Cash Game In over my head (1 Viewer)

[mike32]

I have a poker buddy who is retired and plays every Monday night at a cigar store in a nice suburb of Detroit and has invited me to the game from time to time. I usually don't play because it's Monday, but I have once before. The family is gone so I say what the heck and play last night. My buddy who sat to my right was down $350 twenty minutes into the game and finished up $340 at the end of the night! They play pot matching burn games and things got out of hand with a game I know as twin towers but they called colors. I won't get into all game details but let's say at one point I was staring down a $360 pot that I would have to match if I lose and there is really no way to know (besides calling) if I have the nuts or not. I was literally sweating. I have not felt that out of my league in a while.

I ended up $25 on the night lol, one gentleman lost $800 on colors. I know to some here this would be no biggie, but I was scared $$$.

 

[detroitdad]

Wow. ....I'd be out for that game. Too big for me. Not a fan of the pot matching games.

 

[Trihonda]

They play pot matching burn games and things got out of hand with a game I know as twin towers but they called colors.

Sounds kinda like a game we'd play called "Between the sheets". But there were other pot matching games we'd play as well.. Ya, but we were usually playing for quarters, so it wasn't scary or painful.

 

[luckbox]

for some that is the exact thrill they seek....as some one replied to me one time when i asked what the stakes are, their reply was " what ever makes you feel just a bit uncomfortable"

i always remember that....i think it is a movie quote but i am too lazy to hunt it down....

 

[RagsPoker]

I'm not a fan of those games either. A game that sounds like the one you describe is called "In Between" around here.
A Cliff's note version of the game: Players ante, dealer flips up 2 cards (let's say 5 & Queen), player has option of taking a card that fits in between those two or passing . If he passes, then 2 more cards are flipped up for the next player. However, if he decides to play, he specifies amount he wants to play for (up to the size of the pot, let's say $20 for example)......if the draw card is in between the 5-Queen (let's say it's a Jack) then the player takes $20 out of the pot. If the draw card is outside those cards (i.e., a king) player has to put $20 in the pot. But If a 5 or Queen is the draw card, player must pay the pot double his bet ($40).
One other rule is each player must win an initial $2 before he is allowed to bet a larger amount up to the size of the pot.
I have seen pots get into the hundreds of dollars.....can really make you sweat. We once had a guy bet the pot (almost $200) with Ace / Deuce showing......an Ace flipped up, costing him nearly $400.

 

[72o]

Thanks for sharing, but not for me either. My heartburn acted up just reading about it! That would be a great time for a cigar break.

 

[BiGGyT]

 

[mike32]

I am very familiar with between the sheets/in between/acey deucey as well and this was a similar concept for sure. At least you can choose your bet size in that game, this one if you called the last bet you were in for the pot!

 

[Strike1st]

F that shit.

Thanks for the invite and a smoke...but i need to go puke and eat 5 rolls of Tums.

 

[12thMan]

Around my area we called that game "red dog", no clue why. And yeah, we would use quarters as well, if you didn't plan well enough in advance to stop by the bank to buy 3 or 4 rolls of quarters in advance then people would stop by a video game arcade or a self serve car wash to use the bill changer to get quarters, none of us even had dice chips yet!! lol My group of friends played that game in the late 90's when we were 17-19 year old kids. Even though it was only for quarters pots build fast in that game and I can distinctly remember the sting of seeing the ace flop to match my low card and knowing I had to match a $75 pot. $75 was an ungodly sum for me at 17 years old, I believe my paychecks were around $165 bucks every two weeks and I had insurance and a brand new fancy as fuck cell phone to pay for.

 

[72o]

Damn I got into a lot of trouble with Acey Deucey in college. I still think I'm paying off the cash advances from my credit cards from 20 years ago.

 

[detroitdad]

Around my area we called that game "red dog", no clue why. And yeah, we would use quarters as well, if you didn't plan well enough in advance to stop by the bank to buy 3 or 4 rolls of quarters in advance then people would stop by a video game arcade or a self serve car wash to use the bill changer to get quarters, none of us even had dice chips yet!! lol My group of friends played that game in the late 90's when we were 17-19 year old kids. Even though it was only for quarters pots build fast in that game and I can distinctly remember the sting of seeing the ace flop to match my low card and knowing I had to match a $75 pot. $75 was an ungodly sum for me at 17 years old, I believe my paychecks were around $165 bucks every two weeks and I had insurance and a brand new fancy as fuck cell phone to pay for.

cellphone at 17. Living big. I didn't get my first cell phone until I was 40, lol.

