The birthday poker game was a big success...for me, at least. And, no, I don't think anyone let me win because it was my birthday.

Everyone sat down to buy-in at around 9PM. There was 6 of us: me, Reilly, Aram, Matt, Joe, and Jeff. The game was NL hold 'em, with a $20 buy-in. I only had 200 chips in the house, so everyone ended up with T380 -- 8 each of white ($1), red ($5), blue ($10), and black ($25) -- next time I'll make sure I have more chips, and run a T800-1000 stack buy-in.

The blind structure was kind of loose -- where I wanted to play more of a tournament with the blinds ratcheting in regular increments, we ended up playing $1/$2 until there were 4 players left; $2/$4 and then $5/$10 when there were 3; $10/$20 during heads up play.

Out of the six of us, I probably had the most experience playing, followed by Joe, Aram, Jay, Matt and Jeff. Joe was extremely aggressive, and everyone else was playing pretty loose -- I was playing tight, only because I figured it would be my luck to get sucked out early but one of the table rookies.

The gameplay itself didn't hold much in the way of memorable hands, or really bad beats, except this: It's down to 3 of us (me, Matt, Jeff). I'm dealt pocket fours in the big blind. The flop brought A93, and Matt limps in, I call, and Jeff folds. I'm the short stack at this point behind Matt and then Jeff. I'm figuring Matt for a straight draw, and when the next card is a 6 and he limps in again, I go all-in. He flips over A3! There were only 2 cards that were going to save me -- I had about a 4% chance of finding the 4 on the river...and BAM! I grab the 4 and double up!

The final results:
6. Jay
5. Joe
4. Aram
3. Jeff
2. Matt ($40)
1. Me! ($80)

I think I convinced everyone to play again next month, and I'm hoping to have a couple more folks added by then.

Its tough to get a well-organized game going when only one or two of the people really play/study poker. The best we've done is five in one night, usually its four. We have also moved from a tournament structure to a NL ring game with a maximum buy-in. Seemed to work out well last time.
-ash