Don’t Forget: Pokerati Game this Week + Proper pot-rounding in PLO
Supposedly the Pokerati Game made on its own this past Tuesday around midnight, with @MattCWaldron duking it out into the wee hours with an unusually drinky Rex the Bald PLOcal. Not sure how the stacks ended up, but from what I hear it was some of the most vigorous song-game action the room had seen in a long time. (The Hard Rock background music tends to shift to nuevo-hip hop and variety metal during late hours, and then late-late pre-sunrise it’s a lot of classic rock.)
At last week’s game, I was pretty unhappy because things were going well until I put myself in my first difficult spot of the night. After I failed to hit my 4-outer running it twice, @JaKatkin tweeted:
And @pokerati’s implosion has begun.
10:47 PM May 6th via TweetDeck
Asshole! Katkin clearly had a read on me, as he sat to my left watching my stack dwindle post-tweet to zero, at which point I rebought and re-lost yet again. (How did he know!?!)
That was also the first week we played with officially published rules. However my one copy I had at the table got ruined when a drunk (but good player … think he mighta been a Mavenite) spilled my glass of champagne all over the nicely printed document en route to his seat in the game.
But still all good I suppose. Got to make edits that way. Harris (@JohnHarrisTTU) found a flaw in one of my examples on how to chop the pot when more than two people are all-in and one or more players don’t want to run it twice (while two or more do). Have fixed that. Should all make sense now. Also had a couple punctuation typos.
Click here for the most current rules of the Pokerati Game @hardrockpoker.
The one rule where we’re not completely settled involves rounding the pot in PLO after the flop. As things stand right now, we round to the nearest $5 increment. I’m aware that most games round up even if you’re just a dollar over. (So a $76 pot, for example would play as $80.) And even though Rex the Bald PLOcal (pl-loco?) wants us to round up, too — he always wants to play a big pot — I kinda like rounding down when the true pot is only slightly over. I dunno, just little things that keep this game PLO-newbie friendly … and giving a sense that not every pot turns ridiculously big I think helps that.
However, they’ve also been playing some straight 1/2 PLO at the Hard Rock recently, and I’m not sure how they’re handling the rounding on those tables. (Have a call tomorrow to find out.) As much as I hope it also is to the nearest $5, not necessarily up, I think I’d be willing to change the Pokerati rule just to keep the game consistent across the room. Your gracious game host The timid would just have to sack up!
NOTE: Bald-aggressive Rex texts in to set the record straight:
Just so u know, I’ve never lost net money in the song game. I wish I could play both that game and ur game for the rest of my life. I’d quit my job.
Cool Rex, OK, whatever, learn to twitter and maybe we can talk.
Game Thursday. Lock your seat up around 7ish, cards in the air by 8.
Become a fan of NLH/PLO round of each on Facebook here.
Mojo says:
May 12th, 2010 at 6:37am
This sounds like most of the small “private” games in Houston, but with a lower rake (LOL). Quick question: can you take one off before running it twice, or is it mandatory two-and-two from the flop?
danm says:
May 12th, 2010 at 6:56am
You know, we used to do mandatory run-it-twice, but then decided to give the players the option. You can run it twice here at any point … You can see just the river twice, 2 and 2 as you call it, and if we’re all-in preflop, we can even do two complete boards.
Rex says:
May 16th, 2010 at 11:37pm
Sorry Ati, no twittering for me. I’m wasting enough time reading your website. I’ll have some more choice words for you next week.
See you Thursday. I’ll tell you stome stories from this weekend about Commerce. I felt I went into a time warp ten years back and everyone else was playing poker for the first time, then there was me. I could have trained a chimp to play better than some of these people.
DanM says:
May 17th, 2010 at 12:10am
Awesome. Can’t wait to hear you tell me everything I do wrong with the website.