As I surveyed the list of people reserving seats for last night’s game it dawned on me that this might be the toughest lineup of players I have ever played against. Which, fine, it’s low-stakes, so if you are going to be challenged, at least have it be at a level in which it won’t kill you financially. That was my attitude, although I am aware that there is a feeling among some that the less money involved in a game the easier it is. Maybe so, but people weren’t really throwing money away last night. There weren’t too many spots were I felt myself put to the test, where I had a decent but not a nutty hand and running up against pressure from a better player and having to decide whether they were playing the cards or me. It happened twice actually, and when it did the money involved was $8 and $12, which sure you can sneeze at, but it meant a lot to me to not be shown up as a fool or a fish or whatever. It turns out I folded one when I shouldn’t have and called one when I should have, netting me a cool $4. Laugh all you want. Other than those two hands though, the deck hit me like Trevor Berbick hit Mitch Green in the epic USBA Heavyweight title fight at the Riviera in 1985. I reeled in a flopped flush against a flopped top set, a rivered boat which got a call on the river, a flopped straight flush against a flopped flush (the flopped flush actually had an out to beat me on that one), turned quads when all in, and a few others here or there. In short, the poker gods were really good to me, to the point where, I really didn’t have to do much calculating and thinking.

But, anyhow, if I could just return briefly to that the less money the easier the game idea, while yes I agree with it to an extent, let’s not forget that the more money on the table the worse people play as well. What I mean by that is, if you are playing with more money than you are comfortable with losing, then you won’t play as well as you would when you are playing within your roll. There is a sweet spot of meaningful play in there somewhere, but it’s complicated by the fact that at any given table all of the players will find themselves affected by this by their own personal comfort zones.

Speaking of how tough this table was though, I gave my son $10 worth of chips to play with. He lasted two hands, the second one he got all in with Corey on the turn. The board was 8h Ts 4d 6h. Corey turned over the straight, but Jonah flipped over Kh 4h for a halfway decent, and not dead yet one pair with a flush draw. Corey faded a heart on the turn to felt the nine year old.

The game ended pretty early. We were done before midnight. Corey stayed after where we talked about this crazy coincidence of him possibly going on a date with somebody who took me to her prom in 1990, and while this was going on Bruno showed up. He stayed later than Corey but had to exit after I started going on my why I love Gertrude Stein spiel at 1:30AM.