While hostess Jude introduced the tournament and host Dean served up the food, the two tables of 8 debated table names – The A Team and Winners were chosen (credit the muppet on The Apprentice).
The Apprentice formed a large part of the evening’s conversation. Jo, the emotionally-challenged hyena, who was made redundant from MG Rover (can’t think why!), proved to be a common source of ridicule. Unsurprisingly she worked in training, just slightly above the recruitment industry according to Dean’s hierarchy of vocations.
Dan delighted the eager crowd of ‘well-wishers’ (photo to come) by collecting the booby prize. This gave him roughly three hours to work on his excuses.
With the memories of two mid-week wins still fresh in my mind, the general feeling was that I’d peaked too early (insert your own innuendo – not sure where you want to insert it though). My chips were up and down like a yo-yo on speed. See graph below.
A series of great hands (AA which was not shown to universal derision, QQ which I lost with, AK three times (lost two out of three and a series of other great starting hands) meant my planned tactics (to play it slow) went out of the window. In my final hand, holding fewer chips than Dean has houses, I had AK again. Behind on the flop to JJ (Jane), my Ace hit on the turn only for another J to send me and Rich out of le tournoi.
Scott followed similar fortunes. After taking most of my chips with a lucky 10 on the river (although he did have lots of outs I‘m told), Scott remarked “looks like I’ll definitely be on the final table”. Kiss of death mate. You should have gone in the kitchen for a couple of hours like I’d suggested and you would have made it.
Elsewhere on the table Paul narrowly avoided coming out first two years in a row – consciously laying down a hand when short-stacked to avoid Dan’s fate.
Guest author: Barry
(Our table) : Dan came out with a classic line - "You think you have lots of chips, until you find out that everyone else has more, and you have relatively little!". Fittingly, after that, Dan was out first. He wasn't happy with Dean jumping up to take a photo of the first loser, with his beer and crisps booby prize.
Barry and Aron had quite a big chip lead, but Barry donated a lot of chips to Jude just before the interval. Barry moved over to the other table, and went all in with top pair (Aces). Unfortunately Dean had trip 7's and knocked out the reigning champion in 8th place.
That left 7 people on the final table Final Table consisted of Dean (huge Chip lead), Jude (2nd chip lead), Aron, Sharon, Vic, Jane, Lee
The final table was a little less exciting than it could have been – mainly to the fact that Dean, Jude and Aron picked up most of the chips quite early.
The people going into the final with the least chips (Lee, Jane, Sharon and Vic) never really stood a chance against the big guns, but put up quite a fight. Lee was his usual patient self, but unluckily for him, his 2 Aces or huge hand, never materialised. Vic was left reeling after an unlucky river card wiped out most of his chips, leaving him with very little. His next hand he raised (nearly) all in, leaving himself one black chip. No one raised pre flop. After the flop Aron raised, Vic called his one chip all in, and Aron swept up. In hindsight, it might have been better if Vic had folded, and tried to really prove if "a chip and a chair" was possible.
Eventually, we were left with 3 (Dean, Jude and Aron). Pre tournament, JJ gave odds of 20-1 for Dean to throw a huge chip lead. True to form, Dean did, and went all in with AK. After a long deliberation, Aron called with a pair of 3's. The threes held up and Dean was our 3rd place finisher.
Aron and Jude were left to battle it out for the trophy. It didn't last long. Jude went all in with A2 after the flop (straight draw). After painfully deliberating again, Aron called with a higher straight draw, and hit it. Aron was the new champion, after knocking out both hosts, and winning all the chips.
Back to JJ:
The poker odds were truly prescient as Dean managed to erode yet another monster chip lead. It only remains for me to thank our hosts for a wonderful evening. Congratulations to the winners Aron, Jude, Dean (sounds like a fix to me) and Dan. Aron – make sure you give the trophy a rinse, as you really don’t want to know what Barry’s been doing with it in the past year. Charity was the only winner. Until next year. JJ
