HugePoker

[For your etymological reference, in ultra-hip poker lingo (actually borrowed from the computer hacking world) the verb “to own” means “to dominate” or “to win convincingly” or even “to win in a manner humiliating to one’s opponents”. At some point someone made a typo and spelled it “pwn”, which somehow caught on, so that now you’ll see things on poker forums like “JohnnyBax totally PWNED that final table last night”. There is debate about how one pronounces the word “pwn”, but it’s mostly seen written online, so it rarely matters. There’s discussion of the term on Wikipedia (click here), where you will learn, among other things, that “pwn” is one of 16 words to appear on the 2006 "List of Words and Phrases Banished from the Queen's English for Misuse, Overuse and General Uselessness," which I’m guessing is not terribly troubling to the crowd who make use of it (and anyway can something really be misused and overused and still be useless?). A spin-off and therefore even-more-hip usage is the noun “pwnage” which is, of course, the act or process of pwning, hence: “I crushed those donkeys in that tournament – it was pure pwnage!”]

Deb, Dan, Pete and I all went down to the Muckleshoot casino last night to play in a live poker tournament. There were 40 players at four tables. All four Team Huge members survived half the field, but sadly Pete and Dan made their exits before the final table coalesced. But Deb and I were still alive – when we got to the final table I was the chip leader and Deb was the short stack. At the break before the final table I coached her a little, told her that her only move with such a short stack was to just shove her chips in with any tolerable hand and hope it holds up, and that she didn’t even have to have a tolerable hand if she had good position, etc. She proceeded to steal blinds, double up, and double up again (in the first three hands) taking her quickly from desperate short stack to one of the chip leaders. After that Deb played exceptionally well (and I wasn’t exactly slouching myself) until we had busted out everyone else and it was down to the two of us, and she actually had the audacity to enter the heads-up portion with a significant chip lead on me – I was wondering whether I would be made to regret my earlier coaching. We then had what I think was the longest heads-up battle I’ve ever waged, with Dan and Pete causing a big ruckus behind us and the dealer occasionally mentioning that we were *allowed* to make a deal. (He said something like “You two are friends, right?” to which I sneered and replied “There aren’t going to be any deals between THESE friends”.) In spite of her playing really well, Deb has some leaks heads-up that I was able to exploit, but she caught some good cards and had me out-chipped by something like 6:1 at one point. I have to confess that I sort of wanted her to win, but I still played hard and in the end I battled back and took it down. I must say that I felt a sense of pride that my protégés were pretty clearly the best players in the tournament, along with maybe 2 or 3 other decent players (and me). Dan and Pete had decided (without consulting us) that Deb and I had to take them out for steaks afterwards and asked the floorwoman for directions to the nearest 24-hour steakhouse, so at 11PM we drove up to 13 Coins near the SeaTac airport and consumed celebratory slabs of beef and racks of lamb.

Congratulations to Deb on her biggest tournament prize (and for VERY nearly taking out the master), and thanks to Pete and Dan for the support (even though I know you were both rooting for Deb). Your time will come, and when it does I’ll be there for the Filet Mignon.

In the last four live tournaments I’ve played I’ve won all four outright. OK two of them were home games and the other two were only 40-ish players, and the winnings don’t cover half of the downward slide I’m experiencing online (I have one small cash in the last 24 tournaments online), but still - FOUR FOR FOUR! That’s some Huge Pwnage!

I’m still trying to figure out if I’m really going to venture off to the Eurpoean poker extravaganza – hopefully I can pull out of my online slump in time to win a seat into the Dublin event (qualifying tournaments start on Saturday).

Go Team Huge.