Tao of Pauly

Ferrari's No Limit Tourney #1

"Eighty percent of success is showing up." - Woody Allen

I played in a tournament last night at Signor Ferrari's. Here's some of the highlights from my write-up that I posted to the Tao of Poker:

If only it were that easy. I had a bad feeling about the tournament. Why? Because I was in the middle of a horrible nightmare. What's worse? Getting no cards and losing or getting good cards and losing? OK. We're on the same friggin' page here. Let's continue. Ever since I arrived in Vegas, I have never seen so many pairs. Pocket pairs. High ones. The Jerkoffs. The Hiltons. The Dudes. (My nicknames for pocket J-Q-K). And this ain't online poker I'm moaning about (I'm convinced the sites are programmed to give out a higher percentage of better hands than in "real life") and I'm talking about Las Fuckin' Vegas. I was playing live games daily and saw a ridiculous amount of top tier playing hands... so much that I've been able to play much tighter and muck those marginal hands which got me in a slew of trouble. It's easy to fold an A-small when you know a pocket pair is coming soon. I eagerly kissed the illustrious K-Jo good bye especially when I knew the Hilton Sisters are right around the corner. I haven't played KJo in weeks. And that Varkoyni hand... Q-10? See ya! Have fun in Brooklyn with all the other babushkas.

So in Vegas I got hot cards. Sizzling. I had burn marks on my fingers from all the hot cards I got, just like a crackhead developed after firing up too many late afternoon hits off the crackpipe. Ensuing, was a desperate series of beat downs.... like when those baton swinging, water spraying, juiced-up Chicago cops beat up all those hippies en masse at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. It was bloody chaos. Outdrawn. Badbeated. River'd. Smacked down like a redheaded child at a family picnic. Monsters losing to field mice. You get the gist.

And this past weekend on the tables at Party Poker were no better. Al Can't Hang witnessed the carnage, as did many of you.

Exhibit 1a: Sun, 11:17am EST... 4-4 losing to 3-4o. Party Fish called my preflop raise in LP and my reraised me on the flop 2-4-7 after I made my set. When he caught the straight on the river, he wrote in the chat. "Sorry, I thought you were bluffing?"

With a distasteful shake of my head, I kept plodding though the online waters and saw great hand after hand being taken down. It spooked me for sure, and was part of the reason I walked into Ferrari's not feeling so good about my game. But like Woody Allen said...

The NL Tournament Players
Seat 1: Pauly
Seat 2: Austin aka College Boy
Seat 3: Coach
Seat 4: Ugarte
Seat 5: Rick Blaine
Seat 6: Mike 1.0
Seat 7: James
Seat 8: Swish
Seat 9: Mike 2.0
Seat 10: Ferrari

There were four guys named Mike at the game. But I was most happiest that Swish showed up! He moved to DC recently and made the drive just to play and see everyone. That was way cool. The games have lacked a certain... je ne sais quois... since Swish moved. Anyway, everyone got $100 in chips to equal their buy-in. Top 4 places paid: 50%, 25%, 15%, and 10%. $500 to the winner. I was looking to make my money back... at least.

For more details of what happened to me in the tournament, visit Tao of Poker. Check ou the final results:

Congrats to the winner: James. He rallied back from next to nothing to beat Ugarte headsup. And good job to Ugarte, who pulled in a second place finish. And yeah, I was impressed with the exploits of College Boy, who was a good sport the entire night, allowing everyone to let his moniker stick. Well College Boy schooled most of us.

The Final Tally:
1. $500 James
2. $250 Ugarte
3. $150 College Boy
4. $100 Ferrari

5. Mike 2.0
6. Mike 1.0
7. Coach
8. Rick Blaine
9. Pauly
10. Swish

Congrats again to the winners and thanks to Ferrari for organizing the event.

As you can see I did poorly. But afterwards we played in a side game, something I called: Late Night Poker: The Losers Lounge. Here's a bit of that writeup which included a flashback from Atlanta and a cat incident:

Marie showed up to join the side game which was played on Ferrari's coffee table and on his couch. It reminded me of the home games I played back in my college days in Atlanta... at Jerry and Schanzer's apartment. That was when we would have two games going on at once... with upwards of 14 people playing at the dining room table and on the coffee table. The sorortiy girls who lived across the hall were hooked. They played every night with us, yep... every night in the summer of 1994 that we played poker. And yeah Schanzer had a three legged cat to amuse us in between hands. Those were the days, and I might get around to writing up some great stories from games that happened a decade ago this upcoming summer. Good times for sure.

OK, flashback aside, it was fun to get a cash game going. Rick sat on the floor. Marie sat on the edge of the coffee table and Swish opened up the window to get some fresh air into the apartment. And that led to some comic relief. Ferrari has two cats and one of them was attracted to the ledge of the window. Despite plenty of pleas to the "tournament table" about the curious cat, Ferrari insisted that the cats were fine and not to worry about a wide open window. Ferrari lives on the 19th floor, but he was bogged down in the middle of a hand... so we were all still concerned for the cats safety. Swish blurted out, "This is like a Disney flick... That Darn Cat!" To which, Coach could not stop laughing. He was brought to tears over the obscure Disney reference, and Swish showed us why he's missed at the games ever week. And in some morbid way, we all agreed that it would have been kinda cool to see a cat fall 19 stories. Not necessarily Ferrari's cat. That would have been fucked up. But not on our watch, so Swish closed the window and the cat drama ceased.

For a more detailed write up of the Loser's Lounge game, visit the Tao of Poker. All in all, I had a fun time, despite getting bounced in 9th place.