Just a short note today because that’s all I really have time for. Lots of time yesterday morning, because I wasn’t really able to get to sleep the first night here. No issues with the room or anything, just restless from allergies. So I went into the day with less than an hour of sleep after driving down to Lincoln City and playing poker for 12 hours.
Event #1 $100,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em Day 2
I didn’t have enormous expectations coming into the day with just 14 big blinds (I’d forgotten we still had about half the 6K blind level after stopping for the night, so it was more than 10). Somehow, I managed to creep up the pay scale from #56 in chips at the start of the day to cash out in 42nd. Then I ran ace-king suited into the big stack’s aces and it was over. More than doubled my money.
Event #2 $25,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em
Running on less than an hour’s sleep and playing poker for an hour was probably not the ideal time to enter a tournament that was likely to go on for 12 hours, but I did it. Got seated at the same table as Darrel Dier (@guano on X.com), who I met down here back in 2013 when (if I remember correctly) he was associated with the early days of the Chinook Winds series through the Deepstacks Poker Tour/Oregon State Poker Championship. That gave me the opportunity to show him the photo I took of the Greatest Poker Hair Assemblage of All Time, which I took while I was reporting at the WSOP back in 2016 (Darrel’s in seat 9).
My performance in the tournament wasn’t stellar, though I did still have it together enough to fold kings on a straighty-flushy low-card board when Darrel made a river overbet in a 3-way pot that got called by the other player in the hand (straight for Darrel vs. two pair).
Got aces cracked in another 3-way pot when the short stack’s ace-four flushed on the river. Doubled up with a Mutant Jack.
Brad Press had proposed a small last-longer/share at the start and I agreed. He paid me his $5 on the way out the door.
Managed to get up to twice the chip average by the dinner break, but seven hours in and still not in the money I was back down to 50K and 12bb. The bubble took an hour or more, with the count stuck at 47 (45 paid).
Things were really looking up when I caught aces in the big blind and the former table chip leader who’d been on a run of bad luck (and had made at least one dubious call to pay me off on a previous hand) shoved UTG1 with threes. That win knocked him out and put me over 20bb again.
Final hand I opened to 3.5bb with ace-jack and got one caller. The flop was 98X and I shoved 15bb, he called with middle pair and an ace, which seemed a little dubious to me, but then he won the hand, so what do I know? Out in 32nd place.
Two cashes for the day. Not big cashes, and I still need to win a good deal more to cover expenses, but it’s a start. 6-Max on Monday.
Congrats to Kao Saechao for the two-way deal and the win in Event #1.
Arrived late to registration for Event #1 $100,000 Guaranteed NL Hold’em because I let Google Maps steer me to a different route than my usual path to Lincoln City and it lost the cell connection, so instead of taking a detour to a scenic path to the coast, I ended up turning around at Champoeg Park and having to backtrack, which got me into town twenty minutes after the game started. So, instead of buying in with no line, there were people lined up from the top of the escalator (which wasn’t working, great timing, escalator!), around the corner down the hall to the tournament room, and the length of the tournament room. So it was just over an hour in to the tournament before I was registered.
That said, things went pretty well off the bat. Within twenty minutes I managed to river the nuts with an ace-high flush and got paid off by the second nuts. With action before it went heads-up, I nearly doubled the 22K (20K with a dealer appreciation) starting stack.
My stack kept climbing by bits for the next few levels, then just before the second break and the end of re-entry, I got queens in the big blind. There was a raise and several calls ahead of me, including a player who’d been the chip leader in the first several levels (but was no longer). I pushed it up to 5x the raise and she was the only caller. I hit my set on a king-high board and bet, then she shoved over the top and I called, naturally, She had a king but no flush draw or anything else, and I knocked her out to get up to 150bb.
