A good result at the office, and observations on the Monday game

I played at the office tonight with Marc, John, Trey, Eric, and Dale, and it was a pretty big game in terms of big blind totals in each player's stack. Marc hit a great run of cards early and got his hands on quite a few chips. At one point, I had him dominated in a huge pot where I went all-in for the fourth raise preflop with AA and he called with the AQ. Unfortunately, the flop came down QKT, then the awful J on fourth street, followed by an eight of diamonds on the river for a chop.

Despite this tough split pot, I did manage to score a nice $52 profit in the game (it was really $57, but I lost a 3-player dealer's choice $5 freezeout with Dale and Eric when during a hand of hold'em I lost a coinflip of QQ vs. AK).

Tomorrow, of course, is the Monday night $11 game, which I hope will be a profitable one for me. Unfortunately, the Monday game, though I feel I still rate to profit in it, is no longer as enticing for me, since I began playing with the Friday night crowd. However, I still enjoy it quite a bit in terms of bragging rights, and first place usually pays pretty well. Plus, first place for the end-of-the-year jackpot should be a pretty good payday if I can win it.

It's sort of ironic about the games at the office being better than the Monday games, in a sense, because this year the buy-in for Monday night actually increased. I think in a way this increase was a way to make the payouts better, entice more rebuys, etc. but in a way it is also a compromise. Many of the Monday night players would not be comfortable at levels of much more than $20 to buy in, but some players, myself included, wanted to raise the stakes. I figure I rate to take money in the long run, so by playing higher I feel I can increase my expected value per tournament on average. So, the increase from the $5 + $0.25 buy in w/ one optional $5 + $0.50 to the $10 +$1 w/ unlimited $5 rebuys was a concession in a way. However, had it not increased, the gap in limits between the cash games on Friday and tournaments on Monday would mean, essentially, that the first place Monday payout would be roughly somewhere near the shortest stack's buy-in on Friday.