12-20-2001, 04:20 PM
I played a home game with some old poker buddies from my home town while I was visiting last week. The stakes were low the game was friendly, you know more a game of who has the best trash talk than who can make a few bucks. As the beers started flowing and we were rapping about old times we brought up our old Spades games (I've found it's not as popular outside the midwest... if you don't know it's a fairly simple contract books game with spades as trump.) Once everyone reaches a certain level of expertise there's very little you can do to outplay each other... it's basically glorified Euchre. so the fun came from playing who could cheat better with a partner. We did everything from signaling, to grabbing your partners books and leading yourself, to outright cold decking.
As we got to talking about it we decided to spice up the poker game by playing partners and seeing who could outcheat each other. At first we just teamed up then as the novelty of that wore off, every ten minutes or so we'd draw names from a hat to determine who you were trying to collude with. Your job was to try to help that player, which makes for some nice "bluffs" when signals are picked up by the wrong player since you don't know who your partner is until you can figure it out on your own.
In the scheme of improving your game this is all absolutely pointless but it's a hell of a good time. I particularly enjoyed my buddy Brian, who's one of the best card magicians I've ever seen, dealing me a pat Royal against two sets of quads.
I'm not sure the point of posting this debachery, other than if you're not playing for any real money and feeling like having a few laughs and a few beers with your poker buddies it's a hell of a good time.
As we got to talking about it we decided to spice up the poker game by playing partners and seeing who could outcheat each other. At first we just teamed up then as the novelty of that wore off, every ten minutes or so we'd draw names from a hat to determine who you were trying to collude with. Your job was to try to help that player, which makes for some nice "bluffs" when signals are picked up by the wrong player since you don't know who your partner is until you can figure it out on your own.
In the scheme of improving your game this is all absolutely pointless but it's a hell of a good time. I particularly enjoyed my buddy Brian, who's one of the best card magicians I've ever seen, dealing me a pat Royal against two sets of quads.
I'm not sure the point of posting this debachery, other than if you're not playing for any real money and feeling like having a few laughs and a few beers with your poker buddies it's a hell of a good time.