Easy Money

First off, can I say, "Sea-Ha-Who?" I am now officially ashamed to be a Pacific Northwesterner. Hey, at least the Storm brought home the WNBA title!

Yes, it was rough going in the NFL front, but it was some smooth sailing on the money at home front. The weekend was unexpectedly beautiful for this late in October; and after spending most of Saturday sorting through boxes in the garage, we put up Yard Sale signs and attracted the flocks on Sunday. Got rid of a lot of junk and made a $250 profit in the process. Can't beat getting paid for cleaning out your garage.!

Funny how people construe a Yard Sale as an invitation to be able to freely roam about your property. We have our tables of 'antiques' set up and the larger ticket items out the driveway, in obvious "to sell" piles, yet people walk right past it all and into the garage asking if those bikes are for sale, or making offers on the shelving that's holding all of the yard tools. WTF? And there's always a few folks who you could never in a million years imagine being ones to scavenge around in a trash can, yet they seem to find their way to the side of the house where I've piled up obsolete junk we were going to toss. And there they are, digging through boxes of crap that the dog chewed up, trying to find that one hidden treasure so they can offer me a quarter for it. Shoot folks, if you want that stuff that badly, feel free to take it. It'll save me from having to take a trip to the dump.

Now that our garage isn't just a storage unit anymore, we'll be spending the week converting it into a little walk-through Haunted House for the kiddies at Halloween. Our neighborhood is notorious for the Halloween decorations - one guy even sets out a fire-breathing dragon on his lawn! I'll post pics if I remember to take them.

We spent our usual Sunday night at the Midway. Shawni finished 3rd in the Vegas Freeroll. She was middle stack, about half of the leader, and 3rd place only had enough for 2 or 3 more blinds. Her K4 hit trip 4s on the Flop so she went all-in. Chip leader called and rivered a Straight to knock her out. Short stack was blinded out 2 hands later. She's done a lot better against the players at Midway than I have, so props to her. She finished 4th last week, so only two more weeks and she should be 1st!

I didn't play in the Freeroll this week cause I had to chauffer Shawni's mom to the Casino a little bit later. We had talked her into coming to the Midway to play in the Pai-Gow tournament. It's free, and if we can take up 3 seats for the family and increase our chances of being in the money, why not? Gave her a crash-course in the game, and brought her by just in time to see Shawni bust out of the Vegas Freeroll.

Drew our seats for the Pai-Gow tourney - the wife and I were in Round 1 and Mom was in Rd. 2 which gave her a chance to watch us play first. Shawni couldn't keep up with the others at her table, so she was out and went back to the Poker room for some 3/6 action. I advanced and then watched Mom play and coached her a bit. Some dealers don't like others coaching the players, but the one at this table didn't seem to mind, and I tried to keep it as subtle as possible. With some well-timed bets, Mom was able to jump into 2nd place by the final hand and advance to the Semis!

As we were waiting around for the Semis to start, a few of us joked about splitting the $1000 prize pool amongst the 16 semi-finalists. $60 for getting through the first round, yeah! But we played on, and I got lucky on my last hand. The chip leader at the table didn't bet enough to keep up with me if I won my hand, which I did, so I advanced to the Final table of 6. Mom didn't make it, but she was proud of the fact that she did lead her table for a few hands and others were betting big to try and catch up with her. She'll be back next time for sure!

The final 6 consisted of a couple of us that had initally joked about chopping the prize pool. But now it wasn't a joke. Now it was $166, free money. The normal payout is $600/$300/$100, but we all agreed to just take the $166 and spare ourselves the last 1/2 hour of playing. Hell, some of us were ready to go and put most of that money back onto the Blackjack table! We had to do a lot of convincing for one older lady, who's response was finally, "Whatever." After about 10 minutes of waiting for the Pit Boss to come back with all of our money, he showed up empty-handed and said the lady changed her mind and we had to play.

Fine. Be that way. The other 5 of us agreed to split whatever money was won between us, so if we could keep the deserter down in 4th place, that would be $200 each. As you can imagine, there were a number of not-so-subtle remarks made at the table. "Hmm, I probably shouldn't bet so big... wouldn't want to fall out of 3rd place!" Luckily, she was seated at one end of the table and not between any of us. Unluckily, I was seated next to her. Luckily, I'm a nice guy and kept my mouth mostly shut. That, and I didn't have an urge to get unexpectedly back-handed. At one point, she piped up, "Ok I get it, why don't you all just shut up?" When she finally busted out on the 2nd to last hand, there was quite a cheer from the rest of the table.