 

[DrStrange]

This game is a simple math problem. Do a little homework, come knowing the situations with +EV , -EV and roughly neutral EV.

The trick to the game is each person's risk tolerance. The game is no "fun" if played for pennys when you commonly play poker for dollars. If you end up in a game where you aren't comfortable with taking the risk, even with solid +EV, then it is time to quit.

These types of games are generally not "good for the game". The variance tends to bust people much quicker than holdem or other common poker games because every risk taken tends to be near the maximum tolerance of the players.

If the player has control of the bet sizing, the players with the greatest risk tolerance quickly end up with all the money as they are willing to try to take the whole pot when offered a +EV chance to do so. And even if they lose a try & match the pot, the more cautious players don't try for the even bigger pot letting the money go back into the hands of the risk takers. This isn't a slow process, it happens in just an orbit or two.

Bottom line - don't play these games if you are over your head. DrStrange

 

[phaze12]

acey deucy, guts and 2 card poker were our games of pot matching. always played last cause those games ended the night.

this is when you figured out who the degens are.

 

[12thMan]

Disclaimer: I am a pack rat. I try to pass it off as being too sentimental for my own good but it's probably just a medical condition, you'll probably see me on one of those shitty Discovery shows one day.

Anyway, just for you @detroitdad , this is 1997-98 era PIMPIN!!!! I honestly can't remember if this was my actual first phone or the one after, either way they were very similar, as soon as I found what looked like my first one in my box of old cellphones I just grabbed it. Magnolia High-Fi in Everett made the mistake of giving a 17 year old me credit for a cell phone that I shouldn't have been able to get. lol Minutes were unreal expensive, except from 7:00pm-7:00am M-T and 7pm Friday untill 7am Monday it was unlimited minutes. Everybodys phones would be covered with cobwebs up until 6:59pm then once it hit 7 they would just start melting from all the calls. lol I always played sports in highschool but I also worked part time from 15 or so on so I had to keep up with all my rich friends I went to high school with whose parents bought them theirs. My Dad and Mom worked there asses off to give me everything they could and I still wanted a cell phone so I got one and then promptly ran the bill up to about $400. Lessons learned. (yeah right, I'll never learn!)

 

[detroitdad]

That's awesome sir. FWIW I didn't buy my kids cell phones or pay for their bills. They could get them when they had a job and had the loot. Mean old detroitdad lol.

 

[guinness]

I love these games, but I was playing them long before the poker boom. Plus, I like to gamble and have alligator blood.

I graduated college in 1996. That summer, we had a weekly Wednesday game with fellow alumni. Basically the game was drink tequila, smoke weed, drink beers and tool the ever living hell out of each other. While the party side got a little big, we never put in big money since we were mostly recent single grads with like $50 in the bank, ton of student loans and looking/transitioning into our first salaried jobs. One of my closest friends, Whitey, decided it was smart to bring his new fiance to the game one night. Mistake. We got into a game of Acey Duecey (aka "In Between") where the pot reached $25. This was IOU level stakes at the time. Whitey ends up getting the dream. He gets an Ace, calls it high, then gets a deuce. BAM! He says "pot" and of course an Ace hits, requiring him to pay double ($50) since it posted and you always owe double when it posts.

Everyone yells "OOOOooooooHHHHHHH!!! WHITEY BABY!!!". We hear a neighbor bang on the wall to keep it down. Whitey's fiance then gets up from the couch, evaluates what just happened, screams at Whitey, grabs his ear and pulls him out of the apartment. It was one of the funniest experiences because Whitey is always known for getting into trouble so for him of all people to bring a fiance was just a recipe for disaster. The funnest games ever but of course its not nearly as fun with people you are not tight with like in OP spot obvs.

 

[12thMan]

That's awesome sir. FWIW I didn't buy my kids cell phones or pay for their bills. They could get them when they had a job and had the loot. Mean old detroitdad lol.

