The Ups and Downs of Poker

Kajagugu and I traveled a little north to 23skidoo's place Saturday night. We were joined by some fellow bloggers and out of town guests. I think I played very well until I made 1 big mistake when I was in a pot with Surflexus. I had just doubled my stack and probably shot to #2 or #3 with 7 of us left. The shorty pushes from early position with about 4 times the BB. I have A,Q offsuit and just call. Surf is in the BB and also calls. The flop comes out and I check, but Surf pushes. Hmmmmm. I had 2 overs to the board and a double gut shot for the straight. Calling and losing would take over half my stack, but winning it will put me in second for sure and we lose 2 players. I think for a while and finally call. Surf already has the lower straight and takes away one of my outs and the overs don't mean shit against his hand. I thought I was getting the right price to call, but that was incorrect because I didn't accurately take in to account what he was holding. It was a really bad call because I know Surf wouldn't do that unless he had a lock on the hand. I was lucky enough to still have enough chips to limp in to the money, but I shoulda done better. It was good to see Butch, Francase, Sham, Surley Poker Gnome, and Trips Bro. Congrats to "Doogie the Card Rack" for taking it down. He was kind enough to try to tip me for dealing when they were three handed. Since he is a regular at the PokerCatArena, I told him I'd just take it from him playing nickel / dime games later. At least my string of live game cashes continues.

We are about to have our last game of the Neighborhood Poker League for the year and I had the unfortunate task of letting some folks know that we no longer had room for everyone. I really hated doing this, but our game is getting too big and we had to cut those that weren't long standing "regulars" so we could still fit in the host's house. This finalized my decision that I won't be running the league for '08. I will still host games and will open the field up when I am the one hosting, but I have to respect the desires of others when I'm not hosting. I didn't enjoy being the "bad" guy though.