Tonight I played in a poker game. $50 buy-in tournament, unlimited rebuys, and you pay an additional $10 in cash to the person who knocks you out each time you’re knocked out.
A list of the errors that the host made:
- Not moving the blinds properly when someone is knocked out. (The correct action: the big blind moves to its proper position. The small blind follows the big blind. If this process would lead to someone being small blind twice in a row, there is no small blind.)
- When coloring-up chips, arbitrarily rounding up. (“Coloring up” is the process of removing small-denomination chips when they’re no longer useful. If someone has eight $10 chips and the small blind is now $100 and the big blind $200, you might as well turn all the $10 chips into $50 chips. There is a designated process for coloring up. It’s called a “chip race”. Our host instead just rounded people up… sometimes. Like, if you had three $100 chips, she just gave you a $500. But somebody received three $1000 chips in exchange for a trove of $50 chips. And there’s NO WAY he had 60 of those $50s. I think it far more likely that she mis-mathed.)
- Miscounting stacks. At one point, one guy busted another. Only they miscounted how much money the two guys had, so they left the loser with a few chips when they shouldn’t have. I noticed that they miscounted. But I had only been present at this game for ~30 minutes when the miscount occurred, in a room where I was the plus one to someone I’d never actually hung out with. I didn’t want to intervene if someone else might catch it, and didn’t want to overstep my role. Nobody likes a newbie know-it-all who can eyeball a miscount from the other side of the table.
- When a card is exposed, they offer the would-be owner of the exposed card the option to call a misdeal. Again, this is a circumstance with clearly defined process. Follow the process. (Certainly don’t give the would-be owner the option to call a misdeal after that person has looked at their replacement card. I was the beneficiary of this option in one circumstance, and being new to the game, let it slide. They exposed my ace, replaced it with a three, and I called a misdeal.)
- If one of the players is outside for a smoke break, we fold his hand. But if the host’s boyfriend is away from the table, we wait for him. (Of the above issues, this is probably the main circumstance I find chicanerous. I’ll chalk it up to the cost of her hosting.)
Don’t interpret these as complaints. I had an absolute blast.
I didn’t only take advantage of the spots where it was good for me. In this game, I was along for the ride. There were ~3 spots where the mis-done blinds were meaningfully negative for me. There were also ~2 spots where the incorrectly-done blinds were positive for me. I didn’t care. I was there to have fun and meet people and bring them joy and be invited back.
I probably will be. The host likes that I keep the game moving.
At ~11:30pm, when a player busted, dropping us from four players to three, I ran to the bathroom for a quick pee break. While I was in the bathroom, the other two players agreed to designate first, second, and third place by chip count if I accepted. The guy with the fewest chips agreed to taking third place (20% of the pot; $100). I would receive second place (30% of the pot; $150). The chip leader would receive first place (50% of the pot; $250).
This division is unfair. It’s most unfair to the third-place guy, as it’s acting like he’s busted. It’s second-most unfair to me because I’m way better at poker than these guys (and the upside from second place to first is big). But I want to be invited back.
So the host’s boyfriend got to win first. He was excited. The host is happy too. So am I. I had a great night.
It was so fun. I spoke deeply and intimately with a treasure trove of people:
- The Long Island-born car mechanic who now owns his own dealership of refrigerated trucks and works 6am-6pm Monday through Friday. He’s as gruff and masculine as you’d expect. But he also says to his girlfriend, when he hears about this weekend’s storm: “You know what that means? Snuggle time!”
- The Frenchman who immediately clocks me as a fellow French-speaker because I can pronounce his name correctly… and who speaks so quickly and with such a thick accent that absolutely no one else understands him. My favorite part: he gets frustrated about folding a hand that would have hit a straight, after seeing another guy show his flush! Why are you upset about folding the hand that would have lost you a bunch of money?!
- The oldest man at the table, who has played with the group for years, who still doesn’t know the chip denominations. At one point, he said, “I’ll get it next year.” He’s probably been saying that for years. At one point, he moved to the seat beside me. I helped him by telling him, “The action’s on you. It’s $3000. That’s six reds or three blacks.” Then he’d still toss in the wrong amount, and I’d give him his change.
I had a blast, brought joy to other people, and won.
Same time next month.