QQ in the big blind at 300/600 and I 3-bet to 10K over a raise to 2K (and 4 callers) and get 2 calls. KQ4 flop and I bet 15K, aggressive former big stack shoves and I get a KO. Just under 90K going to break 2. pic.twitter.com/9vesoPMhSP
Then, after the break, when I was big blind, it was aces, and queens got it in against me. Or, I should say, queens ended up getting it in against me, because the player in the small blind re-raised me with what almost everyone (including me) assumed was his full stack. I called and flipped my cards over, then he flipped his cards over, but when the board ran out, he revealed that he still had 2bb behind. The floor got called and the ruling was that all of the chips were in when he flipped his cards over. I didn’t really care about the chips, and admitted I’d probably been at fault for not verifying the all in before I called and flipped my cards over, but the ruling stood.
We went to dinner after 9 levels and I’d hit 120K, which was to be my high point for the day. Got a table change, and even though I started off as the nominal big stack there, I couldn’t get any traction. I mostly lost chips, then got some back, but I was dwindling slowly but surely as we got closer and closer to the money.
Nearly got knocked out less than 10 from the money when I raised king-queen from the small blind and the short stack in the big blind shoved for 2/3 of my stack with jacks. I paired up, but he made a set on an ace-high flop, which gave me some straight outs, but no dice and I found myself down to 5bb on the button.
Suddenly, I started getting hands again, with ace-king suited two times in four hands. Another shove with king-queen worked and I was up to 12bb, Squeaked through two rounds of hand-for-hand play, and we were done for the night, coming back to 10bb on St. Patrick’s Day.
This year’s not off to the banger of a start that last year was, with a four-figure win to start things off. This has been a down month, mostly due to my entry in the Portland Meadows All the Drawmaha tournament.
January started off with a couple of losses in the Beaverton Quarantine Zoom games I play; perhaps my NLHE senses are a bit off. Then it was a bubble in the old home game, which I didn’t mind so much as it was the first game with those guys in quite a while.
Pulled myself out of the hole with the next week’s Quarantine games (NLHE and PLO8 Bounty). Then dropped a chunk in the Drawmaha tournament and never got back to black.
Played 30 Ignition $2 NLHE Jackpot Sit-and-Gos, down four buyins even with two $10 cashes.
And that’s the start of the new year. Coming up in February on my personal calendar is a Freezeout tournament at Last Frontier, and the Portland Poker Winter Royale, two games each at Meadows and Final Table. There are a couple of big games at the Little Creek Spring South Sound Series in early March that are intriguing as well, and of course, the PacWest Poker Classic at Chinook Winds is coming up in just five weeks!
PacWest Poker Classic schedule
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
It’s the first Leaderboard of the year! Technically, I did put out a Leaderboard early in January, but this is there first one covering events that took place in 2024, so first of the year. I’ve upped the inclusion criteria slightly, with $20,000 (US dollar equivalent) as the cutoff (also, only listing events with an ROI of 400% or more). The reason is, with longer periods between Leaderboards, the number of players who meet the requirements increases more or less geometrically (twice as long between events means roughly twice as many entries). Otherwise, I’d be here until March.
Lots of news out of Canada this installment, as World Series of Poker Circuit Calgary ran from January 10–22, more or less at the same time as WSOPC Northern California.
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
First Hendon Mob cash since the beginning of the pandemic for Martin (his most recent was 14 march 2020), the result of a deal with Raminder Singh and Jesse Lonis.
This started off months ago as the wrap-up of my uneventful and mercifully brief trip to this year’s World Series of Poker, where I made attempts on two bracelet events (Event #7 Limit Hold’em and Event #9 Seven-Card Stud), played next to a very annoying person in an Aria $50K GTD HORSE tournament, ran a pair of aces aground in a Wynn $50K GTD NLHE Survivor that would have saved my trip, and at the Orleans $50K GTD NLHE before I headed home.
But I got bored writing about it and bored thinking about people not reading it even if I finished, so I put it off until the next month, and the next month, and by September I wasn’t sure I’d ever write another post here (it’s happened before, I have a personal blog on politics, programming, books, and games that’s gone years without updates).
