UMTerp's weekend tournament

I included you on this email if you played on Saturday, or if I thought you'd be the least bit interested in the results. Everything went smoothly as far as I could tell, and I think everyone had a lot of fun. We'll probably do this again in a few months, either in late January or early February. I'll try to give more notice next time, as I know there were quite a few of you that expressed interest in playing, but had other obligations this past weekend. Again, for those who have friends that played, feel free to forward this email along to them.

We ended up with 18 players for a prize pool of $1,080. 1,500-chip starting stacks, for a total of 27,000 chips in play.

The structure worked as I anticipated, and nobody busted out before the first break over a hour into the tournament, so hopefully every felt like they got their money's worth. The tournament finally ended around 12:45, at the 400/800 blind level.

I think I got all these results right, though I may have flip-flopped one or two spots because I'm doing this from memory. The final table standings were as follows:

1. Jeremy ($460) - Jeremy won a few timely coin flips (which are detailed below), and never lost a significant pot that I can recall at the final table. His stack seemed to be moving in the right direction the entire tournament. Congrats to Jeremy!

2. The Who ($300) - The Who was the short stack almost the entire time at the final table, but patience was a virtue with this structure, and he rode his stack into second place and a nice payday. He couldn't overcome a ~23K to ~4K defecit heads up though, and succumbed to Jeremy after 10 or 15 hands of heads up play.

3. Pat ($190) - Much like The Who, Pat was one of the shorter stacks throughout much of the final table. He oulasted a few of the more aggressive larger stacks, and cashed in third place.

4. Damon ($130) - Although Damon came up short in his bid to become the first player that I'm aware of to finish a marathon and win a poker tournament in the same day, he did hang on to cash. Damon and Jeremy played the biggest pot of the tournament 4-handed at the 200/400 blind level, when Damon's JJ went up against Jeremy's AK all-in preflop. The winner of that hand would have had a commanding chip lead with a stack over 20,000 chips. The first four cards were no help to Jeremy, but a cruel ace on the river sealed Damon's fate.

5. Brian - Brian was actually down to about 150 chips in the second level of play after taking a brutal beat when getting all-in against Big Chris with AA against AK on a K43 flop. A king hit the turn to knock Brian almost down to the felt, but he almost came all the way back before being eliminated in fifth place.

6. Hogie

7. Jason

8. Aaron - The second big hand Jeremy won at the final table was very similar to the first. Jeremy's AK was all-in preflop against Aaron's JJ, but in this case, Jeremy didn't need any river heroics when an ace and a king came out on the flop. This one was for about a third of the chips in play, fairly early at the final table.

9. Peter

If anyone has any constructive criticism about the setup, the structure, whatever, let me know, and I'll consider incorporating it for next time. One thing a lot of folks did mention was the possibility of a small cash game on the side, but it simply wan't feasible his time given who was out early and the timing of the bustouts. It's possible we'll set something up next time. It's also possible we'll expand the tournament a tiny bit and start with ~24 players and three tables, though that depends on the demand. We'll see.

Also, thank you to a few folks that helped me run everything - Damon/Coop, who came through with a few players for me when I was running a bit short, Pete, who helped me deal the final table, and my wife A, who was a gracious host and had a good time playing her first tournament. See you all next time - thanks for playing!

-Phil