Playing Poker with Friends

In order to collect the necessary information for this post, I held a small poker night at my place a couple of nights ago. I invited some of my good friends over because we hadn't caught up in a couple of weeks, and poker was the perfect game to bond and relax over. We munched on some good grub and a couple of drinks, so it was surely a great night.

In determining the skill level of all of the players, I would say that we were all at the same level. Though, my friend Max is a card-playing fiend. Whenever my friends and I play cards, he takes the pot. He was actually among the last players standing during our game, but we had to end early because it was starting to get late. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if he wins when we continue our game. Other than that, we were at at the same skill level. In the past, we've only played poker for fun, and this night really wasn't any different. The game was played in the middle of a long and entertaining conversation, which is the best way to play, in my opinion. To add, none of my friends are very competitive, especially myself. I ended up applauding and congratulating other people for winning a hand, which I know isn't the norm for many other people.

As the game proceeded, the mood in the room stayed pretty consistent. A couple of my friends made some pretty extreme bets in the beginning of the game (the debate of who wins between a flush and a straight definitely stirred up the game a bit) and ended up losing a lot of their chips. This caused them to be a bit more aggressive in playing, which involved riskier moves and higher bets being made. For one of my friends, it worked really, really well, and he made down to the final three. Thankfully, I wasn't one of these players, so I was pretty relaxed throughout the entire game.

I feel that luck didn't play a role in how the game was played. If anything, I was the only one who exhibited some kind of luck during the game. There were many times where I just threw in