Very nice. I just used a mix of chips in the colors I needed.

I also changed some of the names I called these chips.

Special Chips
Pink – “Partridge in a Pear Tree” – Immediately exchange this chip for 4,000 tournament chips.
White - "Zombie Santa" - May exchange for one free buy-in when busto. If you have this chip at the break, exchange it for a free add on of 8,000 chips.

Red - "Mama Got Run Over By a Reindeer" – You must move ALL-IN blind on the next hand.

Blue - "Santa Does Hanukkah" - Exchange all of your chips, including special ones, with the player on your left.

Purple - "Christmas in Omaha" - At any point, trade in this chip for 2 more hole cards. Use any combination of the board cards and your four cards to make the best hand. If you have this chip after the first break exchange it for 4,000 chips.

Yellow - "Bah Humbug!" - Keep this chip until you win a pot or bust. While you have this chip you only get dealt one hole card. If you have this chip after the break exchange it for a 500 chip. Bah, humbug to you too!

Green - "Company's Coming" - You must exchange places with another player of your choice and that player takes your spot. Take all of your chips with you.

Orange - "I saw Santa" - This chip may be played at any time. When played you expose at random one hole card of your choice of every opponent left in the hand.

I can post the entire document if anyone is interested.

As for the TR, here is a quick one:

It was a blast. I wanted to have it run 3 to 3.5 hours, but the feedback I got was that we should make it a quick 2 hour tournament to make a cash game more likely, so I went with that. But once we got into it, everyone was moaning that the first break was going to come too soon, and the special chips would go away.

Hey guys, you can't have it both ways. Well, maybe they could. We extended the rebuy period another level, to 50 minutes total.

A decent number of Santa's were shown. In fact, players called down with obviously losing hands to pull a chip. Unfortunately, none of the more nuclear chips came out. A pink and a few tournament add-on chips.

One purple chip came out, and that was most valuable when NOT played. I mean, who wants to get into a big hand when you could be up against four cards at any time, and any or all of them can be used? It was a hell of a hammer.

The recipient was good enough to not play it on the river when he got someone all-in with AQ on a Q high board, and it turned out he was up against another AQ. He said he thought it would be dickish to do that as insurance in a big pot. We looked at the cards and he would have gotten KK. That was a sucker punch averted.

He ended up playing it when short stacked and needed help on the flop, but got two napkins.

If a red king came on the river, we played a 6th board card and kept that throughout the tournament.

My stack went up and down. As the blinds turbo-ed upwards, I got as short as 6 BBs on multiple occasions, but either got folds I did not deserve, or was called and got luck I did not deserve.

In one hand, I got AA with two callers. The board was a horrendous KQT, but I felt I had to go all-in and hope for the best. Called by KQ, I got lucky with a river T.

Once we were down to three, I got super aggro because everyone was short stacked but did not adjust. Any paint was usually an all-in, especially SB vs BB.

I was chopped down by a couple of hands and hovered around the 2-4 BB zone for a while, but basically robbed my way to second place chips, and took the lead when my 88 held up against the big stack's AJ. My strategy and luck prevailed and I took first place when my Q7 caught a rivered Q against a very short-stacked 55.

In other news, the Secret Santa gift exchange was fun, and we had enough food for three potluck dinners. A lot of people contributed, but it doesn't hurt that one player owns an Italian restaurant.

I will probably do this again next year, but play a longer tournament. And maybe keep some of the milder special chips in the bag the entire game.

Those look outstanding. Wish I could do that....

GB on the ceramics?

Thanks for the TR, it sounded like fun. T minus two hours and change to mine.

Well, not all the special chips go away. I think Company's Coming and I Think I Saw Santa remain live. The others become "Add X chips to your stack" right?

I may have missed that nuance to jz's original document when I modified it. I just made it an add-on. We didn't even use the bag after the break. My bad.

I won the award for most rebuys last night, as I was into the game for six BIs and an add-on.

I ran horribly early on. Won a couple of hands on my first BI, then my doomswitch got flipped. Red kings would simply not fold during the rebuy period, and nearly every time I got it all in, I was a slight-to-large favorite but kept losing. The worst was when I got all-in on a blank flop with JJ and K9 called. Turn and river blanked, I'm ready to rake the pot and my opponent says, "Wait," and throws out Christmas in Omaha on a three-outer. Of course, he picks up a king.

When the rebuy period ended, players tightened up. I started picking off blinds and also got some decent cards here and there. I managed to get myself into a good spot stackwise, but I took a beating from BPPs getting cracked: 99, QQ and KK all cracked by ace-rag, my one AA of the night got the blinds, then picked up KK again and doubled through the big stack to my left. I hit the money with the second largest stack, then went out third when I dramatically lost an AIPF flip with 99 vs AT: AT9 on the flop, turn A.

