Tony Guerrera

Tournament Killer Poker by the Numbers was supposed to be finished 19 days ago, but I'm still tweaking it and adding more material to it. Talking about things like the Independent Chip Model in a rigorous but accessible way is really tough, so I hope my readers will appreciate the overtime I'm putting into that one.

In the meantime, I took some time away from my computer to make some $$$ at a home game that John Vorhaus hosted last night. It was a no limit hold'em game with $1-$2 blinds (first buy-in $100, additional buy-ins $150). The cards started flying at 7:00, but I wasn't able to arrive until 8:00 because of a dinner that ran late. I had been out all day with my girl, Evelyn, and we needed to eat before heading to JV's. Evelyn didn't play (this was her first time even seeing poker played), but I thought it would be a good opportunity to introduce her to some of the people I know while they were in their natural habitats.

As soon as I walked in the door, I smelled the aggressive action in the air. Besides the usual suspects (JV and a good friend of mine named Craig) I was greeted by some new faces: Gary Wise, Mr. Wise Hand Poker himself, along with Hollywood Dave and Tiffany Michelle. I said my hellos, introduced Evelyn to everyone, and I immediately went to work.

"Getting to work" meant sitting and folding a ton of hands. Tiffany even made a remark indicating her surprise at how many hands I was folding. It was a shorthanded game, but with all the straddles, preflop raising, and aggressive postflop play, I didn't have much incentive to become entangled in a lot of pots.

All the folding I did gave me lots of time to observe Gary, Dave, and Tiffany. JV and Craig are typically aggressive, but it was interesting to see that Gary and Dave were actually taking the role of the aggressor for themselves. It wasn't an easy game, and having Evelyn by my side didn't make it easy for me to focus, but I was able to pick my spots and build my stack to $208 in about an hour and fifteen minutes.

At that point (about 9:15PM), Evelyn needed to go home, so I left my chips on the table, and took her home. I got back an hour later to see that Gary, Dave, and Craig had accumulated some big stacks at JV's expense. Shortly after I got back, JV was brutalized for two more buy-ins. At that point, we took a break, and there was some interesting conversation with Dave having to do with his experience as a professional blackjack player.

After the break, we played until 12:13AM. I continued playing relatively tight and straightforward poker...when I was in a hand, my decisions usually involved figuring out whether betting or check/calling was the best way to extract money. After it was all said and done, I ended up +$179 in what was a fun night of playing.