That’s all water under the bridge, though. I barely remember the details.
What I do remember is, I have a database of every single cash game and tournament I’ve played since Black Friday in 2011. So here are a few numbers.
Overall Stats
Nearly 500 entries in the database with only 19 cash games. 149 profits in tournaments (31.5%), but that looks better than it actually is, for reasons I’ll get to in a minute. 4% ROI overall, 9% in tournaments. I wasn’t able to make either of the Chinook Winds series this year or any of the Wildhorse events.
Ignition Casino
Most of my play this year was online on Ignition, with 385 tournaments and 2 cash games. Most of that was in the $2 Jackpot Sit-n-Gos, 3-player turbo tournaments where the payout for first place is $4 or—in a very small percentage of the games—up to $2,400. I have never seen a payout larger than the 5x multiplier for $10. I won 117 of 320, which would have been a loss of $172 except for a number of $10 payouts, so a 4% ROI.
I played a number of Irish Poker Open qualifiers and satellites in the early part of the year, then mostly stuck to Fixed-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo, POLO, and PLO8 tournaments where I had a little success early on but lost money overall.
Home Games
My original home game group only got together once during the year (though I did just get an invite to the first game of 2024!) and even though I took 3rd, since I did a rebuy I lost $20. Do not rebuy in single-table tournaments inless you’re just there for the company.
The other home game is only at home for me. One of the players from the original game introduced me during the pandemic to a group that almost always meets for some $20/$25 home games using the Home Game feature of the PokerStars play money client. There’s an accompanying Zoom call, though I’m not usually on it since I just play from the living room while my wife and I are watching TV. Often, there are two—sometimes three—games during the night, usually starting out with NLHE, then a Bounty game of some sort: NLHE or PLO8. Just a couple of tables at most. Played 44 of those over the course of the year and cashed in 15 for a 25% ROI.
America’s Card Room
I had a little bit of money left on ACR at the beginning of the year, but I’d forgotten about it. Remembered it mid-year and that ACR had a better selection of non-NLHE tournaments than Ignition, so I played for a bit during the summer until I ran down my account (or did I? I’d better check). Took 4/55 in a Stud/8 tournament on my second outing and a 2/155 in a Big O Progressive Knockout, plus a bunch of min-cashes in games where I’d done a rebuy (this is called a loss), so -22% ROI over the course of 23 tournaments and 14 low-stakes Big O and Stud 8 cash games.
Portland Area
This is The Game, Final Table, and Last Frontier (in La Center). The year kicked off great at Last Frontier, where my first poker of 2023 was a three-way chop in a $10K GTD Limit Hold’em tournament. Then I thought I’d take that run and apply it at The Game’s Big O tournament where I was the first player out (after losing 25bb in NLHE cash). Back to Last Frontier for an early out in a $25K GTD NLHE tournament, and in October, Brad Press convinced me to drive up for the $8/$16 Limit Omaha 8 cash games. Waited around for those for a while, got in, and blasted away a couple hundred pretty fast.
At Final Table, I played several of the $20K GTD NLHE First Friday tournaments, never getting into the money (or closer than about 35% of the field) but there’s something about the jumps in the top of their payout structures that’s been bugging me since I noticed it last December.
A jump of $290 from 8th to 7th. Jump of $285 from 7th to 6th. Jump of $290 from 6th to 5th. $285 again from 5th to 4th. $580 jump from 4th to 3rd. 100% increase of $2880 from 3rd to 2nd. Only $2,045 increase from 2nd to 1st. Weird.
ROI for all of that: 0%. $8 profit on $2,595 costs, with everything zeroed out only by the January score at Last Frontier!
Vegas
The trip to the World Series of Poker this year was a complete bust, poker-wise. I only had one weekend, spent it at Ellis Island with my co-worker Ben, and got in a quick meet-up with Kevmath while I was waiting for Brad Press to get through to the registration desk.
