My friend Logan is a third-year law student at Harvard and hosts a poker game most Wednesday nights. This is the third year he’s had it, and it’s evolution has been interesting. Three years ago, it was a $.25/$.50 Pot Limit Hold ‘Em game with a $25 buy-in. I remember once losing more than $50 there and losing sleep over it.
At that time, I was the only non-HLS student there, and though I was better than the average player in the game, I was quite bad. There was only one guy there, Paul, who could be called a poker player. He was a semi-professional, having made a few thousand playing 8/16 Fixed Limit Hold ‘Em at Commerce the previous summer. He made good reads, knew how to play position and manipulate pot size, etc. He consistently got the best of us and rarely had a losing night. I don’t remember how I did overall for that first year, which means I probably lost money. The only people I was beating consistently were some frat boy types who showed up mostly to drink the free beer and would literally give their money away.
The next year was a whole new ballgame. By that time I had started playing poker seriously, and though I was still at small stakes, I had improved a ton. I used to be a very predictable tight aggressive (bordering on tight-weak) player. But I came back to the game in September with a loose and aggressive streak in me. I had just re-read Doyle Brunson’s Super/System and was really starting to get the importance of implied odds and mixing up my play.
I took a lot of people by surprise the first few weeks, before they realized I had a brand new game. Logan toughened up a lot, some of the wildest players from the previous year were gone, and the ones who remained were like the old me: overly tight and predictable, “solid” in the bad sense of the word. A new player named Darren took over the role of wildcard, often showing up with complete garbage after putting in the 4th bet preflop or check-raising the flop and shoving the turn. At first I figured him for a fish, but eventually I came to respect his game. As we became better friends, he revealed that he won at as high as 5/10 NL online and had played in the WSOP main event.
By the beginning of 2006, the game had turned into a sawmill. We raised the buyin to $50 and made the game No Limit. Darren, Paul, Logan, and I collectively broke most of the other regulars to the point where they stopped showing up. Logan started reaching out to new poker communities, recruiting players from some underground clubs in Boston and from e-mail lists at other universities.
By this point the stakes were insignificant enough compared to what we were making online that we didn’t bother to try to rope in any new players. Sometimes someone would catch some beginner’s luck and leave their first night in the game as a winner, but if they started coming regularly, they always lost it back with interest. Most came once, lost a few buyins, and never came back.
It’s been more of the same this year. Paul hasn’t been playing much poker and has probably fallen behind the learning curve relative to the rest of us. He’s shown up maybe twice. The game now has a $60 buy-in, increasing to $100 later in the night, when stacks are deep. Logan, Darren, and I all play pretty maniacally, which has chased away most of the remaining solid regulars. New, less experienced players trickle in from time to time but generally don’t last long. The only regulars we’ve gained are Justin, a law school student a year or two behind Logan, and Todd, a semi-pro whom I know from the 2+2 message boards (TedTodd is his name on there).
Justin is a smart player who either underestimated us initially or just didn’t have a lot of experience playing in a superaggressive game. Anyway, he was a little too predictable at first, but has adapted well. He could still stand to be a bit more creative, but he’s been improving quickly and could easily become one of the best players in the game. I can’t say as much about Todd because he’s only played twice so far, but he seems pretty good and will definitely improve by playing in our game.
And improvement is what our poker night is about. Most of these guys are much better than the regulars I play with at stakes ten times as high. I do win money at this game, but I could win a lot more playing a lot of other games. This game gives me a chance to practice playing very deep-stacked poker against good, tricky players at stakes where I don’t mind taking risks and trying new things.