As most of you know, I help manage a home poker league here in the SE valley in Phoenix. We play for 15 weeks on Wednesdays, then have finals, then start over. Most games happen in the Chandler/Gilbert area. ...but I live in Ahwatukee, under the mountain. So, once a quarter, I host a night on a Saturday to allow me to "give back" to the poker league.

On Saturday the 7th, I'll be having two $10 games -- 7pm and 10pm at my house deep in the Ahwatukee foothills. They follow a much-like-the-bars format of mostly-doubling blinds on a quick schedule. [Full disclosure: $2 of your $10 entry is held for the finals, and the winner of either Saturday game is likely to qualify for the final.]

I serve food and drinks, and we'll be playing $0.25 PLO on the side - and I'll likely have the craps table setup for the degenerates.

I'll bump this with a flyer (minus the exact address) later today.

Craps table, sheesh...my night just went from $20-40 max to...maybe a lot more than that.

Anyway, I plan to be there this time, no schedule conflicts. Thanks.

Okdokie, here I go...

How did you know I live in the Singing Spur Mobile Home Park? Those directions are perfect. Take the big arrow to the little arrow, turn right, keep driving until I see a giant question mark. See you then!

Bumping, shamelessly, for the next day or two.

Reported.

I don't recognize the big red arrows, but I am familiar with some of those little yellow lines.... The wife & I are interested in donating 10 or 20 bucks to your worthy foundation, if you have room for two more. It sounds like a far more satisfying and far less expensive evening than the Saturday nite donk-a-fest at the Fort.

Other than the drive, I agree But directions to my place are easy:

For most of Phoenix, it's simple: "Drive toward Gila River. Exit on Pecos instead of going quite all the way to Gila... Drive down Pecos until you think you've gone to far."

I'll make it one of these times.

I'm pretty sure I'll be there, I'm bringing the wife this time around.

A mini TR for Pali's Quarterly Game

I got to meet the Famous Palimax and Mrs Palimax, and see the Roulette Project in person- looking very impressive. I think I have a steel ball kickin around somewhere to replace that glass marble. I'll see if I can find it.

I also got to meet the Nearly-as-Famous Ray Powers, and his wife who did a great job as TD.

I think there were a few other 2+2ers there but I don't know for sure who they were.

We had 32 for the 7pm tourney and I think there were 28 for the 2nd one.
I went down early on in the first one. I limped in EP with 33 followed by a few other limpers. Flop comes out 389 rainbow. Jackpot! I bet the pot, get one caller. Turn is a K, I bet the pot again, he doubles it. I call, putting him on a big king, maybe AK. River's a blank- no straight, no flush out there. I can't see how I'm possibly behind here, so I shove. He calls and turns over his KK for a bigger set. Yeah, ok, I guess that's one way I'm behind. I'm off to find a beer.

Since I didn't really know anyone, (besides my wife who was still playing), I offered to deal. I dealt it all the way down to the winner. I don't recall the name of the winner, but I think Ray went down about 5th.

Second game I was on the garage table, and didn't really get much in the way of cards. I just sort of donked them away gradually, and made another relatively early exit. Since the wife was also out, we decided to get started on our 45 minute drive home rather than stay for any side games.

Thanks to The Palimax and Mrs Palimax for hosting a great game.
This was a great group of folks- it reminded me a lot of the group we left behind in Ohio- just a low stakes social game that was a lot of fun.

Oh, yeah, Deep Fried Oreos, FTW.

Thanks for the invite Pali.

I had to work until 12:30am.

I cry with sad.

Zathras, was good to have you. I think you'd fit in well in the group, definitely hang out for more of the games when you can. I know the drive is a bear.

The night was amazing as always, I'll try to write up a TR as well. Spoilers: I went 5th in the first tournament and 2nd in the second one. Not a bad showing. (Actual poker content is likely to be sparse in the trip report btw :P)

Ok, here goes:

The eve started off with the wife and I picking up our friend Dan to go to the party. Dan had graciously bought some Lindeman’s Frambiose (http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/187/599/) with him, which I was looking forward to partaking of over the course of the evening. We stopped by at What-A-Burger on the way there to allow my wife and Dan to get some food in their tummy before a night of partying, which I skipped, since it was my intention to pig out on Palimax’s homemade chips and homemade salsa, which already was going to crush my diet.

We arrived around 6 and were the first one’s there. For the Saturday events, showing up early is pretty hit or miss. Sometimes you can show up at 3pm and people are already there BBQing and playing Guitar Hero, and sometimes it’s a dead zone until 10 minutes before the event starts. We chatted some with Palimax, watched him beat down Rock Band, and went to go look at the garage layout to see what he did with the roulette wheel. Strangely, over the course of the night, I never saw anyone playing roulette or craps, besides me doing a couple test spins of the wheel just for fun, but then again, I was actually playing in the tournaments most of the night, so may have missed side game fun.

