Casino Gang(Real)

  Playing poker in a casino was certainly very interesting. I went there with some friends as part of a celebration of an 18th birthday, notably the age required to be able to play in the casino. The main point of the night was definitely just seeing how crazy “real” poker is. My friends and I casually play poker occasionally and while it most certainly isn’t serious or high level, I did sorta expect that to prepare me a bit for the casino environment. Of course it most certainly isn’t the case. I think the biggest rules thing for me was the requirement to keep the cards on the table. I come from the TCG world where we get the luxury of being able to hold our cards in our hands so that we always have access to them. At the poker table, this is very  different. Obviously, people can take the cards off the table to cheat and stuff, but it made it really annoying to keep track of how my current position on the table was. The other thing was trying to keep track of table order. The game moves FAST and there were certainly a few times where I would think I would have a little time to think when suddenly I was being asked if I was going to raise on the current bets. I think I let it get to me a bit and aggressively folded hands on the pressure of slowing down the table. I think I did fold pretty correctly despite that. We were playing people who would just very easily rebuy in with $100 anytime they ran out of money while our group was most certainly playing without that fallback ability. I would’ve at least liked a few more secure hands though. It was a lot of really mid hands which were very iffy keeps except for one godly hand I managed to pull off. I had a diamond flush and very aggressively called into the person at the table with the most chips. I thought I had bluffed him but to my surprise, he blew me out with a full house which I forgot was better than a flush. He was a very good player and I’m glad that despite him cleaning up two of us, he was a very nice guy. Reminds me of the people who helped me learn MTG. Very nice older folks who would be very kind in pointing out mistakes/giving advice while also stomping you with a very clear skill advantage in the game. In fact, despite some degen people the whole table was really nice. It did have the same LGS vibe except we were playing poker instead of TCGs. 

To bring that point into relevance, our experienced friend was giving us a crash course on playing and I noticed the similarities to my most played MTG format: commander. Like commander, poker is very much a multiplayer game that comes with all of the mechanical considerations. Player position and tendencies are two things that are very much shared across the two games. You can use your position at the table to read how people are feeling about their hands, much like how in commander you can see how players use their priority to respond to see what interaction they may/may not have. It’s genuinely very interesting. I think the one thing that makes it harder for me to adapt is that I’m used to playing around MTG related interaction, not poker’s. Poker’s interaction is primarily two things from what I’ve gathered: betting and social. Betting is simple, why are people betting the way they are? Are they bluffing? Are they trying to force people out? That is most certainly the hardest thing for me to read. Social is also a different thing. Social cues can almost certainly be read and learned especially when playing against newer/less serious players. Mastering that can definitely help you know when to push or fold against certain players at the table. These two sides are both similar and yet so different to MTG. Betting is a very simple interaction and yet it offers so much more complexity in trying to read it. In Magic, I can confidently assume things based on what mana people have and don’t have, but poker I don’t really know if it’s a bluff if I’m being raised $20. It is certainly something that I will have to be more mindful of if I ever make the attempt to really learn how to play poker.

To the casino’s credit, the dealers were very chill with small rules infractions and they made the whole experience very smooth. The table we played with were also pretty fun, everyone was having a pretty good time and the environment was overall very positive, if not really expensive. There are certainly more things/aspects of the experience I can/should cover, but this is sorta my raw reaction to playing. I will definitely be revisiting this topic if I ever find myself playing more poker in the future as it is most certainly a very interesting game to learn.