The secret word of the day is: "Trips"

At the $20 buy-in home game I'm currently seated in, we were four-handed yesterday because Nate canceled at the last-minute, which made Doc more than a little peeved. I was the first one to arrive, so I asked Doc if he could teach us some other forms of poker. After Lyss and Joaq arrived, we did a "dealer's choice" session where every time the dealer button came around to me, someone would announce a new game. We ended up playing (in order) 7 Card Stud, Omaha, No Limit Texas Hold'em, and Omaha Hi-Low, which meant that we successfully played a set of SOHHI. I will leave it up to you decide how to pronounce that.

Vin arrived which brought us back up to fuller health and at Lyss' request, we moved back to Hold'em. I bled chips for much of the evening, never really getting down to a bad situation but never really pulling down anything major. One hand I remember losing spectacularly was when I had good hole cards but Doc reeled me in like the fish I was and smacked me with his flush. By the time 10:30 pm rolled around, I was down about $12 and woke up to pocket rockets.

If you've been paying attention, AA has been pretty good to me, but I remember the lesson that Doc taught which is that they can't be counted on improving and someone could end up beating you with a flush or a straight or just anything. So when I got the rockets, I waited to see what everyone else would do and follow the aggressor to at least the flop. Vin was behind the button and he set out a bet of $1.50. I went in the tank for just a teensy bit and called, after which Joaq fired out $5. He'd been doing crazy stuff like that all night, so I know he'd gotten something good but I still had the nuts (so far). Vin goes all-in, and after counting out my chips and remembering that I had said I was going to leave in 30 min., I decided to go all-in as well. (Doc texted me just now saying that I had no choice but to call the all-in with pocket aces, pre-flop. I will have to keep this in mind.)

Play slows down while Doc figures out how much more Joaq needs to put in if he's going to call us, and it ends up being only $2 more to him. This means that there's around $20 in the pot and none of us have seen the flop. After deciding not to show till the river comes out, the flop is Ad-Qc-Jd, and I have officially tripped Aces. The turn is 4d and the river is 9c and I am inwardly dancing my ass off because there's no way that anyone is going to beat me, even if they have a pair of face cards. Since Joaq was the aggressor, he shows and he does have a pair of kings. Vin shows his Qh-9h which means he's got two pair but then I flip over my aces and win it all. Even better than that was going head-to-head with Doc and cracking his pocket aces by choosing to play my pair of 3s and luckily getting a third 3 on the flop, and that ends up being the last hand of the night.

Still, I'm not going to forget the lesson of the evening which is, "Look at the bloody board, you git" because after about six months of these monthly games, I should know better than to fall into Doc's traps. But the queens! They're so shiny and regal and yes, they're bad pocket pairs to have but ooh... yeah, I think he cracked my queens with that flush. I believe I'm going to have to re-banish them to the naughty spot.

Dusting off the blog

I'm choosing to dust off this blog because after my relationship ended in 2007 and I switched careers, I realized I haven't been writing as much as I used to for myself. I'm going to try and dig through my old entries to back-post stuff about gaming, but what with my renewed interest in poker and meeting the Loading Ready Run crew at the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo, I think I've still got a lot to say about my adventures in gaming.

Thanks for reading!