A Fun Game For Losers

[TaoTe]

Hand reading is one of the most important skills in poker and one of the hardest to develop. Last night, after a friend and me busted out of tournament (I don't know how he played but the words "worst" and "ever" are involved with how well I played) we sat around, bored, watching the game and drinking. Out of nowhere we started to guess at what the players in the pot were holding. Around the third hand we started to make our hand reading a little side game to play in while we waited for another tournament to start up. We decided to wager a dollar on every player in the pot, chose their hand and the loser had to pay up. If we both agreed on what someone held we would split it. After we finished we called the game "Loser's Poker" and I was up five bucks. This did several things. 1) the money on every hand kept us interested enough to really try and read the palyers' hands 2) We got to see what players played what hands certain ways. 3) just focusing on other peoples' cards allowed us to eliminate distractions of our own cards (because we didn't have any).

Often, when not in the hand I've done the same exercise, trying to figure out what the players are betting but it has always been dull and I've been easily distracted from it. Salty (my friend) agreed we would play Loser's Poker everytime we got busted out of a tournament early. Hopefully, Loser's Poker will help make us winners. Loser's Poker, I highly recommend it.

[illunious]

Did you only guess just before showdown? Exact holecards or hand rank? Ad Kh/AKo/pair of kings/pair?

[TaoTe]

It was more general. "She's holding two pair. He has top pair. He has a set. He turned a straight. etc." No suits, unless we called out a flush. Whenever there wasn't a showdown we asked to see the players cards and most of them were kind enough to show us their hands. We were definately wrong more than we were right but it was really fun. The worst read we had was when the board had three broad suited cards. My friend calls out, "royal flush," and half of the table looks in our direction. Up until that point no one had even noticed what we were doing. Sadly, no one had the royal flush. An ace high straight took it down.