Falstaff Open weekend recap

The house is clean, the beer is cold

And I am absolutely friggin’ exhausted. Suzy slept for 3 hours Friday night and I slept for 5, not exactly a great recipe for success in a poker game. I now understand why the curse of the host is a very real thing. Between getting the house ready, getting chips sorted, getting snacks acquired, I had next to no time to do the things I typically do to prepare for a tourney, like rest, listen to my iPod, and get my head straight.

So I busted first. I didn’t even make the first blind change, much less the first break. Hee frickin’ Haw. Overplayed everything, including the Hammer. Note to self – playing the hammer hard on an A-high flop is good, unless you opponent is holding pocket Aces. Then it’s what we term “an advanced play.” TripJax was holding the TripRockets on that one, but it was only one in a mercifully short series of mistakes for me.

But the real point wasn’t to win money (yeah right!), it was to throw a big party and see if anyone showed up. And they did in droves. From Columbia, Greensboro, Charlotte, and of course, G-Vegas. There were more out-of-towners than locals, but Jim “Warbucks” Esposito represented the home team by chopping for first with BigPirate’s wheelman Scott. TeamScottSmith was the big winner of the night, taking down 3rd place and almost a full bottle of tequila en route. The biggest guns in poker flexed their way to 4th place, and G-Vegas continued to represent, with Shep Smith rounding out the money finishes in 5th. BigPirate was our unfortunate bubble boy.

Highlights were, of course, having everyone over to the house (and getting more shit to storage and Goodwill to make room) for the first time for most folks, playing Hold ‘Em with TripJax and watching his eyes light up when a J-high flop gives him his namesake hand. Yeah, that was a little bit of a tell (. Catching quad kings in Omaha Hi and having someone bet straight into me was nice, too, and realizing at the end of the cash game that I’d actually profited a little on that table didn’t hurt either.

Thanks to everyone for coming up, we’ll try to do it again in the fall. With more sleep.

So afterwards, what do I do on Sunday but bleed off a big chunk of my online bankroll catching 2nd-best hands and then stupidly moving UP in limits to chase my losses! That turned my $40 losing session into a nice $120 losing session. I <3 poker. Really. Rebounded a little yesterday with a 3rd-place finish in a Stars $5 5-table SNG, then grabbed about $60 on the $25NL 6-max tables to put me back in the black (barely) for the month. Thank god for FTP ads and bonuses!

Oh, I also played a little NL ring on Sunday with the blonde bombshell of blogger babes, who promptly cracked my aces with her turned flush, and kindly checked the river to save me further pain and humiliation. We both finished that table up a little.

Headed to Orlando tomorrow for the Southeastern Theatre Conference through Sunday. Anyone in that part of the world got a home game this weekend, drop me a comment or an email. I think I may cruise up to Daytona for dog track donkey poker on Saturday afternoon, unless there are better or closer options I don’t know about.