Bragging Rights at Stake

Since completing Heavy Rain earlier this week, I’ve been pretty restrained with the PS3. My focus instead has turned towards the weekend and my monthly poker match with my work buddies.

I really look forward to these nights – starting late & finishing in the not so early hours of the morning, it is like a proper gambling den experience – the chips, the baize, the smoke, but without any money exchanging hands. You see, the friends I play with are all Muslims and so, it’s against their religion to gamble. However, we play for something far less superficial than money – bragging rights. We have a league system and award points for the various finishing positions. To go out first on one of our nights is awful – you just know the next month will be filled with taunts. I’d much rather lose a tenner to be honest!

So anyway, this week I have been practicing hard, getting my head into the poker mindset, tuning my thoughts so (hopefully) I can keep my rash decisions to a minimum. The last couple of nights I’ve played a few matches on PKR. A couple of freerolls, a $1 sit & go and for the first time ever, a Pot Limit Omaha (PLO) freeroll.
We usually play the most commonly televised format of the game, Texas Hold-em in our monthly games, so I tend to concentrate on that form of the game. To be honest, I’m ok at it – not good by any means – but I can hold my own. I’ve turned $20 into $40 over the course of a year just through playing small sit & gos & freerolls. To be honest, I feel too pressured if I play at any of the higher stakes and I just enjoy the game, rather than the winning of money, so if I can play in a 2500 seater tourney for most of the night, but don’t win anything I’m happy. I just love the game.

Anyway, I digress. Last night, after watching Durrrr and Zigmund play some PLO in the Durrrr challenge, I decided to give it a go. There was a PLO freeroll up at 10pm and I thought, hey let see what happens. To be honest, for the first 30 minutes or so, I was pretty confused. There just seem to be so many more potential hands with PLO. I found putting my opponent on a hand really hard. However, after a while, I realised that the fact that there are 4 hole cards is more or less irrelevant, the 5 card poker hand that your opponent ends up with is the most important thing and as long as you are aware of what is potentially beating you on the board (like Texas Hold-em) you really don’t go too far wrong. After I’d realised this, I felt a lot more comfortable and I got reasonably deep – 323rd out of 1500. I was pretty happy.

So, perhaps a few games more over the next couple of days and I’ll be ready for the big event on Saturday night. Let’s hope so. The gloating will be unbearable if not!