Poker is a Funny Game

About 55 years ago, Joe Garagiola, a former Major League Baseball player and sports radio announcer, wrote a book titled Baseball is a Funny Game. I was reminded of the book when I examined what happened to me over the past week in my brick and mortar and online poker games.

Last Friday after work, Mike (a co-worker) and I hopped on the interstate and drove the 90 miles or so to East Peoria, IL to play poker at the Par-A-Dice riverboat casino. Par-A-Dice, which has a very small poker room, its the closest thing I have to a "home" casino/poker room. Our plan was to play until we pooped out, keeping enough energy to make the ride back home in the wee hours of the morning.

After over a half hour wait, we were seated at a brand new table. At a ten-person table, I generally prefer to sit in seat five or six in order to see the flop better. I chose seat six and Mike sat in seat five. If only I could redo the start of the night ...

The table was filled with pretty poor players. There was maybe only one other person -- or maybe two -- who looked to be decent. In the first orbit or two, Mike got pocket Aces and got paid off, then flopped a set of 6's and got paid off again. I should have chosen friggin' seat five! Within a few minutes, Mike had a big stack o' chips while yours truly was busy folding ... folding ... folding ...

At one point I finally hit a few decent cards and, with some good play, increased my stack from its initial $200 to about $425. At that point, Mike's $200 buy in was about the same size as mine. Unfortunately, I kept bleeding chips as the table's composition changed and I got zilch for cards. Mike went down quite a bit but then hit a couple of big hands and finished the night up several hundred dollars. As for me ... I grinded out a measly $77 profit. In six hours of play, I only hit one set -- on the final orbit I played. But at least I still came out ahead.

Not satisfied with Friday night's results, I decided to put in another session on Sunday. Eight hours later, I left with a $100 profit. During that time, I hit NO SETS! Fourteen hours of poker on a weekend and only one set? Geez.

Unfortunately, my Tuesday night home game was once again canceled. It only seems to get enough players every other week.

On Wednesday evening, I played in the play money version of the old blogger tournament, The Mookie, now called The Dank. So guess what? In the first five minutes, I flopped a set AND flopped quad Aces and got paid off on each. Why didn't that happen last weekend? Poker is indeed a funny game.

This weekend, I am traveling to the Chicago area to visit my mother and to hit a few casinos with thundering36. Some possibilities include the Joliet casinos (Harrah's and Hollywood), Hollywood Aurora, maybe Grand Victoria Casino in Elgin and/or Harrah's Horseshoe in Hammond, IN. I have never played poker in Hollywood Aurora and Grand Victoria, two casinos notorious for their extremely high rakes. Wherever I play, I hope to hit sets at a slightly better rate than once every 14 hours ...