Poker Night
Whump wasn't certain earlier today whether or not the group of local SF fans would be gathering for dinner tonight (or "beer n' skittles", as he calls it), so by mid-afternoon I accepted an invitation from John to play Poker with a group of people he knows.
Now, it's been many years - probably since college - since I last played Poker, so I was basically a neophyte going into this. I did okay, though; I got $10 worth of chips (yes, they play for the proverbial penny-ante stakes) and played until I'd lost that, which took about two hours. Actually, I was winning pots on a regular basis, it's just that I'd win small pots, and lose large ones, and, well, you can do the math.
Poker is an okay game, although it's way more fun to read about (say, in Tim Powers' novel Last Call) than to play. I think the one thing that bugs me most about it is that every hand has a different set of rules, sometimes (heck, often) a wildly different set of rules, so it's difficult to play enough hands of a single variant to get good at it - unless, presumably, you play a lot. But, really, when the game changes that much, it's not really the same game, and something about that basically doesn't sit well with me.
I was kind of bummed that I was far-and-away the first person to lose my money (I set myself a $10 limit because, well, what would be the point if I just kept throwing money in, especially if those small quantities of money don't mean much?). I'd play it again, but it's certainly in my mind a veryinferior game compared to Bridge, which I thought was cool from the outset.
Oh, and when I left, John - who drove - decided to stay. So he gave me his keys and I drove back. So I got back to Apple and put his car where he said, and then I thought, "Hmm, what the heck do I do with his keys?" I didn't have a phone number to call him at, and I certainly wasn't going to drive all the way back up there (I felt lame enough after being the first one to lose my money), but I think I reasoned out a solution that should work. I hope. Here's hoping I don't get an irate call from John at 2 am!
I'm contemplating jumping on the Clan Lord bandwagon, since I'd like to get into these on-line multi-player games (why? Don't ask me; I just do). I guess CL is going to go commercial in the next few weeks, so I'll have to decide if I want to pony up the money - or if I already have enough hobbies. Sheesh.
Anyway, both Ceej and Diane have played it and seem to like it, so maybe it's worth checking out.
But now, I should head home and rest up for the exercise tomorrow.
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