Home Poker Game #1 - Pot Limit Texas Hold'em

OK, now I know some of y'all are gettin a little tired of readin what I think about home poker, and you just want to hear a real honest-to-goodness Turtle Tale. Fair enough, let me tell ya about a real good Saturday night home poker game I did get into just this past weekend:

Introduction: The Players

Things started off when my pal Jake the Rake calls me up and says "Turtle, you remember my friend Ra The Sungod? He came to one of them debate watching parties last year? Well, he's havin a Hold'Em game tonight at 7:30, and you're invited".

Now, I always like to see the Rake, and the Sungod had seemed like a nice fella. On the other hand, I also had another party to go to (one without cards and chips but a few more curves and hips, if you know what I'm sayin). In any event, 7:30 is just a little early for the Turtle to be stickin his head out on a Saturday eve, so it turns out the I got a bit of a late start and actually showed up around 10:30. I had never been to the house before, and I wasn't even positive they were still playin. But, sure enough they were, and still had an hour or two left in them before kiddies had to be tucked in and whatnot.

Then I came to find out that we were actually at Admiral Sledgehammer's house, and it was just Ra's idea to invite me, or something. Anyhoo, it turns out that a few other people I knew were there, and a few that I didn't. I did know Ra, a very pleasant, sincere, humble guy in his 40s, but I'd never played with him before, and of course I have played with The Rake who's 38 or so, and his wife Senator Jailbait. She is a wonderful sexy lady of about 34, and the Rake is very lucky to have along for this little hayride through life, I'll tell you what. I did not yet know our host The Admiral, or his friends Bonus Bill and Lord Pickles. Of course, that's a big part of the fun for me, since I just plain like meeting people.

Turns out this group has been playin once a month for about 6 months and have pretty much got logistics figured out. Ra and Admiral S. both know the rules, as do Jake and the Senator. Pickles was the oddball, a talkative new player, a very entertaining guy, but didn't know anything about poker, really, even how to play with blinds. He did seem genuinely interested in learning, though, and that's good e-nuff for Professer Turtle. Learning to play with binds is sort of the first hurdle for everyone new to competitive poker, of course, and so I always try to be as helpful as I can to these folks to get em started off right. Anyway, short story long: We had six pretty competent players out of seven (assuming you'll give me credit for knowin my way round the pot smiley turtle. And 6 out of 7 is just fine with me, since I like to teach but I likes to have some kind of bark to rub up against, a little bit of rhythm, a little competition, know what I'm sayin?

Pot Limit Texas Hold'em

So, like I says, I showed late, and it turned out that they were playin Pot Limit Texas Hold-em with real clay chips on a felt portable table-top thingamabob like they sell at the mall these days. How do you like them apples? I thought that was just great. First time playin on felt with friends, for me. What a hoot! We were buying in with $20.00 for $400 in chips (so $1 in chips was actually a nickel). The blinds were $3 and $5. This actually worked pretty darn well to make for a fun game, and I had a real blast-off good time gettin to know these guys, who all turned out to be interesting folks. That's naturally the most important thing in a home game, it should always be fun and friendly and playful, right? Even so, I'm also a person who likes to see the rules followed fairly carefully, in a simulation of the way we play in commercial poker rooms. And in this game, everyone was trying to do just that, so it was going pretty smoothly and pretty enjoyable for the old Turtle, like I says.

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