As I mentioned earlier, last night was our second Texas Hold ‘Em tournament.
It was really fun. We had 12 people playing – although we added a 13th player at the eleventh hour, which changed things up a bit, but made the first place purse a little sweeter.
We started off by having everyone put in their $50 buy-in. That paid for food and drinks, plus the prize money. Then we divided up into two tables; one of 7 players, one of 6. Partytom and I were “table captains”, and chose who we wanted at our table – kind of like picking teams for kickball, except backwards. I won the coin toss and ended up with the six person table, which was made up of swingdoc, Rak, Lippy, Bill, Louis, and myself.
Everyone started off with $10,000 worth of chips. This was “no limit”, with table stakes, which meant that there was no maximum bet, and you got your chips, and that was all. Once you were out of chips, you were out of the game. Every 30 minutes we had a break, during which the dealers changed (we had three lovely ladies dealing the games, including belcanto88) and the blinds would increase. We began with a $300 blind.
The first half hour was pretty uneventful. Our table was a lot of fun, but no major action immediately; everyone was just feeling each other out. After the first break, the blind increased to $600, and some new action started to happen. swingdoc played a tight game, and slowly built up her chips. Lippy was the dark horse, and won some big pots. Louis started aggressive, but got beat a few times pretty hard. Eventually, Louis was the first person eliminated from our table.
After the second break, it became apparently that both Lippy and swingdoc were going to make it to the final round (the top three players from our table would go on to the finals) and that Rak, Bill, and myself were fighting for that third spot. I pushed Rak into an all-in, which he won, putting the three of us fairly even. But then Bill was eliminated. Now it was just Rak and me.
Some cautious hands were played, and Rak ground chips out of me. Finally I was forced into an all-in after the flop on a flush draw, but when Rak flipped his cards, I saw he had four spades. That meant he had two cards to pull one spade to beat me, which he did.
I was eliminated. But it was exciting! I did what I had to do – you hit points in this type of a game where you have to make a move, but sometimes it just doesn’t work out.
So our table was now set for the finals – all three players were relatively close in chipcount going into the second round. After the other table was finished, our finalists were set.
Sitting at the finalist table were Partytom, Jeff, Lippy, Tosh, swingdoc, Howard, and Rak. Jeff was the chip leader with a substantial stack. The “consolation” table was made up of the players who had been eliminated; we all got new chips and played for the booby prize – the winner of the consolation table would win back their $50 buy-in. Eventually, I won that table. I was the winningest of the losers.
Lots of crazy action on the finalist table. Rak was the first one eliminated, making him the losingest of the winners. Next to fall was Howard. The tables started to turn, and Jeff, once the chip leader, was the next one eliminated, coming in fifth place overall.
swingdoc was knocked out next. Partytom was going back and forth and took some big chunks out of Lippy on some bold all-in bets. Tosh forced Lippy to go all in on a substantial pot, and Lippy ended up taking it, which changed the tune. Tosh was soon knocked out, and it was down to Partytom and Lippy for the Big Prize of $150.
The action was fast and furious, but Partytom ended up pushing Lippy out, and was the champion of the tournament. The games started at around 8:30, and the final hand was dealt about 6 hours later.
I think everyone had a really good time. We will for sure do this again.