***Poker Corner***

[Guy Berger]

Anybody else play? I picked Hold'em up as a hobby about 18 months ago and after a bit of a rough start it's been pretty profitable. I play mostly at brick'n'mortar cardrooms, and graduated from 2/4 to 4/8 a few months ago. Anyway, it's a nice supplemental income.

Guy

[Jazzmoose]

I used to play poker back in my Navy days and do alright. Since then, it's just been a once or twice a year thing, and of course I suck at it. It must be something in the mail ego that makes me think I could actually do something once or twice a year and still be good at it...

[Big Wheel]

I started out playing 7-stud and Omaha but eventually shifted to Hold 'em. I will occasionally play (mainly 7-stud) in the local Indian casino when I go home to Miami but have generally stuck to home games lately as the rake is just too freakin' high there. Also the regular players there expect you to tip the dealer on EVERY hand you win, no matter how low the pot, so it's nearly impossible to really come out ahead.

Still need to work on being disciplined and playing tight early, just getting a feel for the other players in the beginning. My shorthanded play is often way better than my game when there is a full table for this reason--also, at this point I'm still much more of an intuitive player rather than a human odds calculator.

Won a little home tournament last December and took home $90; that's the extent of my big winnings at this point. It was pretty hilarious--my friend told us that his neighbor hosts a game every Saturday night or so, so we went to check it out. Turned out his neighbor is Russian and invites his Russian buddies over; there were 3 college kids, the dad of one of the college kids, and 5 Russian guys (all speaking Russian with one another)...you can kind of see the "Rounders" angle developing here. Everyone I knew got knocked out very early so it was me on one side of the table and the 5 Russians on the other. Took me a little while to figure out that about 3 of them were complete fish...

[Rooster_Ties]

Played strip-poker back in the spring of 1992, with a mixed (mostly female ) group of American students when I was in Besançon, France - while visiting my girlfriend (at the time) for a week, who was on a study-abroad program for one year during her Junior year of college.

Don't let your imaginations run too wild (the only Poker that was played was the card game), but I did manage to bluff far better than I had ever expected to, on several very key hands. B)

Thank god for cheap French wine.

(And, AFAIK, that's the last time I ever played Poker.)

[JSngry]

5-Card Draw, Jacks or better, nuthin' wild.

Period.

Anything else is just a game.

[jazzypaul]

I love to play. Usually it's 7 card, but I'll play hold 'em as well. Omaha is a no-no for me after I realized just how big your balls have to be to play that game. The casino that is just down the street from my parents' house used to have $1-5 split, $2/4 and $3/6 games, and I used to spend way too much free time down there. After our governor's brilliant plan to tax the casinos at 70%, the poker room went to games at $10/20 or higher, and that was the end of my brick and mortar experience for a while. Now that I'm only a half hour away from the Indiana casinos, however...

[Guy Berger]

I went to Foxwoods yesterday. A frustrating day... went up big early, then down big later, then built a medium size gain ($76) and decided to call it a night. Not bad for 6 hrs at 4/8...

The crazy thing is that I got quads TWICE within an hour. (Not sure if I'd ever gotten a hand that good in a casino before.) Once I had pocket tens, flopped a set and then rivered the 4th (beat a lady who had a straight). The second time was much crazier, because I was in the small blind with 64 out-of-suit (a very maginal call, but probably o.k. for half a small bet). I flopped trips and then hit quads on the river.

Guy

Edited August 1, 2005 by Guy