Chris Halverson’s Blog

Friday night was my home game put on by a guy at work. I’ve worked with him and known him for quite a while and suddenly he decides to put on a poker game. I was to be the resident expert for this game. My qualifications? I have actually played NLHE (or HE in general) before. We did end up inviting one other person who knew what they were doing. She hasn’t played much recently, but once again, she has played before.

Leading up to the tourney I had setup the Tournament Director software and started to get it ready. The best thing I did leading up to this was to print of the hand ranking chart and bring it along. Most of you already know about this site,but if you don’t and you are planning on doing a home game of any type, you should go to Home Poker Tourney. They have all sorts of info there that can be helpful. The host had ordered a set of 600 chips, which would have been good except that we allowed rebuys. The tourney was to be a $20 buyin, NLHE, unlimited rebuys for “a while”, no addon (mostly because I forgot about it).

After people got there, had a copule drinks, and ate (all provided by the host), we sat down to play some poker. The first order of business was to have a tutorial. We had 8 people at the table and exactly 2 of us had played before. As I was explaining the game, the host asks, “When do I tell you how many new cards I want?” Oh boy. We went through two hands explaining the different kinds of things you could do and just “play” betting. Finally, they thought they understood it enough to play. After all, NLHE, the Cadillac of poker, takes just 5 minutes to learn (but a lifetime to master).

We decided that we’d let Julie deal (or alternately me) in order to keep things moving. We just let people sit wherever they wanted. I’m sure most of you would have cringed a number of times due to the number of procedures that were, if not broken, at least bent a bit. Things were pretty loose procedure wise. We needed to keep it that way, people were already a bit nervous about playing with Julie and I and it probably made it worse when I pulled out the laptop and started the tourney software. The software was mostly for my benefit, I wanted to get some experience using it before I get around to doing my own. We were trying to keep this “fun”, at least for a while. Seating went:

Seat 1: Steve A. (host)
Seat 2: Russ
Seat 3: Julie (decent player)
Seat 4: John
Seat 5: Jarrod
Seat 6: Jason N.
Seat 7: Chris
Seat 8: Jason B. (late arrival)
Seat 9: Steve J. (was 8 until Jason B showed up)

Jason B. is my best friend and was invited in order to get some more people. He showed up late due to other committments and we allowed him to buy in late and slid him in next to me so he could play the BB right away. He’s the one who went to Vegas with me in April. He’s played a bit live, but not online, but is super smart and is pretty good considering how little he’s played. He hasn’t, however, played NLHE as far as I know.

We started the tourney with 8 people and I started the timer for 15 minute rounds, each person with T1000. When we got about halfway through the round, there were a couple small stacks already and they were concerned about people busting out too soon. Uh…yeah, that’s the whole point, but in order to keep people interested we decided to forgo the timer for a while so that people could “have fun”.

Two hours later, we’re still at 10/20 blinds. Oy. The upside was that by this time we’d already had 2 rebuys. My buddy Jason shows up and we’ve got a table of 9. Nobody cared that he bought in at that point, there were only a couple big stacks, most people we actually pretty close, so it wasn’t a big advantage yet. During said 2 hours I had won exactly 1 hand. I got the rockets fairly early, played them pretty hard, had a lot of callers. This was before people were afraid of going out, so people were still having “fun”. That held me over pretty nicely for a while.

During most of this time, Steve A., our host, was the chip leader. Every time the action would be on him, he’d stop, stare at the board and his cards, start sweating, and generally call. He would play any two cards, and won enough that you just never knew what he had. He’d flip over 93o, leading out betting with an A on the board and catch miracle cards. It was uncanny what he was getting for a while. This, of course, encouraged the others to stay in with crap.

Around this time, the texture started to change. Firstly, people were starting to get a little bored so we started up the round timer. Now it started to get interesting. I hadn’t had a decent hand in a while, I had been involved in some due to the passivity of the table. I don’t think there was a pre-flop raise during the first couple hours. Since you could get in for T20, you could see a lot of flops. I still had close to T1500, so seeing a few cheap flops wasn’t hurting me.

