Loser or Outsider?

Call me Ponyboy, but maybe I'm not as much of a loser as I thought.

The Loser's Cup was a great success. With a good chunk of the regular players off in Tinian, there was concern that we would not gather enough players to hold a reasonably-sized tournament. I wasn't planning on going, actually, but Dosa-ken worked his nanpa (pick-up) magic on me and lured me in. We actually had about 35 players attend, which is a pretty decent turnout.

As planned, the levels were long at 25 minutes -- our normal Friday night games are usually 10 minute levels, or sometimes 7 minutes. And with deep stacks of 5000 chips, there was a lot of play. We started at 5:30pm and I don't think the first bustout was for at least an hour, if not an hour and a half.

I did pretty well, taking third place. I made the final table with fewer chips than I would have liked, after pushing with JJ and getting called by a smaller stack's AQ. Flop was safe but a Q came on the turn and I lost about half or 2/3 of my stack, and had to rebuild. Still, I had a great time and felt I played well, so what more can you ask for?

I also scored some coin, worth a few thousand yen of credit at the bar, and 10 more Vegas Cup points, pushing me to 20 points this season. Wow! 5 more points than last season! I might last all of 30 minutes at the Vegas Cup final. I only had 39 points at the start when I won the Vegas Cup a year ago, but I doubt I will get so lucky a second time. (I will try, of course.)

Everyone had such a good time there was immediately talk of doing it again, so Psyka-san has scheduled the next event, now rechristened the "Outsider's Cup". We'll be playing on Saturday, November 10, from 1:30pm this time. Levels are still 25 minutes but this time the starting stacks will be 7500 chips, again starting at 25/50 blinds. Wow, even more deep stack play.

If you're interested in a deep-stack no limit holdem tournament, come on down. You don't even have to be a loser this time. We promise not to bust you quickly.