Poker Tournament

Let's momentarily change the subject.

At one point, I had thought about making Lady Gaga's Poker Face the song of the day, but decided that song gets too much play anyway.  My wife suggested Kenny Rogers' The Gambler, but I will probably never highlight a country song on this blog. 

So since I'm feeling a little less cheap with my upcoming job, I decided to go to a poker tournament.  But I am a cheap person, so I went to the cheapest poker tournament in town and that's a $30 No Limit Texas Hold 'Em tournament at Running Aces.  I didn't even know this place existed until I started looking for local poker tournaments.

I took some notes with my phone while I was there, so this might be a fairly detailed post. 

First off, it's not terribly big.  Maybe half the size of Treasure Island, which is the only other casino I've been to in Minnesota.  However, it was really busy.  There were at least twenty tables that were full and probably more like thirty.  And there were probably 20-30 people at the bar and in those little booths watching horse racing.  Considering it was around 1 in the afternoon, I wonder if all these people are unemployed or something. 

The tournament didn't start until 2, I had some time to kill.  I decided to watch the upcoming horse race.  I've never bet on horse racing before, and I'm probably not that likely to, but it's kind of interesting to see.  There are some guys there with notebooks and all this junk.  After watching them parade each horse in front of the camera, I decided that if I were to bet, I'd pick "Posse in Effect".  I just liked the name.  The horse was in second for a while, but faded down the stretch.  The winner was "She Loves You Now."  I wonder if someone has named their racehorse "He Hate Me" or something like that.

I take my seat at the table about quarter to 2.  People slowly take their seats soon after.  Of course, it's all guys.  I probably only saw a handful of women at any of the tables, and maybe 20 tops in the casino.  I learn that they don't have enough dealers for all the people that are there and there's a really long waiting list.  So as we play, whenever anyone's eliminated from the tournament, someone's there ready to take their place at the table. 

I'm used to playing online where the blinds go up fairly slowly (10/20 to 15/30 to 25/50) but they need to move people through and the blinds double every 10 minutes. 

To make a long story short (too late), I survive for about an hour, but then I was dealt Ace-Queen and I went all in, but the guy that called me had Ace-King.  I didn't get a queen or anything that helped and that was it. 

But if you're free on a Tuesday or Thursday, a $30 poker tournament isn't a bad way to spend an hour (or hopefully more), though it's probably not a great investment.   And Running Aces is only in Forest Lake, so it's not that far away.