Home Game ... and Home Game ...and Home Game

When I first started this habit of spending way too much of my time playing poker, I was fortunate to find a home game, courtesy of the father of my daughter's best friend. Most of the players were IT guys with the same employer, so I was definitely the outsider. Once I became a regular and adapted to their tournament, I was able to cash pretty regularly. We had a flat payout where the top three almost always got paid. I had a decent string of cashes at one point.

During the online poker heyday, we got to the point where the tournaments were pretty regular. We would play two or three times a month on Friday nights. This is where I first got really comfortable handing chips, although to this day I do not riffle at the table. However, we perhaps burned ourselves out on poker and some of the guys who were youngish married guys started having kids. Soon the home game faded into oblivion. For a short time I was without a home game.

However, I was soon to find out that some guys on my softball team played poker, and a new home game was born. We only played once at my house, using a tabletop poker board that had been found by a family member -- who shall remain nameless -- who saw it out on the street waiting to be picked up at a free community garbage hauling day. It was clean but a little warped, and my softball buddies loved chiding me about the shitty table. So ... my wife being the handyperson and creative genius that she is, decided to make me my own table during one of my trips to Las Vegas. After returning home from the trip, I did not go into my basement for a couple of days. When I went down I found this:

Talk about a nice surprise! My wife looked up plans on the internet, then ordered all the parts, hid them, then sawed, cut, hammered, and glued while I was away. Yes, it is very nice and has been great for the home games.

I was lucky, however, to have also get invites to two other home games. Poker blogger gadzooks64 lives about 100 miles away and has invited me to her home games when she hosts. I have gone several times over the past couple of years. I will be going tonight, perhaps wrapping a trip to the riverboat around it. Riverboat poker, home game, riverboat poker. Nice night!

A young woman with whom I worked invited me to her home game in town. It is an interesting crowd, including several university computer science grad students, many from different countries. I have only played this home game once, chopping second/third place and breaking even in a wild, loose cash game.

So ... I have gadzooks' home game tonight, the "international home game" Tuesday night, and I am hosting my regular softball/newspaper crowd game Wednesday night. Add in a few hours at the riverboat tonight and I should certainly get my poker fix over the next five days.

Here is to hoping that my big hands hold this week!