Winning Travel

Yes… I did it again. I won a prize that includes travel. First it was the Windjammer, then the Waikiki hotel we used for our honeymoon. This time, through a poker tournament, I won … well, if I told you now, you wouldn’t read the rest of the story.

It was a charity tournament hosted by the Dallas Association of Young Lawyers, called “Poker for Playgrounds”. All proceeds went to rebuilding a DIST playground somewhere. Laura signed us both up ($150/each), though she had never played any real Hold’em before. I gave her a very tight hand selection and wished her luck as we entered the field of 120 players.

Six hours later, it was time to award the prizes. Laura points out that it’s good that I kept with my theme of winning travel, but I’m a little bitter about how the prizes went. The way they decided to handle the legality-of-poker issue is to give each of the top 20 finishers a number of raffle tickets based on their position. Then tickets were drawn from the hopper, and that person got their choice of prizes. Each person was eligible to win only one prize.

First place got 500 tickets, 2nd got 100, 3rd got 60, and so on down to 20th place getting 1 ticket – with the top 3 finishes weighted very heavily. The prizes were similarly heavily weighted in value for the top 3 … a plasma screen TV and 2 projection LCD widescreen TVs. Good stuff.

Since I had taken 2nd place, I alternated between looking at the trophy I had won, and the big screen TVs I would surely be putting into the back of the car. Sadly, though I had a huge advantage over the 18 people that finished before me, my ticket got drawn 5th, so the TVs were gone, as was the Carnival cruise. What I won was a trip to Orlando – a 7 day hotel stay outside Disney World, a 7 day car rental and $400 in airfare credit.

Laura, with her tight hand selection, never had a shot at first place. Incredibly, though, she finished 16th! We sat next to each other at the first table, and we would review hands she had played. Then, after we were split up, she would ask questions on breaks so we could adjust her play a little. Apparently it worked, and we stood there waiting to find out what prize she would take home.

By the time Laura’s ticket was drawn, she had her choice between a poker table with 1000 chips, a Rio Carbon (which I already have, and she’d never use) or a DVD Recorder (which comes inside every computer I own, and I own a lot). So, she took the poker table, basically giving her prize to me so I can hold poker parties. I guess I’ll take her on the trip. (grin)

If you’re reading this post and you have anything to do with setting up a tournament like this, please, please, please, please do not do to your players what they did to us last night. They wanted to enforce a strict 6-hour time limit on the game … 5 hours of play, followed by 1 hour at the final table. In the beginning, the blinds were climbing very slowly (after 1 hour, they went from 50/100 to 75/150), which was very cool. But, at the end, they raised them so fast to get a final table going (there was on 5 minute round at 15,000/30,000 before they went to 25,000/50,000) that once there was a final table, it lasted 15 minutes as a move in festival. In nearly every hand, one of the 9 players was forced all in as a gamble. That’s not poker. Please consult with someone who has run one before, and they’ll tell you how to escalate the blinds to get the time frame you want.

Finally, I have to say that I played some solid poker last night, and none of it was my fault. Nearly everything I did right last night I learned at PokerSchoolOnline, through the excellent mentoring of Aaron Hendrix, and by playing training tournaments with Chris Alexander and Al Spath. You guys rule. I know that I would have won this tourney if it could have been a real heads-up battle, rather than forced all-ins, and I owe it all to you.