Season 16 Evening Recaps
Season 16 Evening Recaps
Poker is a zero sum game. If we collect $60 from a participant, we put $60 in the prize pool for the best finishers in that tournament. If you bet 2000 chips in a hand then at the end of that hand those 2000 chips are going to end up in someone's stack (hopefully yours!). Deservin's got nothing to do with it. The luckbox at the other end of the table who couldn't miss a draw and outlasted the rest of the players gets your share of what went into the prize pool, or more relevantly to this opening paragraph, the bum who jammed with pocket 5s against your pocket kings but then spikes a 5 on the flop, well they're gonna get those chips you put in the pot. It's nice to think that in the long run, deservin does have something to do with it, but the long run doesn't make anybody feel any better when the only color they can see is red, the only sound they can hear is their own heartbeat, and their jaw is uncomfortably resting on rail's foam.
So it was that kind of night...
We kicked off the season with 23 players in the Poker Basement. (Twenty-four if you count Jeremy's Left Leg.) As we find when the weather is nice, a good number of our regulars (9, by my count!) have something better to do than sit inside and rue Booth Manor's uneven subterranean temperatures. But they'll be back. Oh yes. Just you wait. (Well, except for the skiers, then they're gone for a different part of the year.)
Wonderfully, three of those 23 were new players which folks had invited along. Rich's friend Tim (also going by Dr Tab online has already been introduced to our keyboard battlers), Michael (brought by Heather, in her next attempt at introducing fun coworkers to our Firestone follies), and Clay (who is a bit of a two-fer, as he was brought by our old pal Dave, who is interested in reintroducing poker into his life, as, one assumes, his blood pressure has been dangerously too low lately...). Loved meeting you all, and I made sure your contact information is on our list even prior to jotting down these words.
Sadly we had some last minute changes to our roster as we looked like we were heading into the weekend with 26 (and a leg), so good luck to Milo (earning some relationship points by not skipping Amy's birthday by hanging out our basement), Scott (who, in what has to be one of the most frustrating ways to miss a poker evening, managed to drop a poorly functioning brand new battery into his Subie), and Sully.
But for those who came, we got to enjoy a really pleasant evening together (though the most pleasant parts for some were out on our back deck, noshing on some epic county fair fare). Just on my table in the first two orbits we saw a flopped top set over a flopped middle set, pocket kings defeated by pocket aces (on a lowball board). We saw a board of 333Q3 save pocket 6s from pocket 7s. I managed to get my Q2 rescued over Jody's pocket 4s when the board ran out A727A. Cries rang out from the two other tables nearly simultaneously of quad aces (and yes, the obligatory "but what was your kicker" was asked). As could be said of all poker nights, Shit Happened.
I lived through some shit myself, so oblige me sharing a bit of my journey. We were down to two tables and Norm (great seeing you again!) and I were mother henning on top of the largest stack of eggs at the table. Then on the AsKsJx board we got all our copious numbers of chips into the middle with his flopped top two pair and my Qs9s flush and straight draw. (He got me to call his massive shove, which was an irritatingly great play on his part). The K on the turn annoyingly shut out any further drama, but the Ts did fall on the river when made me futilely squint really hard trying to find a royal flush among my straight and flush result. Unfortunately I was left with but a few chicken scratchings left in front of me, and Norm looked like a dragon on top of a horde of gold coins from behind his mountins of chips.
But I wasn't ready to concede defeat.
