The Big Weekend

 FRIDAY
  With Queen's Birthday weekend this year came what has become my annual pilgrimage to the Clubs New Zealand North Island Poker Championship. This year it was held in Napier, on the east coast of the island, about 6 hours drive from Auckland. Although most of the Auckland clubs attending this event flew down, the organiser for my club, the Onehunga Workingmen's Club, decided that we would hire a minibus and drive down. So on Friday morning twelve of us piled into the van and headed off into the great green yonder. The trip south was largely uneventful, consisting first of travelling through miles and miles of Waikato farmland, followed by miles and miles of high country plantation pine forest. We had a comfort stop early on at Lake Karapiro but after that our driver, Bill, had a rush of blood to the head and drove us straight through to Napier without another break. So we rolled into town tired, hungry and slightly grumpy.
   Once we settled into our motel rooms and took a quick trip down the road for some Chinese takeaways, we were ready to head off to the Taradale Club for the Friday night game. The club is only 5 minutes or so drive up the road from the motel so Bill dropped off those of us who were playing in the Friday night tournament. The club was pretty busy with plenty of locals there, not to mention a hundred or so out-of-town poker players. The tables were set up in a side room adjacent to the main bar area and they looked pretty good. There were about 20 brand new oval tables all lined up and ready to go. Unfortunately the organisers weren't ready to go, as they seemed to have only a couple of people to put out the chip stacks on all those tables. But eventually we got the call to find our seats and after a quick opening welcome speech from the Club Captain the tournament was ready to start.
   This tournament was a one-off, unrelated to the main games to be played on Saturday and Sunday and we had about 105 starters. It was $20 buy-in with $10 re-buys and add-ons for the same size stacks: pretty good value. Although the new tables were pretty nice I found that dealing from the end was a bit of a problem as the cloth was a little coarse. I ended up standing up to deal, just to make sure no-one's cards got flipped over. As far as the game goes, I wasn't hitting much in the way of playable hands but I managed to survive to the first break and topped up my dwindling stack. The only notable hand was my dumb-luck moment of the night: with a dangerously short stack I pushed all-in with K 3 suited and got called by pocket Kings, then I hit a flush on the river. But that was my last good result for the night and I got knocked out in around 30th place.
   What with the late start and all the extra chips from re-buys and add-ons it was already midnight by the time I finished playing. The other OWMC players were all out except for Cal, who was still going strong. So the rest of us hung around and eventually Cal was knocked out in 5th place, collecting $200 for his trouble. It was now 1.30 in the morning so we arranged a courtesy van to deliver us back to the motel and some much-needed sleep.
 SATURDAY
  Next morning we all headed back to the club for breakfast. It was a fine but cool Hawkes Bay morning, so we went and sat by the windows to soak up some sun and play a little pool while we waited for the tournament to start. We heard through the grapevine that the final four players from the previous night had split the prize pool and each pocketed $500. So Cal had just missed out on a bigger payout. One of our players, Clia, checked out the poker room and discovered that there was no seat allocation list posted; each player had a registration card which had been placed at their seat. Clia had obligingly checked out the 150-odd seats and identified where each of the OWMC players was seated. Then we got called in for the start and after about 15 minutes of other players wandering around trying to find their seats we were finally ready to play.
   The Saturday tournament is a qualifying event. The tournament runs until there are 54 players left and they qualify for the Main Event on Sunday. Then all those who missed the cut get to play in the Second Chance Tournament where 18 more players go through to the main Sunday game. We started out at 11 am with the blinds at 50/100 and a starting stack of 20,000. The players at my table were mostly pretty passive, with lots of calling going on. One exception was Sione, a player from the Mangere Cossie Club who I know from way back when I used to play poker at the Phoenix Tavern. He was playing quite aggressively. At one stage he raised pre-flop from the big blind and ended up winning a bit pot by showing down two pair. His hole cards were 7 2, which he declared to be his favourite hand.
   As for me, I was playing tight as usual with the size of my stack not moving much in either direction. At one stage I picked up A A in the big blind. As there was only one limper in the pot, I just checked. The flop was J 4 4; I checked, player 1 put in a small bet and I called. The turn was another J. I checked and so did player 1. With a river Q, I figured that I was probably good and put in a minimum bet. Player 1 called and turned over T T.  Apart from this exception, most of the time I was just  getting almost-playable hands in almost-playable position.
