Sunday at the Thirsty Whale

   I played in a live poker game  yesterday, the first time I've done that for months. The buy-in was a bit over my usual maximum, but I treated it as a special 'fun game', not part of my usual bankroll management plan. It's just as well that I did that, as it turned out to be a fairly expensive exercise.
   My wife's friend's brother is a regular at the Tuesday night tournament at the Thirsty Whale pub. We were told on Sunday morning that he was running a poker cash game at the pub, so we went up in the afternoon to check it out. We were told that the game was Omaha, with a buy-in of $20, but when some of us revealed our opinions on Omaha Holdem, they changed it to alternate rounds of Texas and Omaha. It wasn't till I sat down at the table that I realised it was being played in rather an odd format. It was a no limit game with the blinds at $1 and $2, which means that we were buying in for just 10 big blinds! How strange.
   Even although it was a no limit game, play was pretty passive with very little raising. Even so, I soon found myself topping up my chip stack for another $20, as did a number of others. As play went on, there were more and more top-ups and the play started to get more aggressive, with bigger and bigger bets. My wife and I were both playing and we both ended up topping up several times, with neither of us doing very well. But we played on into the evening, just for the fun of it. They were a fun bunch of players and we had an entertaining, if somewhat expensive evening.
   As for my games, I did better in Texas Holdem than in Omaha, which was no surprise to me. I think the only time I collected in the Omaha games was once when I picked up a better full house than my opponent. A more typical hand was the one where I picked up an Ace high flush only to have it busted when my opponent's two pair was upgraded to a full house on the river.
   The Texas Holdem games were better, but not by much. On three different occasions when I had a huge hand, someone else had the same hand and it was a split pot. I also lost quite a few chips to the same player on two different occasions when he was slow-playing pocket Aces. But at least the Texas hands were keeping  me in the game. Later on, when a few of the players had busted out and we were down to a five player table, the game reverted to Omaha only. So I did a lot of folding and a bit of limping in to see the flop, which invariably missed me completely. When we hit the last hand I was so far behind, and had so few chips left that I pushed all-in blind and, true to form, came last.
   Despite all this, I had a good time and thoroughly enjoyed my first live poker game for a long time. However, it was a one-off  'festive season special'. Even though I believe the game is to be played on a regular basis, I won't be back any time soon. I've got to look after my precious bankroll, and the game is just too expensive for me. Oh well, back to the computer screen in the dark back room.