Last night was the Ante Up ambassadors mixed game. See here for some background on the game and how I feel about mixed games.
The game was a mix of Ante Up folks and old-timers from the AVP forums, including a couple of us who have both in common. I’m going to call the organizer of this event “Clark.” I could probably use his real name, but since I have to give the star of this blog post a pseudonym, I will be consistent and give Clark a blog name too. Clark is one of those folks who is connected with both Ante Up and AVP, that’s why he made sure that the old-time AVP’ers were invited.
The table quickly filled up, and I saw a few others come by to say hi and wanting to join the game. It looked for awhile that there might be enough to start a second table but that never happened.
Suddenly a woman came over to me and patted me on the shoulder, and said hi to me by name. I totally blanked out on who she was. She saw the look of puzzlement in my eyes and said, “Rob, it’s me, Pat.” Duh. Pat is someone I’ve known through the magic of the internet for years. We follow each other on Twitter. I know she is familiar with my blog. I met her once in person a couple of years ago (at the WSOP) and I even knew that she was in town for the early part of this year’s WSOP. I apologized for blanking out, said hello, and she went to play in a NL game.
Hours later, at our full table, Clark decided to read me a text he had gotten from Pat. We were on the opposite sides of the table, about as far away as we could be. And so everyone at the table heard him read off from his phone. “Hey Rob, Pat wants to know if you want to see boobies?”
Everyone at the table heard this, everyone cracked up—including the publisher of Ante Up, who was seating directly to my left.
Most of the people didn’t understand the reference, I’m sure. I’m not even sure that Clark did. But after I finished laughing, I responded, “Well of course I do. Do you even have to ask? Who doesn’t want to see boobies? Duh.”
Clark then asked me if I was going to tell Pat that and I said I didn’t have her number. So Clark responded for me, texting Pat that yes, I wanted to see some boobies.
Clark later reported back that Pat said she didn’t want to get arrested. I said I guess I had misunderstood. I didn’t take it to mean that Pat would be providing the boobies to be seen. I was thinking she was going to point me in a direction where boobies were being displayed, perhaps even as we were playing.
We progressed with the game. Later I saw Pat at her game and again apologized for not recognizing her immediately. Then I thanked for making my night with her question and asked if, when I tell this story on my blog, she wanted me to use a pseudonym instead of her real name, as is my custom here. She said she would prefer an alias. So that’s how Pat became Pat.
When the game broke, I was talking to a common friend of Pat’s & mine. She was cashing out of her game. She said hi and bye to our friend, who I’ll call Don. She gave Don a farewell hug. I was next. As we ended our hug, she said to me, "I'll show you my tits some other time. They're actually pretty nice."
I don’t think Don, who had merely railed our game and hadn’t played, had even been around when Pat’s text was read to the table. But he enjoyed the comment, none-the-less.
She was already on her way to the cage when I stopped laughing, and so I shouted to her, "I have a witness!"
Don shouted after her, “Yes, I heard that, I can testify to it.”
I mean, we’re all poker players, right. And of course, we all know that verbal is binding.
As for the game itself, we played fewer of the really oddball games that I’ve come to dread at these things. Still, I lost $175 at a 3/6 limit game where I had no real chance of winning any money. But I will say, the table we had was really a fun group and I certainly had a good time with all the joking back and forth and the great conversation.
I will only mention one hand, from Big O. That’s five card Omaha hi/lo in case you thought I was saying something salacious. This is actually a game I pretty much understand the rules for, even though I have no clue about the proper strategy, as you will see.
Two of my five cards were Kings. If I have two Kings along with three other cards, can I still call them dreaded? I don’t remember the other three cards. Because I am clueless about this game, I just routinely stay in for the flop with any two paired cards, hoping for quads, and I suspect that is not the right way to play. I say hoping for quads because I know a set is never going to win this game, and even a full house is barely even money to hold up.
There was a King on the flop. I only called a bet. I was not slow playing it. As I said, I didn’t expect a set of Kings to be good at the end, so that’s why I didn’t raise. But the turn was another King. Bingo! Even I can’t blow it with quad Kings. This time the player who bet the flop checked, as did everyone until it came to me. There was only one person left, and thinking the action was on him, he checked too. But no, the dealer pointed out that I hadn’t acted yet.
Now knowing that if I checked it would be checked around, I thought I had no choice but to put out $6. And sure enough, every damn player folded. I got no action for my quad Kings. I of course showed my hand. It was a pretty small pot. But I suppose I should be happy that no one stayed around with a winning low hand, so I didn’t have to split the pot.
Tonight I play in the Colossus event at WSOP. They’ve already changed the starting time of my flight from 6PM to 7PM because they don’t think players will bust out fast enough. I sure hope I am still playing poker at 3:30AM Saturday morning.
