Playing for funsies

Just played a 90-person $2.20 SNG with Cardgrrl for fun. I was a little surprised to find that it allowed us both to register, since we were using the same IP address, but it did. We ended up finishing in 3rd and 4th places, which was nice:



It's nice when you play with a friend and both end up doing about equally well.

The fun was only tarnished by the final two players engaging in obnoxious, mutual-fan-club chat about how brilliant they were and how donktastic everybody else was. Please, dudes--if you're bragging about being better than the average $2 tournament player, you have set the bar pretty low for yourselves.

In one hand, I had aces hold up against an open-ended straight flush draw. Cardgrrl and I disagreed about our guesses as to the percentages when the money went in on the flop. I thought my opponent was ahead about 52/48. She thought he had it about 60/40. But surprisingly, the truth is that I had a 51/49 edge, according to both PokerStove and the odds calculator at CardPlayer.com:



I was too busy playing to think about why the percentages wouldn't be in his favor, when he had 15 outs. But now that the tournament is over and I'm looking at it again, the reason is obviously the paired flop. That gives me four cards (two aces and two fours) to make a full house, which he could then only beat by hitting his straight flush. Put a blank there (e.g., 2s or Js) instead of a second 4, and he is ahead about 56/44--halfway between my estimate and Cardgrrl's.