Post date: Feb 7, 2012 4:23:45 PM
Season V, Episode 2
Apologies — I'm a few days later than usual in getting this posted. I did update the stats (on the Welcome and Project Mayhem pages) on Sunday morning, but it took me a few days to get to the write-up. As always, if you pester me and let me know you were looking for this, I'm much more likely to prioritize it a bit higher.
On Friday we were looking at having six for the game. Then I got an email from a player who had to back out (totally normal), so we were down to five. Woke up Saturday morning and figured I could skip the pre-game beer run based on who was going to show up. Then Shannon started... moping is too strong a word, but she was lamenting the size of the game. (We had five the previous Monday, then ended up with nine people showing up so I'm not completely unfamiliar with the vagaries of poker night numbers changing on the fly.) She did what anyone unhappy with a situation and determined to make things change would do: she picked up her phone and started texting around. Three hours later we had a few more committed, and we ended up playing with eight.
We hadn't seen Jeff in a few weeks (like all of us, he's got some weekend commitments which keeps him away from the cards as often as he'd like) but he nearly immediately responded to Shannon's text that he'd come for cards. We also got Dianna and Mike (a couple Shannon had met while playing up-the-hill) to come for their first time. Is really nice to see some fresh faces in the game and we really enjoyed their company. Along with the fresh faces we had what has come to feel like our standard Saturday crew of Julius (who I'm pretty sure is happy he showed up!), Solveig, and David. Shannon has asked me to promote the idea of folks pestering (she used the phrase "asking around") their friends to see if there may be folks they hang out with which would be interested in coming over for a night of cards some time.
Anyway, our Saturday kicked off close to on time (thank you, everyone!) with our Quick Tournament, and then the Main Event was the first time we had played our KO Tournament.
In what has become a really distressing trend for 2012, I keep getting all my chips in the middle of the table holding the worst cards. Twice I found myself all in with 22 against Dave, and while his JhTh was a solid favorite (we debated it on the table, I just ran the numbers and JTs is a very solid 54% favorite!) he was much better off then than when he flopped two pair. He's had to feel a bit gun shy as I think that lately my Eli Manning-esque horseshoe up my butt has had him firmly in its target. Well that did come to pass later on in the tournament when my 22 managed to out run his TT with a li'l quacker showing up on the turn.
My luck held for that first tournament, and Shannon and I had one of the shorter heads-up battles to figure out first and second place.
Also, we got a fifth person to enter the Project Mayhem madness, so now we're up to Shannon, Neal, David, Solveig, and Julius. So far this season it's looking like it'd take about 11 tournaments (a $33 investment over the course of six weekends) for someone to end up at the Final Table with a full chip stack, so considering we've got six more weekends on the schedule folks could easily jump on board next time out and not be behind the eight ball in the least.
Quick Tournament Summary
$10 Quick Tournament 2/4/2012
PL Preflop, NL Postflop and Heads-up
Action Summary
5:16:45 pm 02/04/2012: Dianna bought-in
5:17:07 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T bought-in
5:17:58 pm 02/04/2012: Neal bought-in
5:18:22 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon bought-in
5:19:59 pm 02/04/2012: Dave bought-in
5:19:59 pm 02/04/2012: Solveig bought-in
5:21:00 pm 02/04/2012: Julius bought-in
5:21:00 pm 02/04/2012: Jeff H bought-in
5:28:08 pm 02/04/2012: Tournament started
5:30:54 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon was busted out by Neal
5:31:01 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon rebought
5:55:16 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T was busted out by Dave
5:55:31 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T rebought
5:56:04 pm 02/04/2012: Dianna was busted out by Dave
5:56:13 pm 02/04/2012: Dianna rebought
6:15:49 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T was busted out by Dave
6:19:29 pm 02/04/2012: Jeff H was busted out by Julius
6:24:09 pm 02/04/2012: Dianna was busted out by Neal
6:32:04 pm 02/04/2012: Solveig was busted out by Julius
6:45:11 pm 02/04/2012: Julius was busted out by Shannon
6:47:55 pm 02/04/2012: Dave was busted out by Neal
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon was busted out by Neal
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Tournament ended
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Total pot: $110.00
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Neal ranked 1st, received $62.00 and 14 points
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon ranked 2nd, received $30.00 and 9 points
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Dave ranked 3rd, received $18.00 and 10 points
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Julius ranked 4th, received 7 points
6:50:43 pm 02/04/2012: Solveig ranked 5th, received 4 points
Quick Tournament Results
$10 Quick Tournament 2/4/2012
PL Preflop, NL Postflop and Heads-up
Now this may surprise some people, but I managed to get a bit tipsy by the time the second tournament came about (which may be evidenced by the results below), so my recollection isn't quite as spot on. I do know that we had some very card dead players (sorry Mike), and that I managed to outthink myself in an opportunity to close a 4-way all-in pot holding the second nut flush draw (which, of course, came in not only on the turn but also on the river, with none of the other players holding a spade). This double-knockout not only earned Julius $10 based on the rules of the KO Tournament, but also catapulted him to the top of the chip stack count. And if you've never played in a tournament with Julius holding a big chip stack... well let me just say that he plays it like a virtuoso.