The cash was laid out on the table and split 5-ways. We all pitched in $20 for a total of $100 toke for the tournament dealing crew. Hey, $180 for 3 hours of playing cards isn't bad. Sure, I would have liked the $600 better, but it was a nice, fun group of people - and it was GUARANTEED money. If I make it to the final 6 again, I won't be the one to suggest a chop-chop, but I won't be the one to say No to it either.

So with the Yard sale, the Pai-Gow money, and Shawni leaving the 3/6 game up $100, we made over $500 on Sunday. Easy money, gotta love it!

Fortune Foretold

Doing the work of two people means having twice as much paper piling up on my desk. I finally had to stop all I was doing and just clear through everything. I came across a fortune cookie fortune that I had gotten a few months ago during a lunch trip to the Chinese deli. It read:

"Remember three months from this date. Good things are in store for you."

I found it amusing and stamped the back of it with a date-stamp:

AUG 27 2004

Three months from the day of the Vegas Freeroll final.

Being from a traditional and superstitious Asian background, I know the little cookie wouldn't lie to me. Swee-eet!

Contender to Pretender

I have a confession to make. Though I haven't made any mention of it here, I'm not a complete virgin to online Poker. My wife and I signed up on UB many moons ago, before we became Casino-rats, just to get down the basic mechanics of Hold'em. I had even deposited $100 for her birthday. This, of course, was when we thought J3o was worth cold-calling 4 bets preflop. :) Happy Birthday for her, and Happy Day for whatever sharks found their way to her table.

As we spent more and more hours in a real Poker room, the thought of depositing more money into UB was never much of a consideration. But we still play every now and then at the Play Chip tables and on UB's Freerolls. What better way to go on tilt than for free?

Well, after my unprecedented success last Sunday, I seemed to be on some meteoric rise to Poker stardom. Well, okay, I exaggerate... it was more on the pace of a Macy's store escalator. On Wednesday night, I signed into UB and registered for the 11:00pm Freeroll, a prize pool of $500 bonus dollars. It gives me something fun to do on the computer while I pay bills or clear through spam. I don't usually last long, or if I finish up with what I'm doing, I'll play stupid just for the hell of it.

But something was different that night. Either I was getting really lucky with the cards, or my subconscious took over and made my play decisions much tighter and smarter. It was crazy. My AQ caught a straight to bust out someone holding AA. My A-rag suited flopped the Flush. An unraised 35o on the BB sees two more 5s on the flop - I had actually had the Check/Fold button clicked and turned away for a second before the flop. When I looked back, the board was already to the River because no one else had bet. Didn't have much of a chance to build that pot, but it didn't matter because somehow I had made it to 1st place out of over 2000 registrants.

Next thing I know, it's 4am in the morning and I'm still playing in the Tourney. Uhhh, yeah... 3 hours of sleep is good enough to get me through a full day of work! At this point, things were still going okay for me, but I was being too passive. It was down to less than 100 people, and everyone else was doubling up big around me. Eventually, I'm all in on QQ and get beat by AT with a JTKAT board. Finished 22nd place and made a whopping $2.50 in bonus dollars. Was the $2.50 worth staying up that late to play for? Hell no. But the confidence boost it gave me definitely was!

On Saturday, I registered for an Ultimate Points tournament. Their Points system is a great bonus structure, I think. You get points monthly for the amount of time playing, even on Play chip tables; and they build up even faster when playing with real cash, so we already had a small stockpile of points from the Birthday deposit. You can play for U-Points in ring games, and even use UPs to buy into real cash tourneys.

I was in for 50pts with over 200 people registered. Early on, I knew things were going well when I cracked AA with the Hilton Sisters - is someone still offering a prize for that? I got JJ followed immediately by AA, and took out 3 people between those two hands. I was in first place and led for over two hours. It got to the point where I could play 72 off-suit (off-color even!) and still win. The next hand after that was 25. I was going to play it, but my wife told me not to be an ass so I folded what would have been the straight to bust out another AA. I hate low pocket pairs that decide to wait until the Turn to triple up.

I made it to the final table in 3rd place, and not two hands in, my two-pair KQ is devastated and I'm the short stack at the table. Nothing I could do when my pocket T hits the set on the flop, but I get called by KK who gets his set on the Turn. Tenth place paid out 126 points, though I would have preferred the 3100 pts for first.