My targets were two of the smallest $1500 buy-in bracelet events of the Series: #7 Limit Hold’em and #9 7-Card Stud. Didn’t make it even close to Day 2 of either one. Brad and I headed over to Aria on my third day to play the $50K GTD HORSE tournament there. I made it halfway through and suffered through a pro sitting next to me who felt entitled to reach his pinkie under my arm to flick my ante chip in when he through I was going to be too slow getting it in for the next hand. Brad did well, though, coming in 5th, and his buddy Bobby got first. I busted out and late-regged a Wynn NLHE Survivor tournament with a $5K payout that would have completely saved the trip, doubled up almost immediately, then let my aces get cracked on a paired board by Q9. My last day, it was the Orleans for a long slog in their $50K NLHE tournament where I beat two-thirds of the field but went home empty-handed.
Portland Meadows
When I was playing more often, I spent more time at Final Table than Portland Meadows, because I tried to avoid weekend games, and the bigger games at Meadows were on Saturday, while the major weekly tournaments at FT have always been on Friday night, which didn’t impact our home life as much. On the other hand, Meadows runs more non-NLHE tournaments, so I found myself drawn over there several times this year, starting with their Biggest of Os Big O tournament in February (brick), then their HEROS tournament in April (also brick). A rebuy in a little PLO tournament in August gort me halfway through the field.
Then, on a whim, I went out for a Saturday night NLHE Freezeout in September and a two-way chop. Then, the next month at the Big Bet Mix I nabbed 2nd out of the field of 55.
Back in December for the weekend of the Oregon State Championship, I busted from the NLHE day before the end of registration, but got through the 111-entry field for the Big O championship to the foinal table with the largest stack, staying that way up to the point I was heads-up with the eventual winner. Another straight -out 2nd place, no deal, no chop.
So, overall, it’s been a profitable year. More profitable if I hadn’t gone down to Vegas, but that’s probably not going to stop me from doing it again in 2024.
Enough about me! Let the wild rumpus begin!
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard: End-of-Year 2023
The last Leaderboard was almost exactly a year ago. I didn’t think I was going to run it again, but after talking to people about this here blog at the Big O tournament earlier in the month, I thought I’d check to see if the script I wrote six or seven years ago would still do the job, even though it would need to deal with a lot more data (a year’s worth of results rather than a month) and I couldn’t be sure the formats of the Hendon Mob state/province leaderboards hadn’t changed. But everything worked!
My previous methodology was to report on every player with a cash of more than $10,000 in the reporting period, but as you can guess, with a period 12 times as long (there are nearly 250 new players on the lisrt by the old measure); I’d never get a year-long Leaderboard done because, let’s face it, nobody’s paying me to do this and I’m a lazy, semi-retired poker player. So this edition is going to be sort of seat-of-the-pants*, and I’m going to look for highlights. Apologies if you should be on here for your accomplishments last year and I didn’t include you!
* After finishing this sucker off, this is the methodology:
Only new or updated players with $120K of earnings reported on Hendon Mob over the past year.
Only events with payouts of $10K or more; many of these players have other cashes through the year under $10,000.
Only events with 400% ROI. This rules out a lot of cashes that are five or even six figures where the buy-in was substantial.
Presented in reverse order of their current standing on the Leaderboard, not by the amount won in 2023, although that’s a rough gauge.
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
Nahm hasn’t shown up on the Leaderboard before because he hasn’t had a five-figure cash since I started tracking British Columbia, but he racked up four cashes at the WSOP and one at the Venetian this summer, including the PLO bracelet.
Linde had a number of other deep-ish runs in big buy-in events that ran into six figures each, but they didn’t meet my arbitrary 400% ROI metric for reporting.
The results are in! The asterisk in the title is because previous years are ranked by the finishing place of the folks on the final table, but the results for this year are by starting stack on the final table until the tournament’s done.
Years ago, I had a discussion with someone about how they thought there would never be another Main Event winner over the age of 40. That was just before Qui Nguyen won it at 39 and a couple of years before Hossein Ensan took it down at 55. Adam Walton has a significant chip lead going into the day. He’s 40.
