Kitten sucked in Tim “Smails” O’Brien early, only a half hour into the game, with Tim pouring good money after bad into the pot, showing a king high after eventually going all-in. Kitten’s pocket rockets won the hand and nearly doubled him up, making him the early chip leader with a dominating stack. Tim’s elimination brought the player total at the main table down to 6, matching the number playing on the second table in the legendary Hefner room.

Almost an hour later, Suz went all in preflop, and I called her (to her vociferous statements that I should have folded)… my QQ held up to her JJ, bringing it to 5 players on the main table at 9:30pm.

A mere ten minutes later, Dan paired up with a straight draw and went all in for the rest of his 280 in chips. The straight didn’t come, so we were down to 4 on the main table. Meanwhile, the 6 players in the back room had still barely scratched each other, with no one a serious underdog.

Elvis went down on a bluff ten minutes later… there was JJXJ on the board after some heavy betting, and he went all in with a KX, and Mikey called him with AK. The river helped neither, so the ace-high won. Down to 7.

“Little” Chad went all-in preflop with AQ versus Mikey’s pocket 10’s, and the pair held up. Six left.

Todd “The Terminator” Henderson proceeded to knock out Mikey, then Greg “von” Schlegel, making him the big stack at the table with 4 players left, all of whom would get paid.

Nickles as the small stack went all in pre-flop with J2 and Kit called him with KQs to knock him out. Nickles went away with $25 from the prize fund, and it was three way action with Todd as the big stack, me in 2nd, and Kitten in 3rd with a slighly smaller stack than I.

 vs. Todd

  vs. John

 (my flush card, d’oh!) and those two went all-in, to knock Kit out in 3rd place.

 vs. Todd

 Looking pretty good for me, a 2-to-1 favorite (59.8%/39.8%).

 with not much help to Todd, and a possible flush draw for me… my high card Ace still holding up for the time being. (75.7%/24.3%)

 which paired up my Ace but gave Todd an inside straight draw, now his only hope with a 10-to-1 shot. (90.9%/9.1%)

 and he made his straight to knock down my puny stack and win the tournament for $130.