   As my stack got down to about 10 big blinds, I had a couple of interesting all-in moments. First I was all-in with pocket Queens and got called by pocket Kings. Uh oh! There was a Queen on the turn, then another on the river. Then, as I got short-stacked again I went all-in with A T suited and got called by- guess what? -K K. The flop was 6 8 9, then the 7 came on the turn, giving me the ten-high straight. Just call me King-slayer!
   With about 74 players left in the field and 8 big blinds in my stack, I had to make a decision: keep trying to double-up, or tighten up and try to coast across the bubble. I decided to tighten up and fold pretty much everything. But when I picked up A Q with just 6 BBs I figured I'd better take one more shot at trying to pick up some chips. I pushed all-in and everyone folded, leaving me to pick up 1 1/2 big blinds. It was just after this that I was moved to another table and then it was announced that we were only five eliminations away from qualifying and we were now playing hand for hand.
   Each time a hand was completed play would stop and the dealer would stand up. Then we'd have to wait until all other tables were finished before starting the next hand. With just 3 BBs left I was wavering between playing and folding. At one point I folded A 7 after another player raised. It turned out he had J J. Of course there was an Ace on the flop and another on the turn. But I finally resolved to just stick it out and fold everything. This was put to the test when I looked down at K K, but I stuck to my plan and folded. In the end, I stopped looking at my cards and just folded them blind. It seemed to take forever for players to be eliminated but eventually we were down to two places from the bubble. I was sitting two seats from the big blind with 8,500 in front of me and the blinds at 4,000/8,000 when the last player was knocked out and I qualified by the barest of margins. It was 4.30 pm and three other OWMC players, Jes, Ham and Cal, had made the cut.
   As I had only managed to grab a pie during one of the breaks, I was getting hungry so my wife and I visited the bistro while the organisers set up for the Second Chance Tournament. Then it was time for her and the other seven OWMC players to head back to the tables and try to qualify for the main event. Meanwhile, the Warriors were playing the Broncos on the big screen so I had plenty to occupy my time. Unbelievably, the Warriors actually won against one of the top-ranked teams, something many of us long-suffering fans had not expected. Meanwhile the tournament was grinding along and it was fast approaching the 'sudden death' stage. Some of us were loitering around the entrance to the tournament room, wondering about the possibility of a cash game starting up. Eventually someone suggested a $20 Sit 'n' Go tournament and one of the tournament directors organised some chips for us to play our single table tournament.
   So we started out with a smallish chip stack, the idea being that the timing for the blinds would follow that of the main tournament and that we would follow the same blind structure, starting at 100/200. Basically, we were making it up as we went along but, surprisingly, it all seemed to run quite smoothly. One of the players volunteered to do all the dealing and he was pretty good at it, keeping things moving at a brisk pace. Meanwhile, some of our club-mates were dropping out of the Second Chance Tournament, my wife included. In the end we got two more players through to the main event.
   I was doing ok in the Sit 'n' Go but somehow it got decided that we were only paying out two prizes and I was knocked out in third place by my club-mate Cal. A couple of other STTs had started and my wife was involved in one of them, so I wandered off in the general direction of the bar. She ended up splitting the prize pool with one other player, so at least one of us got some cash back. Not long after that Bill managed to round everyone up and we all piled back into the van and headed back to the motel.
SUNDAY
   We woke to another fine cold Hawkes Bay morning and, after a certain amount of texting back and forth between rooms, we gathered together in the yard, ready to set off, ready to continue our poker marathon. But first, we had to eat. As it happens, the Taradale RSA Club was right next door to our motel so we decided to go and check out their Sunday breakfast. It was a pretty good spread and, having fortified ourselves with bacon, sausages etc, we headed back to the club. The tournament room was set up for both the main event and the plate tournament, which were due to run at the same time, although the plate event had a smaller starting stack. They were still using the little name tags for seat allocation but they must have learned something from the Saturday game because this time the TD went from table to table announcing the names. Still not ideal, but better than the previous arrangements. Our club had six players in the Cup Tournament and six in the Plate Tournament.
   The Cup Tourney was starting with a 20k starting stack and the blinds at 50/100, so a deep stack of 200 BBs. There were a couple of aggressive players at the other end of my table, and not much happening at all at my end of the table. Fairly early on I managed to lose about a quarter of my stack by betting into another player with my top pair, only to find he'd flopped two pair. But apart from that I was not getting many playable hands. Lunch break came and went and when I returned to the table I had about 10 BBs left. Despite getting rag hand after rag hand I somehow managed to nurse my short stack through until late afternoon, at which point we were down to the last two tables. Ham and Jess and recently been eliminated, so Cal and I were the last of the Workies players left in the field. By the time I played my last hand I had just 3 BBs left. I went all-in with K Q suited and was called by pocket fours. There was a 4 on the flop and I was eliminated 14th out of 72 players. It was about 5.30 pm.
