I hit up the Crescent Lounge in Waltham this past Friday night. Always a good spot. If there’s one thing that differentiates Crescent Lounge from all of the other places I play it has to be the amount of effort the proprietor, Andy, puts into making the room an overall home game experience. There is a giant taxidermied fish on the wall, a camera above the table in case you want to see hands play out on “the big screen,” walls filled with poker paraphernalia, and trophies for high hands, low hands, best bluffs, etc.

Probably the signature aspect of this game is Andy’s insistence, and the players’ appetite for, the 27 hand rule. At Crescent Lounge, 27 suited doesn’t play, but 27 offsuit, is played religiously. The rate of people showing this hand seems to suggest that nobody ever folds it. Winning with it nets you $2 from everybody at the table, and on Friday I think I dumped out around $12 thanks to the deuce seven.

The game was good and swingy. In the beginning, some of the people who normally aren’t big winners were up big, which is always good for a game. Around midnight things started to change though. This is when the stakes jump up. At certain points in this game, much like a tournament, the blinds double even though it is a cash game. So, around 10:30 we jumped from playing .25/.5 to .5/1, and around midnight it went to 1/2. Obviously there are strategic adjustments you need to make here. That and you need to get a little lucky.

My last three sessions at the Lounge have been losing, including Friday’s, however, I don’t feel too bad about it. I was down $140 at around 1am, but ran good at the bigger stakes and ended the evening down $20 total at 2am, which for an evening out, is a steal of a deal. Of course, I would have liked to have been Mike A. who won a few hundred, much of which came from two consecutive  heads up hands with me in which I thought “there’s no way he has trips here” and he did. Even so, good times, and my urge to play more cards remains as strong as ever. I am trying to get some people over the the basement for some Tuesday night action. Hopefully it’ll be good.