The Big Poker Event
It’s Friday night at BGG.Con 2007 and we’ve signed up to play in the Texas Hold-em tournament.

Jeff runs a good tournament. It’s well organized and the custom BGG poker chips add nice flavor to the event. As the tournament starts Jeff implores the experienced poker players to help out the inexperienced players without being jerks. My sentiment exactly: it’s a free tournament, have fun, don’t be a jackass.

Despite Jeff’s plea, every table I play at has one or two self-appointed marshals. Guys that watchdog the cutting of the deck and the shuffling of the inactive deck, and who reprimand players for not using the correct poker terminology when acting. If you would rather stop the game for 45 seconds to argue who should be touching the cards rather than just let the most convenient hand cut the deck, then I’m talking about you.

Strategy
We haven’t eaten dinner yet, and Jesse and I discuss going to Shinsei for dinner. I was obsessed with Top Chef this past summer, and the executive chef at Shinsei is Top Chef finalist Casey Thompson. I’m not from Dallas, so this is a rare opportunity to create a small adventure out of dinner.

http://shinseirestaurant.com/shinsei_home_page.htm

I think that the poker tournament starts at 7:00, and I can easily get eliminated by 8:00 or 8:30 and we’ll be off to the restaurant. As it turns out, the tourney doesn’t start until 8:00, so we’re under the gun to lose fast.

First Table
I sit down at my first table with $800 in chips burning a hole in my pocket. I’m a somewhat conservative player. I prefer to play my cards rather than guess when I can intimidate another player out of a pot. I need a legitimate hand to stay in a pot, and my success in no-limit hold-em has more to do with avoiding unnecessary losses rather than bluffing for non-showdown wins. Well, not today; I need to lose my chips and go out to eat.

First hand: Blinds are $10/$25 and I’m dealt a 9-10 off-suit. Lay this crap down, right? Nah, I’ll raise to $100 and see what happens. Couple of folds, one call, and suddenly a guy across the table reraises to $400. $400!? Is he crazy? This is the first hand of the tournament! Dude, you don’t know how hungry I am and how badly I want to lose, so you’re not going to push me around.

All in. Maybe there’s a prize for first player eliminated. After a minute or two of hemming and hawing, my tablemate folds and the first pot enhances my little stack to around $1400. Dammit, this is going to be harder than I thought.

Here’s the thing. I can’t bring myself to play bad poker. My competitive nature only allows me to play super-aggressive poker. Give me two cards with any sort of potential at all and I’ll pay to see the flop. I’ll lead into the pot with low and middle pairs just to see how folks react. I’ll play late position extremely strong. I’ll call the small stacks that seems to be playing desperate. On the flip side, throw away hands of pure junk. Get out of a pot when an opponent shows real strength and I clearly can’t win a showdown. I am willing to let luck beat me, but not foolhardy decisions.

About 8:45 Jesse comes by and announces that he is out and wonders how long until we leave for dinner. I look down at my stack of $3,000 and proclaim that I can lose it within 15 minutes.

It’s 9:15 and my stack continues to spawn more chips. I play almost recklessly, but backed up by a big stack it works against my true interests. I can’t get anyone to stay in a pot when I have a marginal hand. I can’t catch a bad beat when I have a good hand. Aldie come by and moves me up to table #2.

At this point I have $5,000 in chips and am starting to relish my role as a bully. There are probably 60-70 players still in the tournament with an average chip count of around $1,500. I know that my stack is impressive. (That’s what she said.) Aldie doesn’t have a chip rack readily available, so I dump my chips into my pockets and prepare to give an obnoxious show of strength at my new table. I arrive at table #2, say some pleasant hellos, remain standing and then proceed to pull out my chips. A handful of $5’s from my left pocket, and then another. A handful of $25’s from my right pocket. Some more $5’s from my left, some more $25’s from the right, a couple $100’s from my back pocket. Someone at the table comments that at least it doesn’t look like I have many blacks. So I grab a big handful of black $100’s from my back pocket. And then another. Then find the remaining $5’s and $25’s in my front pockets before getting the last handful of $100’s from the back. I spend a solid two minutes slowly fishing more and more chips out of my pockets, milking my moment. I kind of felt like a dick, but I’m metagaming and want to clearly establish that I’m the new big dog at the table.

