Congressional Charity Poker Tournament

Every year the Congressional Charity Poker Tournament invites my buddy Steve Dannenmann to come and play and bring 4 guests. In exchange, he gives a little speech about poker and then fields a little Q&A/tutorial for those in attendance. This year he invited me to come along. For those that aren't poker players Steve finished second in the WSOP Main Event in 2005 as a bit of a cinderella story and was pretty well received due to his easy going personality and happy go lucky attitude. In addition, for those more in the poker know he got a lot of kudos that same year when he basically chastised Phil Hellmuth for being a douchebag and subsequently presented Phil with a gift:



In any event, we met at Steve's house yesterday afternoon to catch the limo that had been arranged to take us to DC. Well last minute a guy Steve does work with decided he could come after at first saying he couldn't. So now there were 6 of us and when the limo door was opened I realized this wasn't going to be a great trip. 6 middle aged guys piled into the smallest fucking limo this cat has ever seen driving 40 minutes or so through rush hour traffic into DC. And to boot the limo driver had no clue where the Hyatt was. But we got there and were taken to the area where the tournament would go down. The tournament was partially sponsored by Full Tilt Poker.




Obviously they are doing this to keep in contact with the Congressmen and keep on top of the issues currently being discussed in Congress as it relates to the possible regulation of on-line poker/gaming. Well unfortunately, Congress is out of session so none of the Members were present. Rather a bunch of Chief's of Staff for the Members and various lobbyists were there. This meant that one Phil Ivey who had flown in for this last years was not coming. In addition, the WSOP ME seat that FTP had donated to the winner was not up for grabs. Damn that sucks.

In any event, the tournament had started and obviously the structure was LOL. There were $100 rebuys for the first hour. 2k in chips and 25/50 blinds which doubled every 15 mins. Yes doubled 25/50-50/100-100/200-200/400-400/800...wow. Here we go. First hand I doubled up when I flopped a full house holding 85 spades. Flop 885 and bet 3 streets and got called by A high. To say this group of players were novices would be an understatement. Part of the reason that Steve is allowed to bring guests is to put knowledgeable players at each table to help run the action and talk poker. Someone said I heard you won a tournament at the Borgata which I said yes (the thought of describing a chop seemed like a losing battle with these dudes). He replied by saying he had won the American Cancer Society charity tournament a few weeks ago...Uh-Huh. But they were all nice guys and had plenty of questions. After 90 mins or so the blinds were like 1500-3k or something and I was a "big" stack with 20k in chips and I was just shoving almost every hand if the pot is unopened. Guys would limp then fold to my shoves. Pretty funny. Then a really nice guy min-raised to 6k and I told the guy next to me that he was super strong. I said minimum of Pocket Queens here. There were a few tells in this bunch...lol. Sure enough he and another guy get to the river and he tables KK. Guy next to me says "How did you know that?" and proceeds to tell the whole table that I had basically called out the guys hands. They were flabbergasted that I could see it. Was really quite funny.

Anyway with 13 left, the blinds were I think 3k-6k and we had to be out of the ballroom by 10. One problem: it was 9:30. So the guy running it said "Next hand blinds are 10k and 20k with a 2k ante". Wow that was a pretty big jump. Next hand I saw an A and bombed it for like 38k total without looking at card #2 and got called by a pair which held. Turned out I had A6.

I did sit next to John Pappas who is the head of the Poker Player Alliance http://theppa.org which is the lobbying group attempting to repeal UIEGA and make certain poker is defined as a game of skill in various unfriendly states (Washington, South Carolina, Texas, etc.). He was pretty optimistic on some legislation getting through at some point but admitted that Congress is obviously super fickle and these coming elections, particularly in the Senate, would be crucial. He mentioned how important it was to the cause for Harry Reid to be re-elected. The thought of supporting that particular Dem is pretty vomit-inducing. I am a pretty strident conservative but I really think the far rights position on "Poker Prohibition" is so silly and childish. To say grown adults can't play poker on their computers in their homes is so anti-American it is hard to believe it is really their position. We shall see how it all gets resolved.

On the way home the big fella decided to sit in the front passenger seat for two reasons:

• The thought of jamming in with these dudes in the back seat was not particularly appealing
• One of Steve's friends likes to describe in great detail various hands he played. The thought of hearing a bunch of hands from a charity poker tournament was far less appealing than reason 1

I will be going up to the Borgata on the 18th for the $1k double play then back up to give the Taj one more shot for the USPC in November. Hopefully they will be able to get their act together and make it worth a shit.