RC4 victory!

Sometimes poker can be really fun.

On Saturday, Banky and I participated in RC4 (the 4th iteration of a team based poker event called the Royal Cup). The name sounds more official than it really is…it’s essentially a bunch of poker enthusiasts getting together for a crazy day of poker.

Each team has 8 players, who each play in 4 rounds:

Stud/Omaha (half the team plays Stud, the other half Omaha)
Limit Hold’em
No Limit Hold’em
Heads-up

Our team rocked the house (ok, we rocked the community hall), and took 1st place!

Because you got more points the higher you placed in the sit-n-gos, I knew it was going to be a good day when half of our players finished first or second in the Stud & Omaha games. We remained strong throughout the day, but lost some steam during the heads-up matches where we only won 2 of 8 (last time, we won 6 of 8 HU matches). But despite our lackluster HU performance, we still pulled in a win. It felt so good to win as a team. Especially since poker is both a social and solitary pursuit – week in and week out, these people were my opponents….but they’ve also become my friends. It was a really good feeling to have someone to cheer for, and someone to cheer for you.

My results were not the best of the team, but were still very respectable. I played Stud and finished 3rd, I finished 2nd in Limit, 5th in No Limit, and lost my heads-up match. The Limit game was the most frustrating loss for me, as I really outplayed my opponent – three times I got him all-in with the worst of it only to have him suck-out to double up and stay alive. He was a strong opponent though, and we played heads-up for well over an hour. I was most disappointed in my HU game. I think I was a better player than my opponent, but I didn’t play my best. C’est la vie.

All in all, it was an awesome day…and it’s always fun when you come home with some cash in your pocket.