SIF@HOME 0x0: In Mixed Games, We Vary Our Play

Date:

Saturday 7 October 2006

In attendence:

Dawn of ihadouts (Dawn's post about this game), highonpoker (HighOnPoker's post about this game), mary423, princessmaigrey (aka maigrey), SoxLover, SethTheOtherLawyer, tmttr.

Mix:

NL HE, TD2-7, PLO, Stud/8, PL 5-Card-Draw, and O/8

My report is below:

I believe the first instance of SIF@HOME was successful, especially given that I had to practically throw five poker players out of my apartment, whom I believe would have actually stayed until midnight and finally ordered food as I kept suggesting we might want to do.

The game started seven handed, went to eight handed, then nine handed (requiring people to sit out for TD2-7), then fell again to eight and then seven, and for the last two hour or so, six.

I think the stakes level worked out ok for some. Dawn Summers, who insisted that she was attending only the inaugural game, is likely to come back as she seemed to amass chips unbelievably well as people seemed to go all the way to the river with her over and over again in Stud/8 while they missed draws, and she somehow kept scooping with one pair. She also did well in the PLO rounds.

I pushed her out of one of the PLO pots with an all-in coup holding merely a semi-wrap (10 out or so) straight draw and weak flush against HighOnPoker, who was $11 short of an all-in in a large pot and held a better flush draw. I was glad to be holding blockers, but the flush got there. (Dawn folded two pair, quite correctly, because against our likely holdings and combined outs, she was a bit of a underdog.)

Much of the day was rather straightforward poker, but enjoyable because it was a good group enjoying the game. I think PL Draw High isn't that good of a game, because it doesn't generate much action and fails to generate much interest unless huge hands are against each other. Some argued that made the game more about reads, which perhaps it is, but who is really going to practice enough PL Draw to get good reads on opponents?

Regarding organizational issues, it's clearer now than ever that the round table (should be here this week!) was a good choice. Dawn's table is very nice, but being oval, it still makes it difficult for people on the far ends to deal. The only true misdeals we had were dealt by people on the ends. Plus, it's really hard to see everyone clearly.

I know some who were here yesterday felt the stakes were a bit high, so I hope that everyone ended up comfortable with what we had. I scared the heck out of myself when I thought I'd mis-cashed out an earlier departure, and was so worried I threw extra money of my own in the kitty just to make sure, and it turns out when we got to the end, everything was just fine. I suppose that was the only part about the stakes that bothered me a little bit — I've never been the “cage” for more than $40 before. :)

I cannot finish a post about yesterday without pointing out that Greg was ultimately right in the results of his failed experiement: you just can't pull off the powers of two chip denomination thing unless the entire game is made up of computer scientists. I finally realized toward the end of day that it was about biology more than anything else: people are born with five fingers, and I'm not going change a couple of million years of evolution simply by explaining how binary is really cool. Frankly, as W.K.'s new ThinkGeek t-shirt says: There are 10 types of people in the world, those who understand binary and those who don't. How many of you get that joke? Yeah, that's what I figured. :-/

Anyway, as maigrey said, Whatever justification it is you need to have standard chip values, you go ahead and believe it. So, after just one game, I'll abandon the great CS geekiness of my game. I was unable to convince anyone in the game to do away with opposable thumbs, nor chop off a pinky, and besides, they'd have to go back in time and grow up in a non-decimal culture for it to work. Freaking decimal-oriented, five-fingered freaks!

I'm going to keep the $2 chip, because it's a tribute to my years at Foxwoods in the 2/4 and 4/8 games, and that chip value does make playing 4/8 limit easier. However, I'll go for $1, $2, $5, $25 now. Does that make you all happy — killing my inner nerd? :)

I will probably mix up what days the home game occurs for the next few weeks, and see how the attendance pans out. The level of effort for the game is a bit higher than I thought, so I may need to move to a twice a month frequency after an initial flurry of test days.

Those of you on the list, watch for an invite soon to next week's game.

Oh, BTW, my wife says I need to serve better food than just junk food. My argument is that the donations received didn't cover the food I bought, which is no big deal — it wasn't mandatory — but I'm unlikely to up the expense of running the game further. I did suggest a few times that we could order food, and no one was too interested. I am going to leave the menus out for my local places for people to look at to perhaps inspire people to order next time.