The Whole Damn Thing

Tonight, I entered a Free Texas Hold ‘Em Poker Tournament at TT Reynolds. Now, realize that I have been learning poker from playing online, but I have never played “face to face” against a bunch of people.
Well tonight, I did. I actually got to see the chips, shuffle the cards, and look at people’s reactions and expressions.
I was kind of nervous, mainly because I wasn’t quite sure of the protocol — how did people deal, how did they cut, how were the blinds managed? All of this stuff is normally done by computers when playing online. So, a few hands into it, I started catching on pretty well.
When I play poker online, I try to employ a “tight-aggressive” philosophy — that is, I only play good hands, and when I have a good hand, I play it strongly, for lots of chips. I wasn’t sure how that would work in this tournament. But I tried it anyway… besides, it was how I had practiced when playing online.
Well, this particular tournament had 66 players total — there were 7 full tables with 8 people each, as well as a waiting list 10 deep. My starting table seemed to play pretty conservatively, and there wasn’t any early attrition. Next thing you know, 2 people were gone from the table.. then 3. And then they started combining tables, bringing in extra people our table. And some of these people were coming in with “monster stacks” of chips, far outnumbering what I had.
Eventually, the numbers had dwindled so that there were only 8 people at the final table. And guess what, I made the final table. And in three straight hands, three more people were gone. I made the final five. And not much longer, there were only 3 — and I was one of them.
When we made it to the final three people, I had the short-stack (the least number of chips at the table). And in fact, there was this woman who had to have 3 chip-racks just to bring her chips to the table!!! If I were going to finish first, I had some monster pots to win, and that lady could “bully” us around with her massive number of chips.
At one point, I didn’t even have enough chips to be able to cover the small blinds, so I went all-in. I had pocket queens, and I won that hand, so I got to stay a little while longer. And then the next hand, I had to go all-in again. And on this hand, our hands tied, so we split the pot. And then in a way I can’t explain or that I’ve never seen, I started getting good hands every hand.
It wasn’t long until I had the chip lead, and everyone else was playing catch up with me. And I kept getting decent hands! So, at one point, I may have had around 120,000 chips, the blinds were 20,000 and 40,000, and I was the big blind. Basically it meant that I had to put in 40,000 chips just to play. Well, on this particular hand, I was dealt pocket aces — pretty much the best starting hand you can have.
Well, the guy on the small blind had just enough to cover the entry bet (including the small blind, he had something like 47,000 chips), and he went all in. And then it was up to me… I asked the lady how many chips she had, that I was going to put her all in. She told me, and I bet the same amount of chips. So, if she wanted to play in that one hand, she would have to go all-in too. And she did.
They turn over their cards, and the lady had two heart cards, and the guy had something like a Queen and an eight. I had a DECIDED advantage!!! And then came the flop… and there was another Ace — I flopped a set of aces!!! And I won the whole damn thing!!! I know it’s cliche to win with pocket Aces, but dammit, that’s just what happened!
Yep, in my first “tournament,” I left the champion!!!
So, I won a $25 gift certificate to TT Reynolds, and he gave me a t-shirt. Unfortunately, the shirt was only an XL, and I can get one good wear out of an XL before it washes and shrinks up on me, so I ask if he has a XXL, and he doesn’t. So, he offers me a deck of cards… WPT (World Poker Tour) cards to be exact!!!
But there’s more!!! My victory has earned me an automatic invitation into the regional tournament on June 18!!! This one will be much bigger and tougher, I’m guessing. And the winner of that tournament will play in an online tournament (of only 11 people), where the winner gets a free $10,000 buy-in to the World Series of Poker!!! How cool is that?
So, I will say… I am exhausted!!! When I got to the final table, and the blinds were getting so high so quickly, it got tense and stressful!!! And that wore me out!!! The other 2 finalists say that they were pretty worn out as well.
More importantly, I had a great time! There was one gentleman, who was at my first table, and he also made it to the final table. He was very cool, and before he left (that was when there were only 3 players left), he said that it was great playing with me, and that we started the tournament together and it was great to make it to the final table with me. Very cool!!!
So, right now, I’m excited, but very tired!!! But it gets a little worse!!! I “taped” the Survivor finale, and I have to watch it tonight!!! It will be impossible to NOT see who won it tomorrow. They usually talk about it on the radio and have it on the cover of Yahoo! News. So, I’m going to watch the finale, and then go to bed!