I should digress here about a ruling I was asked to make (in the midst of all that) from the other table. There was a very short stacked player who was in the big blind with not enough chips to complete both the big blind ante and the big blind itself. The question came up with gets fulfilled first. The answer to that is completely arbitrary and has changed over time even at the WSOP. Without knowing who was involved in the hand, I defaulted to one of those arbitrary answers and said that the ante is satisfied first, meaning that if the big blind wins the hand they can only win back the chips they put in as the ante. (In my mind, this is the "kindest" way to handle things, as the executioner is probably not far out of sight for that big blind anyway, so why prolong the misplaced hope?) Of course, things played out and at that point a tablemate argued that this is a stupid way to handle things (because it's a pretty hopeless situation for the blind player). I'll be honest, this PISSES ME OFF. The time to debate a house ruling is PRIOR TO things playing out. Once a ruling is invoked, especially in an arbitrary situation, that is how things should be done. The time for debate has passed. Now if there's something obviously stupid about the ruling which wasn't considered at the time is was issued, something which presents itself in the process of carrying it out, then I'm open to reversing something which was obviously dumb. But this case was a it-could-go-either-way-but-we-decided-this-is-the-way-it's-going-to-be decision. No takesie-backsies. As things played out, I simultaneously got schooled by Norm and also got chirped by an opinionated person at the other table. And my reaction to that situation was, to put things generously, less-than-acceptable. My apologies to the room, the players involved, the opinionated participant, and the player who was in the big blind that hand. Nobody should ever hear the acting Tournament Director, after they've issued a ruling say anything along the lines of "Well just handle it however you fucking want then." My bad and I own that burden of shittiness. For someone who prides himself on running a clean game based on the rock of integrity, I failed you all. I am immensly apologetic, and vow to learn from that situation. I am sorry.
So returning to my situation with just a few thousand chips in front of me, the shortest of stacks at a table of about 7 people. Seemingly-cruelly, the poker gods finally decided to throw some nice hands my way. Nobody really believes the short stack when they start shoving nearly every hand, but I got a sequence of pocket pairs and AKs (most of which went uncalled) leading up to my finally getting called while holding pocket kings (which held up), and got back into the mid-to-low competitive stack range. Then I put that stupid Q2 vs 44 beat on Jody (uncharacteristically, I called for the river ace as I dealt it off the deck). I had some hands hold up, and I made the final table with enough chips to play.
Jeremy (and his leg) made the final table, but went out tenth, John pulled in at ninth, Holly was the last woman standing in eighth, Tom and Norm finished up in the two bubble spots, and then we paid out a couple of our new-to-the-basement players. Congrats to Tim and Michael for getting the contents of a few of our prize envelopes. I managed to stave off a lower finish with the hand I alluded to in the first paragraph, risking it all with pocket fives only to run into Doug's pocket kings. But the poker gods took pity on this little sinner and a beautiful five showed up on the flop (deservin's got nothing to do with it, as exemplified two paragraphs up) and that was enough to keep me competitive as we hit our final three.
Between Andy and Doug, there are a combined 179 entries in Felt Club tournaments. (If you throw me into the mix, then that jumps up to 495, but I've been around a while.) Given that we'd just paid out two folks with a combined total of 2 Felt Club entries under their belts, it was quite a bit of whiplash to be up against two of our most regular (poker-wise, at least, I'm not sure their individual roughage consumption situations...) competitors (this side of Shannon). The three of us duked it out over the course of multiple levels, each of us holding the chip lead (and sitting in third place) multiple times. Eventually Andy shoved on me on a QJ4 board with me holding J8 and I looked deep into his eyes, asking "what do you not want me to do in this situation?" and then I totally guessed correctly and I knocked him out in third place. Doug and I went at it for a few more hands, but powered by the extra stack of dark greens I had in front of me, I was able to wait for a good spot and completed the unlikely comeback to take down the S16E1 belt.
Along the way the banter at the table included the very true statement that nobody wins without a few suck-outs going their way, and I definitely rode that route to victory. I had three very obvious "mathematically you should have been eliminated there" moments, and nearly as fortunately I only had one clear you-were-ahead-but-still-got-got (#TheWire) moment. Felt good to get the fattest envelope, but was definitely bittersweet at the end taking it down against such fine, deserving friends. I suppose that's the gist of what we've been up to for 16 seasons, 18 years, and 318 tracked events.
Let's do it again in October.