♠ Sunday, June 20, 2004
“Trip” Report: The Hanging Chads
I promised a trip report from another new home game, but nothing out of the ordinary happened, so this will be short.
The game was in Allendale, but I can't very well call it the Allendale game, because presumably it's not the only one. Since my host was named "Chad," this game has been named "The Hanging Chads."
Chad spent some money on this game, although all through Ebay. He bought a thousand of the "dice" chips, in those 500-per cases that include cards and dice. He also bought a couple of those folding reversible tabletops for poker or blackjack, and placed them on top of card tables I presume he already had. If he didn't, and he bought cardtables and chairs, he put yet more money into the game. But this wouldn't be out of character for him; his basement includes an air-hockey table and a foosball table, and enough spare computer parts under the air-hockey table to indicate that he's probably been a computer guy almost as long as I have.
His plan was to run two $40-buyin tournaments separately, and this worked, although I probably would have run it to combine the tables and play to the top three. In any case, even though there was only one person on my table who really knew what he was doing, there was nobody who was wholly clueless. So, my fourth-place finish (I think) wasn't in the money, but I'm not disappointed. After a couple of nice hands early my cards went cold, and with bluffing being pointless at the table, I couldn't really do much.
As the original two tables went short-handed, the remaining players tried another $10 tourney. Since this had the same blinds as the $40 tourney, but with fewer chips, it was effectively a turbo tourney. I shoved in with a marginal hand (A6♠), and lost.
At this point we use the other table for a 50cent;/$1 cash game. My cards remain cold, and so I win a couple of small pots but don't get back even until my KK holds up at the end, for a whopping 50¢ loss at the ring game.
And so what was supposed to be an easy game, ended up being a $5050 loss.
Chad says he's interested in doing it again, perhaps in August. This seems late to me; if he invested all of this money, his game should be monthly at the least, and maybe even more often. Heck, even the Lithuanians play every two weeks.
