Sunday, March 06, 2005

It was down in ole Virginny

I traveled to the always exciting Georgetown, TX this weekend to hang out with some fellow alumnus of Southwestern University. It was 'Founder's Weekend' for our fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha (Pike), which was founded on March 1st a long time ago. While I admit, poker was not the main reason I drove 6 hours roundtrip, there was a poker tournament that I intended on winning. I first played hold'em because of the fraternity and we take the game very seriously. The tournament during Founder's Weekend and the one at the University's Homecoming are kind of a big deal in our fraternity. Admittedly, the Founder's tournament isn't as big as the Homecoming tournament but there is still a lot of pride at stake. I have never won a big Pike tournament and to my knowledge neither has Lloyd which is a fact that has not escaped the members of the fraternity. And, I'm sorry to say the losing streak continued for me. Lloyd was in South Carolina so it was up to me to take home the trophy and I came in 10th out of 16. Oh well, there's always next year. There were only 16 players at 2 tables and the prevailing thought was to hurry the tournament up so we would have more time to drin......hang out. We started with 1000 chips and blinds of 10 and 20. The blinds went up every 10 minutes so you had to catch some cards. My disaster hand was when I raised with AK of diamonds and got 2 callers. The board came 3 4 8 with two diamonds. There was about 350 in the pot and I had 1000 chips left but I only bet 250 and got one caller. The turn was the 3 of clubs and it went check-check. The river didn't help and we checked it down. I lost to 55. I played it terribly and it cost me. The blinds killed me as I didn't catch any cards. I ended up moving all-in with A9o and getting called by AK. See ya. My brother, who got 2nd out of 35 last time, is a very good player and got knocked out before me. That was about the only saving grace. Congrats to Josh Nowak who won after making a deal. Also, congrats to James Lundquist who was the defending champ and took 2nd place.

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