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.