Mexican Poker

At last, I found a live game in Santiago.

I've been dying to get my hands on some real chips, pass a dealer button, eat pizza, drink beer and be able to look people in the eye as I take their money. I finally found my chance Tuesday night.

It was a typical home game, attended by American English speakers who play poker regularly enough but don't practice or know much.

We ordered 2-for-1 Domino's pizza, cracked open the Flaming Cock whiskey, and began playing with a 10,000 peso ($19) buy-in.

Many of the games were ridiculous, ghetto varieties of poker that feel like an embarrassment to play. We'd play one round of 400/800 (peso) limit hold em, followed by a round of dealer's choice.

These dealer's choice games are some of the most despicable debasements of poker: follow the queen, black widow, baseball, five card draw with two dips of two, seven card stud with a low Chicago and wild cards, the four game, and other crap.

I doubled up pretty early when I made four 8s in five-card draw (with wild cards, of course), and the rest of the night (except for the limit hold em, which was easy enough to win) ran fairly dry.

The last game was the best: Mexican poker.

I'm not going to explain all the rules here, but it's a variety of five card draw in which you can trade in your hand for the one on the board, you can trade individual cards in your hand from the one on the board, and wild cards are determined by the size of a progressive pot.

Everyone had to put up 4,500 pesos (nearly $9), and there were limited rebuys, so the pot was fairly large for a small home game. Winner takes all of the eventual $72 pot.

I held a significant lead when the game got heads-up -- I had all three of my original stacks compared to my opponent's single remaining stack (when you run out of stacks you lose. It's kind of complicated).

Then I was dealt a beautiful five cards: AKQT9 -- a flush, and nearly a royal one at that.

I knocked immediately, feeling pretty smug.

But then the other guy, Peden, flipped over four Jacks, using one wild card.

The next hand, he made another quad.

On the last hand, he was dealt a flush.

Can't compete with that.

Even so, I still finished with 13,400 pesos ($25) for a small profit on my buy-in.

I'll definitely be back. It felt good to be back at the card table after so long in front of my laptop.

Link:
Play Poker SAABPO Style!