Shinsei
I call Jesse at 9:30 and let him know that losing doesn’t appear to be a short term option. He suggests I start playing to win and we skip dinner. I don’t like that option one bit so I ask him to call the restaurant, find out how late they serve (10:30) and if they have a dress code (jeans are OK.) At 9:45 I have approximately $6,000 in chips and ask my table mates to just blind me out because I need to go get something to eat.

We arrive at Shinsei at 10:10 and are seated at the sushi bar. We order some beers and the pressed sushi off of Chef Elvis’s list of specials. Chef Elvis is the Japanese sushi chef with awesome hair and sideburns. He has immaculate manicured hands, which seems a touch “metro”, but I can’t complain given that the guy is fondling the raw fish that I’m about to ingest.

We look at Chef Casey’s list of specials from the kitchen and decide on the Korean-style short ribs and crispy Brussels sprouts. Jesse loves the ribs, but I am infatuated with the Brussels sprouts. Unlike the slimy smelly steamed sprouts that occasionally find their way into my kitchen, These roasted gems are crispy and taste like Asian slaw. Wow, I need to try to make these at Thanksgiving.

We’re still a bit hungry so we round off the night with the Shinsei sashimi, which consists of super white tuna and yellowtail. I go to town on this plate while Jesse knocks off the ribs. We’re the last customers to leave the restaurant at 10:50.

Back to the Tournament
It’s 11:15 by the time we get back to the Westin. The tournament is still going strong, but it’s down to three tables of players. My chips are still sitting at table #2 and a quick count reveals that I’m still live with $3900. The blinds are up to $200/$500 so my absence would not have survived much longer. My belly is full and it’s time to play poker.

Players are starting to sniff the final table and seem to be playing pretty tight. There’s one guy at my table with a stack that must be $20,000. He’s playing it strong, playing about 2 out of every 3 hands and not coming in with less than $3,000 at a time. His play scares the shit out of everybody and he picks up a lot of blinds. The player on my right surrenders the big blind to one of these moves, so I turn to him and casually state (loud enough for everyone at the table) that our big dog is playing too many hands and that his stack is easy money. About 20 minutes later the big dog is out and his money has been spread fairly evenly amongst the table.

As has been the case throughout the tournament (I mean, at least while I’ve been present) there are some self-appointed marshals at the table. Total buzz kills. I can hear some fun and laughter coming from the other two tables, but not mine. But on the plus side, I discover that I’m also playing with MisterCranky. And it doesn’t seem to be a very long journey from MisterCranky’s brain to MisterCranky’s mouth. As MisterCranky is also annoyed by our marshals, I am very entertained by his running commentary. At least I’m laughing.

The Final Table
I win a few pots. Players get eliminated. I advance the final table. Interestingly, my good friend Ryno8 also makes the final table. We decide during the break to go put on our Strang Line Spielers t-shirts, in an attempt to intimidate the finalists.

For the final table my chip stack seems about average, maybe $10,000. I tighten up and play my style of poker. Wait for hands and guard every last piece of plastic as if my life depended upon it.

Not everyone else. The play gets a bit crazy and soon we’re down to five, and then quickly four. I win a pot or two along the way, but for the most part I let the other players do the dirty work. Not long after, there’s a three-way all-in and MisterCranky emerges with the pot and a solid 2-1 chip lead over me for heads-up play.

Ryno8 leaves the tourney in 3rd place. With 2 of the top 3 finishers, we further cement the Strang Line Spielers as “The Internet's Most Powerful Gaming Group!”

Heads-Up
MisterCranky and I exchange blinds a few times. We decide to arbitrarily double the blinds just to accelerate the game. I win an all-in and reverse the chip situation. We exchange a few more blinds. I can’t get any action on my pocket cowboys. And finally I win the tournament with something like A-7.

We’re both thrilled to be walking away with copies of Doyle Brunsen’s Super System. My 1st place prize package is five poker theory books and seventeen software packages from Masque Publishing. I think MisterCranky is happy to get just the Super System and not to have to pack the grand prize into his luggage for the flight back to Pennsylvania. I’ve never known a better guy to throw a tournament just to lighten his luggage.

Morals of the Story
1. Shinsei was awesome.
2. I'm certain that had I set out to win the tournament I would have been a non-factor.
3. I felt that my late tournament strategy of playing loose prior to the final table and then tight at the final table served me well. My sense is that most players were doing just the opposite.