[ba-poker] YACHT-7 trip report

[Patrick Milligan <patrick(deleted the rest)>]

We had a gathering of the usual suspects as well as some new faces on 
Saturday, April 17th, for the 7th YACHT NLHE tournament.  YACHT 
stands for Yet Another Cool Holdem Tournament.  They are usually held 
twice a year, in mid-September and in March/April (sometime prior to 
Ken Kubey's TARGET).

The tradition goes back to Lee Jones home tournaments (MATH, MOSFET, 
MOTH) that were held to honor his poker-playing mother-in-law, Liz 
Halpert.  My wife Eileen and I hosted MOTH (Mom's Occasional 
Tournament - Holdem) back in May 2000, and we had so much fun that we 
started the YACHT series in September 2000.

Some of the background for YACHT can be found at 
http://www.oakleaf.com/poker/yacht/.

YACHT has been growing in attendance, with most of the players coming 
from previous YACHT events, home game play in the Milligan 
cardroom[1], and via word of mouth.  We had a total of 44 entries 
this Saturday, with a prize pool of $1,760.  In contrast, YACHT-6 had 
31 players.

Part of this growth is thanks to cell phone game developer Sorrent. 
Paul Zuzelo, the Sorrent CFO, is a Milligan home game regular and a 
poker lover.  He has purchased two lovely 10-handed poker tables for 
the Sorrent "rec room" in Foster City as well as personally acquiring 
a set of 2000 clay chips.  With Paul's two tables and chips plus 
three octagon poker table tops, we were able to support 44 players 
this time for YACHT.

There were 6 places paid.  The payout structure was fairly flat, with 
a good return for the bottom places.  When we got to heads up play, 
Andrei Herasimchuck and Connie Kellers cut a deal to chop the $180 
difference between 1st and 2nd place.  They played one more hand: KK 
for Connie, 86o for Andrei, with an 8-high board of that gave Andrei 
top pair and a straight draw, which didn't get there, giving Connie 
the victory.  The final table players were:

1st. $550: Connie Kellers
2nd. $550: Andrei Herasimchuck
3rd. $350: Rick "Stubing" Kerndt
4th: $175: Jonas Flug-Entin
5th:  $90: Bobby Rooney
6th:  $45: Patricia Hewett

Out of the money:
7th: Spencer "Zorak" Sun (bubble boy)
8th: Michael Maurer
9th: Mason Kong

Jeff Okamoto busted in 10th place at the same time that David 
Langemak went out in 11th place, so Jeff missed the forming of the 
final table.

As we broke tables, we started up some ring games.  A $1/$2 limit 
CHORSEL[2] dealers choice game started first, followed by a $1/$2 
pot-limit dealers choice game.  The pot-limit game lasted until past 
midnight.

If Eileen and I are still in the bay area in September, there will be 
a YACHT-8.  Right now, we are looking at a possible move to a "more 
affordable" area.

--Patrick Milligan

[1] The Milligan Cardroom in Cupertino currently hosts a $0.50/$1.00 
limit CHORSEL[2] home game every Friday night starting at 7:30 pm. 
If there is interest, we sometimes play pot-limit Holdem & Omaha with 
blinds of $0.25/$0.50.  Contact me if you are interested in this 
game.  We usually have 8-10 players, and we sometimes set up a second 
table.

[2] CHORSEL stands for the game choices of Crazy Pineapple/8, Holdem, 
Omaha/8, Razz, 7-card Stud (high only), 7-card stud hi-lo (Eight or 
better) and Lowball.  Each game is played for a full orbit, following 
cardroom rules for blinds, antes and bring-ins.