Now that I'm done complaining, this thing was a BLAST. I haven't heard our game so loud in a long time. Everyone loved the special chips, and the rebuys were so cheap that nobody cared much about busting. I had numerous requests to do this again before next Christmas, so I'll either rework the theme or call it "Christmas in March" if we do it then. And a set of custom ceramics for this game are definitely in my future.

A couple of observations based on my experience last night vs. eneely's:

Yep, 100% this. I even did it myself once. By the end of the tourney, about 55 of the 60 chips had been drawn.

I had one for a while and kept it in front. It wasn't as much of a deterrent to my players. However, one guy had two of them for a while, and everyone definitely noticed this. He's the K9 villain above who cracked my jacks with it at showdown. I forgot to mention that after stealing this hand from me, guess what he drew from the bag?

Interesting twist - we didn't do this but I may add it for next time.

This game is crazy loose during the rebuy period, so expect a rollercoaster ride.

OTOH, I think next year I will convert all special chips to tourney cash after the rebuy. Last night, we kept Christmas in Omaha and I Think I Saw Santa in play through the whole tourney. Those chips turned out to be extremely powerful in the late game - players used them in a couple of key spots, and it had a significant effect on the late game.

For example, I busted in third partly because of this chip. Big stack raised with AT, I shove 99, and he tanks for a couple moments before using his "Saw Santa" chip to look at one of my cards. As soon as he saw the 9, he snap-called, knowing that it was at worst a flip. He may have called anyway, but I think I had some significant fold equity in that spot that was lost due to the special chip.

It could be that our players are not used to unlimited rebuy tournaments, so played tighter during the rebuy period than they should have, especially with the rebuys only being five dollars.

Oh yeah, and you forgot to contrast our personal results in the tournament.

There was one hand that was all in with three players. 22 versus A9 versus AQ. The board was an exciting A2A9Q.

Bite me, sir.

It actually sounds like our results were fairly similar - up and down all night, managed to drag our sorry butts into the money in spite of the cards. And if I'd been able to catch one freaking flip at the end with my nines, I'd have had over 2/3 of the chips on the table and would almost certainly have won mine too.

Also FYI, tomorrow night is my last cash game of the year, and as always we're doing the Santa Claus game - win with a red king in the hole and pick a random prize. I've got scratch-off tickets, gift cards, free add-ons, and a couple of booby prizes just to keep things fun.

I think I'll also add the "deal a sixth street when there's a red king on the river" rule, that sounds like fun.

Yeah, I was one flip from being out more than once. When you win with Q7, you cannot boast too much.

"But I had odds!"

Ah, I did this tourney instead of the Santa Game, which is why I called it Santa Gone Wild. Kudos for double-dipping on the Christmas poker cheer.

Huge success in the tournament today. We had 10 players, a lot from 2+2, who will hopefully post about their experiences. We managed to generate quite the prize pool from $5 buy ins and had a lot of fun laughing about situations happening from people.

As expected I set the standard high, by rebuying a whopping 20 times and providing about 45% of the prize pool by myself. I had one or two all ins with the 2h/As going crazy but also had a ton only AQ/PP type hands get sucked out on which is why I kept rebuying. One stretch with blinds at 400/800 in the last rebuy level I went bust 5/6 hands with my 5k.

My wife was playing on my dime and was 2 rebuys ins as well. I entered the end of the rebuy period with 4k and took the 15k add on making me the second shortest stack.

I then caught some cards and won two races to get me the chip lead. We played down to the bubble at 4 and decided to do a chop according to stacks. I had 50%of the chips at that point and got the 1st place 50%. Personally I won $5, but by covering my wife, I was down $15... Pretty amazing.

My highlight of the tournament. Picking a Bah Humbug chip while button. Rebuying. Getting my one card a beautiful 2h. Shoving all in. Then watched the remaining 5 players fold. LOL!

We actually ran out of presents halfway through the night before Xmas drawing.

We will absolutely be doing this again next year.

I can attest to the 20 buyin machine that is jzpiano


I managed to run AK suited into red aces and not beat it (EVEN WITH AN OMAHA CHIP).

Was a great tournament and my only regret was being next to act after the one card shove with four players behind me... HOW DOES ANYONE FOLD THERE (except of course me cause i made the right decision lolz)


great game sir!

Thanks. That AK vs AA hand was amazing given that you had 4 hole cards to work with and couldn't suck out on Aces. Seems like they lose every other time...

Sounds like you got some special chips into play.

And 20 rebuys? That is epic. I guess it was shove or fold for the first hour.

Wow - I thought I was a buy-in machine last Tuesday with six of them.

