Townie Poker!

It only took one tournament, and one trophy, to get me hooked on Townie Poker. For the uninitiated, there are a few places near my cottage up north that host charity poker tournaments. These tournaments attract many locals looking to get lucky and take home the $500 first prize. Unfortunately for them, these tourneys often attract people like myself who are visiting for the weekend and have a greater grasp of game theory and the ability to adjust their playing style to fit the game. Sit someone with those attributes at a table like the ones in these tournaments and it's Darwinism at it's best. You can sit back and watch as the weakest bust out first, then up to the next level of the food chain until you see, barring many miracle suckouts, the player who was able to adapt the best standing there holding everyone else's money.

This is unfortunate for the locals because they are all genuinely nice people just hoping they can make a little extra money by playing some cards. And true to the well known quote from Rounders, "The nicer the guy, the poorer the player." It's kind of like the lottery to them, but instead of 1000:1 to make any money, they are getting approximately 10:1.

This being said, I changed my play to suit the game and did pretty well until an error in judgment put me out of the game. I could easily blame the old guy who called a 4.5 x BB raise with 93 offsuit for my demise, but I should have known better than to push all in on the turn without the very best hand after he had checked it to me. 1 mistake. 5th place. 0 dollars.

Jen adapted her game even better and stuck with it to finish 2nd and in the money again. Had the blinds not doubled every half hour and gotten ridiculously high at the end, she very easily could have outplayed the guy who took 1st. We were only at the same table for a few hands before I busted out, but it seemed that she played her draws less aggressively than I did and that worked in her favor because no matter what the best was, someone was going to call each time with an overvalued middle or even bottom pair. She also seemed to read the townie players better than I did and wasn't afraid to muck it when she had to.

There's another townie tourney during Labor Day weekend. Hopefully this time I can stay in the right mindset and we can both get a few hands here and there so we can finish first and second again. Hopefully there will be another trophy up for grabs so I can stay a little more focused on the task at hand. Maybe I just need to play more hands on Party Poker to get used to the townie style. Practice makes perfect right? Well in poker, practice makes money.