My wife and I are fortunate enough that we could give our kid whatever his heart desired (not talking a pony, just the normal bs kids want ) but we are the mean parents as well who make him work for everything he has. He did have a cell phone growing up but that was for us to get a hold of him and our peace of mind, he was not allowed to call a friend without asking first, it was more of a burden for him than a privilege. One Christmas ago my wife and I decided that we were going to get Ri a smart phone and add him to my plan. Every one of his friends had one and are on facebook, instagram, etc and I honestly felt bad knowing how good of a kid he is for him not to have one while literally every one around him had one and he didn't make a peep about it at 16, I would have been begging everyday. I bought him a new Iphone and told him he was responsible for buying a case and paying $50/month to cover his part of the bill and he had to put insurance on it. Not a bad deal for a kid but also far from a lot of his friends who have never had to pay/work for anything yet in there life. I am such a bipolar parent, I pray to whatever higher power there is that he will recognize one day that us being hard on him was out of love, but then sometimes I want to just give him the world because he's such an incredible kid and I like seeing him smile. The older he gets the worse it becomes for me because I don't want to spend the last of his youth he has left being hard on him and making him want to move far away form us. lol


Edit: And when I say in my previous post that I got a cell phone I meant I payed for it. My parents were not getting me a cell phone, if I wanted one it was on me.

 

[12thMan]

@guinness , the $75 I lost when I was 17 was most definitely an IOU from me spread out over a couple paychecks if I remember right. lol So awesome.

 

[BiGGyT]

A cell phone when I was 17

and it was attached to the car.
and cost about $200/month.

Think I was 35 when I got my first phone, didn't want one. Now, it is not a phone, more a mobile internet access device.

 

[ohikthxbye]

Between the sheets has caused some epic times in my past homegame. We play where the first ace can be called high or low (generally its better to call low) and the second ace is always high. In addition there was always a min bet of $1. Even if you got a 10 and a 10 you had to bet $1. If you cased on a pair you owed triple the pot.

You probably know where this is going... There was 320 in the pot when one of the guys got an Ace and called it low. Next card he gets an ace and its high. One of the aces was dead. He cheers and says POT!

Ace.

He had to go to the ATM lol. We chopped the pot shortly after as it got too big and the game would almost never end.

 

[12thMan]

My grandpa was in on the wave of the first cell phones in the Phoenix area, early 80's I think, maybe late 70's? I don't know, all I remember was him getting his "new" phone (his second one, this one was much improved over the original) installed in his truck when I was about 8, it had a box the size of a briefcase that had to be mounted behind the seat, a totally separate antenna, and the actual physical base the phone sat on up by the front seats. Coolest thing in the world when I was little.

 

[luckbox]

fitzgeralds used to run the game you describe...i know it as "between the sheets"...they called it "red dog"

how many $11 chips have you seen?

described here, played in the 1800's

http://www.junkets.ca/red-dog-basics.html

 

[12thMan]

fitzgeralds used to run the game you describe...i know it as "between the sheets"...they called it "red dog"

I have heard the game called a few things; between the sheets, acey-duecy, in between, etc etc etc, but up until your post I have never heard anybody else call it red dog. I assumed many years ago that it was a name that somehow got made up by someone in my group of friends but I am very excited to see that you have heard it called that before, I always hated calling it between the sheets when talking about it to other people, always liked the name red dog better!!!

 

[BGinGA]

My first cell phone, circa 1990. (my phone, but not me....)

 

[Skippy11]

I have had the Ace low, Ace high, on the board and flopped the Ace happen to me. Not a good feeling. I would still bet it again today though.

We still talk about that hand whenever someone new plays in our game.

Rick

 

[CHP TD]

if ya cant afford it dont play it.

there is more than onece i wished id taken that advice.

just for good measure another golden rule at the table is "Nor lender nor borrower be" Ahh Shakespere, has all the answers!

 

[Blaster]

My 1st ... circa mid 1980's ... Built in carry handle, two lead-acid batteries inside.

 

[dickzapper]

Thinking about it now, I remember Acey Deucey being in the Ceaser's Palace video game as Red Dog and thinking 'wtf is Red Dog.' That game was a really bad game, though, because you had to walk an avatar through the casino to play the games and the controls were horrible.

Back in the Blockbuster days.