Finally, poker in California

So after living here (kind of) since mid-February, I sat down at Bay 101 and played some cards.  Believe it or not I haven’t yet played cards out here.  Between my family and work obligations it just wasn’t possible. 

And it turns out I’m rusty.  I knew this since I’ve had a several hundred dollar slide at the no limit tables in DC and I started reviewing my play to great disappointment.  So I decided to sit down and play some $3/$6 limit hold’em.  Ugh, talk about losing your card sense.  I was continuing in the hand when I hit bottom pair with a crappy kicker.  It took me two hours to get my card sense back, but I finally started to get some solid reads that allowed me to value bet on the river and other obnoxious things that let me relieve many players of some money when they thought they had the best hand.

In a month or so, after I’ve turned 40 once on each coast, we’ll move into our new home in San Francisco and I can setup a regular poker game.  I’m looking forward to assembling a set of really smart players for a low-stakes high-cerebral game.  My poker buddy Chris Hannigan pointed this out to me when I asked him why he kept playing the $1/$2 game every Friday. 

"Every friday I get to play against nine players, five of which are consistent winners in casinos in higher stakes games.  From my point of view, that’s a bargain quantity of competitive play at a low price."

Brilliant, absolutely brilliant.  I’m looking forward to getting a really nice poker table and a set of chips for this.