Trip Report: 2+2 game outside Denver

[elitegimp]

As mentioned in the other thread, Grasshopp3r hosted a 2+2 lagfest last night. I tried to pull a Hellmuth and showed up at 5:30 (5:00 start time), only to find Grasshopp3r working the grill while swede123 and Mondogarage hung out. Mondo was sporting a Hokie's t-shirt, which is an awesome ice-breaker (my brother and a bunch of my friends went to Tech); it turns out he and his wife just moved to the Denver area from ~10 minutes away from my parents' house. Small world. Swede, on the other hand, was wearing Dookie apparel... the dude has about 5 inches on me, though, so I kept my trap shut (go 'Heels!).

After about 10 minutes nubs showed up, sporting most of a case of Mickey 40s. Around the same time, the first round of meat came off the grill - some kickass venison steaks. We were chowing down and chatting when Patrick del Poker Grande showed up. So there were six of us total, and after some more food and drink (Grasshopp3r is also a home-brewer, which I think should be a requirement for hosting homegames) we decided that we might as well play some cards. This might be a good time to point out the Grasshopp3r had built his own octogonal table; much like the meat and beer, it was awesome. Maybe I'm just too used to playing homegames on folding card tables while drinking Pabst and eating Papa John's, but it was a huge step up in my book.

The line-up (in order, starting with the host):

1) Grasshopp3r
2) nubs
3) swede123
4) elitegimp
5) Patrick del Poker Grande
6) Mondogarage

We did a $50 buy-in dealer calls game -- .25/.50 blinds for no limit / pot limit games, .5/$1 blinds for limit / kill games, 5c antes and 25c/50c bets for stud games. It was dealer calls for an orbit + one, so 7 hands / round. Some of the games were pretty ridiculous:

* nubs was a big fan of double flop games -- that soon became double flop / high-low... I kept waiting for someone to get 1/8ed but it never happened. We did add the kill button for scooping at showdown, and somehow or other played 4 kill hands that orbit.

* Mondogarage was a big fan of Follow The Queen (7 stud, the first card up following a Q replaces whatever used to be wild as the new wild card). I ran extra hot (there's a picture of me with 7s full of As, which doesn't do justice to the fact that 7s were wild), which was all part of my strategy to not lose all my money.

* Grasshopp3r quickly realized that none of us knew how to play 5-draw, so he called that game twice (three times?). The last orbit he must've won 3 or 4 hands, including a $40 pot when he filled up against Mondo.

The only hand worth mentioning (in my opinion) was a hold 'em hand between Grasshopp3r and nubs. I'm not too sure I got the action right, but the dialog at the end of the hand is spot-on. Hell, I can't even remember if it was limit or not, but lets just pretend it was.

Mondo is SB, Grasshopp3r BB, nubs straddles. I think it folded to the BB who called, and nubs raised to show how awesome straddling is. Hopp3r calls, and it's 2 to the flop:

T 9 2, rainbow

Hopp3r checks, nubs bets, Hopp3r tanks for a little bit then calls.

Turn: [T 9 2] T

Hopp3r checks, nubs bets, Hopp3r tanks some more and then folds.

As he's collecting the pot, nubs tables Q4o and says "I really think I had the best hand there." In cartoon fashion, Grasshopp3r's eyes get to be the size of dinner plates and you can see the steam coming out of his ears. I'm trying really hard not to crack up, but I failed when nubs applied more pressure with "I had you beat, right?"

Back to non-poker: Hopp3r had this bottle of 140 proof Bourbon. I tried to man up and drink it, but ended up nursing about half a shot for like 7 hours. I swear I found two new chest hairs when I woke up this morning... The homebrewed Belgian sour brown I had was pretty tasty, and I swede gave high praise to the licorice stout while Mondo was downing the martinis and nubs was enjoying his 40s.

There was talk of getting together in Blackhawk or Central City the weekend after Memorial day, which I'm really hoping I'll be able to make. It was a great group of guys, and more fun than I usually have on Saturday nights.

Hopefully Hopp3r will hop in here (hahaha, get it?) and post some pictures, since he brought out the camera a couple hours into the game.