Home Game Stories

Six-handed the other night, and arguably about the six best players in
our group were there. At the very least there were no fish.

I have this super-tight image, so this first situation is classic.
I'm in the big blind and I get A-A. Blinds are something like 100/200
- everyone had 2500 in starting chips plus a 2500 rebuy so there are
30,000 chips in play at this time (nobody has busted). It folds all
around to the small blind, who ALSO folds. I get A-A and NOBODY calls
the blind. Unreal.

The next time in the big blind, I get AsJs and the SAME Thing happens.
I turned both of these over and the room roared. Whatcha gonna do?

Highlight of the night...in the small blind, I get 39o. Call the big
blind, he pops it to 2x and I stick around. Flop comes with three
rags. Turn is a 9. River is another rag. He bets every time and I
call every time. At the end, someone says to me "How could you just
call that?" and I respond "Because I believe I have the best hand." I
have the pair of 9s. He has a couple of over cards, A-high or
something like that. I read it *perfectly*. Didn't play it
perfectly, though. I should've popped it on the turn instead of
giving him another chance to catch. Still, your reads can win you
pots that your cards alone won't touch. Very rewarding to start
taking these kinds of pots.

Highlight of the night not involving me...our home game
player-of-the-year leader goes all-in early on and gets called by the
player to his left. Roughly 2500 chips at stake for each player,
though the re-buy was still out there. This was no more than six
hands into the evening. POY leader has 9-9 and is called by 7-7.
Holy crap! Those are complete throw-away hands until the blinds get
into the hundreds, aren't they?

Missed opportunity of the night... I got 3c6c in early position and
something was telling me to play it. But you can't play that hand,
right? Well I laid it down. I would've had a set of 3s on the flop
and quads on the river. Could've done some damage with that. It's
still the right play to lay it down, though.

The end came suddenly. Blinds were 800/1600 and about to go up on the
very next hand. I get A-10o on the button, three-handed (so I'm first
to act too). I go all-in (1600 call + 4700 chips) and big stack to my
right calls with Jh5h. Flop 5-5-6 and that was that. Tourney ended
on the very next hand. Again, whatcha gonna do? With nobody busting
out early, and the blinds doubling to extreme amounts later on, this
quickly morphed into bingo by the 7th level.

Still, third place in this field is pretty good. Felt like I played
well, made some good reads, and turned up the heat when the time was
right.