[UPDATE] Walton did make it to Day 2 of the Final Table, but not for long. Congrats to Daniel Weinman!
The running joke on thePoker In the Ears podcast and PokerStars Sunday Million and EPT livestreams is that it’s always #TheYearOfRomania, but I think that we can safely call 2023 #TheYearOfJordison. Coming off a win for the GPI Global Poker Awards Breakout Player early in March for a phenomenal run in 2022, Jordison and conspirator Jackie Burkhart put together the feel-good event of the year, by sponsoring (initially) eight—and so far, thirteen—veterans to play in the WSOPSalute to Warriors tournament, with packages including buy-in and expenses. She’s been doing lots of podcast appearances the past several months, including Kara Scott’s Heart of Poker at the end of the month. I can’t keep up.
Nomination/selection process is live!!
Any additional donations received between now and mid June we will use to award last minute seats to veterans that are already in Vegas and/or split up any extra money between the vets for incidental expenses (taxi,food etc) https://t.co/77jP1ETFQj
Got my Poker Tracker 4 running again. I used to be good at this IT stuff. There was some sort of issue on my Mac, the database was hinky at first, then after I got that sorted out, none of the select menus would work, which made slicing and dicing the data extremely difficult. Finally managed to import a couple years’ worth of Ignition Casino tournaments, which is good, because my old go-to for showing off hands—ShareMyPair—is no more.
Beaverton Quarantine
This little group typically plays two or three $20 or $25 tournaments on Friday night via the PokerStars Home Games play money client and Zoom (though PokerStars now has a beta video conferencing feature). They tend to be one-and-a-half tables at most, with the first game (usually NLHE) being larger and a smaller number of players for the later game or games. I usually miss the first one, but try to jump into the others when I get the opportunity. I played a PLO8 bounty tournament as my first game of the month (out 7 of 8), and my last game was a straight PLO bounty, where I took 2nd place (of 8 entries) and a couple of bounties.
Ignition Casino 2-Seat GTD NLHE Irish Poker Open Satellite Qualifier
This was my last gasp effort at making it to the Irish Poker Open, which is going on right now (click on the EPT link above to watch it on YouTube). Didn’t manage to come close.
Last Frontier Casino $25K GTD NLHE
After some success at Last Frontier early in the year in LHE, I decided to try my hand there at NLHE and ran into a bit of a buzzsaw. Ran KK into AA just over an hour in and lost the equivalent of a starting stack. With the slower structure, I still had 40bb. Managed to get to the add-on break with 5K and got an extra 15K, then ran it up to 23K (57bb by then).
18500 at the end of the first level. My buddy BP takes better photos than I do—or maybe I’m just more photogenic. pic.twitter.com/aylGyDTITy
The player on my left had been grumbling about my play most of the tournament for the first two hours after I’d raised early and called an oversized re-raise with KJs. He had TT and lost a chunk of chips early on. Two hours in, I limped K4s from the HJ, he raised to 3.5bb and SB called. I called and the flop his KKJ. SB and I checked, he bet 5K into 7K and on the assumption that #BlockersAreReal, I shoved for about 30bb. Both of them folded, he said “KJ again?” and I told him “No, king-four.” He snorted, “Figures.”
Karma, as they say, is a bitch, and poker karma is a whole pack of bitches. I picked up KK on my very next hand and raised, as one does. BB—the guy I’d run my KK into when he had AA early on—makes the call. K24 flop. He check-calls my 3.5bb bet. 4 on the turn, he checks, I bet 8bb and he calls. A on the river, He checks, I bet 8bb again and he raised to18bb. I called very reluctantly, hoping he’d over-valued two pair maybe, and he shows K3s. I managed to last about 40 minutes after that.
Ignition Casino $500 GTD PLO8 Turbo
Just 34 hands. Out well before the money.