   I was still keen to keep the poker action going so I went to the front of the room to check out what was happening with the cash games. There were a number of cash tables running and they were all under the control of one of the local TDs. So I put my name down on the waiting list and hung around for a while, waiting for an opening. Eventually one of the tables had a vacancy so I paid my $20 to the man and got my $18 worth of chips ($2.00 is raked for the club).
   There was just a single $1.00 blind at this table, giving me a short starting stack of just 18 blinds. So I started out with my usual super-tight, super-aggressive pre-flop short-stack strategy. It didn't take me long to realise that a number of players at this table were pretty drunk, and as a result the game was progressing at a snail's pace. Players also kept wandering off to check out what was happening at the main event, or to get another drink, or whatever, so there were typically only about 5 players actually seated at the table at any one time. I ended up getting into an argument with one of the players over the proper procedure when a player is absent and misses the blinds. He wanted to just pay the absent player's blinds from their stack, like you do in a tournament. This is not the way it's done in a ring game but in the end I gave in and we did it his way, which at least had the advantage of keeping it simple.
   Meanwhile, there were just nine players left in the main Tournament, including my club-mate Cal. The organisers suspended the tournament while they set up the final table and bought the barbecue dinner out to feed all the guests. So our cash game was put on hold for a while so everyone could go and get something to eat. By the time the cashie got under way again with a handful of players I'd had enough. I went back to the organiser and asked if I could move to another table and he found me a spot at a different game straight away.
   To my surprise I discovered that I'd just sat down at a $1/$2 game with a stack of around $20: a super-short stack. But at least it was progressing at a normal pace and we had a full table of active players. As for the Cup Tournament, the final tablers had been waiting for about an hour before the game was restarted. They were paraded on the stage and introduced to the crowd before being seated. Meanwhile I discovered that when someone at our table lost all their chips they would buy a new stack from one of the other players 'under the table', in order to avoid the rake. I was just hanging on with a bit more than my starting stack when I finally hit the hand I'd been waiting for. I put in a substantial raise with my pocket Jacks, and got a ridiculous number of callers. The flop was something like 4 5 8. It looked pretty good to me so I pushed all-in with my last $23.00 and was called by my old mate Sione. Of course he had his favourite hand, 7 2, giving him an inside straight draw. His draw didn't come in and I finally had a reasonable-sized stack.

  Not long after this one of the other players wanted to top up his depleted stack by buying some chips from me. I had to politely decline as I didn't want to play with a short stack if I could help it. In the Cup Tournament the players were steadily getting knocked out but Cal was still there, moving up the payout scale. It was getting late but there were still quite a few people standing around the final table, watching the action, and also a few cash games still running. After a while we heard a round of applause coming from the tournament table, and it was all over. I heard that Cal had come in second place, winning $1000. A pretty profitable weekend for him!
   I figured it must be time to head home so I left my cashie, selling a new player some of my chips on the quiet and cashing out the rest through the proper channels. Most of the other Workies players had already left but we found one of our lot, Mol, playing on the slots. Then we booked ourselves a courtesy van. It was going to take a while, so we had time for 'one for the road' while we watched the karaoke. The bar was closing but there were still quite a few poker players hanging around, especially the die-hards from Mangere Cossie Club. Our ride turned up so Cal, Mol, my wife and I got into the courtesy van and headed back to the motel.
MONDAY
   It was a fairly late start the next morning. Apparently the boys had a late drinking session after Cal got back. By all accounts, Cal was making sure everyone knew that he was the winner and that they most certainly were not. Eventually we were all ready to head off and took our places back in the van. This time our driver was more accommodating and we stopped at a café for breakfast up in the mountains. Then it was back on the road for the long haul back to Auckland.
   This is the third time my wife and I have been to this event and once again, a good time was had by all. I'm pretty happy with qualifying for the main event for the third time in a row, as well as going fairly deep into the tournament once again. Next year it'll be hosted by the Weymouth Cossie Club in Auckland, so no need to travel out of town. My goal, of course, will be to make the money bubble, ideally to do one better than Cal. Time will tell.