'Twas a loverly March evening on the eve of St. Patrick's day that saw 20 wee Irish loving degenerates gather in the Garage Around Back at Pepper Street.
The mood was festive from the start, with a special set list of Irish music hand selected and crafted
for maximum listening pleasure, and tasty green treats outside including minty Oreo's and super sugary shamrock cookies.
There was definitely something in the air, for barely into the first round of play we had a spectacular collision. Jacob flopped a set of tens, Jeff S. flopped a set of threes and all the money went in, and then....
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| Screw you poker. |
Jacob was on life support barely ten minutes into the evening, but managed to not only hang on but build his stack up over the next hour and a half. Shortly after the break however, he would finally succumb, becoming the first player to hit the rail (and in spectacular fashion as you will see). Well done in any event Jacob! It takes a lot of heart to not give up in the face of a massive cooler, and you managed to salvage your evening in spite of the baddest of bad beats.
As the Celtic rock blasted, the evening progressed...
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| Table 1 action. |
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| View from the felt. |
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| The action table. You'll see why in the next photo... |
It was after 10pm before the bust outs picked up, with yours truly departing earlier than he would've liked when he hit trip aces on the flop and ran headlong into a boat.
But shortly before that there was this insanity over at what was the action table - the blue table.
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| I said SCREW YOU, poker. |
All the money went in on the flop and in the end Mike K. knocked out Jacob and Ken with the clearly superior pair of Aces, AhAs obviously rules over AdAc. Especially when there's four hearts on board, the fourth one naturally peeling off in sick fashion on the river.
And within an hour and a half we were at the final table.
Final table participants were delighted to find that they had already won a super awesome St. Patty's day prize.
Alas there were no big winners, but a couple of players did win another ticket. Oh well.
The biggest stack before the final table sat down, at first appeared to belong to Rob G.
But in short order he got whittled down (as does happen often in this game) and before we knew it he was out on the bubble and then it was money time.
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| Super big ass money payouts. Actually, smaller than most LA bar tabs. |
Next to fall and get their money back was the lovely Barbara N. who was just behind the stunningly beautiful and smart Beverly M. (yes, that would be my wife) in chips - as they were both knocked out by Mike P. Beverly received $80 for her 5th place finish and got to go back in the house and watch Project Runway.
I stuck around and shuffled the four handed play. Next to fall was John S., who also got $80.
Marc F. stepped up and helped shuffle the always rather tedious (unless I'm still in it) 3 handed action. Thanks so much for your help Marc! Allen R. finished next in 3rd place for $100.
And then there were two. The chips flew fast and furious and in the end it was Mike P. who edged out Josh F. The latter collected $200 for second place. The former locked up $300 and his umpteenth trophy over the years at Pepper Street.
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| "See, I only play real hands!" |
Well done Mike! And very much deserved!
Stay tuned for the evite to our next tournament, which will be Saturday, April 6th at 7pm. I know I posted that there would be a WSOP satellite that day, but it turns out that Saturday is probably the best one of the month for our regular tournament. We will still get the satellite in, I promise!
