Texas Hold 'Em Tournament 2005
March 19th - Tour de Tori stop #1
Held at the Seattle Tennis Club, the CF Foundation's inaugural poker tournament and casino night held raised $55,000! Sponsored by Riverside Ford and Gillis Auto Center and presented by Destination Harley-Davidson, the event had over 100 poker players vying for a trip to Las Vegas to play against CFF chapter winners from across the country. This year's winner was Jon Hongladarom, who'll now compete against the other chapter winners for a seat in the World Series of Poker.
While I'm not a poker expert by any means, I decided to spend my hard-earned basketball referee money to see how I would stack up, thus Tori's Tilters were born. I then went into poker training mode, buying Phil Gordon's book and playing on-line at fulltiltpoker.com. One thing I lacked was playing with real people in the same room, but I was as ready as I could be.
Dealt pocket 8's on the very first hand, I suspended by tight play strategy for one hand, only to lose to two pair, 10's and 3's. This cost me a third of my stack, so I went into tight mode after seeing someone bet a 10-3 off-suit. An unbelievable streak of cold cards, my unwillingness to bluff with 2-4 and 2-8 and escalating blinds ate up my stack, so I was toast. My only consolation is that if I played my cards all the way to the river, none of them in two hours would've been a winning hand. That's poker!
The casino portion of the event had craps, roulette and blackjack, and those tables were crowded all night long. There were silent and live auctions and hors d'oeuvres, beer and wine were provided. Dottie Moore from the CFF office and I seemed to have a contest to see who could eat the most between us, I think it ended up a tie.
Charlie Maher from "The Bachelorette" and "Extra" helped out with the live auction. He also played at my table, lasting longer than I did. Standing next to Charlie is Tirza Sanchez from the CFF office. Most of the guys just wanted to be that motorcyle at that moment.
