A New Player… A New Champion, And a New Highest Hand!

The Drawing Dead Dogs were fresh out of the oven and the scent of bacon and brown sugar was filling up the room! It’s the type of comfort food that goes great on a cold rainy evening and did we ever need it. As players started to fill the seats, the flames of competition began to warm the casino floor. It seems that when we get down to the last part of the year, the competition starts to heat up. Good thing it was cold and rainy so as to temper the competitive fires within the LHC! That being said, it had all the earmarks of being a great tournament… we welcomed a new player to the S.B.P.T., we had a good turnout of 14 players attending, and a lot was riding on this tournament for our year-end point’s race for the Tour Championship Title.

Seats were randomly chosen and the tournament got underway. And unlike recent months, it wasn’t the all-in frenzy it has been, at least for a little while. But all in all, not the craziness we have seen in past months. There were re-buys throughout the first hour and at the end of, but surprisingly somewhat minimal… except of course for Meaty who holds the title for most money spent in entries & re-buys. Ultimately first place was set to have a fairly nice payday.

When the buzzer rang for break time, “The Hill” provided a Mexican food feast of Chicken & Carne Asada burritos from El Tarasco, with fixing’s, and six layer dip. The management at Little Hill Casino would like to say thanks to those who brought dessert and/or liquor or anything else to the tournament (Meaty, hold off on bringing Vodka to the next one, we’ll bring the bottle that you left at Little Hill. We’re getting quite the collection).

As players dined, the tournament manager and newly deputized U.S. “Texas Hold’em” Marshal, collected the re-buys got us ready to go for the serious part of the tournament night. Then when everyone was fed, seated, and ready to proceed, the familiar yet still somewhat troubling “Whhaaaaaa” of the poker tournament software got us underway.

We were off, all with tournament glory in mind but some were able to hold on to that dream longer than others. The first to have his dreams dashed was Turtle who quickly hit the rail with a thud, but deserves big props for dealing the entire rest of the night and also for dealing out the highest hand in S.B.P.T. tournament history. Thank you for that. Another player with high hopes to have them dashed was none other than the two time Tour Champion Sponge Bob who had called his shot before the tournament, but fell a bit short. For some it was an early night while others found ways to hang in there. Unfortunately, the players that didn’t fair too well, left instead of starting a cash game.

Once we had lost enough players to combine to a final table of seven, we saw some notable names at the table including 4 Tournament Champions, three of which are in the top four of the Tour Championship race. But the other name of note was Zug, the player that no one had played against before. Was it going to be another title to the new guy? When Slick tried a move against him only to have the ultimate bad timing by running into his pocket aces, he gave Zug half his stack. Slick then gave the rest away to Zug when his pocket 8’s ran into Zug’s pocket 9’s, securing Zug the headhunter award and for those who follow the strange statistics, history has proven that there is a better than 2 to 1 chance that the headhunter award winner goes on to take the Tournament Champion title.

Before the tournament, Big Slick’s Sports Book had set the line on someone completing the poker cycle this tournament and it was accomplished by Scooter when she took third, congratulations, but the real news is what I discovered after viewing all the stats. It turns out that by securing that third place finish, she now has for the year, get this… a headhunter, a first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, and also a ninth place finish. Will that ever happen again?

With Scooter bowing out in third, that left us heads up with Meaty and Zug going toe to toe with what were pretty even chip stacks. They played as I cleaned up a bit but it wasn’t long before all the money was in the middle and we saw the biggest hand in our short history. Meaty was holding K/Q of diamonds when the board flopped 7d,8d,10d, giving him a King high flush, but he was slow playing and both players checked. The turn was a 9d, and that’s when all the money went into the middle and Meaty could only wonder what could have been as Zug turned over the 6 of diamonds giving him a straight flush and the highest hand in S.B.P.T. history. Meaty still had one out, the jack of diamonds but it never came and we crowned a new champion.

Congratulations to Zug for all he accomplished already, thanks to Turtle for dealing the entire evening, and also a special thanks to Marshal for becoming the Shuffle Master for the evening!

I’m looking forward to next month when the sparks are really going to fly!

Slick