I did have an ugly hand that I mis-remembered my holding (I thought I had 98, I actually had T9 — who was drinking and not driving again?) which may not have mattered except that the flop came down 8-high. And my lovely wife had flopped top set. And she only had to call to get all the chips in the middle against me. The turn was a blank and the six of hearts came on the river, giving me a very gross (and undeserved) straight. Of course, those were the only $5 I was going to earn in the second tournament, and since it was during the rebuy period, she was able to buy back in (and eventually take down second place).
But the story of the second tournament was Julius. If you look at the summary below, you may notice his name appearing a few times. He mowed us down like we were dandelions and our basement was filled with figurative white fluff all over the place as he just kept collecting $5 at a pop out of the KO bear. We don't normally have one person dominate a tournament so thoroughly (and don't think my lack-of-a-call with the K-high flush draw earlier in the tournament wasn't haunting me each time as I kept thinking, I COULD HAVE STOPPED THIS!). It was truly a sense of good timing that he did this during the KO Tournament as well, as each one of his EIGHT knock outs nabbed him $5. It's almost like the first place prize money was incidental to the haul he was pulling on directly on the felt, one five-dollar bill at a time.
KO Tournament Summary
KO Tournament 2/4/2012
No Limit Hold Em (rebuy @ < T300)
Anyway, it was a pretty memorable tournament even for those of us who managed to finish out-of-the-money and at the bottom of a can of adult beverage.
Note (for the Project Mayhem peeps) that the points in the summary below are off a bit (I can't quite get the software to mimic my point structure). The points on the Project Mayhem summaries are actually the correct values.
Action Summary
6:58:15 pm 02/04/2012: Julius bought-in
6:58:15 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon bought-in
6:58:15 pm 02/04/2012: Dave bought-in
6:58:15 pm 02/04/2012: Neal bought-in
6:58:15 pm 02/04/2012: Solveig bought-in
7:00:35 pm 02/04/2012: Jeff H bought-in
7:02:18 pm 02/04/2012: Dianna bought-in
7:02:18 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T bought-in
7:09:03 pm 02/04/2012: Tournament started
7:51:07 pm 02/04/2012: Dave was busted out by Julius
7:51:17 pm 02/04/2012: Dave rebought
8:05:55 pm 02/04/2012: Jeff H rebought
8:08:21 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon was busted out by Neal
8:08:49 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon rebought
8:49:24 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T rebought
9:01:17 pm 02/04/2012: Jeff H was busted out by Julius
9:01:17 pm 02/04/2012: Solveig was busted out by Julius
9:14:48 pm 02/04/2012: Dianna was busted out by Julius
9:14:48 pm 02/04/2012: Mike T was busted out by Julius
9:32:20 pm 02/04/2012: Neal was busted out by Julius
10:01:34 pm 02/04/2012: Dave was busted out by Julius
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon was busted out by Julius
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Tournament ended
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Total pot: $120.00
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Julius ranked 1st, received $66.00 and 18 points
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Shannon ranked 2nd, received $34.00 and 8 points
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Dave ranked 3rd, received $20.00 and 7 points
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Neal ranked 4th, received 6 points
10:23:43 pm 02/04/2012: Solveig ranked 7th, received 2 points
KO Tournament Results
KO Tournament 2/4/2012
No Limit Hold Em (rebuy @ < T300)