Shuffle up and deal

Tonight is poker night at the chez. This is what I do when the team is at the States Finals.

Our normal poker game, which is older than anyone on my debate team, is an easy-going affair with more jibberjabber than card playing. Twenty-five / fifty cent blinds, pot limit. Quite extreme. A bad night can cost you seven, eight dollars easy. Since most of the people are jibberjabbering rather than watching the cards, a good night, when you yourself have nothing to jibberjabber about, can net you ten dollars easy. Then you get to spend all Saturday deciding where to spend it.

Last month, however, we launched a game of no limit hold 'em with a $25 buy-in. We called it the Tournament of Sham Peons (actually, I came up with that name; I wonder where I got it from). For once, there was no jibberjabber. Not one but two people went out during the first round of blinds (we doubled them every half hour), in the same hand! When the night was over (way earlier than usual), I had come in third place, which entitled me to getting my twenty-five bucks back. Worse things could have happened.

Tonight we'll be back to the open game, probably jibberjabbering a lot about ways to improve the Sham Peons. One thing we'll probably introduce is unlimited buy-ins for the first 4 blind levels (so that you don't come all the way to the chez to go out after the first deal). It's amazing how money changes everything. In our normal game the money is so insignificant that mostly we just shoot the jibberjabber. But when you can win seventy-five or a hundred bucks, it's a different story. Real emotion comes out. It's fun, but it's a different kind of fun. The fun of hanging out with your friends is replaced by the fun of playing serious poker. At some point, the two may conflict. Given a choice, I would prefer the former. Most people, I think, would, or at least should.

Which reminds me why I banned poker from the team (which seemed rather daring of me at the time, until I later learned that just about every adult coach had done the same, often by order of their administration). The last thing you should want is a friendship to go south over money, and serious poker can make that happen. It just isn't worth it.

On the other hand, one does like to play poker, and one does like the idea of no-limit. I wonder. Maybe I should organize a team tournament where no money changes hands, but we put a couple of seriously good crappy prizes on the line. But then, what if I won? I mean, I've already got all the crappy prizes.

I'll have to think about that.