Poker Cruise 2

I had a very enjoyable poker cruise on Friday but the result feels like a bit of a non-event; reinforcing the concept of the utility of money and the fact that wins don't bring nearly as much joy as losses bring lows.

Surprisingly on this trip, most people ended up winning, probably 6 winners and 4 losers. Usually, we have a couple of people gather most of the chips by the end of the night (symptom of alcohol, triple-barrelling and a propensity to call massive overbets). For some reason though, the money seemed to circulate more on Friday.

Our land-based host has been having a bad run and on Friday he just seemed to be playing in the moment and played extremely well all night to be a $400 winner. He picked his spots and seemed to be right every time he had to make a marginal decision.

One notable loser on the night was our only "internet kid" who had been looking forward to his first poker cruise and a crack at the rich oldies. No-one was happy at the fact that he was the one that could least afford to lose the money. In reality though, he didn't adjust well to the crazy and often unpredictable nature of our home game. A valuable investment as a lesson learned early in his career. No doubt, he’ll be back.

As for me, things started well on the very first hand with quad Kings almost tripling up. The games are wild and I was relatively card dead for the next couple of hours. I can recall a number of good lay-downs on the flop with 2nd pair, and TPGK etc. With an average of 5 to the flop, it plays like a Limit game with your stack always at risk, where you really do need the best hand at showdown. Massive over-bets get called, so its very difficult to knock people out. Somehow, I managed to play sufficiently tight/weak to slowly leak away my stack over a barren period lasting several hours.

My second buy-in fared better and grew steadily until a critical hand when I managed to limp in with 99 in early position. Flop of Q74r was checked around and then the 9 came on the turn, I led out with a modest $5 bet into $7 or so in the middle, MP raiser made it $50 (which is just the kind of game that it is). I was genuinely afraid of the QQ because the raiser knows that I play fairly tight into multi-way pots, although he did seem tilty on the night. Being a cash game, the AI shove for another $70 was relatively straightforward and if I'm behind, I'm behind. He had Q7 and had let me get there on the Turn which was a costly mistake. My trips held up and I was in a very healthy position to safely pick my spots again. When we docked at 2am, I had booked an uneventful $150 win, enjoyed gourmet sandwiches courtesy of one of the players and laughed all night.

The banter was great as usual, which is what real poker is all about. Roll on the next home game which looks like 3 weeks away.