Summer Classic 2006: The Tournament

Let's get the poker write-up out of the way first, shall we?

I can't imagine a more fitting trophy for a WPBT tournament than the Golden Hammer. The hammer that the trophy representes really *is* more useful than it seems though. For instance, when you have position on an aggressive player, you can reraise your hammer over his preflop raise and then take the pot down on the flop with nothing, but only as long as you slam your hammer down on the table and yell out "HAMMAH!" as you do so.

Yeah, so, the tournament. Does anybody care? I doubt it. But a quick overview anyway. I liked my starting table:

1. Stephan
2. MrSubliminal
3. Blinders
4. Jen Leo
5. Chad
6. Hoyazo
7. Me
8. Hoff
9. Human Head



Almost all of these people were unknowns to me. Hoyazo proved to be the most aggressive, and he was on my right. I felt like I had good control over everyone else. It helped that I was able to advertise a few solid hands early on.

I only made one significant mistake about midway through the tournament, calling an all-in for a good portion of my stack holding 99 on the button. The player in question (help with name? not sure who it was and given how many coronas I was pounding, I'm sure I wouldn't remember anyway) had moved in several times with a non-small stack and when he did it the third time, I mulled over racing him for all those chips. I wasn't short but I wasn't tall at that point either, and I was trying to decide how much I minded a race. It probably was a mistake to call even if his hand was as weak as two broadway cards; it was definitely a mistake when those two broadway cards were queens. When a pre-flop raiser don't give himself any room to play post-flop, however, he resigns himself to the CJ Effect -- for instance, his opponent spiking a 9 on the turn. I felt bad, because it was a loose, bad call on my part that worked out. Further proof that in order to win a tournament, you have to get lucky.

Other than that, it was smooth sailing to the final table. I picked up my share of good hands, and between those hands and decent aggression I kept amassing chips. At my first table, Hoyazo and I took turns raising. When we broke down to two tables, I found Huge Junk on my right playing the role of Hoyazo. Again, we took turns raising other people's blinds. In fact, at one point Bob raised three hands in a row and folded the fourth. When I immediately raised that fourth hand, he said "You only did that because I folded." Well, duh!

At the final table I drew an excellent seat, with Bob and his huge junk stack three seats to my right and DoubleAs with his sizable stack two seats to my right. I brought a decent stack to the table, and when we got down to 7 players remaining I had 25% of the chips and was feeling good. It was a roller coaster from there, but I hung tough until DoubleAs ran his AJ into my AQ while we were in the blinds. I was happy for the chips, but unhappy that I crippled him because I was hoping to take on the noted poker author heads up for the title. When he went out third, my heads up opponent became Pii. Our match lasted about 15 minutes before I got him all-in on the turn of a 2h-9-Ah-7h board, me with A8 and Pii with Qh-7. He had 14 outs on the river but it was a harmless 2d. It would have served me right if he had hit, because I went for a trap on the flop by checking my ace behind his check.

All in all, the tournament was a great experience, and now I have a Golden Hammer sitting on my desk at work, eliciting curious stares and stammered questions from my co-workers. Forget the cash, kids -- the trophy and the bragging rights (I am Poker Champ) are worth way more.