Paullywood Park

On Friday we had Uncle Paul's game, whose house has been dubbed Paullywood Park due to Paul's affection for the Hollywood Park Casino. For a couple years now we've had this tourney every month, ranging in occurrence from once a month to every other week, with buy-ins ranging from $20 to $100.

I started my poker playing in this game, and won the first tourney the first time I played it. I took my first paycheck ever to this game and ended up winner. I had never played before and thought K-5 was the coolest hand ever, and damn was I right! I must've hit that hand seven times that night.

After that game I started learning everything I could about the game. I started off reading some donk books, and eventually started playing at Chumash, which is 18 years+, every chance I got. Over the years I had become a waiter and fell into a wonderful world of tip money. I would take off every night after work at 10PM, talk to Becca on the phone while making the half-hour drive, and play the $2-4 for hours before going home and skipping out on high school in the morning.

I moved up through the $3-6, $4-8, and $6-12 before switching over to the $2-5NL game since the limit games were dying fast and hard. Throughout all that play and all this time Paul's game became seemingly more miniscule and, frankly, annoying. The attendance topped at 40 and dipped to nine players at one point.

The more players there were the worse the play was, and some of the players were just terrible. Every player there was under my level and it seemed more like a waste of money than anything else. The payouts were becoming too small and the players just made me frustrated with their obliviousness to the simple understanding of the game. There's been increasingly less to be excited about with the game, and over time it's turned into me just going to hang out with a couple of the good crowd and dealing more than playing poker.

This year, though, Paul came up with a schedule and a wannabe "league", complete with a point system and a TOC. I missed the first game of the year, but was able to jump in this weekend. When I arrived, Pauly explained to me that I'd be dealing the whole time while playing, and dealing the FT if I didn't make it.

We started the tourney with 30 players buying in for $30 a pop. I ended up chipping away early and played pretty solidly. I got sucked out on and sucked back early on, and was able to take a standard stack to the FT. I doubled up and saw the final five, all of us making points. I took fourth and third place out with my AK vs KQ and AQ.

Heads up lasted about twelve minutes and I finished first taking $342 and five points. It's been a while since I've won the thing, so my interest in Pauly's game is sparked again for sure. He's also running a $20 rebuy tourney every third game, the first of which falls next time, so that'll be somethin I'll be lookin forward to also.

After the first tourney we played another one with half the players, and I lost a flip when I shoved A6s and got called by KQ. Darsky and I started a heads up game of Bonedoneskis, and we got one brave soul that tried to learn the game for a little bit. I ended up taking a small profit there before the night ended.

On Sunday I took to my dad's house for the Super Bowl where a bunch of family and friends met up. My squares turned out like crap and I ended up blankin those. I didn't place a bet on the SB either, but I was going to take Indy and the under at 48 so I woulda scooped that one if I manned up. Oh well. That'll teach me.

Until next time.