Home Game Stories

Always entertaining, even when you donk out halfway through.

 

* Our resident fish was back, min-raising everything in sight.  Early on, I get dealt 3-3, call a small raise and get to the flop.  It comes out 3-8-x and I fire at it.  About a half of the pot.  Our friend calls.  Turn is another low card.  I bet, he calls again.  River is a second eight.  Uh oh.  Could he have A-8?  Yeah, sure he could.  Of course, he'd play just about anything else too, so I bet out and he calls again. 

 

He turns over 10-10 for two pair.  Big pot and I'm on my way.

 

* For the next hour or so, I'm playing my typical tight-aggressive style.  I take one pot down with AK suited when a bullet comes on the flop.  I popped it to 3x the blinds (200 up to 600) pre-flop so I get some payback on that.  But otherwise, the cards are cold and the table is still seven-handed, so I'm still sitting tight.  Plus the blinds are going to go up big time in a level or two and I don't want to donk things off before then.

 

* Then I finally get a decent set of hole cards.  JJ, albeit in early position.  I bet 3x the blinds to see where I'm at.  I get a couple of callers.  The flop comes out with cards all weaker than J, and no great straight or flush possibilities.  Again, I bet.  The player to my left, an infrequent player in the home game but a decent player nonetheless raises it to 2x my bet.  I think about it and call.  I'm trying to get a read on him, but he's just stoic.  Sitting upright in the chair - but he always does that, so I can't really lean on Navarro's signature tell.  He's not tilting his head, he's not moving his hands out toward the table.  Legs are still.  My guess is that he's got a good-but-not-great hand (top pair with an A kicker) and that I can either take this down or edge him on a showdown...provided the cards fall the right way. 

 

So I set out to check-raise him on the turn, provided the card is a dud.  It is.  I check.  He bets, and I go all-in, which would force him all-in.  He instacalls with A-A.  Ouch.

 

* Now I'm clearly short-stacked and am in the easiest position to play poker - it's either all-in or fold.  And don't I get a run of 2-7, 3-8, 4-9 kind of hands for about six straight hands.  The blinds are attacking me, and soon enough, I'm dead.  I did triple up somewhere in there when I went all-in blind and my 9-7 hit the flop, but I gave it back soon after when K8 suited went up against QQ and 99 and lost to a set of 9s. 

 

* I did get a couple of reads out of the game though.  One player leans forward, almost over the table, and his legs just bounce around like mad when he has cards.  When I was short-stacked, I got 7-7 and just called it.  He raised and would've forced me all-in, but I looked over and he was bouncing around like a jumping bean.  I thought, laid it down and said "high pair, huh"?  I prodded a little further and it was, in fact, KK. 

 

* Another (very good) player puts his hand on his neck when he's got something marginal.  I didn't get to act upon it, but now I know that it's there.