A weekend of fishing, drinking and playing cards

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Mark | Poker and Life, Poker Articles

I just returned home from a so called “Gentlemen’s weekend” with my girlfriend’s dad and 15 of his friends who I have never met before. The “Gentlemen’s weekend” has been an annual event since 1996 and this year I was invited. To the outside world the primary theme of the trip is fishing but in reality it is more of a social get-together with good food, a lot of alcohol and semi-high roller (at least on my budget) card games.

The weekend started with a boat fishing trip out at sea. For those of you who haven’t read about my dreadful previous boat fishing trip on Malta, here’s a link: Malta fishing trip. I won’t go into details about the boat trip since none of us caught anything. Still I had a personal victory by not puking all over the place, so now it’s The Ocean: 1 Mark: 1.  The next day we went fishing in a really small put and take pond. We caught 1 fish in total the first two hours, then a truck came with 50kg of farmed trout  that were released into the pond. Within 1 hour we caught about 15 fish and I managed to land three 2-3kg trouts. I haven’t really caught much in lakes before so I didn’t really know how to kill the fish I landed. I was instructed to give them a karate style chop with my hand on their necks but the damn fish just kept flopping around. Must have handed out 20 or so karate chops, where one of them painfully hit the ground because the stupid fish dodged my stroke by flopping madly. Later I managed to drop one of my fish in the lake while rinsing it so I had to borrow a net to get it back. I think the other experienced anglers were quite amused. Still I caught more fish than my girlfriends dad, so all in all the fishing part of the weekend was a success.

On a side note I have decided that I do not like the put and take concept. It just seems stupid to breed a bunch of fish catch them, then release them in a small pond where they have no chance of escaping, then catch them again and kill them. I would much rather fish in the real nature from now on.

I cannot write anything about the large amounts of alcohol consumed and the naturally associated embarrassing moments….this is one of the unwritten rules of these weekends. However I will share with you a bad beat I received in the aforementioned semi-high roller card games. The game played is called “half-twelve” – it resembles Black Jack and it’s really simple. The object of the game is to obtain a card value of 11.5. Picture cards are valued at 0.5, Aces are valued 1 or 11 and the remaining cards are valued with their face value. The maximum number of cards than can be dealt to a player is 5, and if the combined values of the cards is below 11.5 this automatically counts as 11.5. If the combined value of the cards you have been dealt exceed 11.5 you have lost the hand.

All players start with 1 card and have the option of betting the pot or any fraction of it with the card they have or receiving another card (up to a maximum of 5 cards) for any fraction of the pot. When the player thinks his hand is good enough the bank then draws his hand. When both the player and the bank are satisfied with their hand there’s a showdown. If the player wins he takes whatever fraction of the pot he wagered. If the bank wins the money wagered enters into the pot for the next player to gamble for. If there is a tie, the bank wins by default. A round ends when the bank has dealt out all the cards in a deck.

Now onto the game in question. I am up about 30$ for the evening and it is the last round of betting before a change of bank. I have proclaimed that I want to stop playing but according to the rules I have to finish the round. The pot is 50$ when the player before is dealt an Ace. He bets the pot and stands on his Ace. Having an Ace is equivalent to having pocket rockets in poker so this is where you make your money. The bank then manages to turn 5 cards with a value below 11.5 and beats the player before me. The pot is now 100$ and I look down at an Ace. I of course bet the pot and stand with my Ace and then the bank turns an 8 and the a 3 to tie my ace and beat me by default. Alas!!!! I haven’t calculated the excact odds but they are pretty slim for the bank after turning an 8. For the weekend next year I will memorize all the odds and kill at the tables. For now I have entered the 100000$ Sunday tournament at Everest Poker where I hope to revenge my losses. Things however are not looking good but I’ll write about that later.

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