People slowly started coming in, and pretty soon I was having an animated discussion with a couple friends about Omaha hands recently played, when in came the people I would come to know as Zathras and Mrs. Zathras. How can someone be registered in 2004 and have 75 posts? Sick post to year ratio! (Posts Per Day: 0.04) I looked up, said hi, and then said “Palimax and Mrs. Palimax are upstairs” assuming that this was just one of Palimax’s friends I didn’t know, and then turned back to talk more Omaha.

I’m a ****ty replacement host. Fortunately we actually got to talking a little bit later, and Zathras turned out to a) not hold it against me and b) be a really good guy.

As everyone rolled in, the all important question came up: Would Palimax have enough homemade tortilla chips to hold out the entire night? A quick reveal in his pantry proved that he had prepared well, as there were literally BUCKETS of chips in his pantry ready to go. Good times!

My wife agreed to take on TD duties, and taking entry, and I was looking forward to seeing tuq come by.

Side note on tuq: tuq is the guy that knows everyone I know, despite us not knowing each other until recently. A few months back, tuq and I met for lunch, where it was revealed that he knew a friend of mine named Brian, and in fact helped find Brian a job. During our next lunch, he decided to bring along a friend, another guy I knew named Bill. During that lunch, I talked about my last Vegas trip, and Palimax’s name came up, and it turns out tuq knows Palimax, too!

I almost felt stalked.

In any case, the reason tuq’s name came up here was because Palimax asked to add him in because he was going to be running late, and we’d just blind him off. I wondered if he was going to make it after all. Someone I didn’t expect to make it, but did, was my sister, who is a very casual poker player and brought a friend of hers as well, equally casual. I was happy to see her show up though for the fun and festivities.

At 7pm the UFC fights started and I staked out my chair for this. For those of you who know me, the UFC > Poker in my attention/interest. I was here to watch a UFC, and poker was incidental. Those at my table were going to see an amazing exhibit of my folding while staring at the tv screen during fights. But first, the initial prop bet. Palimax and I always bet on when the first fight will start, I started at 7:14, Palimax went at 7:15, and I took the under, so as long as the opening bell rang for the first fight before 7:15, I could start the evening up.

The poker game started around 7:10 to allow for another couple of late players, and, lucky me, I had a seat in excellent viewing of the event. But alas, Bruce Buffer failed me and went on too long on introductions and I lost the opening fight bet, and started the evening down and tilted instead!

Palimax’s Mai Tai’s were flowing freely, as was the beer. The Lindeman’s got broken out fairly early, but there was a mad rush on it, and Dan has many friends, so to split it evenly, we all ended up with only about 2/3rds of a glass. Still, much better than nothing. Tuq did show up pretty early on, but never seemed to be able to get a lot going on in either tournament.

The first event was very much a blur. I cannot remember a single hand I played. I folded a lot, raised and continuation bet when I could, and somehow made it from the initial 32 down to the final table. I do remember that just prior to the final table, I was running short, and decided to just do an all in fest, and went all in 11 out 15 hands. And wasn’t called once. That’s a fun way to build a stack. (It may have been closer to 11 out of 18, but it was an extreme amount of all ins).

The final table was horrible for me. My back was to the screen! And it was the Silva/Sonnen fight! What kind of crap was this?! I was relegated to getting cards, either pushing or folding, then watching the fights more. If I pushed, I would look back in a few minutes to see if anyone called me and if they did if I was still alive.

Somehow, I made it to fifth like that before my luck ran out. Top 3 pays in these events, so this is the worst case scenario for me. I got no money, had problems watching the final fight, and had no opportunity to play the cash game to make some money’s there! (Yes, I’m whining about doing well in an event. I’m such a douche. :P)

I did go peek in to look at the cash game, though, and it was… No Limit Hold’em instead of Omaha! The scoundrels!

During the ten o’clock game, we had almost the same amount of people, and Palimax began the glorious duty of deep frying some Oreo’s for those with the munchies. Also, to add excitement, Palimax came in to announce to his wife that they just spotted a mouse in the garage. Mrs. Palimax was very not amused. This was made doubly amusing by a mouse then being spotted in the back yard (same mouse? Who knows?). I wonder if Palimax was forced to go mouse hunting all of Sunday?

Upon seating, my sister starts immediately complaining that she is stuck at my table AGAIN. She was stuck at my table in the first game, and in fact I had knocked her out. Hilariously, that pattern would repeat itself when shortly later I knocked her out a second time. She was very (fake) cranky and began texting her son (who is in the military) to come exact revenge when he comes back home next.

