Community Weekly Round-Up: home games, AMAs and more interviews

Barry Carter causes trouble in a home game as well as bringing you everything you need to know about the week ahead at PokerStrategy.com.

Last weekend I committed a cardinal sin of poker - trying to educate my opponents.

My first taste of poker [sometime back before the printing press when cards were all handwritten - MJP] was in a home game I had with my old school friends over ten years ago - I am delighted to say our game still takes place today, even though we are all "LOL old".

Although I have played in some of the finest casinos in the world, I fully adhere to our crappy home game rules for the simple fact that my friends prefer them. So we don't have burn cards, we are allowed to under-raise, and instead of playing with numerical values, we literally play with numbers of chips (so the third blind level is three chips/six chips). They are of course all wrong ways to play, but my friends don't play in casinos or online, so it's just easier for them to understand. 

I always bite my lip when someone makes a big mistake or says something like "that online poker is rigged", so I have no idea why I couldn't control myself last weekend. My friend limped with Ace-King, I had 7-5 suited in the big blind, and I flopped an open-ended straight flush draw. I decided to shove with my draw, my friend looked me up with ace high, and I hit a straight on the river.

Everyone was really angry with me and foolishly I started to yabber on about how I was the favourite to win the hand after I shoved. Nobody believed me and thought I had just got dumb lucky with seven high. From that point on, everyone wanted to "bust the pro".

I have never said I was a professional player (in fact I don't play that often) but none of my friends believe it is possible to have a full time job writing about poker, so they assume I must play cards for a living.

I ended up winning the game, nobody was happy about it. 

Thread of the week

A real opportunity this week on our forums as veteran coach mbml is doing an Ask Me Anything thread in our General Poker Forum. 

He really is the most prolific poster on the site and has probably commented on more hands than anyone else, with over 17,000 posts.

He has been with the site for five years and this really is not to be missed. 

LOL of the week

Last week we published a "Top Five Egos" feature and I was reminded of this classic interview with Brandon Cantu - totally worth it just for the hostess holding back the laughter at the end:

In case you missed it....

Tons of interviews last week, all of them very enjoyable to conduct and read. 

One man who I think really is at the heart of understanding what poker players want is Lee Jones, and we discussed the future of the game last week. 

Jeremy Ausmus is one of the winningest players of the last two years and we sat down to talk about how he keeps poker and his family commitments in check. 

You may not know him (yet) but bettinglife from Portugal has some really interesting ideas about how to manage the mental side of his game. 

Speaking of mindset, our very own Erik Stenqvist and Schnitzelfisch joined me to talk about goal setting. 

We also had two big announcements. We unveiled a new book section, and as a fledgling poker author myself obviously I am delighted about that. 

Last but not least, the small matter of our partnership with HUSNG.com, which is great news for all you heads-up grinders. 

What to watch out for this week

A busy week ahead (I always say that but it really is) for our Poker School.

You can expect live coaching from Pleno1, Unam and Uri Peleg. 

We also have new videos fromTomSom87, CollinMoshman, and KatieDozier314. 

You can expect more interviews, including a couple of our MTT coaches and one of the stars of Bet Raise Fold. 

I want your feedback on what you would like to see more or less of on the news pages of PokerStrategy.com. Let me know your thoughts, good and bad, in my editor thread below:

By Barry Carter l Barry Carter on Twitter