Mom and I went up to the Kewadin Casino in St. Ignace for the night. We got there around 3:30, but the poker room didn’t open until 4:00, so I had a seat at the bar to watch the Red Wings and have a beer. After awhile I finally decided to check out the poker room.

There was only one table going (the entire night) and it was a dealer’s choice table and the limits were 3-5-10-10 for each betting round. When it was your turn “on the button” you could call one of four games: Texas Hold’em, Omaha Hold’em, Pineapple, or Crazy Pineapple. You could also play it as high or high-low (8 or better). Just about half of the table was calling Omaha High-Low, a few of us were playing straight Texas, and the others were playing different versions of Pineapple.

I’ve primarily played Texas Hold’em since I’ve been playing poker so I didn’t know much about what hands I needed to win with Omaha. Pineapple is really easy, just like Texas Hold’em actually. In both version of Pineapple (Reg. and Crazy) you get 3 cards. If playing Crazy Pineapple, you throw away card after the flop. If playing regular Pineapple, you throw away one card before the flop. The rest is played exactly like Texas.

I played for about 5 hours and came out $10 ahead. In actuality though, I came out $336 ahead. In the poker rooms they have what are called bad beat jackpots. In order to qualify, one player has to have a very high hand beat by another hand. For the jackpots in this casino aces full had to be beat in Texas, any 4 of a kind beat in the Pineapple games, and 4 sixes had to be beat in Omaha. Well…while playing Omaha, 4 nines were beat by 4 queens. The jackpot was worth over $10,400 so the player who got beat (had 4 nines) wins 50% of the jackpot, the player who won the hand gets 25% of the jackpot, and the remaining 25% is split between the other players at the table. I ended up getting $326.19. It was pretty sweet when it happened.

Overall for the night I was very pleased in how I ended up ahead especially since I’ve never played Omaha for this much money and have never played Pineapple. If I would have had a little more experience I would have won probably an extra $100, but that is how you learn I guess. I still prefer to play Texas Hold’em anyday! These high-low games aren’t for me.

I also sat at a Blackjack table for the first time ever and left with an extra $8. I really had no clue what I was doing, so again, I did well, but should have won more. I’ll have to do some reading on stratagies.

It was a fun night!