Poker

The poker tournament is finally over! It saw nine players start off with 1838 monopoly dollars fight it out through two and a half weeks of poker. Our players were: Michael, Nichola, Eleanor, James, Hitten, Nikesh, Tom, Nick and myself.

Day 1 was one of the most interesting days, it started with 8 dollars in the first pot (figure it out) and Tom stole it early. Then we had our first casualty of the tourney, Nick went all in against Nichola and lost it all before 2pm. 8 people left, Nichola in first.

We played for about a week until our second casualty, Tom was looking pretty low on cash and he looked like he'd catch eighth place, then James went all in against Michael with an incredibly stupid hand and crashed and burned. Such a shame, James was one of my favourites. Michael storms to the front of the pack.

I started off the tournament pretty badly, heading straight to the back, but while Michael was taking out James (and then Tom), I was earning a steady income from the other players, working my way into first place. About 2 weeks in, things kicked off, Eleanor took Hitten down to 1 dollar, and I finished him off the next day, it was then that Michael and myself clashed.

All it took was one hand. Michael accused me and James (our dealer) of cheating straight away, so we counted the cards and I dealt. All was looking bad for me until the last card, a pair. Turns out Michael had two pairs from the first three cards. But a heavenly voice said "did you burn the last card?" so Michael laid down a SIXTH card (this is him cheating now), then a seventh and an eighth and a ninth! He took the ninth card and cleared the fifth (losing my pair), sixth, seventh and eighth cards. Little did he know that although he had given himself a flush (pretty good) with an ace (the best flush possible), he had just given me a straight flush (second best hand in the game). He foolishly went all in and I laughed all the way to the bank.

I was now well ahead of the rest and with only four players and one school day left, things were heating up. Eleanor "forgot" her cards on the last day so my intentions were to take out Nikesh and play Nichola and Eleanor outside of school hours. However, as all of my plans go, this failed, and Nikesh finished off Nichola glamourously at break. Leaving just me and Nikesh to battle it out at lunch time, our final school battle. I walked away with the spoils, keeping me in first with an awesome 10,900, a good two thirds of the overall money. Just me and Eleanor left.

A few days into the holiday, a convenient invitation to a BBQ at her house arrived by text, asking me to bring my cash with me. And so we played our final game of the tournament at hers. She started off pretty well, but I stole it with a lucky hand (and having much more cash in the first place) and walked away with all of my monopoly money safely in my pocket.

So, thanks to everybody involved in the tournament and thank you for looking after the cash as well. It's been great. hope we can do it again next winter!