That Was a Crazy Game of Poker

Dave T. hosted the second straight road game for Donkeytown, and it turned out to be quite the game(s)!

Nine players started the $40 buy-in game with the equivalent of 200 big blinds, but from the start it was apparent that this was no "deep stack" poker.  The standard preflop raise for the first hour was anywhere from 6 to 12 times the big blind, something we have never seen before in Donkeytown!  It didn't help that a number of big hands and big flops were dealt, adding to the incredible action and huge pots right from the start!  Trips, full houses, straights and flushes seemed to be the norm.

And the Donkeytown quad drought, which lasted for more than a year, ended shortly thereafter!  I managed to squeeze into a rare unraised preflop pot in late position with 4-6 offsuit (Mark T.'s favorite hand), and the flop was 4-4-4!  Unluckily for Corky, he held J-J and I took a pretty large pot off of him.

After that, the action slowed down and it was apparent that the goal became surviving the bubble (top 3).  Along the way, Jeff suffered the biggest cooler of the night, holding Qd 7d on a board with three diamonds, one of them being the King of diamonds.  Holding the second nuts, he was put all in on the turn, and after some deliberation called Dave C., only to see the bad news -- Dave had the nut flush with Ad 2d, and Jeff was drawing dead.

Because of the early action, the bubble burst after only 3 hours of play, and with nearly everyone who busted out early still hanging around Dave T.'s pad, a chop was agreed upon between Tom, Dave T., and Dave C. in order to make room for a second game.  Tom had 39% of the chips, and took the top prize of $130; Dave T. had 35% of the chips and earned $122, while Dave C. had 26% of the chips and took $108.

Game 2 featured a $20 buy-in among 8 players.  The poker was more conventional, except for the unusual payout structure of $105-$55.  The bubble was again tight, and Jeff again took a tough beat to finish third when his pocket 10's was outflopped by Corky's two pair with 7-3.  Corky eventually took down the first prize over Dave T.

Thanks again to Dave T. for hosting and providing us with free pizza and snacks!  We hope to return someday to "Northeast Donkeytown"!

Quad Drought!

Donkeytown is way overdue for quads or a straight flush! During 2009-2010, we had a high hand contest for most of the 11 nights that we played, and we did not see anything higher than Aces Full once! Not even in the few games we played without a high hand contest!

Now, I assume that nobody failed to show their quads during that time, but I doubt anyone in our group would not show.

I did move all-in once with 10-K when i hit a pair of tens on the flop, and Dave T. must have sensed what was coming, because he folded QQ! And sure enough, we rabbited the last two cards, which of course were 10-10 which WOULD have made me quads.

To put in perspective, during Super Bowl weekend at Greg's, we saw quad QUEENS four times! And Darren also made a straight flush. And not too long ago, I flopped quad kings twice in one hour, and made quad kings again the next weekend.

It's just weird that we haven't seen it happen once in Donkeytown recently. Maybe Northeast Donkeytown will break the jinx on Friday. Just don't put me on the losing end...

West Donkeytown

Ian hosted 5 other players for three games on Saturday night in Spring Lake.  Because everyone who has played recently at Donkeytown was invited to the game, we decided to make it an officially-sanctioned Donkeytown game!

Jeremy J., Bryan O., Mike C., Tom H., and Dave T. joined "King Ian" for the first two $20 games.  The first one proved difficult to reach a conclusion, as the blinds reached the final levels before any players were eliminated.  Eventually, with the blinds at 3000/6000 for some time, Dave T. prevailed over Jeremy to take Game 1 and $80, while Jeremy pocketed $40.

Game 2 played with an accelerated blind structure to finish more quickly, and did it ever!  The blinds had just reached 800/1600 before Ian was the only one left standing, knocking out Tom on the 2nd heads-up hand.  The payouts were the same as Game 1, $80 for Ian and $40 for Tom.

Mike, Tom, Ian, and Dave remained for one final game, and the rich got richer while the poor got poorer.  Ian took 1st place yet again over Dave, earning them $60 and $20, respectively.

Ian has taken a stronghold of the "King of Donkeytown" title.  It will likely take multiple in-the-money finishes, and a sudden slump for Ian, for anybody to overtake him.  Jeremy passed Tom for 3rd place in the King standings, otherwise the order is unchanged near the top.

Thanks again to Ian for hosting the first-ever Donkeytown road game!