02.25.07
Tournaments! Tournaments! Tournaments!
Well, it’s Sunday again and poker players are waking up late, racing to the Sunday afternoon game. This doesn’t mean they sleep less than the conventional eight hours…Saturday night games go well past midnight, then there’s hours spent after, re-hashing success and catastrophe from the previous night.
Of course, there’s a lot of truth to that old, old saw: The winners tell jokes and the losers say, “Deal!”
So, for the winners, here’s a joke:
A poker player walks in to a bar. He sees a soft game in the back, takes the empty chair. On the second hand he gets wired aces and goes all in. Three players call. No one draws out and as our hero reaches for the pot, one player puts his pistol on the table and says, “Hang on one second.”
“Tough beat, he made a lollapalooza,” the dealer says, and shoves the chips to the big blind.
“Yup, nine-seven-four-three-two, he drew a gut-shot lollapalooza, tough beat,” the players commiserate.
“What the h—?” our hero complains. “A lollapalooza?”
The dealer points to a small sign behind the pool-table: “Lollapallooza (9-7-4-3-2) beats any hand.”
Our hero figures that between the pistol and the sign he better not argue, so he re-buys (the game was really, really soft), and two hands later he’s Big Blind with a nine-seven suited. He limps in before the flop and then the flop comes 2-3-4.
“Nice,” our hero thinks, and he pushes in all his chips.
Fold, fold, call, fold, fold. Burn, turn, burn, turn, runner, runner, the caller turns over his set of trip fours, our hero turns over his 9-7 and reaches for the chips.
Once more the pistol smashes down on the table as the dealer pushes the chips to the trip fours.
“What about my lollapalooza?” our hero demands.
“What are you, an idiot?” the three fours reply. “Everyone knows the lollapalooza is good only once a night.”
* * *
Lollapalooza:
And here we are with the round-up of poker news for Sunday in the am, and yes, it’s tournaments, tournaments, tournaments! And, um, celebrities?
First of the bat we have the actress best known for her stint as the scantily clad foreign exchange student in the first installment of American Pie. Shannon Elizabeth is on her way to New Zealand to try her hand at the Celebrity Poker Challenge for Charity in April according to Christchurch Casinos.
Elizabeth signed up to compete in the main tournament, for the grand prize of $500,000, and believe it or not, you American Pie fans out there, Shannon Elizabeth is celebrated, not only as one of the most attractive women in the world, but also a poker champion of the highest caliber.
Last year, for example, the actress won the first Nicky Hilton Caesars Palace New Year’s Eve poker tournament. According to the spokesman for Christchurch, who seems to know his poker, “her opponents will have to be wary though…if they underestimate her, they will get burned.”
Stay tuned for our next installment…coming later in the day…we’ll take you to LA for a run-down of the 2007 Poker Classic Tournament Updates and Round-offs.
All right, now shut up and deal.
