3.28.2006

It's at....

7 pm......SEVEN.....7 7 7 SEVEN...........................SEVEN..............

3.20.2006

Dead Money's House of Pain

Poker started out well on Saturday night. Apparently the communication in the DM household is about as good as it is in most households. Doc showed up 15 minutes prior to first deal and was told to go home, that we weren't starting for another hour 15. When DM realized that that was a mistake, he unfortunately forgot to tell Doc. Probably saved Doc $20.

The story of the first game was the unmitigated domination from start to finish by Magic Man. That might be a bit of an overstatement, but I don't get to crow a lot, so I'm going to live it up. On hand #1 Magic took $800 of Regulator, setting the tone for the night. Hours later, Regulator was heard muttering to himself in a corner "Did he have the flush? Did he have the flush?"

Things went swimmingly when it got down to the final table. Musky had been doing well but hit a rough spot, and was close to being forced into an all in decision. Magic said "This is about the time when you go all in as a big favorite and get sucked out." The next hand Musky was all in before the flop. He got called. By a lesser hand. And he was done.

The final table had two story lines. One was Magic completely dominating Squeaky in every phase of the game. Squeaky generally played very well during the whole night, but made the wrong decision against Magic in the first tournament. He folded when he should have called. He called when he should have folded.

The other story line was Ron. "I have to leave in 20 minutes, what do I do." You leave and we blind you out. "I didn't expect to be in this long."

He proceeded to get very short stacked, only to pull AA and QQ to build up to a dominating lead. Squeaky, weakened by Magic's pecking was forced into an All In. Magic, not wanting to win on a technicality when a guy was forced to leave, went all in. Ron called and won the hand.

The second tournament was set up a little more difficult for Magic. Squeaky was no longer around to pick on, and Musky was at his table. Musky has had Magic's number since the time he took 9 out of 10 heads up matches from him.

However, Musky was almost passed out during the first phase and got stomped several hands in succession by Magic. Tabatha had a weird vibe going on. No matter what the pot was, no matter what situation, he bet $100. Not $25, not $50, not 200. $100. Every single time.

The final table came down to newbie loser (not my choice on nickname), vs. Regulator, Squeaky and Magic. NL had a monster stack at one point and used it to bully the rest of the table. Until they actually had a hand or two. NL finished fourth.

At one point, it was looking as if Regulator might break his cherry. But his stack got whittled away over time, and eventually he was fighting with Magic to finish second to Squeaky's utterly dominating stack. Reg finished 3rd.

Magic entered heads up against Squeaky with about 10% of the chips in play. Magic battled back to take a significant lead. However, the blinds caught up, and it was basically all in every hand. For five straight hands, we had either the best hand being sucked out or the best hand being sucked out only to resuckout. It was a wild set of events.

Magic and Squeaky decided to split, so there is no technical winner for that tournament. Do you hear that? That's the sound of no one whining about it.

Also, Jamie got himself involved in two pseudo controversies. First, he was doing everyone the favor of chipping them up, when there was a discussion about rounding out the Red Chips. At first, he chipped up a guy from $100 to $500, rounding up. Then it was decided that was moronic. So he took back a $500 chip and put the rest of the reds back. So said guy was even money wise. Except Jamie made the mistake of pulling it from the POT. Said guy was a lawyer. He didn't want to give up the $500 he owed to the pot, not thinking that somehow he had been shorted. He eventually relented.

Immediately after the table combination in Tourney 2, Jamie decided that it wasn't fair that only the disbanded table got randomized order. Of course this had been the way it was for all eternity (as far as I know at least). And he only complained in the second tourney, after seat assignments were determined and blinds had been posted. I suggested taking this up with the rules subcommittee at their next meeting.

Thanks to DM for hosting. As Musky knows, my house is open for a tournament almost any time. The only stipulation is that it's an Omaha only night. My doors are open.

3.13.2006

Irony

So I get on the train, and who do I see? It's Rob (aka Dead Money and host of the next poker tournament).

Rob: "We had a tournament at a convention last week. I now know how you guys felt when I first started. These guys were winning, but it was like 'you shouldn't be winning because of doing that.'"

Our little baby done all growed up.