Donktastic Home Game Fun...

I haven't played much poker to speak of online this week. Just haven't had the time energy or drive to really concentrate on it. Tonight though, I played a series of home tourneys with some of my new work colleagues. We played three $5 buy-in tournaments, the first with 10 players, which I won and the second and third with 11 and 9 players respectively, both of which I took bad beats in.

The blind structure was kind of silly with everyone starting with something like 1700 in chips, with blinds of 5/10, but the blinds then doubling every time someone went out. In the first game I lost some chips early when I bet strongly with my QT on a ten-high flop, then folded to an all-in when I thought I was probably beat on the river. From there I played pretty tight and changed gears well when the blinds started getting really high in relation to my stack. At one point I went all-in from the BB without looking at my cards and ended up with a straight with 68o. I think at that point the BB represented a little less than half my stack so I felt like it was pretty much mandatory. From there I changed gears well, played my shortstack aggressively, and got lucky in a couple key pots. I made it to heads-up, and with the blinds at an absolutely ridiculous 800/1600 with only about 12-13k chips in play, it became an all-in fest. After a seesaw battle, that saw me getting very short and going all-in in the dark only to find 99 and have it hold up, then after regaining a very slight chip lead after a bit more back and forth, I pushed with Th9h and got called by 44, the flop and turn were blanks, and it looked like I was done, but the river was a Ten and I had won. I feel pretty good about the way I played that game, it certainly wasn't all skill, I did get lucky in some key pots, but I also played my stack well and managed to take it down.

In the 2nd two games I wasn't nearly so lucky. First I raised with AQo and narrowed the field to 4 players I think. The flop came down QT8 rainbow and the kid to my right went all-in. He hadn't played the first game and I had no read on him, so I couldn't fold top pair and I went all-in after him. Then, the guy to my left called also. They showed K8 and J8 respectively and I was way ahead, then the turn came a 9 and I was drawing dead. After that hand, I still had a few chips left and found AKo the very next hand. I pushed all-in of course and got called by like 3 or 4 people. Found no help on the board and was eliminated when J9 caught two pair. In the next game I had raised pre-flop with KcJc and the flop came JsQcAc, a guy in front of me bet and I moved all-in with 17 outs and a 58% chance of winning according to cardplayer's odds calculator. Of course, his Ah9h held up when neither the turn nor river brought one of my many outs and I was gone from that one.

All in all though, I had a good time and left about $20 richer than I walked in. It was one of the most donktastic groups I've ever played cards with. Even the "decent" players were pretty bad. No one ever folded. They didn't know that the dealer is always small blind heads-up and I eventually lost that argument later on in the night (though I managed to work it that way when I was playing heads-up). They also analyzed hands in very flawed ways throughout the night. If only they played for higher stakes and had a better blind structure, I could quit my day job :).