Posted by Dr Fro 2:52 PM

Straight from the horse's mouth

A guest blog, written by the esteemed tournament director, KTL:

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This weekend I hosted a $50 NLHE tournament at my house. I am not sure why I wanted to host a tournament but, once Ms. KL gave the okay, I went full speed ahead planning the tourney. There ended up being 26 players (3 tables) comprised mostly of other accountants, a lawyer, 2 IT guys, a college student and a few others. Overall, I would say the field had an above average skill level.

The blind structure was not aggressive, especially early on, and the tourney was expected to last until about 11:30pm and we started about 4:15pm. The most interesting part of the structure is that I allowed limited rebuys during the first 2 hours. Phreaux and I thought there would only be a couple of rebuys. My thought behind the limited rebuy was preventing someone from being out in the first 5 minutes - not changing how the game was played. Well, we blew that one. There were 11 rebuys in the 2 hour window. I am not sure if the rebuys were caused by overaggressive play or just "bad" luck. Either way, the result was an additional $440 in the $1,300.

After the rebuy period, players started dropping fast and we were down to 2 tables rather quickly. Soon after consolidating to 2 tables, Kings cracked Aces on the river and we were down to 15 players. CCM, Phreaux and I went out in succession and we were down to 1 table (for future reference this was around 10pm).

My night was mostly filled with bad cards, missed draws and bad calls. I played about 5 hands in the first 2 hours. I re-bought when my Td4d met Ad2d and 3 other diamonds. I caught a little run when I twice flopped a straight limping into the pot with weak cards (T9o, 86o). My downfall occurred at the 13 player mark when I put ~2,500 chips into a pot with AJ against AQ, an ace came on the flop and I could not get away from it.

The play at the final table took awhile but the blinds eventually caught up to the group and the pace picked up. My brother-in-law (the college student) ultimately bested one of the accountants to win the $700 grand prize (around 11:30pm).

At this point, Phreaux and CCM had rounded up enough people to play a cash game. The stakes were similar to our regular Sunday game ($40 buy-in rotating between NLHE and Omaha Hi-Lo). I joined the cash game and so did Ms. KL when she returned from the "poker widows" dinner. Around midnight we were playing 8 handed in the cash game… and we were still playing at 3:30am. I lost a large pot to Phreaux on the last hand when, after consuming keg beer for 11 hours, I made a stupid call in Omaha. Phreaux realized he had to be super dad in about 3 hours and I realized that I had not stayed up this late in years so we shut it down. Phreaux cashed out almost $132 profit, Ms. KL $53 profit (I am so proud!), I lost $40 and CCM… well let's just say he was not positive.

All and all a wonderful experience. I am glad that I decided to host and I look forward to the 2nd KL Poker Tourney. I am now taking sign-ups and suggestions for next April.

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