I attended was an inaugural freeroll for a quasi-free bar league in New York.

Sucker play of the night: A major part of this freeroll event was that Montel Williams would be there, and he was. After the game, he pitched some blatant, ridiculous pyramid recruiting scheme for a free-money poker site, and people actually signed up for it.

Was that Poker Training Network, now called Card Geniuses,? Got this information from Williams' Wiki page.

Speaking of New York state, the current champion for the bar league (WPT League) I play online is from New York.

Yep, that's exactly what it was. I think I still have the free PTN hat stuffed in a closet somewhere.

The guy who invited me to the event later tried to talk me into joining—$150 or something for a "recruiter's package" to sign people up for a play-money poker site. I asked him straight-up if he could see that it's a pyramid scheme, and he told me he did, but that we'd be getting in on the top of the pyramid (i.e., that we'd basically be scamming everyone else, including him scamming me by trying to get me to join one tier under him).

Needless to say, I passed on that "opportunity."

Best line I ever heard at the bar league I play at was when a player explained why they never fold preflop was because "How else are you supposed to know if your hole cards are any good?"

That goes hand in hand with 'You're always 50/50 going to the flop. Either you'll hit or you won't!'

I poker anti-logic.

Player at my last game: "Poker is all luck. Watch."

*turn is dealt, Q*

"See? You couldn't tell me the queen of spades was coming there. All luck."

Legit LOLed

I've sometimes called the next card based on what would be the most interesting card to have appear and sometimes I'd be right.

People are astounded but with them being drunk, they concentrate on the idea that I called the card and not the fact that I have to get lucky sometimes.

If someone has no live experience, bar leagues are great for learning to interact with people.

"Interact with people" being a cute euphemism for "tolerate morons".

A bit cynical. I've made some good friends from bar poker, but many of them have no desire to play anything elsr. So I play bar poker to socialize with them.

You're right, sorry. In fact, I absolutely should attend some of these for the very reason of getting used to playing live with real people. I'm not really the socialising type so it's easy for me to forget that most people are.

I was actually a lot more introverted before I started playing.

I'm an extreme introvert. It take a lot for me to go out among people I don't know and be sociable. Poker provides a good outlet for it, because it provides a general topic of conversation that doesn't have to be forced.

If you try and take bar poker seriously, you're just going to want to throw things. If you accept it for what it is without trying to make it a WPT final table, then you can have fun with it and use it to hone certain skills that will serve you down the line.

Yeah, I'm in the same boat, which is why I had such a kneejerk reaction, I guess. In fact, I phoned around last night and discovered that my local has a bar poker league on Monday nights.

Given what you just said, I think I'll bite the bullet and give it a whirl some time.

Played last night, finished third in the first session, and second in the second session. When we got down to four during the second session, one of the players let muscle memory take over and actually shuffled and dealt with his eyes closed. We were all tired.

I cannot believe that I used to play seven nights a week, not get home until one or two in the morning, and still have energy to work the next day.