A rainy day in Phoenix, an unusual occurrence.
What to do now? Play my first online poker game of course.
Hello Scorum friends!
When I first started here on Scorum I noticed lots of betting posts, which is to be expected. I commented on one of mikey’s posts and he said that I should join the poker league. I said something like, “Maybe some day…” I can’t remember exactly. To start off I am not much of a gambler, unless you consider investing in cryptocurrency gambling. But I have always enjoyed playing poker with friends and family, never for cash, always for candy, or just using the poker chips as is. I remember the first and only time I ever gambled with real money. I was with some friends on a houseboat, I think I was 17, and my friend’s aunt asked if I wanted to play blackjack. She would be the dealer and the “house”. I had 4 bucks on me, so I thought why not. I wound up winning 12 more dollars, oh yeah; I was feeling good, but never played for real money after that. Well I take that back, the last time I was in Vegas, 2000, I played video poker with like 3 or 4 dollars worth of nickels. I played for a couple of hours and walked away with 3 or 4 dollars worth of nickels. I am a high roller, I know. I am sure the Casino security, with their little eyes in the ceiling, was paying very close attention to me. Do they really do that? Or is that only in the movies? My other poker experience comes from once in awhile turning on the TV and finding the World Series of Poker on. I remember watching Phil Ivey play. Something oddly exciting about sitting in front of the television, eating popcorn, and watching other people play poker, haha.
Interesting side note, my step-grandpa although he was the only grandpa I ever knew was a career gambler. He earned a living playing poker and other games of chance. He won lots of money and lost lots of money. Being way too young at the time I never got to see him play, before he passed away. But I am sure he would have loved online poker!
I finally decided to try my hand at online poker. A few folks in a couple of the Discords helped me get setup. @btb was a great help and introduced me to @bethalea, who was gracious enough to teach me some things on how to play in Lucksacks. I wanted to support the new Scorum specific platform, BroSports so I was sitting in BroSports beta and no one was really in there to play. People in Discord chat said it was an odd time to find people to play. So I said I would try again the next day. That day game and I found a tournament on Lucksacks that would be starting at 2:35pm my time, and of course I was excited to play my first game. I was nervous but I knew it would be a good learning experience.
One thing about me is all those times I played poker with candy or just chips; I always played as if it were my real money on the line. My work used to host Christmas parties with a casino night theme, and they would give us all 1000 worth of chips to play the various games during the evening. Each 200 worth of chips could be turned in for a raffle ticket. So even if you didn’t play you could still get like 5 raffle tickets. I was totally terrible at all the games. I wound up with enough for a few raffle tickets. There were some people who wound up with 50 or 60 raffle tickets. Great prizes on the line too; the grand prize was an all-expenses paid trip to Lake Tahoe for 3 days. Needless to say I didn’t win any prizes.
Okay, back to my story. I went to enter the tournament, and was given an error, something about needing a Ticket to play. I was confused. But @Tuck Fheman hooked me up with some tickets, so I was set. I registered for the game and then had to wait for 45 minutes for the tournament to start. I took that time to eat some lunch and then study all the material I could on Texas Holdem, lol kidding, I already knew how to play. Finally the game started and we were off. After a few hands, I won a monster pot! I was so excited. Then got a little confused as we kept switching tables, automatically, but that makes total sense for the tournament. As people lose, other tables get filled up. Then I noticed someone at my table…could it be? Yes it was the one and only @mikey! I had joked earlier on discord chat that my only reason for playing was so I could take him down!
This was our conversation on Discord:
The table was going well, I won another monster hand, and was the chip leader for a while. Then came my pocket kings. I played it pretty closely I think, Mikey was in it to win it this round, and I was matching him bet for bet. He went all-in and I went all-in. The cards turn over and I think he had pocket Jacks. I would win that hand!! I would defeat Mikey!! I could retire right now and be so very happy. The tournament continued on and I found myself at the final table, or maybe that table was the final one, I can't remember lol. I started taking down folks left and right and loving it.
One of my favorite hands was this Full House: (I am mrchef111)
A few hands later and one more opponent down and I wind up with this hand:
I tell you I was like a kid in a candy store. And then after several more rounds I won the tournament!!! I won my first tournament I entered; final game time was 1 hour and 45 minutes. Beginners luck? Probably so but of course it was a blast. I won some chips too, which is awesome! I think I might have won 10 SBD, but not sure about that.
Here is a look at my stats page:
So there you have it my friends the story of my first online poker tournament and how I took down @mikey with pocket kings, and ultimately in the end wound up winning the whole tournament. Mikey, it was a blast playing with you man. Who knows maybe I will see you all in there sometime…
Your Scorum Friend,
Matt aka bayareasportsfan
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