Obviously, I'm feeling pretty good about myself, thinking NL tourneys should be my new "thing" - but that dream is quickly dashed on Sunday at the Midway's Freeroll. I'm the 4th one out; ironically my wife lasts and finished in 4th place. We've still got at least 5 more tries at getting to the Midway's final table for that Vegas package!

I should have known that things were going to go bad for me when the Seahawks couldn't do anything against the Patriots, seeing as how my Poker fate and destiny is cosmically tied into the Seahawk's success (or lack thereof) this season. Well, now that Jerry Rice is the newest Seahawk, maybe we won't lead the league in dropped passes anymore - as long as he doesn't get caught up in the Pacific NW's herbal habit. Here's to hoping that next week's post can be titled Contender Once Again.

One More Table...

Last week was somewhat hectic. My co-worker went on maternity leave a bit earlier than expected, so I've had a trial-by-fire crash course in doing the parts of her job that I agreed to pick up on during her leave. We're re-decorating the little ones' room (we have a 3 year old and a 6 year old daughter); so I've been assembling all sorts of stuff from IKEA, including a new bunk-bed. We took a road-trip to Portland, OR to clear out the mother-in-law's storage space, now that she lives in Seattle. This week's going to be just as crazy. I'll be doing the work of 2 people at the office every day. I'll be moving and assembling furniture every evening. And my weekend's going to be spent clearing out the garage for a yard sale (which will include a good portion of the cleared-out storage space junk).

But I'll be doing it all with a smile on my face and a spring in my step, because I qualified for the final table of the Vegas Freeroll! Come late November, I'll have a 1-in-9 shot of winning an all-expense paid trip to Vegas, which includes a buy-in to the $3000+100 satellite tournament on Dec. 11 during the Bellagio's Five Diamond World Poker Classic. Winner there gets 40% of the prize pool, estimated to be over a million dollars, as well as a free ride into the WPT Championship!

My wife asked me if I made it to Vegas, if I'd give her my seat. C'mon now... I love the woman and all, but an opportunity like this so early in my 'career' is not something I could give up, even to the woman I vowed to give my life for... luckily she understands. I told her if I finished in-the-money at the Bellagio, I would just go ahead and buy her the $25,000 seat into the WPT Championship. But that's a lot of "if"s... I'm pretty sure the competition in Vegas is going to be exponentially tougher than it was here.

So here's how it went down: the Midway has a sister location, the Cascade Lanes, Lounge, and Casino (a 24-hour bowling alley with a built-in cardroom). Both locations are doing the Vegas Freeroll, so they are actually giving away 2 Vegas trips and satellite tournament seats! The Poker Room hours that a player accumulates can be used at either location. Shawni and I both had 40+ hours, and the Cascade tournament started at 3pm, so instead of it just being a Freeroll Sunday Night like the previous week, we turned last Sunday into an entire Freeroll Day!

We'd heard from other Midway players that Cascade didn't have as many players as Midway, and they were right. Cascade was a smaller place and they only ran 2 tables of 9 for the Freeroll (they have a 3rd table, but it was being used for their daily $25 buy-in cash tourney), so right off the bat my chances were 100% better! I played tight, folding Paint/Rag if it got raised pre-flop - a few times it would have been the best hand but I didn't let that affect me and stuck to my guns.

About 4 hands into the tourney, I limped in with QTd, and got to see the flop for cheap... 89J. I checked it, someone bet T200, and I just called along with 2 others. The Turn came a 3, no help for anyone, so I was the first to go All-in. The guy sitting to my right called, and showed Q7o. I flipped mine and said, as apologetically as I could fake, "Sorry, I flopped it..." As the dealer was getting ready to burn and turn the River, the guy started calling for a Q. I had to scratch my head at that one, as only another T could have saved him.

So I got lucky to double-up early, and then just rode it out and folded almost everything, just observing and trying to get a read on some of the other players, since I'd never played with any of them before. People began dropping like flies, and within an hour we were down to one table. We redrew for seats, and I got seated next to my wife, and Eric, another player we know from Midway.

A few hands in I got AA and decided to play it safe. Made a decent raise, scared some limpers off, and saw a flop that had two Qs. One lady seated to my left shook her head in disgust, so I knew I had made her throw away her Q. One down, only one more to worry about. The other two still in the hand didn't look too excited, so I made a small bet to test the waters. Got some hesitant calls and saw a third Q on the Turn. Now the lady to my left began to really fume. It didn't matter if anyone else noticed her 'cause I had the nuts and my All-in bet took the pot. I made two other All-in raises, once when I caught two-pair on the Flop, and again when the Turn made my Straight.

