Click me, I taste like chicken!

While others are just beginning their quest to become the envy (and possible simultaneous ridicule) of every poker player on planet earth as the main event begins today in Vegas, I am currently living the dream. Yup, right here in the ol' Mini-apple. As you can see by my the clicky picture above, I am the number one rated poker player in all of the Twin Cities metropolitan area. Or was the number one until last night after being vanquished from my precipice(or was it parapet?) high above the commoners. Regicide in the form of being cold-carded in a freeroll, my friends. I'll get to that later, though.

The first stop of the Riverush Poker Tour landed smack dab in the middle of the Lone Tree Bar and Grill in beautiful downtown Minneapolis on a cloudless Tuesday night. Like you care about the weather, right? Fuck the weather, my friend Anthony wanted to play poker, have a pocketful of beer and, quite possibly, walk away as champeen.

My buddy Anthony and I arrived a few minutes early, talked with event coordinator, and settled in at the bar for a quick beer, right along with the other poker player determined to make history. The set-up of the series is that there are 6 weeks of freerolls, 4 freerolls a week all at different bars in and around downtown Minneapolis. That's good for me because I like bars. Each nightly winner immediately secures his seat in the finals at the end of the 6 weeks. He is also awarded 20 points in the overall standings, and each subsequent place gets 1 point less with just 1 measly point awarded for 20th place.

Make sense? Good, because I don't have the energy to explain the structure to all the Plebes in the house.

There was a ton of bad play in the early going, almost like we were playing in a freeroll. The play was so bad that I can't even justify talking about it this blog for fear that my reader's brains would explode. I'm just looking out for y'all. But, I will detail the final table action.

Seat 1:Travis (Burnsville, MN) 10K Says he spends much of his time playing online at JetSet poker. JetSet is also the name of a homosexual drinking establishment in Minneapolis. I doubt he knows that.
Seat 3:Chad (Minneapolis, MN) 10K Poker player extraordinaire. Self-made millionaire. Do you need to know more? I think not.
Seat 5:Anthony (Minneapolis, MN) 10K Turkey milker during the week, racecar driver on the weekends. Still sucks at poker.
Seat 7:Jason (Parts Unknown) 10K Riverush's Steve Lipscomb. As of press time, had yet to find a place to live.

Yes, I know our final table is lacking a certain something. That something is "5 other players". There's a legitimate reason behind it, believe me. Above, when I said "right along with the other poker player...", that wasn't a typo. I didn't miss the "s" on the end.

Only three people showed up to play poker.

The room was so devoid of people wanting to play poker that the man running the show had to join in just so we'd look a little less pathetic in the eyes of the oh-so-cute waitress! So very sad.

Nobody really cares about the action, I know this. So, I'll just quickly run through how I secured my place atop the Minneapolis poker elite.

--I sucked out on Anthony(get your minds out of the gutter!) when my Q7o hit middle pair and beat out his AKo. He sucks at poker. So hard.

--I ran over Travis heads-up. It's so much easier to do when there's no real money on the line. "IIIIII AM THE CHAMPEEN, MY FRIIIIIEEEENNNNNNS"

You would not believe the number of adoring female fans that came out of the woodwork after I defeated my foe with my wicked awesome poker skillz. That's because there were no fainting women or skillz involved. Unbelievable, huh? Pitifully enough, the poker tournament doubled the number of patrons for the Lone Tree on Tuesday night. Ugh.

So, what did the hollow victory get me? For starters, a coveted seat in the finals. Can't go wrong with that, as I probably won't make the final table again in another one of these events. I also won a $25 bar tab at the Lone Tree and a shirt stating that I do, in fact, rule.

Here's how I'd rate the night on a scale from 1-5, 1 being the best.

Tables:(1) Brand new tables. Nice.
Chips: (1) Also brand new with denominations hot-stamped on them. This doesn't seem like a big deal, but I have a tough time playing with plastic chips and having everybody ask "What are the blues again?" I am poker snob.
Structure (4) Come on, what do you expect? It's a freeroll! Everyone starts with 10K in chips with blinds starting at 200-400 and increasing every 20-25 minutes. If you make the final table of a full tourney(100 people), you can expect to be there for 4+ hours.
Funability (1) I'll just list these as what they really are; a bar promotion. They're in place to get people into the bars that are usually quiet during the week. Once they catch on, the promotion will work like a charm. Even though the prizes can't be monetarily large by Minnesota law, that doesn't mean I didn't have fun, though. I'm always in need of getting out of the house during the week, and these are perfect for me. Drinking and playing poker on a school night; how can you go wrong?

Will I go back? Of course! In fact, I went back last night--even though there was a little filly was begging me to mate with her--and I'll probably be going back tonight for the sole reason that it's being held at Rock Bottom, and I'm such a sucker for pints upon pints of their stout.

Last night's was held at a little faux irish place on campus called Blarney's. I didn't have a chance of defending my title and was bumped 12th/15th(hey, that's almost two tables!), netting me another 8 points. That should've been enough to keep me stting atop the leaderboard, but oh no. Travis, the guy I massacred heads-up on Tuesday, outlasted another buddy of mine. Instead of a gift certificate, Travis took home a decent chip set and the knowledge that he's now the best freeroll player in all of the Twin Cities.

That is, until tonight.