It’s Here If You Want It: Apparently, our weekly game has a bit of a reputation here in Madtown. Some people think that our game is way too serious. Lately, we’re having difficulty getting people to play at or stay in our game. Worse than that, people are being warned away from our game. My thinking on the situation is this: If you can’t hang with the varsity, then, by all means, go play with the j.v. That’s what the j.v. is for. If you're scared of the deep water, then, please, have fun splashing around in the kiddy pool, but don’t talk shit about our game. Just because you can’t keep up, that doesn’t mean that other people can’t; don’t project your weaknesses and cowardice onto other people.

When one of us has a hand, we’re going to attack with it. If one of us has a hand, we’re going to defend it if it is attacked; we’ll probably counter-attack and come right back at you. That’s just good poker, and I’d rather lose and lose and lose playing good poker than win or break even at a punk-ass game.

Considering the limits at which we play, we get some pretty decent pots. Get ready to lose big, to have good hands cracked. In our game, it happens all the time. This is what happened Friday night: Bert, inventor of the Bert Classic and the toaster oven, was down about $76 early. Did he bitch like a whiny little fuck? No, Bert’s badass, and he came back and ended up losing only three dollars. Jesse came in and almost immediately was down to five dollars from his $40 buy-in. Did he get on his goddamn cell phone and complain? No, Jesse’s hardcore, and he was actually up about $30 before he slowed down and came out $2 ahead. I, myself, was down about $35 pretty quickly, hovered in that general area for a few hours, got as low as being down $51, but hung in and, after almost eight hours of play, ended up making a little bit of money, $10.50. When I was down, did I act like somebody had stolen my Tonka truck? I admit that I felt badly, but that was because I had played badly the week before (see You Guys Are Mean), I wasn’t playing as well as I expect myself to play, I felt discouraged, and I had thought to myself, “Here we go again.” When I was way down, though, did I gripe like somebody had slapped the lollipop out of my mouth? No, I stayed out of the truly huge pots and folded early when I needed a lot of help on the flop or when the flop completely missed me, and I tried to play intelligently. I fought through and tried to keep a level head and I came out blasting when I could. When I was way down, all I did was crack wise. My big bro, as nails as they come, didn’t have to worry about being down; he took care of his business early and he took care of his business late, and he was the big winner. Props to my big bro. There have been nights when he paid out, however, but he’s still there every fucking Friday. Same thing for Ivan, poker player deluxe and designer of this site. Ivan’s taken some horrible beats and been way, way down, but he mans up and comes with it until the end. Respect to the entire poker crew.

This is one of the problems: some people want to play chickenshit poker, where the person with the best cards always wins. I call it bingo poker because there’s no strategy in bingo; you get lucky and you win or you don’t get lucky and you don’t win. There's no strategy (and no pressure) because the bet sizes and betting aren’t significant enough to drive anybody off of a hand. If the max bet is a dollar, or if the max bet is larger but nobody has the stones to bet his hand, then everybody will stay in for the showdown and players will catch on the turn or the river and nobody will ever bluff anybody out.

Our game is different. Here are two examples from Friday’s game, and both involve Ivan and yours truly, and in each example Ivan put the pressure on me when he made the max bet after the river and forced me to think about whether I should make a call. Both times, I had very strong hands, but there was room above me for stronger hands—in one case I had a flush, but I was only holding a seven and a five of spades and there were four higher spades that weren’t in my hand or on the board; in the other, I had a low straight when Ivan could have made a higher straight—so I folded. Did Ivan have better cards than I did in either case? No. I had the better hands, but Ivan punked me. He didn’t check and hope for the best; he risked four dollars in an attack to test my character and bravery, and both times I was found lacking. I was not and am not mad at Ivan; he played it like the badass that he is and I've got to respect that. In fact, it was quite cool to know that I’m in the type of poker game where we’ll cut each other’s throats to win a hand. Does Ivan’s trying to extract my soul mean that our game is “too serious?” No, just that it is exactly serious enough. And, by the way, we have a lot of fun trying to fillet each other.

If you can’t deal, go play anaconda or guts or follow the queen, or baseball, or some other weak-ass game. Not to be harsh, but those of you who are bad-mouthing our game can go and fuck yourselves.

