Cash Game Marathon

   After not playing any live poker games for a year (not counting those freaky NPPL games), I've now played in two in the space of a couple of weeks. A few weeks ago my wife's friend rang us on Sunday morning to let us know that she was running a home poker game at her place. She assured us that this would be a limit game, unlike the one we'd played in previously at the Thirsty Whale pub. She told me that for a $20 buy-in each player would get $100 worth of chips and that the big blind was $2.00. It took me a while to get my head around the idea of a cash game where the chips are worth more than the actual cash value, but eventually I worked out that it was $20 for 50 big blinds. This sounded like a reasonable blind structure and a reasonable buy-in, so we headed off for a game.
   In the end there were six of us playing: myself, my wife, her friend (A), her friend's two brothers (V and M) and their friend (S), all players who'd been at the pub for the previous game. We started at about 5pm that afternoon, and we were playing dealer's choice. However, the game wasn't quite what I'd expected. It turned out that the game was actually being run by V, and he told us that we would actually be getting $50 worth of chips, which meant we were getting 25 big blinds; another short stack game. We started out playing mainly Texas Holdem, Omaha and Nine-card (5 cards in the hand and 4 on the board).
   While the rest of us were playing the three previously mentioned games, V was introducing some different games. He started playing some games that involved multiple sets of community cards and multiple rounds of betting. I'd come across these types of games before when my wife and I had played in "syndicate games" years before. These tended to be action games that were quite expensive to play in so I tended to fold a lot when V was the dealer. So, I was playing pretty conservatively early on and after a few hours play had to top up with another $20, as did a number of other players.
   After a while V started changing the rules on his "Big Nine" and "Big Seven" games to get more action. He introduced compulsory blinds that all players had to play (essentially, antes that cost the same as the big blind) and draws where players had to pay $2.00 for each card drawn. He seemed to be trying to increase the stakes as much as possible without actually raising the limits or the blinds. It was obvious to me that he would have preferred to be playing in a higher stakes game and he was trying to make the hands more expensive. So I resigned myself to folding my blinds in his games unless I had a monster starting hand, and concentrating on playing in the more straightforward game types.
   As we played into the night I started to win some pots and after a while I realised that I'd at least made my buy-in back. This was still the summer holiday period, so I didn't have to go to work Monday morning, but my wife and I had plans for the next day, so we said we'd only play until midnight. Somehow midnight came and went and we were all still playing. By the early hours of the morning my chip stack looked like it might be twice my original buy-in, so I was feeling pretty good. I even started dealing a few hands of Omaha, and even won a pot or two in that game.
   S told us that he was definitely leaving at 4am so we all agreed that the game would end at that hour. Somehow 4am came and went and we were still all playing. Our host was getting pretty tired and finally went off to bed around 5 or 6, but the rest of us kept going. By this stage I was folding a lot, intent on keeping a healthy chip stack, and just playing premium starting hands. Basically, I was just waiting for someone to call a close to the game. Eventually the game finished at around 7am, at which point I discovered that I had more than doubled my starting stack.
   There were a number of negative factors to this game. The blind structure meant starting with a short stack of only 25 blinds. Some of the games were expensive to play in and designed to increase the luck factor. There was a 'donation' towards the house that amounted to about 10% of the buy-in. Despite all this I managed to come out ahead and also had an enjoyable evening, although a somewhat tiring one.
   After 14 hours of poker play without a break, my wife and I headed home for a well-deserved rest. It was great to get back into live home games after so long. While it was nice to win some money, the best part of the whole experience was the possibility of playing another game in the near future, preferably at my place this time. That way,  I get to go to bed whenever I please.