Live Poker, Online Poker, Home Poker (4 of... 5)... Call me a bad planner one more after this one...

The finale for me in that Texas Holdem game came when I shoved under the gun, after having a discussion with Joe B about shoving utg with large blinds and antes. I subscribe to the school of thought of almost any two cards rather than getting into BB and losing that extra money of the BB or having lesser hands getting pot-stuck while you wait it out in the blinds.

One hand I don’t like from early position shoves is A or K rag, truth be told I’d rather two littles that are likely live, then getting out kicked. Maybe that's not good math and I need to re-learn poker. Still, in that situation at that time, I was going to fire and hope nobody wakes up with A10 or better. I had A rag and said oh well.

The Big Blind told me I was good but had to call me because of his massive stack. He had K10 and hit his 10. I headed for the exit with only myself to blame.
This week I also hosted the home game, and I enjoyed seeing Big Smoove, Lee Mc, Joe C, Kyle L, Teddy O, and Sam Cappo. We are all trying to learn PLO and some of us are even trying to learn Hold’em so we kept the blinds at 0.50 – 0.50 and played pot limit for both games. We had a number of people decline at the last moment that sounded very interested so hopefully we can keep building the game and make it a regular monthly thing.

The plan was to end the evening with a SNG but after playing cash that long nobody really wanted to commit to a tournament and we just kept playing games. I decided that after a round of Hold’em and Omaha we’d also play dealers choice. We played pineapple and five card draw.

Hard to believe but the five card draw did the most damage. In holdem and plo unlike the previous time we kept having big hands butt into each other. Still, nobody got too out of line and the chips were mostly bouncing back and forth. On the five card draw, I dealt out the first hand. Ted, who is probably the least experienced player, liked what he saw and raised. Kyle reraised and when action got to me I looked at two small pairs.

I calculated they were overplaying big pairs and popped in another raise. Ted potted it putting himself all in and me virtually all in. Kyle wisely folded. Ted asked for two cards and I knew I was drawing way too slim. I asked for one.
Ted showed his trips, Kyle showed his folded two pair, and I squeezed out the final card which was a brick. I thought two pair was a good five card draw starting hand but it lost three out of the five hands we played. Nobody went back to draw but that did open up the game a little.

Joe C ended up the big winner with Ray coming in second. Early in the night, I repopped ray on the river with a straight flush wheel. I made a remark when I entered the Omaha hand preflop that I shouldn’t be there. I was talking and called out of distraction with four cards of the same suit (yes, I am terrible 91034). Flop had A2 of my suit. The turn gave me the five, and I think I hit the huge hand like a pro barely flinching. When we got to the river, the board paired and Ray bet. I repopped him and he stewed forever before calling. He had a full house. A baby full house but I was shocked he didn’t throw another bet on there. Anyway, with that in mind I decided on the last hand of the night I was going to make a move on Ray.

To be continued...