Okay, I Feel Better: But enough of that. What about Friday’s game? I already gave you a taste in the preceding screed, but I left out one of the craziest Omaha hands that I have ever seen, and, thank all that is good and lovely in the universe, I wasn’t involved. It was about three in the morning, and we were down to four players, my big bro, having left at a reasonable hour. I got a crummy hand, folded before the flop, and left to take care of some business. It’s true what they say: you only really rent a can of Mountain Dew. I come back to the table and there are mountains of chips in the pot. I had returned while the post-fifth-street betting was in progress. Ivan had bet the four, Jesse had raised it to eight, and Bert, inventor of the Bert Light and bottled water, was contemplating his next move. What does Bert, inventor of the Bert Death Spiral and drip irrigation, do? He makes it twelve to go. Ivan? He makes the final max bet raise. It’s eight more to Jesse, and he calls without a second thought. Bert needs to put in four more to call, which he does quite calmly. In the last round alone, these three hardcore motherfuckers put in $16 each, a $48 dollar round. The total pot? With the antes, and the bets and calls pre- and post-flop, and the fourth-street action, there were sixty-seven dollars in the middle of the table.

Ivan was called, so he’s the first to show his cards. He’s got a boat, sixes over sevens, which he made on the turn. I think that Ivan’s won it, and so does he. Jesse, however, turns over his cards, and he’s got a bigger boat, that, with his pocket pair, he also made on the turn. So now, I think that Jesse’s won it because there isn’t much room left above him. That’s when Bert turns over his cards. What did Bert end up with? A gut-shot straight flush. He caught perfectly on fifth. He needed a nine of clubs, and he got it. Bert had had straight draws (any one of three non-club nines), flush draws (any of the seven clubs[not counting the nine of clubs]) and the straight flush draw (the nine of clubs, obviously), but the odds of Bert making the straight flush were one in forty-four and there’s no way he would have factored that into his pre-river actions. And there’s no way that Ivan or Jesse would ever have thought that Bert was betting at the end with a straight flush.

The question, though, is why did Bert stay in to the end when the best he could realistically do, pre-river, was make a flush? He also held the ace of clubs, so if his flush had hit, he would have had a hand that, because there hadn't been much betting before the river, he could realistically think would pay off. He had been wrong and, in fact, if he had made only a flush, he would have been in third place and he would have paid out before the showdown. Since both Jesse and Ivan, already had great hands, when the first bet came, there could have been a re-raise, and probably one after that, and that would have probably driven Bert off of his straight and flush draws. Ivan still would have lost the hand to Jesse, but he wouldn’t have paid as much. Still, there’s nothing to fault; when you think that you’ve got a monster hand, you can slow-play it and hope somebody almost catches up to you on the river and bets it for you so that you can re-raise. Bert caught, and Ivan, with his boat, got the bronze; Jesse, with his nearly unbeatable boat, got the silver, and Bert, with the best hand possible, got the metaphorical gold, along with the non-metaphorical sixty-seven in chips.

Maybe this is what people mean about our game being too serious, but you’d have to be a pretty weak player not to attack or counter-attack with max bets when you have a great hand, even if it ends up costing you twenty-two dollars. Of course it hurts to lose twenty-two, but you’d do it again pretty much the same way the next time. If you didn’t, that’d be a good way to guarantee that you never make any money at the table.

Bad Beat of the Night: If Bert weren’t such a cool guy, I’m pretty sure that I would hate him. He’s always kicking my ass and making me feel badly about myself. It’s a little after 4:00 a.m., and the official last hand of the night is being dealt. I’m holding Q-7, not a very good hand, but there isn’t any action after the deal, so I’m in for the flop. The flop is Q-7-4, giving me top two pair, so I bet the max, Jesse folds, Bert calls, and, since Ivan had left just a few minutes before, that’s the end of the post-flop action. Fourth is a jack, and, since I still think I have a very strong hand, I bet the max again, hoping to close it off right there so that Bert can’t out-draw me on fifth, but he calls. I put Bert on top pair with a good kicker, maybe on a straight draw if he’s holding A-K. Fifth is another queen and now I’ve made a Q-Q-Q-7-7 boat. At this point, I’m up about twenty-six dollars, a seventy-seven dollar turnaround from the fifty-one dollars that I had been down, and I think that I’m going to get that up over thirty. I check, hoping Bert, as cutthroat as they come, will come out betting, which he does by betting the $4. I check-raise it to $8, thinking that I just suckered Bert into betting the first $4 and he’ll either fold or call. Instead Bert re-raises it to $12. I almost re-raise again, but Bert’s got me a little nervous now, so I just call it, expecting to win the last hand of the night. I turn over my Q-7, but Bert turns over his Q-J, giving him a Q-Q-Q-J-J boat, and sixteen more of my dollars. Damn you, Bert, damn you. No, I’m kidding (but not really).

Poker Problem: The sky, it is pretty, no?