Cystic fibrosis poker gift baskets

Last night, the Horseshoe in Hammond, Ind., hosted a charity event in downtown Chicago to benefit cystic fibrosis. Donations were in increments of a buy-in to their poker tournament, which awarded one winner a seat into the main event of the World Series of Poker, airfare, and hotel.

Three hundred people played, with three players from each table moving on to the next round. Then one person from each of those tables moved to the final table.

This is a similar structure to how Harrah’s handles their freeroll tournaments in their casinos. While at Harrah’s in Vegas a couple weeks ago, 3000 slot players played their poker tournament, which meant not a lot of people playing knew anything about poker… and which also meant many of the same people played in the convenient poker room located right downstairs.

The best thing about dead money is that if you can beat Ace high, you’re likely good. One dealer said someone bought in for $100 at a 1/2 NL table and cashed out with $7500 (I think that may have included a high hand jackpot). Carla and I played and we each won $500 from the same table. One of those hands I won with a guy calling me down with Jack high, which he also proudly showed and neither of those cards were drawing to a straight or flush. If games were that good all the time, I’d be flying to Vegas every weekend.

Downtown Chicago with its skyscrapers feels like a real city to me, like a slice of New York. I don’t make it downtown very often, and I should. I like the options in Chicago — it always has something to offer anyone.

On this first coatless weather day in 6 months, the cystic fibrosis event was held at a hotel with this horse-drawn carriage in front:

Our company purchased a table in which 10 employees played, and I tagged along as a guest. The free food and drink available throughout the night also applied to guests, and my motto is never turn down free food and drink. If I had a better motto for life, I wouldn’t have lost so much to Harrah’s trying to get to Diamond status just for the free food in their Diamond Lounge that I could’ve bought on my own many times over.  (Incidentally, Harrah’s was experimenting with their food by having each day feature food from one of their restaurants — a terrific idea that would allow Diamond members to sample and then try out those restaurants… of course, for me, just the free food that was out there was enough to satisfy me).

While in line to register, some people had extra seats that would go to waste because they had no-shows from their company. I was tempted but decided against asking for a handout, figuring it wouldn’t be proper to ask to play for another company.

I was there for the team, to support our 10 representatives, to possibly play in the casino night, and to get free food. Maybe not in that order.

Also during registration, I heard someone ask whether a flush beats a straight. I heard someone else ask if jokers were used — and the response from another player was he didn’t know.

I began to salivate, hoping they had a cash game running, with rake going to cystic fibrosis. Unfortunately, they only had blackjack, roulette, and craps in casino night. And I would have played blackjack, except that what you won was turned in for raffle tickets that were far cheaper than the items they had for live and silent auction.

In the poker room, a quick intro was made, the cystic fibrosis kids were trotted out onstage to thank everyone, and cards were in the air. Chips began at T100,000 with blinds at T1000/2000. At one point they made a mistake and attempted to go from T5000/10,000 to T25,000/50,000.

The first person out lost with pocket Aces.

Like the cocktail servers, dealers were all volunteers, and they could accept tips. The dealers seemed to have had some training, so they weren’t completely awful, but they often didn’t control their table well.

Judging by the big logo on the felt, tables were provided by Action Gaming (creators of many varieties of video poker) and ShuffleMaster, which also included their automatic shuffler within every table.  And you kind of have to wonder why ShuffleMaster (which has been battered by their low stock) bothered with this, because it isn’t as if any of the companies supporting the charities had any say in getting those shufflers on a casino floor.  Players would have put up with dealers manually shuffling.

I visited each of the three bar stations, as well as filled my plate with appetizers. Two women came up to me and lied that what I had on my plate looked good and would I like to try their cranberry vodka spritzer.  My mind in some double-entendre mode, I thought they meant something else until I saw the bottle of vodka and the drink.  Either way, I didn’t turn them down.

I expected to be charged for the tasting, but they were a good sponsor. The open bars were truly open — not even a tip jar. That’s my kind of free.

Because of those sponsors, drinks were good. But the food was lacking — I wouldn’t have minded if Chipotle was a sponsor to get some better quality. There was pizza, penne pasta, tortellini and chicken, vegetables with heavy garlic, mini grilled cheese sandwiches, and mini Philly cheesesteaks roast beef at carving stations.

A separate lounge area had me lounging with all women — their boyfriends and spouses were playing the tournament. Enormous rocks on their ring fingers might as well have been a stop sign or a banner that read, “whatever you’re thinking, you can’t afford.”

Three Vegas-style showgirls wandered around in revealing outfits color-coded with green, pink, and blue boas. In this picture, a coworker borrowed Miss Green’s boa for luck, and he lent his sunglasses.

 

There may have been celebrities in attendance, but I didn’t notice any except Richard Roeper, who was pointed out to me chatting up a hot Asian chick. I haven’t seen the show post-Siskel and mistook him for one of the dealers.

Of our 10 players, seven made it to the next round.

Before that next round began, the live auction took place. Food was removed, and a coworker and I attempted to get drinks but all three bars were closed until the end of the auction — in half an hour.

