pen missile

Hi everyone, I'm looking to start a home game and I wanted to get a nice set of cards to start it with. Anyone have any recommendations for sets they personally like/have good things to say about? I think I want a plastic set, but I'm definitely open to suggestions. I was reading some reviews for some of the better looking sets on theory11.com, but some of them say things like "(And yes, the hidden one-way marks are handy - it was a few months before I discovered them.)" which leaves me thinking I might be buying cards that aren't necessarily made for playing poker. I want a slick, cheap, unmarked deck that's stylish enough to play with at weekend games regularly. If you have any suggestions on sites to buy from, let me know too!

Thanks .

0 votes

Comments (9)

So I'm in this live single table tournament with 9 people last night. It's about half-half with people who know what they're doing and people who don't have any idea what's going on. There's one Korean guy who is actually a pretty good player, he's cashed for a couple grand in stars tournaments playing like 5-10 dollar buyins.

Anyway if you read my last blog, there's this retarded donk that tilts me like no other, so I've been devising countermeasures for him. I started wearing a hooded jacket and listening to an ipod so I don't have to listen to him talk. I try not to look at him and just stare at the felt with my hood on, occasionally smoking a cigarette.

In response to this, he's devised another way to tilt me: he's invited his friend. His friend is a Korean businessman in his late 50s who can't speak English very well and has no fucking idea what he's doing at the table. Everything we say to him has to be translated, so we're constantly telling donk #1 to tell his friend to fucking post the blinds or how to deal the flop or that it's his turn to act and the blinds are 200/400 because they go up every 20 minutes.

So we're playing last night and this girl who plays with us (a terrible luckbox who calls everything and always hits while mixing in the occasional 4x pot raise) is heads-up with the dude who has no idea what he's doing in like the third hand of the tournament. He raises preflop, she donk reraises from the big blind, he calls. The flop is 779 rainbow. She raises, he calls, turn is a blank and they both shove their chips in. She flips aces and he flips pocket 9s for a full house. Good hand, well played, whatever, get on with it, the blinds are halfway to going up and we've played 3 hands. I'm concerned that this idiot has a shit ton of chips because I act before him and the one good player is between us.

Anyway next hand he ends up getting all-in again on a board that's like 23K48. The dude to his left is drunk off his ass and shows K9 for a pair of kings. He flips an A2o and waits for someone to tell him if he's won. We explain to him that he has a pair of 2s and it loses to a pair of kings and I click the safety off my gun and check the chamber for the bullet I want to shoot myself with.

A bit later in the tournament, the dude who doubled up off of the idiot is dealing, still drunk off his ass, taking 5 seconds to respond to anything while his brain registers it and generally just being retarded. I've got T9s in the hijack and I raise it to 3x the blinds. 2 callers to the flop, one of them drunkass, and the flop comes JT7 rainbow. The first guy checks, I cbet 2/3 the pot, dude asks me how much it is and calls after he figures out how to make that amount with his chips. ("Two pinks and a yellow. No, one more pink. Okay but put back that white. Yes. Okay.")

So we get to the turn and another jack hits. I don't think he's got a jack or a ten because he's been bluffing everyone off of pots all night with shit like K4o and I figure if I bet 4k, a little less than a third of the pot, I can take it down or get him to call with a worse hand like one overcard with no draw.

Anyway, I bet the 4k and we look over to him. The donk that tilts me is like HAY U MIXED UR CARDS INTO THE BURN CARDS to the drunk dude. A bunch of havoc ensues and after a good deal of yelling while I listen to "Ackrite" on my ipod I get fed up and tell drunkass to tell tilt-donk his hand and have him search the muck for it. Whatever, I don't care. So tilt-donk goes over, drunkass whispers in his ear, and tilt-donk reaches over and lifts the muck up, peering down the table at it. Drunkass is peering right beside him. I start berating these idiots:

"Dude what the hell are you doing? Don't show him the fucking cards."

"I'm only showing him the top two."

"That's exactly my fucking point, what if the top two weren't his cards? Jesus christ why did we have him tell you his hand in the first place if he was just going to search the entire burn for it?"

"It's okay, he told me his hand."

I'm steaming fucking mad at this point. I just want to get this hand over with. The dude with no idea what's going on is speaking to me in Korean and I don't make any effort to understand it, tilt-donk is acting like I'm making a big deal out of nothing and drunkass in the meantime throws three 5k chips into the pot, which is more than my stack thanks to Ace-deuce, who's still talking to me in Korean.

"ALRIGHT, that puts me all-in. Whatever I call."

Sure enough, he flips pocket jacks for four of a kind and I just say "good game" and leave.

0 votes

Comments (7)

K so I play a live donkament like 4 times a week with the same guys for low stakes, like $20~ USD buyin and the prize pool usually pays top 3 with winner taking half and the other two splitting 2/3 1/3. I'm living in Korea and basically I crush everyone I play with because they're all huge donks, probably me included but the game is easy and they give off so many tells that they might as well be playing with their hands up.

There's one idiot there who just makes me rage, though. He's easy money but people tend to feed the fish here so he always has a huge chipstack from his strategy, which is never bluff/rarely fold, which is in stark contrast to the never value bet/always bluff strategy that everyone else employs. The problem is that he puts me on tilt with his comments because he thinks he's a sick player and that nobody makes decisions as hard as him.

Every fecking hand he's taking 2 minutes to make his damn decision, and because I taught him a little bit when he first started, he shows me every hand to get a compliment for his decision making process. There was a four handed 3-bet hand to the flop (lol) and it came something like 4 6 J rainbow. Someone donk bet 1/3 the pot and he's second action, so he takes like a minute before leaning over while going "ARRRRRGH" super fucking loud and showing me ATo.

So I'm like half laughing half pissed that he's taking 3 years to fold his shit hand on a shit flop, but i'm still complacent cuz I got a stack thats pretty big and im sitting tight. He folds and we move on.

A few hands later he folded preflop to a raise and the flop came 8 A 2 or something stupid, and he leans over to the guy next to him, searches the muck for his cards, shows them to the guy and points with two fingers at the ace and the deuce, while the other two guys are betting. I'm like wtf are you doing stop fucking talking about the hand while its being played holy shit and he's like "OH sorry you're right I didn't realize" and suddenly I'm on tilt.

I'd think he was doing this shit to tilt me on purpose but I'm pretty sure he's too stupid, so I light a cig and walk around outside a bit before coming back in. I sit back down and the very next hand he folds somewhere in the middle and the river comes giving him like J8 two pair or something and he gets all super fucking loud going ARRRRRGGGGHHHHHH and pounding the table and shit. "I WOULD HAVE WON THAT HAND" he yells, flipping his J8. The guy who took it down on the river show KJ for a higher 2p and he's like "LOL I made a really good fold" and I just want to fucking punch him really bad.

Anyway later on I flopped top two on the chip leader and he reraised me all in with a straight draw that hit so I was out and the dude is there trying to give me advice on why i should have folded my two pair on a flop where im crushing and how to read the other guy's hand so I just say "ya, tru" and get up and leave.

Does anyone know of any good antidepressants or drugs that I can just zone this guy out with? Obv not too serious but like if you got anything that works...

0 votes

Comments (7)