Now that the blinds were going up I decided it was time to play. Of course, since Tight Chris had been playing for 2 hours, whenever I would bet or God forbid, raise, everybody would fold. When the blinds got to 50/100 I got the rockets again in EP, and raised to T200. Everybody folded. Ug. Shortly after that I had a pleasant visit from the beautiful Hilton Sisters. I slow played them so I could keep people in. The flop brings me a beautiful board of AQx. I ended up sucking in a couple people who held aces. That was the toughest part of the night, figuring out how much I could bet to keep people in the pot. For the early part of the night, my hand decisions were easy because I never knew what people had, so I played extra tight. I probably gave up quite a few pots here and there, but I didn’t want to rebuy and the rest of the people were calling with anything, so it was not worth getting involved in drawing hands, at least not yet.

Finally it got to the point where one guy had rebought twice and busted out again. He then decided to not rebuy and that set the tone for the rest of the people. There would be no more rebuys. Let’s turn up the aggression.

I had a decent sized stack, but Steve A. still had the lead, or close to it, but still didn’t know what he was doing I won a couple of decent pots off of him as did a copule other people. Finally, I put him all in and busted him out. Shortly after that, Jarrod busted out and we were down to six.

Nothing too exciting until we get down to five. My friend Jason had nailed me once when I slowplayed a set and he had an overset. It was then when I looked down and saw A5s and called. Jason calls and we bring one other person. The flop comes a beautiful AA5. A monster hand. This was my second flopped boat of the night, the first one didn’t really pay off. I was determined to make this one pay off. I led out with a small T100 bet. I dug the hole, put the leaves on top and set the trap. Both called. Turn comes another high card, some paint card IIRC. I toss out another T100 and Jason goes over the top all in, we lose the other guy and I, of course, call. He about died when I flipped over my boat and he was gone.

We’re one away from the money and Julie is short stacked. She makes a move and is busted. I’m now in the money with a pretty decent chip lead. I start to throw my weight around a bit and start bluffing more. I knock off Steve J. and I’m heads up with Jason N. who says he’s never played before.

Blinds are up to 400/800 and I’m the huge chip leader. I double him up a couple times while trying to bust him, but I’m still ahead by a ton. I steal a few from him after that by raising huge pre-flop. Finally, he’s down to about T900 in the BB and I raise him all in with Axo. He calls and I get an A on the flop and I win the tourney.

There were a total of 9 buyins and 4 rebuys for a prize pool of $260. My win brings me $130. Sweet! This will come with me to Trump in a couple of weeks.

By now it’s midnight and I’ve got an hour drive ahead of me. Most of the others have left by now, so we say thanks to Steve A and head on out. On the way home I pass the exit that, in a short 10 minutes, would bring me to Canterbury. Oh, the pull is strong. I’ve got a “free” 3/6 buyin sitting in my pocket. Oh man…But no, I’m dead tired (getting up at 5AM to run is wearing me out), so I just head on home.

The fears of all the players came true. Everybody was convinced I’d win, but I wasn’t sure. I figured I would do OK, but the suckouts were incredible. I just stayed out of the way unless I had huge cards and waited until people got sick of rebuying. When I had the big chip lead I was able to be the bully and since everybody was already scared of me they didn’t know what to do. I’m not saying I’m that good, but I knew I was better than the others and could push them around. They knew it too which put them on the defensive from the outset.

All in all it was a fun night. He’s wanting to plan another one already. He’s already ordered a table, it just didn’t get there in time. He’s going to order some more chips because we had some issues due to the rebuys. For a normal ring game he had enough (600), but with the rebuys and no blind progression for so long, we had some problems coloring up and such until people went out. In the future, now that they’ve got their first time out of the way, I’m sure we’ll start the timer right away.

Jarrod won his buyin back by winning a couple ping pong games, so he ended up happy. It was a fun night and hopefully I’ll be invited back They’re longtime friends, so that should help. Plus nobody (other than me) was surprised that I won, so it didn’t really get them upset. This did, however, get me in the mood to get my own home game going. There were a couple people there that said they’d play, especially because my house is at least 30 minutes closer

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 24th, 2004 at 12:14 pm and is filed under . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.