In all three of those instances, I made it a point to show my hand and not just muck it. This was to my benefit as people started fearing my raises and I could steal the blinds and small pots with stone-cold bluffs. I wasn't quite the chip leader yet, but I made sure to win enough to keep up with the blinds, and decided to stay out of the way and let everyone else take each other out.

When it got down to six players, my rush came and from there things went by in a blur. I took out two people at once when my KQ made the Broadway straight - one of the people who went out on that hand was my wife, and she was holding Pocket Aces. Sorry honey. I was holding an A when the Flop came Axx of clubs. Eric immediately jumped All-in. Since I knew him from Midway and knew his playing style, I recognized his bluff attempt, so I called and took him out.

Then there were three. I was at about T10,000 and trailing by 5000. Short-stack went All-in on my BB of 58h and I called. He showed Pocket 5s. I smiled and said, "Well, there's one of the 5s you were looking for." But even if he got the other 5, it didn't matter as 2 more hearts flopped, and then I got my Flush on the Turn.

Now I was heads-up with an older guy, and that scared me. I'm sure this guy has seen a lot more Poker tables than I have. I'd only been in 3 other NLHE tourneys (2 cash and the Freeroll last week at the Midway), and obviously this was the first time I'd made it this far. We went back and forth folding our SBs to each other; and we saw maybe 3 Flops out of a dozen hands. It seemed that any raise would be followed by a fold, so I began min-raising my BB after he'd called the SB and this seemed to be effective at really chipping away at him.

The blinds were up to 1600/3200, with 2 minutes left to go before doubling. I was holding one of my favorite hands, K2o, and we were going to get to see one of those rare Flops! It came all low cards and we both checked. Turn was a K, and the old guy pushed All-in.

I honestly don't know when it happened or how, but I had taken a major chip lead. The guy had his chips tucked in close and his arm over his stack most of the time so I really didn't know his status. When he called All-in, I obviously considered folding, but I almost fell out of my chair when he put out his stack of only T2900. I had to ask the dealer, "Is that all?" I eyeballed my chip pile, saw I had two stacks of T10,000 each and then some, and said, "Yea, let's see your kicker... I call."

I expected to see AK, or KQ, and I knew K-anything would beat me. 36o. The old man chuckled, "Ah... you had the King! Nice call." And that was that. I pumped my fist once, high-fived my wife, and shook hands with 2nd and 3rd place. There was no cash prize involved, but still, what a rush! Now, I only need to do this a few more times and maybe I'll do some jumping and screaming.

Somewhere between the final 6 and final 3 at the table, the Seahawks had blown their 17 point lead to the Rams in less than 5 minutes. I blame this on Anisotropy because he decided to jump on the Seattle bandwagon and jinxed us. But that loss pretty much summed up the rest of our Sunday night after we left the Cascade.

I signed up for the Freeroll at Midway, trying to give myself two shots at a Vegas trip; and if by some miracle I won both locations, it'd cover taking the entire family to Vegas. But the first hand I got involved in, I had JJ, and called an All-in after a 9-high flop. The guy who went All-in said he was trying to bust out so he could go play in the live 3/6 game, but he had just won two all-ins with crap by catching the River card. Then he did it again and took me out when his 89 hit a third 9 on the River.

Then I got beat by T25 in the Semi-finals of the Pai-Gow tournament by another last hand Bonus payout. Shawni was already in the 3/6 game and it was full, so I took the $60 I was going to buy-in with and played some Blackjack. I actually made $100 profit, and I cashed out and went to see if I was any closer to getting a seat. I had told one of the dealers I would be out in the Pit and to call me when a seat opened, but apparently he left and didn't pass that info on, so I was overlooked and had to start at the bottom of the list again. What did I do? Like the Seahawks throwing an incomplete pass when the Rams didn't have any time-outs left, I went back to the BJ table and blew the $100 I had just made. I went back into the Poker room and waited like a good boy to squander away my $60.

All in all, we lost $120 between us, but we probably would have spent that much on dinner and a movie and we wouldn't have had nearly half the fun we did last night, so it was well worth it. And of course, one more table, and I'm going to Vegas, baby!

FreeRollin' Sunday

I realize it's already Tuesday and I have a lot to write about from Sunday, but I had a lot of work to catch up on and for some reason I'm always really tired on Mondays. :)

First of all, Washington State is still intact! Mt. St. Helens spewed out a little ash on Friday and then just steamed for awhile. There's been continued quakes and even more steam, but no lava yet, and no silly-tourist casualties yet...

