Four Queens Poker Classic

The Four Queens Poker Classic, hosted by Bonnie Damiano, was once again a good tournament. All of the events had lots of play to them, and the $5,000 championship event came with a free rebuy. This meant a player could start with $10,000 in chips, or with $5,000 and take a free rebuy anytime in the first three hours. I think most of the players started with $5,000 in order to give themselves an opportunity to withstand one bad beat. The reason for starting with a full stack of $10,000 is to bully the table and show off a big stack. I chose to wait until I was broke to get the additional $5,000 in chips. Unfortunately for me, it didn't help, and I was on the freeway going home within hours of the tournament's starting time.

Some players prefer to bust out quickly if they don't make the money and others prefer to get their money's worth and play as many hours as possible. I have always been a big fan of playing as long as possible, because it is always a learning experience. The problem with lasting a long time and not making the money is that it's a little depressing, and you may miss out on some good live games.

Busting out quickly was not that bad for me, because I didn't get emotionally involved, and never thought about the prize pool and how I was going to spend the money. After thinking about it for a while, I changed my opinion. How often can I play with Phil Hellmuth, Dan Harrington, Jim Bechtel, and Chip Jett at the same time? Each of those guys has a different playing style, and they all play great. By lasting longer, I could have learned a few tricks or picked up on a tell.

Those who made the final table were: Peter Costa, Thor Hansen, Daniel Negreanu, Paul Kroh, Dan Harrington, Kathy Liebert, Kirk Conrad, Randall Skaggs, and Steve Ford. With 18 players left, I asked my good friend Harley Hall (who was still in at the time) who was playing well. He immediately said that Skaggs and Ford weren't getting their money in with poor hands. Well, Harley was right, because they played heads up, and Steve Ford walked away as the new Four Queens Poker Classic champion. Good job, Steve!

During the other events, I had the opportunity to get in a lot of playing time with Chip Jett. For some reason, he was sitting directly to my left every day, and he always had chips (hence, his name). Chip, who just passed Amir Vahedi to become the leader in the Player of the Year standings (according to Amir, it was because Amir was on vacation), was one of the chip leaders in the $1,000 no-limit hold'em event when he received a phone call that his wife, Karina, was at the hospital ready to give birth to their first child. With 20 or so people left in the tournament, all of the players agreed to give Chip his buy-in back and readjust the prize pool so that he could be with is wife for the birth of their child. Congratulations, Chip and Karina!