The Mt. Otis CJ Memorial Game

This past Saturday, I had the honor and the pleasure of being invited back to Mt. Otis for a poker game with those crazy kids from UpForPoker. CJ was in town for a rare visit and Otis had decided that since none of us could find our way north for Bash at the Boathouse, we'd have to have a little Southern get together to compensate.

I arrived right around 8pm as directed and was greeted by a few familiar faces. I got to get a look at mini-Otis who has more hair than I do atop his head. I'm not jealous, I shave mine by choice man, by choice!

The consensus of the poker playing attendees was that we'd do a no-limit ring game with .25/.50 blinds and a max $30 buy-in. Sounded great to me, I'd never played a live no-limit ring game and I anticipated loads of fun.

Very eary on, and I mean very early, I became an early big-stack having nearly doubled my buy-in through both getting some hands and a few key bluffs. Readers of UpForPoker may recall this little post:

Didja Know?

As per my master plan, I'm dealt the Hammer and raise the blinds to $3 and get a cold call from Otis and another player. The flop is K-high junk with no cards matching my monster. Undeterred, I bet out $5 and Otis goes into the tank for a bit. He mucks as does the other player and I proudly show my Hammer. What did Otis muck? The Hiltons. He said he put me on A,K and folded. A small bit of revenge that I had to blog about. I'm sure he understands.

To his credit, you can't bluff out bad players and Otis, I believe, finished the evening way up. Recall on one of the WSOP episodes when Thunder Keller got bluffed out of his Hiltons by Sousa who held crap. Keller went on to win that tournament, so I offer my kudos to Otis who easily finished the night better than I.

How did I end up fairing? Um, not so good. I had two all-ins go awry, getting beat by the only lady player at the table. The first hand I called Tracy's pre-flop raise w/K,J hearts. The flop was 9,T,J rainbow and she bet out $5. I raised to $10 and she came back all-in for only an additional $3 or $4. She showed her A,Q giving her an outside straight draw. The turn brought another J which removed her K outs. Well the river brought an 8 and I grabbed my wallet for another buy-in.

The second buy-in went to Tracy too as I was all in with A,Q on an A-high flop. TeamScottSmith was also in the hand up until the turn. He ended up folding his A,Q when the board rivered a 3rd heart. Tracy held A,7 hearts and took another decent-sized, BadBlood-filled pot.

My third buy-in was going to be my last. I actually was able to build the stack back to close to $80 but began whittling it away in a series of horrible pre-flop calls. The cards went totally dry and when I was down to my last $25 I hadn't seen a flop in what seemed like an hour and a half. The last hand came for me in the big blind holding Q,2 off suit. The board showed 5,5,Q,5,T and I was put all-in by Otis' brother Jeff. I called and was totally blown away when Jeff showed down K,K. He didn't raise the pot pre-flop as we were only 4-players at that time. It was a great play on his part and I bid my farewell at 2:30AM.

TeamScottSmith was the massive chip leader when I left. I have to commend his play as well as Otis' as Otis didn't allow an early bad beat and my Hammer bluff to get him off his game. Meanwhile, I had a total blast. Losing $90 is no big deal when I had so much fun, it was worth it. It was good to see CJ again too, we didn't tangle too much during the night but it was fun talking poker with him.

I brought my cellphone in anticipation of a call from the Northern Bloggers partying it up, but alas that phone call never came. Perhaps AlCantDial was predisposed with more important things, I can hardly blame him :)