First readers' tournament results: no donkeys, winner "Pemite"

The most important result (being just a wee bit self-centered here) is that I didn't make a complete fool of myself. I think I only applied one bad beat, but was on the receiving end of several, which is a reasonable indicator that I was usually getting my money in at the right spots. I managed an embarrassment-avoiding, just-barely-snuck-into-the-money, very-very-slightly-above-average finish of third place, out of seven who played.

The double-stacks thing on Full Tilt really does give a lot more play than standard formats. We went a long time before seeing the first casualty, "kazor," who unluckily ran his A-K into my pocket aces. I had been below average in chips until that point, and it vaulted me into the lead:





It is, of course, the hallmark of a great professional player to know how to pick up pocket aces when an opponent has K-K or A-K, so that you get all of his chips. Poker is all skill, you know.

The next big inflection point for me was when my Q-Q ran into the K-K of "redbullandpoker" (Ted O'Neill; see his poker blog at http://redbullandpoker.blogspot.com/). It had predictably ugly results:



Oops. So much for the hallmark of a great professional....

Things toodled along sort of mediocre like that for a while. I got a boost when I picked off Ted's all-in bluff on the river with my queen-high flush, praying as if I were Jerry Yang that he wasn't holding a higher one. He wasn't. Whew!

"Festus 9" went out next. It must be noted that he was playing at a significant disadvantage, with a storm causing him frustrating interruptions in his connection at some crucial moments.

I think that both "sendit2kj" and "I_P_Icicles" went down to a double knockout by "Lucypher." Other participants are welcome to fill in the details in the comments section. I may be bollixing everything up from how it actually occurred in these middle sections. (Dang--I should have turned on Poker Tracker; then I could check the log electronically and pretend that I just have a phenomenal memory.)

Judging by Ted's post earlier today (http://redbullandpoker.blogspot.com/2008/02/poker-grump-readers-tourney-tonight-on.html), I'm guessing that "sendit2kj" was Kelly Jo McGlothlin, who was the next-to-last woman left standing (eliminated in 95th place) at last year's WSOP main event--see http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19758035/. I had not seen Ted's note when the tourney started, so I had no idea who it was, until just now.

Anyway, that left us looking like this in the standings:



Next, "pemite," our only non-American participant (his information said something about a "U.K." nationality--what kind of weird country name is that, anyway??? Sounds like something the damn Brits would make up), took out Ted on the bubble with quads (slight overkill) leaving us here, going into three-handed play:



I'm second out of three--respectable enough!

There was a lot of jabbing and feinting and stealing and threatening. But no big all-in clashes for quite a while.

Then the end came. (Warning: Extremely sad story ahead. We're talking "Love Story" sad. We're talking "Brian's Song" sad. We're talking "Terms of Endearment" sad. You might want to go grab the Kleenex box right now.)

I was in the big blind with Q-Q. Both opponents limped in for 400 each. I raised it to 1400, and they both called. The flop was J-x-x. Sweet! No overcards! I moved all in. "Pemite" thought a while, then called with suited J-9 for top pair. It was looking good for the Grump, until a very ugly third jack showed up--completely uninvited, I might add--on the turn. And that was the end of that:




But as all experienced tournament players know, you can't blame the outcome on just the last hand. It's everything that led up to it that gave me a much smaller stack than "pemite" had, so that I was precariously situated and it took just one unlucky card to topple me. One of the great advantages of accumulating a big stack is that you can withstand a couple of bad beats and walk away bruised but still alive. Not so when you've allowed yourself to get whittled down before the bad beat happens.

My elimination gave "pemite" a virtually insurmountable lead, and it was only a few minutes later that "Lucypher" ran his pocket tens smack into pocket aces, and couldn't beat them, giving us these final standings:




Congratulations to those two for finishing first and second.

I thought it was a lot of fun, and could only have been better by having more of you there.

Or by me winning. Yeah, that would have been OK, too.

I don't know when the next event will be--probably a month or two. The $10 profit I took ($32 payout minus $22 entry fee) will go into the pot somehow for that tourney, probably as a small bounty on my head. That should make things interesting.

Thanks to all the players for spending a little time with me. I really had a great time.

And, most importantly, I didn't completely suck.