The 2006 season Championship has been completed! We had 14 players competing for a portion of $400 and the Ragged Aces Championship Trophy.
Seats for the three tables were pre-determined based on how the players did during the season and all 24 seats were filled with chips stacks which meant we had 10 "dead stack" players at the tables for the first half of the tournament.
The tables (with dead stacks grayed out):
- "Aces": Ryan dealing to Clark, Terry, Darin, Garth, Molly, Greg, and Chris
- "Wingmen": Sayuri dealing to Abi, Andre, Peter, Rob, Austin, Andrew, and Jason
- "Recruits": Kyla dealing to Christine, Rich, Blake, Sue, James, Diep, and Casey
The first 4 blind levels were played pretty straight forward with the goal of eliminating 3 players from two tables and two players from the third table before recombining to two tables of 8 for the sweet 16. Casey and Ryan started the night in the worst chip positions of all the live players, Ryan was unable to get past the first table, while Casey just made it through the first cut.
Ryan was actually on a roll for a while at the Aces table and had double up a couple of times and looked like he'd survive. Then he clashed with Darin and lost to a boat for most of his chips before getting knocked out when his pocket 7's lost to Terry's pocket 5's that became quads.
The other players eliminated by the first cut were all "dead" stacks representing the following player's season stack totals: Sayuri, Kyla, Chris, Jason, Greg, Diep, and James
Each player colored up their red and white chips and totalled their stacks to see where they would sit at the final two tables. Christine had built up quite a lead and passed Clark as the chip leader at this point moving her to the "Aces" table, the other big movers were Molly from 13th to 5th largest stack, Rob from 12th to 4th largest and Abi from 2nd to 7th.
The Sweet 16 included 3 "dead" stacks:
- "Aces": Austin dealing to Christine, Rob, Molly, Terry, Darin, Andrew, and Blake
- "Wingmen": Casey dealing to Clark, Rich, Andre, Abi, Sue, Peter and Garth
In the sweet 16, 4 players from each table had to be eliminated before we could draw for seats on the final table. The first "live" player to get knocked out was Peter on the Wingmen table as his luck ran out against virtually everyone at the table. The last three "dead" stacks were eliminated before Darin hit the rail on the Aces table, followed by Sue and Casey on the Wingmen, and finally Terry busted out as the blinds began to get excessively high.
We colored up the Green chips, counted everyones stacks and drew for seat positions. At this time, we decided to speed up the blind rounds as they were already at $1k/1.5k to 15 minutes per round to ensure we got done before midnight.
The final table was: Molly dealing to Christine, Rob, Andre, Andrew, Rich, Abi, and Clark
The biggest stack moves before the final table were Molly from 5th to 1st chip position, Andrew from 12th to 6th, Abi from 7th to 3rd, and Rob from 4th to 8th.
We didn't even make it a full cycle around the table before the blinds went up to 1.5k/3k and we had our first all-in move. However, it was shortly into the next to highest blind level that we had our first casualty at the final table when Clark made a large raise on the button with JJ against Rob's and Andrew's limps into the pot. Rob called all-in with AA from UTG followed by Andrew calling all-in with a J5o from middle position.
I wish we would have taken a picture of the final board on this one, as it was the most brutal suck-out bad beat that I've ever seen as Rob's A's get cracked by Andrew making a straight on the river with his 5c. To give some perspective, the percentages to win pre-flop were: Rob 84%, Clark 10.5%, Andrew 5.5% and even after the turn Rob had an 88% to Andrew's 9.5% chance. But that is poker...
With Rob gone, and Andrew trippled up, things heated up again as Rich was elmininated and then Clark had Andrew dominated with AKo vs Ah5h and it held up sending Andrew to the rail as well.
Next out was Andre as he got all-in with his pocket 9's and got called by Abi holding 87o. Abi cracked the 9's when she flopped 2 pair and the Quiet Giant moved silently to the side.
Down to the final four with blinds at 3k/5k there wasn't a lot of wiggle room before somebody would go all-in and get called but Christine succumbed to the pressure first and went out on the bubble before Abi and Clark chipped away at Molly's lead and sent her out in 3rd place.
Two hands later, Abi was all-in against Clark with a K6o vs QJo. Clark hit his pair to win the 55/45 race and the championship.
The final results and prize money were as follows: Clark Musser - 1st place $200
Abi Velin - 2nd place $130
Molly King - 3rd place $70
Prior to the championship tournament start, everyone voted for the Ragged Aces "Player of the Year" with the following people qualified to win the prize: Clark, Abi, Rich, Andre, Terry, Peter, Blake, and Garth.
Abi Velin was voted Player of the Year and will be awarded her trophy on July 15th at the same time Clark will be awarded the championship trophy.
Congratulations to all the winners during the 2006 season, I look forward to a great 2007 season!