Championship Sunday
Good morning, friends. Yesterday was not without it’s tough moments, but I believe that all in all, it turned out to be a good day of competition that was enjoyed by…most of us. Unfortunately, we did have a few hit the rail, and we hope they’ll be back next year.
The four knockouts were split evenly between the two tables, but there’s no doubt that the table draw impacted the game. Table 1 (my table) played big pots much earlier than Table 2, and for the most part early, I was the one on the losing end. Other than Cody Jones (who began the day with all 75,000), I was the first player with all 75,000 of the chips in play and at risk, and was as low as 26,000. I rallied back after dinner however.
Hosting an event like this has its share of challenges. Obviously, everyone in the room knows each other and is friendly towards each other, but we’d all like to win the $5k up top. There are no professional dealers, and while Jim and I do have a lot of experience around this game, we are only human as well. No matter what happens today, I truly hope that everyone comes out of this experience knowing that he and I have done the absolute best we could to keep the integrity of the game high while also providing an opportunity, structure, and buy-in that offered our players one of the best poker experiences, especially local, of their year.
That said, we will also learn from this experience and strive to be better. At next year’s event, I truly intend to employ dealers to take the pressure off the players. While the goal of this event is to be player friendly in terms of the cost (the rising costs in casinos is truly disheartening on this level of buy-in), dealers I believe will improve the experience next year.
I’ll do my best to post more updates as we get closer to a champion today, but yours truly will be focused on putting up a fight as well! As the chip leader, Mark Tucker will no doubt be a force today. But there is no player with less than 10BB entering today’s action, so I have no doubt that this thing is a long way from over.
Good luck to all remaining players.
#teamfade
- Colton