Ignition Casino $2 NLHE Jackpot Sit-n-Go
Only won one of these of the three I played (yes, I know, that’s the random distribution) and I missed the 5x multiplier.
Ignition Casino $3K GTD NLHE PKO Turbo
Twenty percent of the buy-in goes to the bounty pool in this tournament. I managed to take down a couple of bounties, made it to the money, but never really caught wind and was pretty short-stacked by the time we got to two tables. Went out 18th when I open-shoved 6bb with Qs9s and the blinds had Ac9h and AdJd (Mutant Jack!). Flopped an open-ended straight draw, but the board double-paired and I min-cashed.
Ignition Casino $35K GTD NLHE
I’d never played this nightly tournament before but enjoyed it briefly. Never managed to get any traction above the starting stack and went out with the Portland Nuts (QcTc) v AdQd, making two pair on the river against the rivered flush.
Ignition Casino $5K GTD NLHE Thousandaire Maker
I hadn’t played one of these for nine months, and I figured I’d take a couple shots. They pay approximately 7% of the fields flat $1K on an $82 buy-in. My aces got cracked on the 20th hand of the first one when I raised UTG, got three callers, and jammed on the flop, only to have J9 with a gut-shot draw call off more than half of his stack and hit. So, nowhere near the money on that one. Did a little better on the second go, but still never made it further than the middle the field.
Coming Up
No Irish Poker Open for me, no Wildhorse Spring Poker Round-Up. There’s a lot of action here in Portland with people gearing up for the summer poker series in Vegas. I’ve already taken a stab at one of Final Table‘s First Friday $20K GTD events (they ran a special Fifth Friday $20K at the end of March). They’re running a $50K GTD on April 15th, but I’m going to miss that due to family obligations. There is a $500 buy-in Freezeout there on April 23rd, but it’s up against Portland Meadows‘ HEROES tournament and I have a hard time passing up HORSE variants. Meadows is also running a NLHE/PLO mix game on the 13th that I’m going to try to make it to. And they’ve got a Progressive Knockout with a $400 buy-in on the 29th. Then Last Frontier is running another one of their $25K GTD tournaments on April 30. And that’s just the stuff I’m trying to fit into my retired from poker guy schedule.
I also need to make my reservations for the first weekend of the WSOP. Limit Hold’em and Seven-Card Stud await!
I didn’t play much poker to start off the fourth year of my poker retirement, but it was reasonably successful, probably because of that.
Last Frontier Casino $10K Guarantee Limit Hold’em
I was both intrigued and a little worried when I saw poker room manager Chris Canter post the notice for this one last month. Washington State’s poker room regulations only allowed limit for a number of years, and it was Last Frontier’s bread-and-butter, so I was expecting some serious LHE crushers to show up for this, but I went anyway.
Never played much of it myself, except in HORSE and other mixed game rotations, and it’s definitely not my strongest game in HORSE (like every other HORSE player, my strongest game is Razz).
I got off to a fast start, despite the presence at the table of some long-time players who were re-bonding after not seeing each other at the tables for a while. They included Kevin Erickson, who was the runner-up for an LHE bracelet at the 2021 WSOP. Fortunately, he was balanced to another table after a short while. I was leading the table for a time.
Three hours in and I was still above the pack—sometimes considerably so. In the fourth hour, my stack hit more than double the tournament average, though I’d dropped down to about one-and-a-half average after that. Ran into a former co-worker of my late brother-in-law, who I’d met at the tables in the past.
The stack managed to stay healthy as we approached the money with just three tables. As I noted on Twitter, the 12th-place prize was less than the buyin+entry.
When we consolidated to two tables, I ended up next to Korey Payne, who said hello, but I knocked him out dirty A7 > AK not long after the money bubble broke.
Also got to catch up a bit with a different Kory, one of the regulars from my Portland Players Club days, who’d won the $25K GTD NLHE at Last Frontier a couple of weeks before. He took over the chip lead at the final table as the guy who came to the final with a bu=ig stack managed to blast it away, first to me, then to Kory. We started whittling away at the shorter stacks. I picked off 6th with the Robbie Jade Lew hand (J4o) when I had over 300K on the 15K big blind and just had to call 10K for his all-in.
