People Wanna Know

Rarely do I get asked, "Hey, where's the blog post about such and such?" But sometimes things happen that are so astronomically improbable that multiple people do exactly that.

G-Rob won my 5th Annual New Year's Day Tournament.

Yes, that's right. It's not a typo. I know what you're thinking. "How could this happen?" "G-Rob?" "Does he even still play poker?" "My, he looks a bit slimmer."

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We had 22 runners this year, which was right about where I expect things to settle out each year. The host, me, defending champion, managed to draw a seat to the immediate right of Mrs_Blood at the table in the kitchen. That was the day's first bad beat. You see, while she's most certainly the best thing to ever happen to me in real life, in poker life, she's the exact opposite. Those of you with poker-playing spouses understand. You just can't get away with raising your wife's blinds every orbit and not hear about it later. Few people pitied me, which is standard operating procedure at my house.

So too is standard operating procedure for me to be one of the biggest pay off wizards on the planet. That's how I'd have my Aces cracked by K2o early in level one. I also mis-read GucciRick on a medium sized pot later in the same orbit to take my 5000 starting chip stack down to around 1700. It wasn't the way I wanted to start defending my short-lived crown. In level 4, with the blinds 100/200, I made a stand.

After chipping back up to right around 3800, I limped from the button in a 4-way pot with Ts8s. Stan "The Man" McKinney, who continued his tradition of bringing a half-eaten salami to the party, min-raised from the big blind. Nobody folded. With the pot at 1600, the flop came Ks8d2s. Stan led out for 1000 and it was folded to me. With my pair and a flush draw, I had a decision to make. Fold and leave myself about 3400 in chips or gamble and try to double up against Stan. I opted to go for broke and try to build a stack. I pushed, Stan called with his pocket Aces, and Mrs_Blood, the dealer at the time, issued two bricks to the board to send me packing. There would be no repeat champion.

****

I was not the first to hit the couch and begin the wait for the cash game. My son's gymnastics coach (who I was saddened to find out was not this person) finished an unfortunate last, followed closely by special guest Lee Jones. Lee now lives in close-by Asheville and made the trek down to G-Vegas to visit our core group of local degenerates. As more and more people busted out, I kept overhearing from the other room phrases like "suckout," "unbelievable," "bad beat," and "G-Rob."

Random101's self-fulfilling prophecy of bubbling in 5th came true when he got it in with pocket Jacks against G-Rob's KJo. No chance. Newcomer Ryan would finish 4th, Shep Tiltstein a very respectable 3rd, and GucciRick would finish as the runner-up. G-Rob had outlasted a decent field and for the first time in ages lay claim to some kind of championship of his own.

Otis was very happy that G-Rob would now be able to pay him back the cash he borrowed after getting wiped out at the last (4) cash game(s) he'd played in.

Slight dig. Said with a smile.

But TRUE! :)

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I do enjoy hosting a live tournament and cash game. I really do. But it's expensive. Especially when you pay for your wife's tourney buy-in. And her cash game buy-in. Thankfully, due to some nice luck in PLO, I was able to recoup all expenses and start the year off in the black. Hopefully everyone who played had an enjoyable time. If all goes well, I should hopefully host my annual birthday tournament again in April. Now if I can avoid being that pay off wizard I spoke about, I can keep letting the wife freeroll. If not, I'll just buy my son into the game instead of me.