Pokerstars is having it’s second blogger freeroll. When I played in the first event I mentioned I was thinking about starting an all poker blog. Last year the winner got a bahamas world poker tour package…this year they are sending the winner to the world series of poke main event and everyone else at the final table gets a seat in a WSOP $1,500 event. More on the prizes here.
(brrnt = Brent = for anyone confused (edit: oh, and i originally titled this entry brrnt poker instead of pacman poker, so that previous statement made more sense))
Friday night a few coworkers mentioned they might want to play some poker. After trying to get a game together a few times in the last couple months and failing, this one was looking good. Even Hoover was interested (and later declined surprisingly). A few emails later we ended up with a small crew of players: Me, Brent, Danny, Dick, Brent’s roommates Megan and Tony, and Megan’s boyfriend Franklin. We met up at Brent’s place in Arlington (close enough for me to walk to) cooked some burgers and kabobs on the grill, drank a few beers, and played a couple games of pac-man to warm up our card shuffling/chip betting hands before the poker began.
We played high stakes - $10 buy in NL Hold ‘Em. They probably should have had a video crew and announcers there to chronicle the action for an episode of High Stakes Poker (new season starts Monday June 5th on GSN [game show network]). Gabe Kotter Kaplin would have been proud. Even the normally tight Wangmeister gambled it up after losing his entire buy-in on the first hand to Franklin. Danny held AQ and Franklin AT - the flop had an ace and Danny’s bet didn’t scare Franklin away. The turn was a 10 and after Danny fired another bet, Franklin pushed all in….Danny gave it some thought but eventually called and lost the pot. Unfortunately for Danny, Franklin later took all of Danny’s money again a couple hours after he re-bought for $10.
This was the first second time I’d played with Dick…after the first 10 minutes of play we got most of the Dick jokes out of the way. All of which were brand new that I’m sure Dick had never heard before. According to Brent, “Dick doesn’t value money” which could present a problem when playing poker. This could work out in two ways - either the gambles a little more often to win some big pots OR he could play lots of hands and lose his money slowly. As the night started Dick seemed to play in the latter manor being in the middle of a lot of pots, sometimes not even looking at his hole cards - however, as the night progressed he seemed to shift a tad towards the gambling for big pots side. Instead of just calling he now was putting pressure on the other players by betting and raising big after the flop.
As the night progressed and players lost their stacks (or got tired of winning and decided to go have loud relations instead) the players were down to three. Me, Brent, and Dick. Perfect time for a three way tournament for $10 each. I thought it should be winner take all since we only had 3 players, but since it was Brent’s house, we went with Brent’s rules and decided that first would get $20 and second would receive their $10 back. The very first hand I looked down at 
…Brent raised a standard amount - 3 handed, with fast blind levels and limited chips I decided to push all in assuming out of 3 players I probably had the best hand. Dick instantly calls and brent folds - Dick shows 
…oops. But the poker gods were with me after I won the hand with a river ace. After exchanging the chip lead a number of times the blinds became astronomical (about half the average stack) and Brent took down the win. Luckily for me I got my buy-in back!
The picture of Brent is a Hackergotchi that I made as a request from Tucker…I seem to keep losing it so I finally posted it on the web for safekeeping.
I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.