As referenced in the previous post, I played in the ISM Charity Poker Invitational Tournament tonight. It was reasonably fun, and I ended up playing at the same table with Brian Robbins from Fuel Industries who is an experienced guy working in the online space. We’ve never met face-to-face but “know” each other from an email discussion list.

I sat down, introduced myself to the previously seated players at my table and evidently he didn’t hear me, as he asked, “Who are you with?” I replied, “Iron Realms” expecting kind of a blank look (I’m used to it, don’t worry) but instead got an “Oh yeah! I’m on a mailing list with the head of Iron Realms. I can’t remember his name offhand though….”

“Matt Mihaly?” I ask.
“That’s it!” says Brian.

“That’s me!” says I.

And hilarity ensued.

Actually, what ensued was a quick ass-kicking. One guy from an adjacent table went out on the 1st or 2nd hand, having gone all-in. The whole room applauded him, but he did not look very happy. I felt a bit bad for him as his table was towards the back of the room, so he had to do a walk of shame past many of the other tables as he trudged out.

Then one of the fellows at my table went all-in on a hand that justified it, but got ambushed by the river card that gave his opponent an unexpected full house, and out he went. A couple more guys went, and then the organizers combined people from another table with ours, bringing another friend (David Christensen from SOE) to the table.

As I said, I have no real idea how to play poker properly (especially with so many participants), and though I did manage to win a couple hands my first poker tournament was mainly a steady downward spiral. I strongly suspect that a couple of the other guys at the table play poker regularly as they seemed to have all the lingo down and appeared pretty dubious of some of my bets, though to be fair I was dubious of the wisdom of 100% of my bets. The guy I suspect really knew what he was doing (who was dominating the table when I left) took me out by just outspending me at the end. He had probably 6-7x as many chips as I did and just forced me to go all-in without big risk to himself.

I have to say, it was pretty fun. I liked the fact that I knew I had already spent all the money I was going to lose (it was for charity, so you committed money up front and then played for prizes) so I really had no reason to care if I won or lost. The grand prize was a PS3 but…meh. That’s not exactly motivation.