Ragged Aces Poker Group

First off, I’d like to congratulate “Dead Hand” Joe on his third win of the season!  He beat a field of 22 and Mike in heads-up to earn a seat to play at Quest Field in the CF Celebrity Charity Tournament on Feb 7^th (Mike and I have seats as well).  Joe is moving up the Roster of Aces (career win list) and is now in 6^th place behind “Monkey Boy” Darin lifetime. The CF Foundation benefited as well with $230 going to the charity from our tournament matched by Mike to make is a $460 donation, a nice win for them as well since they normally sell the tickets for $300.  Thanks to all that played in the tournament as the money went to a good cause and goes toward finding a cure for people like Mike’s son Cole.

With Joe, Mike, and Jordan taking down the top three places in tournament #13, the roster of Aces has had quite a bit of movement.  The 22 player tournament caused a lot of changes on the season rankings as well.  I have updated the current standings but I thought I’d call out the big moves.  Clark and “WalMart” Tyler have swapped the top spot.  Tyler busted 3^rd and Clark made it to 7^th so this was a big shift as they both have more than 10 games.  Tyler replaced a 4 point game with a 6 point game improving by 2 points.  Clark replaced a 2 point game with a 32 point game improving by 30.  There is now 19 points between the top two spots, but I expect that will shift dramatically over the last 11 games of the season.  Clark must have better than an 8 point game for it to count while Tyler needs better than a 6.  Other big moves included Mike bouncing up 3 spots to join the top 5, “Quiet Giant” Andre and Joe jumping up 7 and 8 spots to join the top 10, and John F. and Darin cracking the top 15.  “Cockroach” Christine reached 10 games and will replace a 4 point game with her next tournament.  Jordan has one more tournament to reach 10 games before he begins to improve his showings.

The bounty hunter race has a new leader as well.  Jordan took down 6 players in a 22 player tournament gaining 660 points and overtaking Tyler for the lead.  This race is a crap shoot right to the end and the top ten will continue to shift with each game, take a look at the trends page to see the current standings.  The Heads-Up tournament will be a good place for people to get bounties.

So now we are less than a week away from the first annual Heads-up tournament!  I have put together brackets that can handle 16, 20 or 24 players.  Ultimately, I’d like to hit those numbers exactly but we can have “bye” games if we don’t make it.  I will need to set up everything the night before, so please let me know if you plan to play by 5pm on Friday.  This tournament is going to be special with its own trophy and higher value points in the season standings. For a 24 player tournament the payouts will be: $180/120/80/30/30 ($20 buy-in).  A 20 player tournament will have payouts of: $160/100/50/30/30.  And a 16 player tournament will have a payout of: $120/70/50/30/30.  Points for busting out will be earned based on the band you bust.  Thus, in a 24 player tournament, after the 2^nd round, 6 players will bust at the same time.  They will all count as if they busted in 19^th place (12 points), the next round will count as 13^th place (24 points), the next as 8^th place (34 points), then 6^th place (38 points), 4^th place (in the money, 42 points), 3^rd (special roster chip & 44 points), 2^nd (special roster chip & 46 points), and Heads-Up Champ (trophy, special roster chip, & 48 points).  Of course, smaller tournaments have lower point scores.

So who is playing?  Currently I have 13 confirmed players for the Heads-up Championship game on the 31st:

Clark, Tyler “WalMart”, Christine “Cockroach”, Jordan, Sue S., John F., Darin “Monkey Boy”, Andrew, Diana “Ms. Piggy”, Peter “Black Hole”, Terry, Adam Conder (new player), Casey Cady (new player)

I have 14 players that have shown interest but need to confirm that they will (or won’t) be playing as soon as they can so I can fill up the brackets:

Rich M. “Revealer”, Andre “Quiet Giant”, Scott A., Garrett “McGarrett”, Garth “Steamroller”, Allan “Anecdote”, John “Bad Beat”, Diep “Black Widow”, Nick “Miss Manners”, Jeff B., Rob, Harold, Lan Ong (new player), Donna Krell (new player)

As soon as I have enough players confirmed I will put together the lowest bracket (16) and send it out.  As we get more players I will fill in the 20 and 24 (if we get there) and send those out.  If you are planning on playing the 31^st, let me know ASAP, so I can prepare for this unique tournament format. Players will be seeded by their current season records, roster of aces ranking, past season records, and then by random order.  I plan to fill the 24 seats with the first 24 people that commit to playing!

Ragged Aces Calendar

I have 4 calendars left that have gone unclaimed.  Please let me know if you would like one of the 2009 Ragged Aces Calendars I got at a discount (normal cost is $25).  It is $20 per calendar and I worked on getting some interesting quotes and pictures into it from last season.

Team Poker

I am contemplating running one of the open date tournaments (if we don’t get another host) as a Team Poker game.  If you would be interested in managing one of the 4 teams, let me know…take a look at the website in the discussion forums for how this works.

Let me know as soon as you can if you plan to play any of the games on our schedule or if you’d like to host the game on May 2 or May 30.

2009 Schedule (all Saturday games)

http://tfcia.com/raggedaces/content/TournamentSchedule.aspx

1. January 31 - HEADS-UP Tournament, Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 3:00 start ($20)
2. February 21 - Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($20)
3. March 7 - Sammamish, at Andre’s Place 6:30 start ($20)
4. March 21 - Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($20)
5. April 4 - RAWSOP Tournament, Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($ TBD)
6. April 18 - Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($20)
7. May 2 - Open date, host TBD 6:30 start ($20)
8. May 16 - Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($20)
9. May 30 – Open date, host TBD 6:30 start ($20)
10. June 6 - BIG ACE Tournament, Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($50)
11. June 20 - Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 6:30 start ($20)
12. July 11 - CHAMPIONSHIP, Redmond Ridge "The Hangar" 1:00 start (invite only $20 entry)

See you on the 31^st!

~ Clark