My holiday cash game on Thursday was a great success. I had fourteen players sign up (a record for my game), and I had to run two tables of NLHE. Unfortunately I had two no-shows due to a miscommunication, but we still ran six and six for most of the night until a few folks left and we combined to one table.

The poker itself was largely uneventful. I ran pretty dead most of the night and basically sat on my first buy-in, just winning/stealing enough to keep from going in the hole. I eventually doubled up with AA v. KK AIPF, then gave my profit and more to a new guy who went on an unreal heater. He was playing ATC preflop and hit three boats, a couple of flushes, two sets, and a few other winning hands in about an hour. Many of these hands were against me shortly after my double up: rivered boat vs. rivered straight twice and turned top two vs. rivered straight are the three big ones I remember. I gave this guy 200bb in under two orbits. Ultimately his streak ended and he gave a good chunk of his winnings back to the table, so I ended up close to even (-12bb).

The Santa Claus game was fun as usual, and we got loud. At my table, people weren't quite as crazy with red kings as they were in the rebuy tourney, but something was going on at the other table - hooping and hollering every time somebody won a present.

This year I had 25 gifts. Twenty of those were nice: scratch-offs, booze, gift cards, and free stack add-ons("fish food"). Five of the gifts were naughty: four gag gifts and "The Spirit of Xmas" (every player gets a card, the first ace to appear gets $1 from the recipient):





I'm not sure I liked "The Spirit of Xmas" and probably won't include it next year. The idea was a fun little needle where the recipient had to pay a random player $1 from his stack. As it worked out this year, the recipient drew the first ace and ended up paying himself, but it didn't seem to go over as well as I thought. Next year I'm going to drop that and keep the gag gifts.

On top of the Santa game, Mrs. S was killing it in the kitchen. She sent plate after plate after plate of cookies upstairs, and each was emptied in minutes.

JZ's holiday tournament was a blast, and I hope he runs it again next year. At the end of the rebuy period I had fresh rebuy of 5K and added on another 15K. After treading water for several levels I managed to get a couple of good hands that held up and worked my pathetic stack up to third by the time we agreed to a chop, scoring a net profit of 2 BI.

All hail jz, the rebuy king. Eat your heart out, DNegs.

More so the second hour especially when we got down to about 5-6 presents left and 2 of them were the Omaha ones!!

Basically during the second hour every hand I played was all in as the blinds were 300/600 or 400/800 with a 5k stack and by that point several people had stacks of 30-40k with Breich having over 65k. I knew I just had to double up multiple times to even have a chance. Problem was I couldn't a race at this point.

An interesting situation happened within the first 10 minutes. I doubled up my stack with a hand giving me the chip lead containing the As. I drew the gift exchange chip and shipped my big stack to my left to a player who hadn't even arrived yet, and now had the chip lead!! I got my revenge an orbit later when I doubled up the new stack and then lost a hand containing the 2h. I drew another Gift Exchange chip and got my original stack back. Rigged.

Tournament will be on the schedule for sure next year!

Might need to add to the undertitle....Flip & Rebuy King...I was planning on rebuying a lot if needed, but even I couldn't have imagined I would lose that many hands I just kept pulling out 5's and then realized at one point I was out and knew I was in deep as I had $100 in 5's at the beginning.

This sounds awesome. You definitely upped your game on the Santa gifts, from what I remember. What would you say you spent on them?

Around $65 total. The glühwein and one of the gift cards were freebies.

My run in the tournament was ****ing rediculous. Some of the details weren't very clear because I pounded about four Hoegaardens in the first three levels, but I managed to only spend $10, 1 initial buy in and 1 add-on. Honestly the deck just hit me and I was playing fairly aggressive due to more NL playing in the last few months + beer. Had a couple close value hands with Mr. SMG, one where I 3! pre with KK and flop goes AQA. I barreled flop and turn/river went check/check. He was sitting with KQ.

As for jz's 2 one-card hand, I had 53o in the big blind and didn't feel like calling. I guess I could have for ****s and giggles.

My stack ran up to 80k at one point, but was about 65k just as we added-on. My biggest scare towards the end of the evening was avoiding the chip that caused you to switch your chips with the player to your left. There was only one of those chips left, but I avoided them religiously, while others (Abby) moved seats to my left with her special chip to get the chance at taking my stack. I managed to avoid the chip on the night before Christmas phase and I was good to go with my Goliath stack (below).

After the add-on players were knocked out in quick succession, and jz ran up a monster stack with half the chips in front of him. I just couldn't stop loll'ing as we equity-chopped four ways because he lost money, even after taking 50% of the prize pool. I was card-dead leading into the chop so I had the smallest stack at 50k. But, I still took $25 for a net profit of $15.





Rest of the pictures will be up in the Decembro thread.