Aladdin Tournament

Playing at the Aladdin was a great experience. They had a microphone and everything for our event and we got the traditional…dealers, shuffle up and deal via the mic. I wanted to thank CJ for putting this together…not to mention he was very smart in having everyone there a half an hour early. What I liked is that we had some readers and wife’s play in the tournament…gave it a good warm fuzzy feeling.

We got there and the room was rather dead which was nice because it gave plenty of space for signing up and chatting with some fellow bloggers. Needless to say 71 Bloggers showed up to the event and were ready to play.

Sidenote: In the cab on the way to the event I mentioned to everyone in the cab…please don’t take it personal, but I’m here to win this thing. Someone said, I think there is a lot of pride on the line and we all want to win it…opps…now I’m in trouble…everyone is here to draw blood. No one came here with the friendly attitude.

I got seated at table 10, which was cool because some of my favorite bloggers were at the table…including Fat Man. There was this reader at our table from LA. For some reason I think he was H-Double’s friend. He was aggressive as heck and kept pushing me off hands with his aggressive bets. I was a bit thrown off with his play because I was sure that he was holding something low…too early to call and the table was tight. Then out of nowhere…Poker Geek yells Hamma! This gets a cheer from the bloggers.

I look to Fat Man’s right and I see Bill Rini really digging in. Serious, he had this look on his face that he was there to win. This is when my adrenaline started to pump with excitement. I figured to try and stay away from Bill and Spaceman as I see both to be in the zone at that point in time. Go figures they would tangle for a big hand later in the event that set Bill up at the final table. I sat and sat and won a few hands and busted Felecia when she was short stacked (I didn’t collect my bounty). Don’t worry Felecia fans, she took a nice pot from me in Razz later that night…I thought I had a lock but she had a better cards (I will talk about this hand in a later post).

As the tournament went on everyone started to go crazy over hands…but at Table 10 things were rather quiet. I think everyone seriously was taking this thing too serious…wait…who was that guy singing, Mr. Serious in the cab. So this is how I got busted. I laid down a few good hands because Bill was licking his chops when I looked over at him. I had forgotten about the other carnivore at my table and sitting to my left, Mr. Spaceman. I thought at thought after peeking a Kd&Jh with the blinds fast approaching. I thought now or never and pushed. Spaceman pushed with A-10…flop was A-5-junk…turn was an A and river was a 5…ouch…full house and I’m out in 19th.

In the finals we had one reader and three bloggers. Two of the four finalists were from my table. So I was rooting for table 10 and when the reader and other blogger got knocked out I was happy to see one survivor from table 10…Mr. Bill Rini. Bill was just focused the whole day and I couldn’t see him losing. Yet, it was CJ and he was throwing the event. In the end Bill won the event and everyone was happy for both guys who played hard all day long. I’m sure they were tired and Bill later told me playing against CJ was an emotional drain. I believe it since Otis said the same thing about getting knocked out of the WSOP and we have better players than they do. So congrats to Bill and if you ever want to sit and talk serious Poker you should talk to Bill. He is great at breaking down hands and position.

posted by Joaquin "The Rooster" Ochoa @ 12:16 PM