Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Hold em, Texans


Somehow I got roped into playing poker tonight. I feel as though I'm somewhat at a disadvantage. The problem is that I haven't played poker with any regularity in 10 years and haven't played period (that I can recall) within the last several years. I can't remember when to hold em, when to fold em, when to walk away and when to run.

In the meanwhile, it seems that everyone else in the world has become an expert at Texas Hold'em. I've even seen a TV show with Danny from the Partridge Family playing against Everybody Loves Raymond's brother and some other celebrities. These people are not all that entertaining when teams of professional writers tell them what to say, so why are they on my TV playing cards?

My lack of recent experience is compounded by the fact that I tend to forget how to play games fairly quickly. For the past 16 years or so, the Clowns and I have gotten together once or twice a year, and we always play spades. Each and every year, they have to re-teach me the rules. Fortunately, I am a fast learner and my team usually takes the upper "hand" by day 2. Unfortunately, my team usually loses the upper "hand" by day 3 because I am unable to concentrate on anything but the waves of nausea and occassional spasms of vomiting.

Anyway, can someone remind me about the guidelines for Texas Hold'em. When should I go "all in?" When should I go "all home?"

3 comments:

Doc Bok said...

I always secretly suspected that you sucked at spades, yet every year, you are chosen to participate instead of me. Perplexing.

Meg said...

Poker should not be allowed to be televised. It's about as exciting as watching a game of chess (which I actually did this weekend--I don't recommend it).

Doc Bok said...

What about the cool sunglasses and exotic head-wear and facial hair? You can't find a finer collection of those things outside of putting radio personalities on TV.