Amazingly, my wife and I were able to pry ourselves away from all of the excitement of mountain watching and make it over to the Casino for my turn at the Vegas Freeroll. Got there about an hour early, so Shawni bought into the main 3/6 game for $100 and I sat back and watched her, keeping to our promise of not playing at the same table together.

Now here's an interesting aside: after a hand, the dealer "washes" the cards on the table, then as he straightens them before the shuffle, he'll have the bottom card exposed to the players. Back in high school, I used to sit in class with a deck of cards, playing around with sleight of hands and card manipulations: palming, back-palming, forces, double lifts, one hand cuts, etc. and I learned myself quite a few card tricks. One of the simplest ones involved spotting the bottom card and keeping track of it to be able to find another person's chosen card. Recently, I read an article about the infamous MIT Blackjack Team; and other than just counting, one of the tricks used was Shuffle Tracking - watching for long runs of big cards and tracking those clumps during the shuffle.

With that thought fresh in my head, and with my knowledge of shuffling techniques, I started watching the dealers to see if I could spot... well, anything. And it didn't take me long. I noticed one of the three dealers in rotation that evening didn't ever bring the bottom card up high enough to get shuffled in, so it remained on the bottom during the riffles and cuts. The only time it moved was during the final half-cut onto the Cut card, bringing it to somewhere in the middle.

Five out of eight times I saw the bottom card show up on the board! Three times it flopped, once on the turn, and once on the river. I wish I could have taken a peek at the burn cards... I'd place bets on what they were. That dealer got moved to Shawni's table, which had 2 less people, so I was only able to "predict" a board card once out of 6 times.

Hmm... I'm going to have to stop by to "observe" some more and see if the percentage at a full table holds up. If so, I just may start chasing the river a bit more. Wouldn't you?

Anyways, back to the real world of Poker and to just hoping and praying you get the cards you want to get. I sit down at the second 3/6 table and buy-in with $50. First hand, I get dealt pocket 4's, and it get's raised around and capped before me. Geez. I pay $12 to see my first flop, and of course it's nothing but face cards. I tighten up for a few rounds, and then limp in UTG with AT of clubs. Flop comes... three clubs! Since I hadn't been involved in any hands in the last 15 minutes, I didn't want to scare everyone off by coming out betting. So I look at the board, wince a bit and give out an audible "ooooh" and just check. With a K on the board, someone does bet and he gets 4 callers, including me. The turn comes 7h. I ponder thoughtfully for a moment, then say, "Sure, why not?" and bet out. 2 call. River comes Qd. I shrug and say, "Gotta keep betting!" and toss my $6 out. One fold, followed by a strong raise. Sure, I'll take that. Re-raise. He pauses, gives me the evil eye, "I'll just call." KQ... but the Rivered Two Pair can't beat the Flopped Nut Flush! Mwahahaha. I'll take my $80 pot and the Oscar for the Best Slowplay of the Evening, thank you thank you. I see KQ whispering with the other caller on the other side of the table, saying nasty things about me I'm sure. But hey, the only thing worse than being talked about is NOT being talked about, right?

A few hands later, Tournament players are told to rack up and draw for seats. Walked away with $78. Not quite the chunk out of the deficit I wanted to take, but I guess I'll be happy with little nibbles to start. The Tourney starts off without a hitch, and just before the blinds I get dealt Pocket Tens and go in with a minimum raise. I get called by "Grunt" - a young punk who's shipping off for boot camp in a few months. The Flop comes Jack high, and he calls my minimum bet. Same on the Turn. By the River, it's still Jack high, he hasn't raised or shown any aggression, so I make a large bet (leaving myself T500) and he calls, taking away my chips with a pair of Jacks. I'm dealt 9T for my BB, and I get to see the Flop for free. Ten high, no straight or flush draws. I got top pair, so I push all-in with my T500. The only one who calls is Grunt. He shows K6. This time, my Tens hold up and I get my stack back from Grunt.

To my right is a young kid wearing a Mickey's Pub and Grill T-shirt. His first time in a tournament, and he'd blown most of his chips during his very first hand. The button goes around and he's the BB. I limp in with A4s, and everyone folds except for the two blinds. The Flop comes 469 rainbow. I bet in for 250, just happy to scare the blinds off. SB considers but folds, and Mickey, being short-stacked anyways, goes all-in. It was another 200 to call and I seriously considered folding; but I knew Mickey was pretty bummed about losing so much so quickly and was just acting in desperation, figuring he'd lose and try again next week. I decide to oblige his death wish and call, and he shows a 57o. I felt it was a good decision on my part, but the Turn is a 5, and just to add insult to injury, the 8 on the River completes his Straight.

