Poker

... was the name of the game this weekend.

Part 1:
Friday night, it was the house game at Oceanaire. Phung, Joe, James, Darien, Chris, me, Val, and Mike were the players. Brandon eventually came too. I took some big pots, and eventually my collection ended up being composed of a couple big wins against James early on, Darien about middle game, Chris early game (a couple times), a big all in win against Mike, and a couple good calls against Phung. I was reading Phung really well I think, I made a couple good calls where I was right and my hand held up, whether it was my pair being the better one or the fact that he didn't have anything and I made the gutsy call to claim the chips. Overall, after a buy-in of $10, I cashed out with $32. So I tripled my money after playing from about 10pm to 3am.

Part 2:
After playing so much the night/morning before, I had my filling of poker for a bit... but Greg did ask if I wanted to play in his chemistry frat (AXE)'s poker tournament yesterday, and I was so enthusiastic about it, and he called to ask if I was coming again. I eventually agreed, and went. $10 buy in once again, and it was much smaller than everyone had anticipated. They had I think about 13 or 14 people play overall. It was insanely painful, because there were people who didn't know what the hell they were doing and having them deal when it was their turn was hard. But, it was pretty easy to semi-bluff my way to some good pots and hold my own at the first table without taking too many hits. Actually I don't remember losing a big pot at all... anyways, by the time we condensed the table I would say I was sitting in about the middle as far as chips went. I then proceeded to first take out one of the girls, who had maybe a similar stack as mine starting at the final table. I did that in 2 separate hands. Then it came to one of the guys who had the big stacks, but after I took the girl out I had a bit more than he did. He went all in pre-flop, and I was holding KQ of hearts. I called, and he was holding KJ of spades. It was looking good, as flop came out with each of us hitting one of our suits. The turn was another heart, so I was in good shape. River was a blank, so I took the big pot and was now the big stack. My next victim was Nick, who had a pretty good stack... and he decided to put the shortest stack (Greg) on the table all in, he folded, but I called. I had K6 of diamonds, and he had like a Q5 of another suit. I hit a 6 on the turn, and he was out. It was then myself and Greg, and I took him out with my second hand playing heads up with him with a 8-2, hitting the 8 against his 3-6 or something rediculous. AXE took a fatty chunk of the winnings, saying it was a "fund raiser" and after collecting what was the cash equivalent of over $150 in cash in front of me, I walked away with a measly 1st place prize of $30. Minus the $10 buy in, I made $20 from about 6pm to 8:20pm. It was good experience I guess..... no wait, it wasn't. I was playing against shitty people most of the time, and got lucky a couple times, and beat out 14 other people. Big whoop.