Home game

I held my weekly home poker tourney last night. $30 buy-in, freezeout. Using DoD Tournament Software, we had a real structure going, or so I thought.
First off, let me say my friends can be real f-ing annoying. Yelling and arguing is just standard procedure. With one of my buddies especially, life is not complete with some meaningless shouting contest, every miniscule detail must argued about. What he is in technical terms is, "a little bitch." Bitch, bitch, bitch. bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch ALL NIGHT LONG. Of course, we've all known each other for a long time,... so I can sometimes defuse the screaming. Not last night, because we had another player who likes to "push buttons." He likes to instigate. So we had one player bitching about everything, and another player pushing his buttons, and me steaming from a my crappy run of cards... All of us screaming at too high-a-volume... (cue blood rushing to face, and steam from ears.)
"SHUT THE F*** UP!"

In skiing, I consider someone a good skier if they can successfully perform on all terrains: groomed, crud, ice, cement, powder, whatever. In poker, I should be able to play my best game under the most difficult circumstances. It was sort of like playing poker while a drill seargeant barks insults at you. I ought to consider this a lesson in playing under pressure.

This is no excuse though. Maybe I played scared poker, but I honestly got SHIT cards last night. Absolute shit. Meanwhile the ADD OCD maniacs at the table ran the show making big raises at every chance. When I finally made my stand, it was post flop, I held top pair, my opponent flips over top pair AND bottom pair. I drew dead and got knocked out. F***!

Game two ended up being a much better game. We played a short handed tourney, with fast blinds,... I got knocked out middle pack when my A9 got dominated by AT. But at least we played some decent poker. I bluffed at a couple pots, and actually had a shot at a comeback. Crap.

Lesson: Keep your head in the game despite annoyingly loud and obnoxious players.