When we hit three players, Kory had the lead by a good bit, and the other player and I were swapping 2nd and 3rd. Then I pulled in a chunk of chips, and non-Kory proposed an even chop, which I was rather surprised Kory—with more than twice his stack and half again mine—agreed to. I agreed, naturally, and #3 and I went to the payout desk. Kory went into the field of cash players and did some consulting with a friend, coming back to tell me his friend had suggested he should have held out for an ICM deal. Personally, I think that would have been a better option, rather than readily agreeing to the even chop immediately, but I just ran the numbers through Icmizer, to show him the difference.
Beaverton Quarantine NLHE Bounty
For some reason, my long-time home game never went online during the worst of the pandemic (I first got the inkling it was going to be bad when one of the guys in the group who works in virology at OHSU backed out of a game we had scheduled in March 2020). But Kate, one of the folks I met through that group, invited me last year to a far-flung Friday night game that had gotten together via PokerStars Lite Home Games and Zoom. They typically play two or three $20-$25 games—usually NLHE or PLO8—get enough players for one or two tables, and Matt handles the money. All very friendly. I don’t usually get into the Zoom conference because of where I’m playing from, and I usually miss the first game, but this night I caught the Bounty tournament, busted just short of the money, and didn’t pick up a single bounty.
The Game $10K Guarantee Big O and 1/2 NLHE
I misremembered the start time of this tournament. I was running a little late, I thought, until I turned into the parking lot of The Game and it was almost empty. I should have turned around and skipped it. When I went in, there was a single cash table running and I learned I was two hours early. I thought I’d read for a couple hours, but the urge to play got the best of me and I grabbed one of the empty cash game seats. I hovered around my buy-in for an hour or so, then got it in bad with AK < KT on a KTx flop and the two pair held. Players on the button could call some games, as well, so there were some of the inevitable bomb pots, and 5-2-2, which is a double-board Big O game that’s popular with degenerates.
Speaking of which, the Big O tournament lasted less time than I waited for it to start (at least for me), because I kept insisting on risking things with just low draws. I could have just lit that money on fire (see below).
Beaverton Quarantine Pot-Limit Omaha Hi-Lo Bounty
The second game in the last BQ poker night for the month was somewhat successful, I took 2nd place (out of 6, plus a rebuy) and two half-bounties (split-pot knockouts).
Snowman Num-Num
For years, a piece of They Might Be Giants 20th anniversary swag was my go-to hoodie for playing poker. It featured a piece of art from their first EP: a cartoon snowman warming their mitts over a fire of burning money. It just somehow seemed appropriate.
Poker Mutant goes to the 2012 Pendleton Poker Round-Up Main Event.
I was wearing it the night I won a seat to the Pendleton Poker Round-Up Main Event at Players Club (and my wife had an unrelated heart attack the next morning). I was wearing it when I had my largest-ever cash, at Chinook Winds, placing 3rd out of a 462-entry field (how is that five years ago?).
But given tat TMBG has been around forever now, the 20th-anniversary hoodie is itself two decades long in the tooth, with the black faded and the screen printing cracked and the seam on the hood torn several inches. They hadn’t ever revived the design for a hoodie.
Until this winter, when they announced a red version. Which I promptly ordered two of. I didn’t need a daily-use poker hoodie any longer, but I do walk a couple miles to work and back, and I can always use a couple extras during the winter (I did get a very nice PokerStars hoodie when I was on the Poker In the Ears podcast a couple years ago).
The package arrived quickly and when I got home I opened it immediately, only to have that familiar sausage-squeezed-into-casing feeling when I slid the first of the new hoodies on. Had I put on (more) weight? Was XL the new XXL? No, the invoices and packaging said XXL, but the tag on the hoodie itself said XL.
