Live "Home Game" Tourney

We had our first annual Gashaus Gorillaz Poker Tourney this weekend and I guess it's only fitting the founder was the winner, yours truly. It was a GREAT time. I met Robb and Al at "the farm" around 10:30am just after Al had begun the smoker (GREAT stuff BTW, Al, MUCH appreciated). I was shocked to see that everyone else trickled in shortly after and we hit capacity at approximately 1pm.

After losing a quick game of washers I dug the poker table and chips out of Robb's Explorer and attempted to gather players for a small cash game. We had room for eight players and it wasn't hard to fill that quota. I wanted to play a $10 max game but settled for $5 max with blinds at $.05/$.10. I wanted to make it a bit higher, obviously, but we had a big mix of players and we figured it was better to have limits too low vs. too high to encourage participation.

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POKER BEGINS:

The play was a little loose as was expected but nothing ridiculous. I stated before that we had a mix of players, there was also a mix of style. There were a few players that played serious, a few more that played somewhat serious and the rest were recreational players. Tom (a good friend of mine whom I've played with a LOT) really got the action going but it there wasn't anything of interest to me until I got involved in a hand much later. I kept getting nothing but trouble hands (K-J, Q-10, etc.) and missing flops.

I sat with my same $5 (which was suprising as I was NOT playing tight I just wasn't getting the right spots) for several orbits, give or take a few small pots. Finally I got involved in a pot. I got heads-up with T-dub (a friend and plus one member). I called a pre flop raise from another player that I was confident I could out-play post with KQ only to also have T-dub in the hand, not what I wanted. The flop came: K-9-10 rainbow. I put a raise out there, opp calls and T-dub pushes the rest of his chips in. I was certain the opp would fold the hand at this point to T-dub's raise as he'd been rather easy to get out of pots (but would see almost ANY flop). With T-dub's all-in I loosely calculated that I was getting the correct odds on just about any hand he could hold except for AK as I was getting almost 4.5-1 at that point. Even AK might have been laying me the right pot-odds to make the call here except that the several beers and lack of calculating math in my head left me unsure but looking back AK was NOT giving me the odds.

I reluctantly call fully expecting him to show me the AK. T-dub turns over 9-10. This made my "K" live and me very happy as I was clean to any J-Q-K. 10 outs run twice. The turn came up blank but the river netted me the J for the straight. I double and T-dub lets someone else sit in his seat. I was actually shocked that "tight-bastard" allowed himself to short in this cash game and not protect his stack. Btw, after playing a little X-box he was back.

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Another key hand in the cash game was when we finally got our maniac. We'll call him Buddy, because that's his name. Buddy had played pretty tight and solid for a few orbits and then got aggressive, very aggressive. He was making raises of 10x the bb in a game where the buy-in is only 50bb. After several hands of him making big bets pre and getting it all in the middle on most flops I figured I'd see a flop with my KQ (again with the KQ) and see if I could pair either of my cards or better. I had to figure I was in either a 50/50 situation or 60/40-40/60 against his range of hands. With his bets I may not be getting the correct pot-odds here but the implied odds, while not tremendous, were obv there.

Soooo, Buddy makes his standard $1 bet with a $.10 bb. Flop A-J-10. (HOLY SHIT!!). Out-of-Position to me I am fairly certain that he hit that flop, not hard or as hard as me but he hit. So I check setting up the check-raise. Perfection. Check. Bet. All-in (me). Call (him). Sweet (me). As he emphatically announces A-9 I quietly lay down my cards and announce "broadway".

Shortly after this hand we bust up and head into the house to play the "Main Event". there were some interesting hands in that one and I'll get into them later. Including flopping a flush only to lose to a PP when the turn paired the board and the river brought the case 8 to fill him up (he had 88 pre with an 8 in an opponents hand). A backdoor flush draw and falling behind approximately 7-1 after holding the CL for quite sometime and still coming back to win.