Poker Night

My girlfriend and I sometimes go to an Irish pub in Seattle called Fadó for trivia night. The goal is to correctly answer as many questions as possible. There is a host with a microphone who asks five questions in a row about a particular subject such as history or entertainment. The teams right down the answers on paper and hand them in at the end of each round. There are at least ten or fifteen rounds I think. It lasts at least two hours.

The trivia tournament is on Wednesday nights. Some time ago I read about a weekly poker tournament on Fadó's Web site but for some reason I never bothered to check it out. I used to play poker every night for a few weeks a couple of years ago on Yahoo Games but haven't since. I was taking a break from work yesterday afternoon and saw the tournament was on in the evening and decided to give it a shot. It starts at 6:30 so at 5:00 I went online to refresh my game-play. I got into it again after a few tries.

I got to the pub just before 6:30 and grabbed a seat at one of the three or four available tables. Each table has eight players so I think there is a maximum of 32 players. I think there are probably 25-28 players. Each player gets $500 in chips and the play continues until there are 16 players left. Actually a player can move to a different table at anytime because some tables might empty out sooner and moving evens out the number of player/table.

I started out slow and lost a few bucks the first few rounds but was soon winning a few. There are no staffed dealers at the table--the players take turns dealing. I was a little shaky doing that since I've never done it before and needed assistance from other players. Most of the guys and gals there were pretty nice although there were a couple of stiffs who actually cared about nothing else but winning the grand prize of a $25 gift certificate! I don't think they were having too much fun. One big baboon got mad at me for beating him because he thought I was playing dumb, which I was at times just to make it more fun.

I was probably second in the money count at our table when we split up to join the two final tables. I lost the first hand when the guy who was ahead of me went all in on a pair of kings. I had one ace and was hoping for another one on the final two cards. I didn't get it. Oh well. By that time I had played for 2 hours. So I think the play could have lasted at least another hour and a half. That's a lot of poker, but the time goes by really fast. I enjoyed it and I'll be back hopefully next week.

By the way, Fadó is a chain, which surprised me when I found out that it was one because it doesn't feel like it. Part of it is because it's downtown and on the first floor of a larger building; it's also well done inside (lots of wood) and feels hospitable.