Poker

I played poker with Johnathan and several of his friends last night, and I made a killing! I was actually feeling guilty, because I won almost every hand I stayed in, and I stayed in most of the hands. It's not that I'm terribly talented at bluffing or combinatorics- I just kept getting ridiculously good hands.

I bought in to the game for $10, and I won $42.80, although I rounded down because I felt guilty enough leaving early with most of the money- having to split a quarter from the bank would have been mortifying.

We had an interesting debate in one hand. I believe the game was 7 card stud, (2 down, 4 up, optional $0.50 to have the last card face up), with the twist that your LOWEST face-down card was wild for you. So if you have pocket 4s, they're both wild, and you could pay to have the last card up so that you can't draw a 2 or 3 and break your wild pair.

I had pocket 4s, and then they dealt me a pair of 10s face up. That's 4 of a kind, so I started raising as much as possible without scaring anybody off. My last card was face up, another 4, so *I* knew it was 5 of a kind. I could tell the other two guys thought they were hot stuff as well, but I thought 5 of a kind was unbeatable, so I just did the maximum raise every time.

One of my opponents, though, had a straight royal flush. 10-A of clubs. Both of us thought our hand was the highest, so dealer decided we should split the pot. But I did some discreet googling, and I believe I was vindicated.

(note- I didn't write that article, I swear! There were a few other sources that said the same thing. And I think combinatorics was on my side, although I don't remember much from that class.)