Soaring Eagle Tournament (4/26/08) -- Part 2

This is a recap of a poker tournament I played in at Soaring Eagle Casino on 4/26/08 (Part 2 of 2). This was a Playboy Poker tournament with Chris Moneymaker also playing.

I will eventually post how I decided to play in the tournament later. So, this is part 2 of 2...part 1 to come later.

I ended up in 145 out of 179 people. But, the good news is that Chris Moneymaker (the pro) got out before me. The bits of bad news are that he had a $2500 bounty for the person to knock him out, and that wasn't me and the playboy bunny, guest player, was still playing when I got out.

Oh well, you win some, you lose some.

I'll give you a little recap of how the day went, it was a fun and relaxing event. I did have to come south from my Opening Day of Trout season fishing weekend, but I'll live...the weather was bad and the river was too dirty anyway. No one fished.

So, I drive down from Gaylord and get to the casino about 11:00. I head off to the poker room to make sure that I get signed in. I tell them that I won tickets from a radio station and they yell to the people behind the desk "Yeah, here's another radio winner". They sounded like they've had a few of them that morning. After doing the little bit of paperwork and paying for the additional add on (20% more chips for $10), I get my entry card and receipt. Well, since I was hoping not to lose too much money, I thought it best to stay in the poker room for the next hour, instead of wandering the casino floor. For some reason, that always gets me in trouble.

So, I'm standing around (not sitting, since I was hoping to be sitting for the next many hours) and noticed there was a bigger than normal crowd of guys hovering around a table nearby. Well, it turned out that they were having a special guest playboy bunny there to sign autographs and chat with the players. So, I spent the next 1/2 hour standing pretending not to take glances at her (brown hair, short, petite, cute face, red shirt, tight jeans....not that I was looking) . She wasn't in full skimpy-mode clothes, but a tight shirt and tight pants were no accident, I'm sure.

The crowd around her subsided, eventually, and she was left at the table with an old man. I was listening to her talk to this guy and was just laughing the whole time. She was pretending to be this stereotypical, innocent, ditsy, young girl who's never played poker before. Well, I didn't memorize the conversation, but I remember a few things she said which made me laugh. "I'm not really good at this" "Last time I played, I was in for 5 hours, that's good right?" "I'm not even sure what hands beat which" "They put 5 cards on the table, right?" So, needless to say, I knew she had played a lot.

Well, finally the room gets filled enough that I decided to join people in taking my seat. Of course, we're all sitting there talking about where Chris is going to sit and how much the bounty was. We may have also wished that Stephanie (the bunny) would be at our table too. Then finally, Chris comes into the poker room and everyone gets quieter. We all watch him mingle and sign autographs for a few minutes. At this point it's already 12:00 and we're not close to starting. So, people eventually start sitting down, Chris gets his seat (across the room from me) and the bunny gets hers (the next table over, but some fat guy is in my way). And eventually, they get close to starting the tournament.

Of course, I choose that time to wander over, interupt one of his conversations and ask for his autograph. He's more than happy to oblige, signs my poker recipt and continues on his business.

I decided to take the most time talking about before the tournament, because after the tournament was a little less exciting...and, as it turns out, less time. My story (simplified) is that I got a great starting hand, which cost me a lot to see the flop. Didn't hit anything and had to fold eventually. After that, I had little money and not good cards. I lasted about 45 minutes total. Oh well.

But, like I said, Chris got out before me, I think he was only in for 20-25 minutes. His story is a little more fun, but I'll give you the short version. This will make a lot more sense to people who play hold'em. He flopped the nuts straight and put someone all-in, who went runner runner for a boat. Then, he was short stacked. Soon after he had big slick of hearts, went all in when the flop came 2-2-10 with two hearts. Well, the one guy who called him had the Doyle Brunson hand (10-2) and Chris was drawing dead. End of story.

After he got out, lots of people moaned a bit, at the loss of a chance for $2500, but then we got back to playing cards.