Booze it Up For +EV

If you are like me you are always looking for something extra to boost your edge in a game. If I'm playing online, I try to get that edge through table selection. There are generally hundreds of tables going on sites like Party Poker, so it's not hard to find a loose one. But if I'm playing with my friends I generally don't have that option. Now I'm not trying to say I'm unpopular, but getting several hundred games together would be a bit of a stretch.

But luckily there is an easy solution to making even a tight home game juicy. And that would be beer… the cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems. Now if you haven't had the privilege of playing with drunken players you don't know what you are missing. No pair and no draw??? Sounds good enough to call for them. Like they say, if you're trying to beat a game, skill can kill, but liquor is quicker.

So if you are organizing a home game, just make sure that the alcohol is flowing freely. In fact you might want to break it out before the game if you are waiting on someone. Often you can even subsidize all of your booze expenditures by having every one toss in a few extra bucks in the buy in.

So now that you've got your friends all liquored up how should you play against them? I recommend playing a loose, aggressive game. You want to see a lot of cheap flops, and when you do hit a hand bet it, because you will get called down. The value of preflop raises decreases if your opponents are drunk, because it is very hard to get them to lay down hands, so you don't want to invest a lot of money before you know what you have. Additionally bluffs are right out. There are very few mistakes that will cost you more than trying to bluff an intoxicated person out of a pot who is more than happy to call you down with A-7.

There is some question of how ethical it is to use this method. After all they are your friends right? With that being said I would have no hesitation at all from taking 10-20 bucks away from a guy even if he didn't know which side of the card had the values, but I would cut them off from playing before they lost too much and it would endanger tuition and rent.