So that seems like a big screw-up, probably on the part of the clothing/silkscreen contractor, and probably something that wasn’t particular to my order, which was confirmed when I contacted the seller to swap them out.
So, if you play against me anytime this month, it’s the old, ratty hoodie you’ll be seeing.
All good things must come to an end, and the same is true for this feature of Mutant Poker. The ##PNWPokerLeaderboard has been running for nearly six years, since back at the end of April 2017.It’s been interesting and entertaining, but it does take a fair amount of time, which I could be using to rewatch episodes of the original The Addams Family.
So I’m going to take a little break from this, after one last mega-Leaderboard, which wraps up 2022 (mostly). Still hope to see some of you folks on my infrequent forays out onto the local tables.
Coming Up at Last Frontier
Two events for the new year have already been announced at Last Frontier: Next Sunday (8 January) is a $10K GTD Limit Hold’em tournament, with a $25K GTD NLHEtournament on Sunday, 29 January. Both events start at noon, both are a $235 buyin with no rebuy. The NLHE event has a $100 add-on.
PNW Poker Leaderboard
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
I’m thanking my lucky stars it hasn’t been too busy since Halloween. It’s picking up, though, despite the approaching holidays. Enough that since I ran the numbers on Saturday, perennial blog favorite Angela Jordison almost got her hands on a WSOP Circuit Ring in the Main Event at Durant. Don’t miss her interview on this podcast.
Many thanks to @EastOregonQueen for tagging me in posts about the Wildhorse Fall Poker Round-Up this past week. The final results (and the dates for Spring) are below; check out the Twitter account (assuming that’s still a thing by the time I post this) for more results.
The Game ran two big buy-in events last weekend, including a $300+$150 Big O tournament last weekend (no idea how many players, I wasn’t able to make it, much against the siren song of 5 cards). Final Tableran a $500 Freezeout a week ago (also tugging at me) and has a $200 bounty tournament on Saturday (11/19) at noon.
Coming up in December, Portland Meadows has NLHE and Big O Freezeout championships.
Out of town, Little Creek Casino west of Olympia has a Mini Series running in early December.
That’s enough from me!
Pacific Northwest Poker Leaderboard
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
Congratulations Richard Jeffrey, winner of the Wynn Fall Classic $500 Seniors Event on October 17. Mr. Jeffrey earned $19,416 for his first place finish. Well played! pic.twitter.com/XHqKgnFJdn
Kevin Roope earned the single day victory in the Wynn Fall Classic $1,600 NLH $500 Bounty, taking home $23,243. Congratulations Kevin! pic.twitter.com/3JbtR0p4O5
This is one of our all-time favorite winner-and-rail photos as @houseofcardspdx chops HU with Paul Sampson in the @PeppermillPoker Main Event, Sampson gets the medal and $52k, Bernard $50k and Bruno on her rail pic.twitter.com/RMhNYxIiKw
Not going to say much this edition. We lost one of the long-time residents here at the Catsino (up there in the header) last week, and things have been a little glum. Jasmine predated my time in poker (at least in the modern era) and she spent many a day at the home office or during an online tournament or while I was writing blog entries here at Mutant Poker making space for herself between the keyboard and the monitor. She’s going to be sorely missed after more than eighteen years.
There’s a remembrance tournament for Heath Bloodgood, the long-time manager at The Final Table, next Thursday evening.
Anyway, on to the Leaderboard.
Key to the Leaderboard
Name and home town (according to the player’s Hendon Mob profile).
The player’s most recent ranking in the PNW Poker Leaderboard in italics. If this is their first time on the Leaderboard, an em dash (—)
Their new standing in bold, preceded by the pound sign (#).
Their change in status on the Leaderboard (with an arrow indicating up or down), or a black club (♣) if this is their first appearance.
For each of the tournaments that are being recognized in this Leaderboard:
The name and link to the Hendon Mob listing for that tournament.
The player’s finishing position in the tournament and the number of entries.
