Happy Holidays to everyone out there (and Merry Christmas to those celebrating today). We will pick back up with our strategy series in the next few days. Shame on you all; almost no one listed things that temporarily or permanently expand or shrink your poker box.


I personally am in Florida with my mother's family. Interestingly, the title of professional poker player seems to have a ton of credibility with the current generation of grandparents. Apparently, soldiers from WWII were allotted a few months of unemployment after the war (regardless of if they had money/a job), so many chose to gamble with it. My grandfather's family owned a pool hall that had a poker room in the back. I learned that my grandfather used to hustle pool to pay the bills in high school and shrotly after. Just the way I would never play SNGs professionally, my grandpa explained that pool made him money, so he had no reason to go into the poker games.

Accordingly, we played a friendly game of poker last night. The five contestants (my dad, grandfather, myself and my two younger brothers) each started with 100 chips at 1/2 NL. It was a typical loose/passive game, but, as with all poker games, eventually shit goes down.

The first knockout occurred when I raised preflop with about 45 chips to 16 at 2/4 (we moved the blinds up out of boredom). My dad called and I shoved for eff a 3/4 PSB on a T84fd. I was dissapointed when my dad called all in (I covered), but somehow was flipping against 35hh. I faded and we had our first victim.

My youngest brother went out shortly after on fairly epic fashion. 3 handed to the flop of AKJdd. My grandpa donks, and I raise. My youngest brother cold calls with about a 1/4 PSB left for the turn. My grandpa calls and the Kh turn hits. My grandpa bets out again, I fold, David goes all in. He get called and announced flush, flipping Q5hh. To his dismay, a flush is actually five cards of the same suit, not of the same color, so he is drawing to a T river. A 9h harmlessly falls and he loses to K6o.

It was getting fairly late and my luckbox grandfather was getting tired. 3 handed, fairly deep, with all around the same stack sizes, I get KK in the SB. My grandpa calls OTB, and I raise big in the SB. My brother in the BB announces all in. A little humorous history about him. He is a D1 athlete in baseball who is projected round 1 or 2 in the MLB draft this year. He is obviously a very aggressive ballplayer and person in general, but it's funny when he plays poker because he plays incredibly weak/tight. For example, I would snap fold JJ in this spot, because he would call with all his non-amazing hands (amazing defined as either QQ+ or KK+ and AK), even if it meant putting in 60% of his stack preflop. My grandpa overcalls all in.

I flip kings, my brother has aces and is very excited to be in great position to win the tournament and go tell all his friends how he played well and won the family tournament. My grandpa flips T4cc. As you can imagine, the board ran out JT464. This "ridiculous play" left my brother confused and frustrated for the rest of the night. In fact, the first thing he said today was that he can't believe our grandpa "stayed in with such a bad hand what was he thinking!" My grandpa confidently replied, "Seeing seven cards gives you a lot of chances to win."

Hell, it seemed to work for him.

Happy Holidays,
Greg