oker is one of those things that's far more fun in concept than in actuality. Watching it on TV you can imagine being the winner, bluffing people, having fun, winning money, etc. It's easy to overlook the reality of smoky casinos, overpriced drinks, noisy drunks at both elbows, losing money 90% of the hands you play, and the overwhelming feeling of malaise and depression slowing building over you like a storm cloud.

Most of this is hypothetical, being as I've never actually played poker in a casino, for all of the above-stated reasons, as well as a lack of funds to risk at it. I enjoy playing poker in real life though, so I keep thinking about doing it, though with any luck I'll never actually do so.

This page archives blog updates about poker, with more recent entries on top.

December 1, 2003

We ran errands Saturday, and then did some more of that Sunday afternoon.  Ridiculous errands, primarily seeking poker chips.  Yes, poker chips.  Those little plastic disks you use to represent money when you're playing something and betting over it, or at least simulating betting, which is what Malaya and I do as we play just for fun.

We've grown lately to appreciate Texas Hold 'em, a card game that seems to have a tournament on ESPN2 about every other day.

Click this site for a thorough description of the game, rules, strategy, and more.

The game is easy; everyone gets two cards down and then shares five cards that are turned up, with betting after the first 2, then the first 3 up, and the 4th, and the 5th.  You make your best five card hand from the seven cards, with no draws or card exchanges, which makes the game far more about anticipating odds and bluffing than getting lucky with the cards. That's part of it as well, but with only two unseen cards, both of which you have the entire hand, the variables aren't that enormous.  However with no draws and nothing wild, you'll very seldom have a big hand, and quite often hands end up with just high card, making an ace in the pocket quite a weapon.

Of course you can easily lose with an Ace/King pocket to some noob who plays on with a 4/Jack, and happens to match up with one of the 5 up cards, which is what makes it fun.  A pair is usually enough to win, but do you have the balls to bet with a pair of 5's in your pocket when there's a ten/Jack/Queen/Ace sitting on the table, and your opponent has damn good odds to be able to match one of those to the two cards in his hand?  There are no sure things either, you can be dealt two aces, then sit and watch while someone with a 7/9 matches up two pairs, or three of a kind while you get nothing to improve upon and lose despite having the best possible starting hand.

There are also enough chances to bet, especially in no limit Hold 'em that you can get sucked in and die.  You might look pretty good, drop a fair-sized bet to open and after the flop and the turn, and then your opponent draws an inside straight on The River and goes all in and you're sitting there with a small fortune already bet, and no way to make him turn over his cards other than matching his bet, and a sinking suspicion that you're fucked.  Which you would be, in the above scenario.

Anyway, we like watching the tournaments on TV, and we also like poker, though Malaya is a bit of a noob to it.  We play Blackjack and Hold 'em from time to time, and since we spent a couple of hours screwing around with Monopoly money last week, we decided we needed poker chips to play for real.  Or to at least more accurately simulate realness.

The problem is, no one sells fricking poker chips.

We tried two supermarkets, a drug store, and Tuesday Morning and TJ Maxx, and while most of them had games, including cards, none of them had poker chips. We even tried a local toy store we'd never been to, and a local games store too, but neither of those had poker chips either.

We're doing all this driving around (and walking, since most of the stores are in little strip malls in the Lamorinda area we live in) in the rain Sunday afternoon, and the whole time I'm pretty miserable with my semi-cold/sinus problems and wanting to kill some of the goddamned pathetically slow and timid drivers that were clogging the roads.  Drivers in the bougie Lamorinda area are bad. Drivers in the rain are bad.  Drivers on weekends are bad.  Add the three together and you can pretty well guarantee that the ability of the car(s) ahead of you to turn right on red, accelerate after a light turns green, and just generally manage to keep it at or above the speed limit will be very limited.

At last we tried the Rite-Aid down in Orinda, and there Malaya conclusively proved that Rite-Aid and Longs aren't identical, as I've long claimed.  Since Longs had no poker chips, while Rite-Aid did.

We at last returned home and after Malaya made some dinner my head was really aching so I went to lie down in the bedroom and let my sinuses drain and read a book.  Flash forward 2 hours to me waking up in the bedroom with the lights off and the Jinxers sleeping on my feet.  Malaya told me she'd come in and snuggled with me some, rubbed my forehead, etc, and I'd slept right through it.  So she turned off the lights and let me sleep, and I eventually woke up.  Of course she was busy napping on the couch while I was hogging the bed, so at least we were well-rested for an hour of breaking in our chips with some Hold 'em and Blackjack.

Neither of us has ever done any real gambling at a casino; not at the tables with actual chips, but we're captivated by the concept and since you can in theory win long term in Blackjack, and Hold 'em is fun and mostly played against other people, we're interested in practicing at home and perhaps trying it out in person, when next we go with Malaya's mom to a casino.

And yes, we're likely to learn just enough to think we know something, while actually being complete and total bait for real gamblers.

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