Evolution

When the FAPA boys started playing NL Hold 'Em some five months ago, used to be that we'd go through three, sometimes even four rounds of table stakes a night, averaging just under two hours for a round.

You'd have Ricky more often than not being the early big stack, and pushing people out of most pots. Nik would be the "tighty-whitey" and play infrequently, and betting small at that. You'd have calls and raises on all sorts of pocket cards, few of them counting among Phil Helmuth's Top 10 Hands.

That was then.

Now, we'd be lucky to get two rounds in a night. Everyone seems to be playing better, playing smatter. People are questioning their play, questioning the play of others too. Chan even had his existential episode last weekend, which I'm sad to have missed.

That's what poker's all about. Playing, learning, playing some more.

We're glad to have come across Nick G's South Metro Group, and the dude's (and babe) at Solar Sports too. Our wider (and widening) poker world here in Metro Manila now gives us the opportunity to match wits with a diverse group of players, with skills ranging from absolute beginner to expert (BarbieManila's online playing career is an inspiration to many of us. If only we could be that successful online -- and if they'd only take our credit cards!).

More than anything, its playing against people outside our crew that has contributed to our poker education.

Imagine if we never got the chance to play against others, we'd still be raising on 2/4 suited!

We may have lost against our new friends, and we'll probably lose to them again, but that's all part of our tuition fee. Though sometimes, I kick myself for losing as much as I sometimes do. Oh well, tuition fee...

As WPT Champ Antonio Esfandiari says: "If you hit the target every time, that target's too damn big or too damn close."

First Deal

Its been about 6 months since the good old high school gang picked up poker, and we haven't cashed in since. Starting our poker odyssey with 7-card stud, we've since shifted to No Limit Hold 'Em, and haven't played any other way from our first NL game in January.

For our motley crew of poker afficionados, if we wanted to play, we had to make it happen. Here in the sunny Philippine Islands, there aren't any poker clubs, and neither is it offered at the casinos. So it was home games at least twice a week, with plastic chips we'd inherited (filched) from mah jong-playing relatives.

The thrill of the game and the chance to poke fun at each other kept us playing any day we could get at least five guys together, up to the wee hours of the morning (to the chagrin of my significant other), mostly at my house or Kix's. But something was missing, something aggravated by the sight of Gus Hansen shuffling his chips at the WPT...we needed real chips!

We searched Metro Manila to no avail -- not only were clay chips impossible to find, ordinary plastic chips were quite scarce too, So again, the FAPA boys had to make things happen, and found a great deal for a set of 500 chips from a store in Texas, which we had shipped to a friend's aunt in the East Coast...which finally made its way here.

Cutting to the chase, we finally got our set of 11.5 gram chips, and boy-oh-boy, our late-20's faces lit up like kids' at Christmas when we opened the set: 500 11.5-gram clay chips, 2 decks of Bee cards, 5 cut cards, and a genuine Dealer button!

And now the lack of a poker club doesn't seem so bad, as long as our Dealer button doesn't go missing...