Mrs. Powers saw fit to play the late event. She is very shy about playing, and thinks she plays bad, and everyone will make fun of her. (In reality she is just a big feel player, and feels way out of place against the math players like me, but she doesn’t really play badly at all.) However, during our Wednesday game this week, one of the regulars was dogging her mercilessly to play tonight, so she finally caved in. She ended up doing very well. At the first break she had more chips than I did, and she ended up with a very respectable 4th place finish. The final five was three women and two men, as the girls were just crushing left and right tonight. The final three was me and two women, one of which was my sister’s friend. I went extremely card dead here and basically folded my way to second place, but couldn’t mount a comeback, and my sister’s friend took home the whole thing. Bravo for her.

We stayed behind a while longer and chatted, and as usual it was just a fantastic time. The Palimax family is incredible hosts and the night was great, and I can’t thank them enough for hosting.

Despite Sonnen losing after beating Silva’s face in for 4.5 rounds.

Thanks for having us. We can't wait for the next one.

Dan has read the report and would also like to point out that in the second tournament I knocked out my wife in addition to knocking out my sister.

<--- bad person.

Edit; thesnuke, was your wife the one who's first name started with C, and final tabled the first tournament? She was shy, but loosed up a bit towards the end. Nice girl. She played VERY well too. Pretty sure she was getting annoyed at heck with me at the end of the first tournament between my all in fest and continually trying to watch the fights.

Hey I'm proud of my .04 ppd ratio... and most of those are in the past year, too. actually about the same time I registered on 2+2 I signed up on Keen's table forum. I ended up post-whoring there (~2300 posts) rather than here mainly because I cared more about building impressive tables than playing impressive poker. My efforts Saturday show I'm still tracking well in that regard.

Was Dan the one that plays the strategy boardgames (eg Advanced Civ?). One of the guys there early was talking with me about that when I spotted some of Pali's games. Don't recall what his name was but it might've been Dan.

Was Tuq the recruiter dude that's gonna find my wife a job? I will forgive him for taking me out of the 2nd game. Is that the same Tuq that's here on 2+2?

Correct on both counts. Dan is board game dude, tuq will find your wife a job.. probably with someone I know but don't know that tuq knows.

And wild guess yes, same tuq.

Ray, that was my wife Carrie. She said, "that Ray guy was pretty funny."

Anyway, I took third in the first tourney after busting to a river board pair that counterfeited my flopped two pair. I think I busted fifth or sixth in the second game. I'm bummed that I didn't get a craps lesson though.... Hopefully next time.

-brandon

Well taking third in either even should minimally guaranteed you walked out with a profit for the night. Nice job!

I remembered her name, I just didn't know if you were comfortable putting it online.

Old school soda machine A+.

Soda selections in old school soda machine A++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++.

While there were a lot of people I didn't know going in, by chance the people who did the damage to my stack were people I was familiar with. The host and hostess each cracked my aces early to do me in and Ray's wife bounced me late. If you go in with the attitude that it's $20 and what happens happens it's a good time. I know one of the guys was getting frustrated that people weren't playing optimally - meaning he couldn't push them off of mediocre holdings with big overbets, and of course their hands would improve and cripple him both games - but the blind structure and need to finish quickly renders it a variance fest. More importantly, it's a chance to hang out and socialize. If people wanted to grind for money they could go down the street and play at Gila River with people old enough to be Howard Beale's grandfather.

Good time, very easily worth the $20. Hell on Saturday nights I usually spend twice that on hookers, so I saved money and haven't discovered any mysterious rashes (yet).

That's the least she could do, after your aces were cracked.

(Ray, don't go all UFC on me for that!)

My wife was looking particularly good Saturday night, but she's all mine.

Agree with tuq 100% on its spending $20 to have a good time, and never worth getting frustrated over. Some of the every week people get frustrated when more casual players are in and playing wacky and it throws them for a loop. But we all know, you WANT those people in your game. They provide a pretty good amount of dead money if you can adapt to them, they add variety to the game, and most importantly they're FUN to have in the game.

the evil spirits of OOT can't be fought off....

Pix or GTFO

Actually, rumor has it that she REALLY said "damn, that Ray guy was pretty sexy- I wonder if they'll agree to wife-swap?"

thesnuke's response was either a) a fight or b) abject defeat, knowing he can't argue the point. Reports have been conflicting, we hope to have a followup.. with pix.


Dude, as my former mentor, this is embarrassing. Do you need me to ship you a few bux, so you can upgrade those choices you're making?



Also, good reports, Zathras and Ray... but where the hell is the host's report??

A few comments must be made:
Talk about knowing how to prepare for a tourney! Palimax, my hero!

I'm a tad confused- how long where the hosting hosts actually upstairs? Palimax, my SUPER-hero!


** for your sister- wp.

She'd like my wife.

Yeah, keep telling yourself it was the cards, donkeyboy.