Last night we finally got around to having our Strugglers Poker Night. Unfortunately I did not do anywhere near as well as in my first poker game!

There were four of us present: myself, Matt, Phil and Simon. We started playing just after 8pm, and stuck to the plan until just after 10pm when we decided the chips were going too slowly and decided to double the ante, blinds and betting limits.

Matt had to leave at about 11.30pm and so we decied we’d allow cashing out, i.e. counting up your chips and taking away the equivalent amount of money. Matt was up by about £2.82!

At around midnight Simon ran out of chips leaving just Phil and I playing head to head. This was going far too slowly and I was seriously low on chips so I decided it would be best to call it a night at that point. Phil came away with over £4 of profit and so was the clear winner, whereas I was left with a loss of about £2.20!

I did make a few glaring errors later in the night due to being a bit tired and not paying enough attention but other than that I don’t think I played too badly, I was just unlucky.

I hope that we will do it again, but I think we need to change things a little so that the chips go faster. The increased level of betting worked well, but maybe we should look at playing no limit instead (so raises can be any amount)?

By the way, the poker set I bought for the occasion is really quite impressive. The chips are reassuringly heavy, and it came in a nice aluminium case.