No food (except that he removed a sandwich from his pocket that he’d brought to the event), no drink… that wouldn’t do, so we took a break and skipped out of the hotel and roamed downtown looking for a late but short movie to catch. Found an AMC and saw Year of the Dog, which had the pedigree of Mike White as writer/director, but it was anything but what you’d expect from a Mike White flick.

After the movie was finally over, I turned to my coworker (who kept talking about his final hand) and said that never mind his hand, this whole movie was a freakin’ bad beat.

We headed back and found that two of our men made it to the final table.  Pretty darn good, even though we’re a gambling company and helped our chances by having our mathematicians play who knew poker and odds… and who all busted in the first two rounds, because pot odds mean nothing to an opponent who doesn’t know poker.

Chips are not brought with you through each round; you start over again. The final table contained 11 players because they allowed 18 rebuys (at $1000 a pop) for busted players to buy into the second round.  They were only supposed to allow 10 additional players, but they went with 18.  I guess those cystic fibrosis kids are greedy.

At the final table, chips were T150,000 but because of the late start and the need to get everyone out of the hotel by a certain time, blinds began at the third level — T5000/10,000.

This meant everyone had just 15x the big blind. At under 10x the big blind is when I start pushing, but if everyone is at that same level, it could pay off to play tighter and wait for others to bust.

Sure enough, that’s what happened. But not with the hands you’d expect. 10-10 vs. AQ was the only really understandable coinflip (10s won). Other all-in calls were at least played with live — albeit dominated — cards. Luck caught up to them lasting past the first two rounds but ran out when at the final table and calling an all-in with non-facecard unsuited disconnectors.

One of our two busted at about 7th and was given a small gift basket containing a WSOP t-shirt, a deck of cards, and various other things.

I asked what was in 2nd place’s basket (who receives the same as 11th).  A coworker said probably a vibrator to further the ass rape you’d feel coming in second.  I said it was probably a vibrator without batteries and lube to make it even worse.

That left one more of our group, who was extremely shortstacked with blinds escalating.

One hand had him in the big blind and three all-ins behind him. It wasn’t much more to call and he was getting odds, but he chose to fold. He later said he had a 3, which was a smart laydown because one person had A3, another had AQ, and another had Q9.

Two more people were eliminated.

The small blind swept him up, but he got lucky and doubled up. Luck helped a second double-up. Both double-ups were from dominated hands hitting cards, though each time he went in he had live cards.

As big as they were, capturing the blinds (T50,000/100,000) was enough to keep him in the game.

And from there it was good playing. He trash talked the chip leader and goaded him into calling hands he shouldn’t have.

By the time he began heads-up he had less than T250,000 left, making him stacked about 6.5:1. I said it would be the greatest comeback ever.

Making things worse, the blinds were T100,000/200,000 and the chip leader was the Button. The dealer made a mistake here — in heads-up play, the Button is the small blind, but the dealer forced the chip leader to put out a big blind on the Button.

My coworker even noticed the mistake and asked the dealer if she was sure.

This mistake let him get away with not only half the blind, but enabled him to move all-in with a good amount of chips.

If he had the big blind, it would’ve left him with less than T50,000 — an amount small enough that the chip leader would have to call. But calling T150,000 is just large enough to get away from.

The chip leader folded.

A couple more all-ins (one of which he didn’t show and I suspect did want the chip leader to call, because he didn’t speak for that hand) took the blinds.

The final hand he pushed with J5o preflop. For some reason, the chip leader must’ve felt his J2o was good enough, or he had enough of the trash talking and just wanted to go home, because he called.

“Truth” became a phrase bellowed by my coworker, by his cadre of supporters including me, and eventually by the tournament director over the microphone who also finally got his name right.

No deuce came, and my coworker won the thing to loud cheers and applause.

I wish I had my camera on, because he hugged a coworker and took him down to the floor in what looked like a fully clothed wrestling move from Borat.

The once chip leader and now 2nd place winner of nothing quickly vanished with his gift basket.

Walking out of the hotel, a girl ran up to us and said that the basket we’re carrying wasn’t the correct one, that it’s the yacht basket won by someone on auction.

It was larger than the others, so the assumption was that it was for first place. Not to mention he’d been handed the basket after winning.

The girl had fear in her eyes, as if she would lose her job.

The confusion probably came from there being an 11th player at the final table and 10 baskets on the stage. And the 2nd place winner may have very well walked away with the 1st place basket.

Two more people came up to us and wanted that basket back. All it seemed to contain was what was in the regular baskets plus a bobblehead, a ceramic pitcher, candles in martini glasses, and a sweatshirt. Oh, and maybe what looked like a gift certificate to something.

With it being called the “yacht basket,” two and two were quickly put together and suddenly the basket could be worth quite a bit more than it appeared.

In exchange for the basket, a cruise was offered on the Horseshoe yacht (the Horseshoe recently purchased the Hammond Yacht Club). By the time our group left and my coworker appeared, he had negotiated a cruise for 20 people aboard the yacht.

It was 3 a.m., too late to find a bar, so we celebrated his win just as good by going to his place and playing Wii bowling (I lost $5) and Wii tennis.