The tourney started with 33 (3 tables of 11), and I mostly folded my way to the final table of 10. I did manage take out one guy, when I had JJ and he went all-in with AQ. The dealer dealt the three Flop cards and turned over a Q. I rolled my eyes in disgust, thinking my pocket pairs were beat again, but when I focused back on the table, the 3rd Flop card was a J. Apparently, this was an ongoing theme of the night, as there was another hand where AA went up againt QJ. The first exposed Flop card was an A, but the cheers from AA were silenced when the Flop continued to spread out K and T.

The blinds were now up to 200-400 and the BB was 2 hands away from me. At this point, I was the short stack with just T575, so I had to make a move. I went all-in with A9s, and my buddy Grunt called. This time he had the Pocket Tens, and I couldn't catch another A for the life of me.

Ah well. I already have another 20 hours logged, so I'll be back next week. I watched the rest of the Tourney, and wouldn't you know it, the final two were Grunt and Mickey. The silly thing is that both of these guys are under 21 (MIdway is an 18 and up Casino); so neither of them would be able to take the Vegas trip. They were both in it for "fun" and if they happen to win at the final table, they'll be able to auction off their satellite seat to the highest bidder. Damn kids nowadays. I went to watch Shawni lose the rest of her buy-in, but I heard that Grunt ended up winning that night.

That Sunday was also the first of a weekly Sunday night free Pai-Gow Tournament the Midway is holding, so the both of us signed up for that. Similar to Blackjack tournaments, you play 9 hands against the house, and the only real "strategy" is in how you bet. I'm in the first round of play and we all start off with T500. Everyone goes in with a standard T100 bet and a couple of Nickels on the Bonus. One lady gets Quads on her first hand, with 15 on the Bonus, so she's already up T375. Needless to say, she played conservative the rest of the round (and hitting a few more bonuses didn't hurt her either). I don't remember how many of the hands played out, except that I fell behind early and had to chase for 3rd place (top 3 at each table moved on). I quit playing the bonus with 4 hands left to go and just went all in with T420. If you read about my previous Pai-Gow experience, you can guess what happened... I pushed the next 3 hands.

The final hand, two others had already busted out, and so I was on the bubble. The girl who hit Quads was definitely in, and I estimated the remaining two had about 600 each. I asked the dealer who was first to bet, so I could bet accordingly and hope to hold on. He shook the dice, and lucky me had to bet first. I said screw it and left my 420 out. The dealer jokingly moved it all to Bonus. Yeah right. I humored him by moving moving a Nickel over anyways. The next guy just bet minimum, and the old lady at the end of the table put out about T150 total.

I saw my cards and bust out laughing. Three of a Kind. And the rest of my T415 bet? Push, of course. So I increased my final total to T435, and got up to leave as they were counting the rest of the chips. But old lady had lost her bets, and ended up with only T425! Wow. My wife qualified at her table, so we were both in the semi-finals. $600 for first, and $200 each for 2nd and 3rd. Not bad for a Freeroll!

For the semis, only 1 person per table would move on, so I played safe with T100 per bet and avoided the bonus (which was good cause I didn't get one at all!). I hit 4 Pai-Gows in a row and lost the first four hands and was down to T100, then amazingly things turned around and I doubled up 4 times in a row. So going into the final hand, I had T800 and everyone else was at 200-300, except for second place with about T700. So I changed down and put out the minimum bet of 5. I sat back and said, "Good luck Dealer!" I got a couple of glares, but hey, rooting for the house is a valid strategy in these types of tournaments. Second place bet out about T150, so I really needed for him to lose or push and I would be in the clear.

The Dealer had a great hand, so everyone lost, except for Second place, who pushed. I gave out a loud cheer, until I realized he pushed because he had a Flush... along with a hefty Bonus bet out there. Turns out Shawni got beat by a final hand Bonus as well. That really sucks. No one should get to win like that, unless of course it's me and I'm barely beating some old lady who doesn't know what she's doing. :)

Anyways, it was a fun-filled night, so I think we know how we're going to be spending the rest of our Sunday nights for the next few weeks at least. Heh, so much for my Monday productivity!