The 2006 World Championship of Green Valley Poker

What do these two have in common? They have both won major poker championships.

It was just like the World Series of Poker Main Event last night at the Green Valley Poker Tournament. Sort of. Let’s check out the similarities. The WSOP Main Event had just over 5,600 players this year. Our tournament had just under 56. The WSOP has a $10,000 buy-in. We had a buy-in at 1% of $10,000. The WSOP has Greg Raymer. We had Greg Marks. So you can see how surprised I was not to see any media covering the event. Which leaves me no alternative but to capture the essence right here.

When I arrived at the event, the excitement level was as high as a Florida State crowd with 1.7 seconds to go in a big home victory. I immediately of course made my way to the open bar. Now this presented somewhat of a dilemma. One of the few things I enjoy more than a Captain and Seven is a Captain and Seven from an open bar. But we all know that your poker inhibitions let up after a few trips to the bar. I figured a normal session at a 90 minute open bar, could lead me to play like Luterman, calling “all-in” on the first hand before even looking at what I had.

Everybody paid the entry fee and seats were randomly assigned. So of course I sit down right next to my brother-in-law. The last time I played poker with him I went all-in with AK to his KK, and of course no Ace came up. So I begin by warning him to leave me alone, or I would tell my sister on him, or better yet my mother. He knows he is no match for them, so he agrees to leave me alone. On the other side of me is a guest to the tournament named Tony Mamo, who seems like a good enough guy. Everybody starts with $4,000 in chips, blinds start at 25/50, and blinds increase every 15 minutes. With the pace of play that was going on at my table, that translates to blind increases roughly every four hands.

So play begins. My first hand is something like 10 4, which I fold faster than Georgia Tech with a double digit second half lead. And it goes on like this for a while. At one point, I get a pair of 10’s, raise to 500, get called, and then have to fold when a King and a Jack come on the flop. Meanwhile, while I am getting blinded and flopped down to about 2,500 in chips, Getson (aforementioned brother-in-law) is building a chip stack bigger than Frito Lay. He is clearly the chip leader at our table, and probably overall, pulling full houses on the flop, straights and flushes on the river, and in general dominating the field. Of course, as soon as he uttered the words “I just always pull great cards, what can I say,” I knew it was a matter of time.

People started dropping like flies. Billy Bredt, out. Jarrett Wells, out. Ken Dash, out. Meanwhile, I was getting blinded down and was pretty short stacked. I had about 1,700 chips left with blinds at 200/400 and a 50 ante. So I got Ace Jack and went all-in. The dude on the big blind (who I do not know), called me with A 7 suited (diamonds). That was cool because I was almost a 5-to-2 favorite to win the hand. Flop comes out 8 5 2….diamond….diamond….diamond. Game over. Thanks for playing.

Baseball has the Mendoza line. If you can’t hit above the Mendoza line, widely considered .200 although Mario Mendoza was a career .215 hitter, you are widely considered a failure. Green Valley has enacted the Luterman Line, which basically says, if you can’t outlast Bill Luterman in a poker tournament, just drop your money off at the door next time. Well, when I got knocked out, old Luterman was still hanging in there. Imagine if the media did show up, and I had Lon McEachern or Normad Chad ask something like “Dils, with this talented field you couldn’t expect to win it all, but are you disappointed that you couldn’t outlast Bill?” How do you answer that question? Of course, like three hands later his Q Q was knocked out by A A (by the Tony Mamo who I was sitting next to earlier). Now that is painful.

People continued to drop out, and the ultimate demise of Getson after his taunting the poker Gods was quick and painful! He went from one of the chip leaders to out of the tournament in about two hands. The excitement was building. These great champions were battling it out like Duke and North Carolina. When John Rodack dropped out in the always painful “first place out of the money spot,” the five money spots were reserved by Brian Levine, Tony Mamo, Billy Glazer, Art Stern, and Sam Donsky. If you did not know better, you would think you were watching Phil Hellmuth, Phil Ivey, Greg Raymer, Sammy Farha and Dan Harrington going at it. The only differences were the size of the crowd, lack of television cameras, prize money being battled over, and the quality of play. Otherwise, you would have never known the difference.

Donsky bowed out, followed shortly thereafter by Levine. That left Stern, Mamo, and Glazer to fight for the title. Now, as I said before, Mamo seems like a nice fellow, but I knew he had no chance to win this thing, because his wife was there watching, huddled up all close to him like they were McNabb and T.O., in the good old days. There has to be something in the rulebook that says “Thou who brings they wife to poker event will not take down the title.” I am only guessing there, so do not pull the rule book out.

Stern bowed out next, leaving Mamo and Billy G to fight it out. The winning hand was Q 3 for Glazer, when he turned a queen on the flop and another on the turn to end Mamo’s pain and beat his pair of 3’s. Well, not really painful. He still won over a quarter of a million dollars for his second place finish, less a slight withholding for taxes.

Meanwhile, Billy Glazer is the Champion of the World. This has not been substantiated, but the word is his company has been put on the block this morning, so that he can focus on playing poker professionally full time. He has already signed up for this year’s WSOP Main Event. If I were Phil Hellmuth, I would be very aware of what was going on here, as the power is clearly shifting in the poker world.

In the meantime, I am already plotting my strategy for the next Green Valley poker tournament, starting with talking Billy Bredt into letting us do re-buys…

Note: Pictures courtesy of pokernews.com and kpg.biz