Playing in a few tournaments has made me more aware of the fact that any two face cards will bring most people into a hand, even with a raise, and sometimes they are the raiser. Start trashing me for that statement kids. I’m not a poker expert but I do realize that raising with Q-J suited on the button with a few limpers is one thing – playing and/or raising with Q-J off suit UTG is not my idea of great play in a 10 handed game. I didn’t write a poker book so I’m not an authority.

Since I’m not a poker authority, I’ll just flat out state that I don’t feel Q-J, K-Q, or K-J are big hands in a 10 handed game. They can be…but it takes position, a flop, and certain players in the pot with you to make them a big hand, yet I watched players in my game putting in the last raise pre-flop with Q-J more than once recently.

I’ve really enjoyed playing the two tournaments I’ve been in at the Orleans Open. I’ve just taken the day, cleared out all of the ‘gotta do this – gotta do that – don’t forget this – oops I forgot that’ jumble out of my head and settled in to play poker. The first was NLH and the second was limit. I admit to being a lot more secure with the Limit than I am with NL but I liked playing both.

The dealers were better than I expected. That was nice. The one thing I did not like was when a dealer called for a decision (this happened twice) that they dealer stated what the player meant to do. Umnnnhhh! How can a dealer know what a player meant to do? We got a completely wrong decision on one incident but that wasn’t really any different than I expected. I’ve never believed it was possible to take even one card room and have all the floor people interpret the rules in the same manner…maybe somewhere, someday down the line, I will be proven wrong.

For all of you youngsters that don’t get the title, that’s from the Maverick theme song. Those boys always had case $$ pinned somewhere in their clothing. Wouldn’t it be nice if that were the case of the average poker player today?