I was hooked, the principle of the game is easy but it took me a while to figure out what to play and what to fold. My boss invited me to his home poker game. The guys at this game were all married and the women would take the kids to a babysitter and go out, while the boys played cards. I was the single guy but more importantly the fresh meat. The first game was just a small one 10 bucks to play, 1st 2nd and 3rd took home some money. I enjoyed the game, but then some drama came about a month later. Boss man sat me down one day and told me that one of the guys in the group had gotten real drunk at a get together and called his wife a few not so nice words at the party. So the wife got angry and told his wife that bad hubby was cheating at the poker games. The story was that he would go to the bathroom and set the deck, then ask for a deck change. Thus the set up deck would come into play giving him or a friend a winning hand. The idea around setting the deck is to not only give you or a friend a winning hand but to also give another person a really good 2nd best hand. When we talked about it we did conclude that the game had a lot of monster hands and he did call for bathroom breaks, often. All of this information was obtained by hearsay, so my boss called him out. The suspect was angry and defensive but denied any wrong doing. We left it at that but kept a close eye on the game, no deck changes were called after that. I played with this group of guys for a while and the game got real good. The guys put together some awesome tournaments, with small games to give some people a chance to win a seat in the big game. We even had a news letter and point system for the world series of poker year end big game. The guys would provide food, beer on tap and rubber custom bracelets for the winier of the big tournament each month. The game grew and turned into a once a month Sunday game that the ladies started joining in. The game had turned from a man cave poker game to full on poker tour style game with satellite and main games for everyone.
My poker game was starting to bloom and I started picking up some poker books. My roommate bought me a great book called; Telling Lies and Getting Paid: More Gambling Stories. I devoured any how to play poker book, even Phil Helmuths; I was a big fan of Phil Helmuth back then, I still like him even when he complains a lot. I had a job that required lots of traveling back then; I did over 50k miles in one year. I would stop at a poker room on my way home and play for an hour or two, then jump back on the road. Some days I would make 80 bucks on my "lunch" break.
When I turned 21 the guys took me to Reno.
We got the hotel on Friday afternoon, checked in, grabbed some food and the guys bought me my first margarita(ca-ra-zy right?) We had poker on the brain and stayed up all night playing at the Silverado poker room. We got back to our hotel at 9am and we all tried to win a $20 satellite game into the big $250 buy-in tournament. I was the only one who won an entry. So I went up to the room to sleep a bit before playing the big game at 12, while the others played a few more games. I asked my boss to wake me up before 12 for the start of the game, he was smart and woke me up an hour after the game started. I guess its a thing to come to the tournament late. I guess it might be a good idea to show up late, I played some of my best poker that day. I was in the top 5 chip stacks for the first 6 hours, it was awesome. After making it to the dinner break I looked around and realized that I was in the money, and noticed 1st place was around $9,000. The best part of the trip was when my friends would stop by and give me a thumbs up, admire how well I was doing and that I could win this thing. The game started to get tough when we got to the final 3 tables. My strategy and some luck did not hold up, I think I got 27th. I made off with $450, not bad for a $20 buy-in, but I kept on thinking man I could have won it. Looking back I had no idea what I was doing and didn't have the skill to win a big game like that. All said and done I played poker for 28 hours with a 2 hr nap. Oh to be 21 again.
My poker stile was very tight back then, I and still do have the skill to wait out for the good hands. Back then only playing good hands was very lucrative. Granted I was only playing 3-6 4-8 limit games, nothing big. I would wait out a good hand and jam the pot and the wild players would pay big. I played in as many tournaments with this strategy as I could usually make it into the money, by playing tight. I would have been an elephant if we went by Phil Helmuth's animals. This strategy was great but then along came Gus Hansen and others who started mixing up the game. My return was not so solid when a jackal or donkey would crush my kings (KK) with A3. I began to resent the fellow opponents and go on tilt, bleeding off my chips needlessly. I would over compensate by playing even tighter and play the victim, killing my poker game. I blame the game but really it was me not wanting to evolve with the game. It was not until years later that I realized the strategy behind playing high return "crazy" hands and other ways to win a pot.
I love steemit and its a great community. So it was only a matter of time before this great community created a "home" poker game. SPL is a free to join poker league, also available a pro league on pokerstars. You get 100 credits to start with, costs 5 SBD's to refill. With those 100 credits you get a chance at winning some SBD's yo! The big games cost 10 credits and have a prize pool of 100-200 SBD in winnings. You can play a ring game and earn credits, or sit and go tournament to win 30 cents to 1 SBD. I have 70 credits, currently in last place, haha. So I will be more than happy to help fund SPL and refill my credits, its going to a great platform; its no food and beer on tap poker game (yet), but still really awesome.
Want to play with me? click here @SPL?
