Home Game Fun with 7-2

Last night was another fun home game session...it wasn't at the normal one in Queens - sometimes we host one here in the BKNY, too. It was a bit short-handed at 5 people, but to tell the truth, that fits my style a lot better. The four other guys are among the tighter players in our group, so I turned on the aggression big-time and turned $5 into $14.

First, at my roommate's suggestion, we played a few hours of Omaha to kick things off. Not that I'm the world's leading expert or anything, but I have at least played it a bit and read the chapter in Super System...meaning I had more experience with it than most of the rest of the group. I gave them a short tutorial about what kinds of starting hands they should be looking for and some basic concepts to know. With that, we spent about 3 hours or so at it. Oddly, it was a fairly tame Omaha session in terms of winning hands. What I mean is that there weren't any gross instances that I can remember of boat over boat or boat over flush, shit like that. I wasn't writing things down this time because honestly, it's a huge distraction to my play. I made much more of an effort last night to watch the other players at the table and try and pick up minor tells to help me out. Sorry guys, but I'm not saying shit about what I did or didn't see. I'll just say that I won one or two pots that I wouldn't have won had I not been paying attention, and I mucked one or two probable second-best hands that I may have lost more with.

After a dinner break, the guys wanted to move back to Hold 'Em. However, my roommate had another fun idea, which was to play out a tournament using our current chip stacks to make paying out a lot easier (we had two $10s and a $5, and breaking that up would have been a bitch). Joe (who you may remember from my last home game post as being quite the survivor) decided to try a new tack, which was to Hoover up any chips he could find. You ever play Hungry Hungry Hippos as a kid? You know how sometimes, for whatever reason, all the little marble things ended up with one kid for whatever reason, like the board was tilting that way or something? That's what playing against Joe was like last night!

Still, your dashing protagonist doubled up the $5 buy-in by finishing second. Joe had a monster chip lead, while Al (the other survivorman) uncharacteristically busted out first (we're taking advantage of his Omaha inexperience while we still can!). Brendan and I were on horrifically short stacks, so it became a battle of who can cling on the longest. Brendan ended up getting a hand that he was pretty much contractually obligated to go all-in with. I ended up using that time to take a leak, and by the time I came back, I found that I had made the money. Isn't that rad? It's like taking a piss at a restaurant and coming back to find that your food has arrived. Anyway, the heads-up battle ended up lasting all of one hand - I too got something had to go in with, and Joe I think had a better hand and it held up. Still, it was fun for a change to play some Omaha in a setting where I was comfortable and not up against much-more experienced players. I think I may try that against online competition later on, if Sportsbook has some micro tables.

Oh...now I remember a weird one from the Omaha portion. I had K-K-4-4, and raised it up. Only Joe called. I fired at every street, and Joe called every time. The board on the turn was 5-6-7-8, so I had the ignorant end of the straight. I figured it was good for some reason though, so I kept going (I had Joe on a set or two pair, with a small chance of him on a flush draw where my Kings would still be good - this was only five-handed after all). The river was a 9, and the board played. Incidentally, he had Q-Q-5-5.

Once it turned to hold 'em, I had a hot streak for quite a while. I turned into a total card rack...and while I didn't win any super-mega-monster pot that I can remember, the combination of winning with solid hands and a constant stream of continuation bets had me up at around $22 for a while ($10 buy-in). Unfortunately, I got a little too loosey-goosey at that point and ended up losing $8 of it. Of course, one has to be a little more relaxed with starting requirements five-handed, but it got to the point where my continuation bets were being called 100% of the time, and I wasn't catching anything where I could actually win the hands.

All in all, I'm happy with my play in both disciplines. One last thing - we always play the 7-2 game, and as it turned out, 7-2 cracked K-Q THREE TIMES, and I think it beat K-J once as well. I was the beneficiary once when I caught trip 2s against Rob KGB. But, it was only fair - he called a raise with 10-2, and caught two pair to beat my high pair (I forget what I had). So there.