Yale Poker Scene / Poker Night

To be honest, I haven't found much going on at Yale in terms of regularly-scheduled poker games. This is one of the main reasons why I like collegepokerassociation.com since I can always get a game for free when I want to. It's also cool because I can play in tournaments for free with the chance of winning some money. In terms of Yale games, there was one tournament sponspored by CPA and Habitat called "Casino Royale". That was a pretty cool tournament with decent players. The dealers were a bit iffy at times (they accidentally folded a couple of people's hands). But, overall, I had a good time.

To get around the lack of poker games on campus, I started one up that I run every week. We usually play dealer's choice with lots of No Limit and Limit Hold 'Em. We also play some wacky stud variants like Follow the Queen and Anaconda along with some more standard ones like Chicago. Despite my Italian heritage, I have not yet engaged in a game of baseball.

This week we had some extra fun (played poker) as a good friend of a friend is back in town. I tend to be a somewhat decent player except when I go on tilt (see the name of the blog above). We had some pretty classy (and / or stupid) showdowns tonight which I think are worth mentioning: (Disclaimer: my memory is fuzzy so if I know you and some of these are off let me know).

Crazy Queens (basically follow the Queen except if the Queen o' Spades pops up everyone turns in their cards and new hands are dealt out to all of the players still in with the pot remaining the same):
-My friend, whom I shall refer to as "T" made some ridiculous bet (like half the pot with maybe 300 chips in the pot given that we all start with 500 chips) with something like two blanks and a 7c / 5c showing. Another friend, whom I shall refer to as "E" debated calling. She had a full house. In essence, since no queens had come up during the round and thus no other cards except for queens were wild, we were all sort of guessing that "T" was holding something like three of a kind or a full house. Turns out "E" called and wouldn't you know it, "T" had three queens underneath. Straight flush... barf.
-In another round of Crazy Queens, Aces were wild and I was showing 10d / Jd / Kd / Ah after we went down and dirty with young master "R" sitting to my right and "E" sitting to my left. There were 150 chips in the pot and I made a hesitant bet of 50 after "R" checked. I was playing the royal flush, but, in reality, I had an ace-high flush. "E" had something like a full house or four of a kind, while "R" had both of us covered with a straight flush. I can't remember if "E" called or not but "R" certainly did and, well, yeah. Fun bluff though. :)

Those were, to me, the most interesting hands of the night. Otherwise, it was just me being stupid trying to push people around with top two-pair and getting burned by trips and / or nut straights. Sigh... I seriously need to start doing yoga meditation or something and rock it hard with Dhalsim to just take a second and think before I go tilt my money away. More to come tomorrow night.

Endnote: I forgot one of the best of hands where I tried to be "aggressive Gus" and I went all-in on a J / 7 off-suit after "T" raised 10 chips in a 5 / 10 no-limit game. At first, I thought it might be amusing to come over the top, but then I just said screw it. By that point, my tilt was so bad it was just like whatever. Turns out that, uh, young "T" actually had pocket queens and was just slow-playing as usual. The flop was like 2 / 8 / J and I got excited because my outs increased. Otherwise, the turn and the river were just blanks and I basically screwed up. I lost about 200 chips there but I managed to make them back on the next hand after my good friend "P" lent me 200 chips. I hit trip 3s from a big blind 6h / 3d. Flop was 3 / 3 / 5. "R" made a bet of like 50 chips or something and I went all-in... again. He ended up only having one 5. Lucky for me. :)