So, after the great success of the Designer/Developer Poker Tournament, I decided that a full fledged site, devoted to it was in order. Thus, Style Bluff was conceived.

The Technology

With the help of Ruby Genious Abel Rios, we have created a completely geekifyed website. The site was developed with Ruby on Rails (except for the forum, thats PunBB), with a CSS/XHTML front end. We are currently in a very early stage of development, so expect certain things to not work. One thing for example, is that you have to register once for the site, and seperately for the forum. We expect to have this fixed soon, but we just wanted to get people started on the site. Also, no tournaments are currently scheduled as we have yet to decide on a poker site to use (deciding between Ultimate Bet and Party Poker).

The Rules

Instead of trying to give away a prize for each tournament, we will run the tournaments in quarters. There will be 9 tournaments per quarter, with the top 10 finishers in each tourney getting a specified amount of points. The 10th tournament will decide who gets the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place prize pools. This, and many other changes to the format can be found on the site’s FAQ’s .

So sign up, have fun, talk shit, and spread the word…

Wow. All I can say is, I am impressed. This was a GREAT tournament. The play was 10 times better than I could have ever expected. No horrible calls, not many bad beats (other than my Q Q losing to TMeister’s J 10 full house, great hand man). Eventually, the blinds started eating my chips, and my 8 3 suited (a forced call with few chips) lost to kadazuro’s straight.

The Final Table

The final table provided some intense action. Tim ‘stayin alive’ Walling, couldn’t be taken down. At one point, I looked at his chip stack, and he was around 500-700, and then he gets to the final table, and all of a sudden, he’s got 11,000 in chips. When Tim and codetroll were down to heads up, Tim was all in with 89 offsuit, and caught trips on the river to beat codetroll’s K’s. Kadazuro played a monster amount of hands (somewhere in the 80% range if I remember correctly) and somehow kept catching cards to make it to the final 4. NoMoreAllIn tight play, and smart moves kept him in, to the final 3. But, in the end codetroll’s massive chip lead at the final table couldn’t be beaten, although there were a couple times he took a good hit, but managed to stick in there and get it back within a few hands. (James, email me your address, and I will send out your prizes)

The Results

This tournament was a blast from the very start. Congrats to everyone on a great tournament (except Abel… 45th man? tisk tisk :D).

1. codetroll
2. twboston
3. NoMoreAllIn
4. kadazuro
5. Tmeister
6. PreNupCarpet
7. thejoker101 (award: most drunk man at the final table)
8. FrenchDickens (award: best name in the tourney)
9. joshdura
10. K3v0

For the full results, click here

Note: The results aren’t completely accurate, as most of the no-shows didn’t get booted, and finished around the 20’s. So everyone below that, finished about 10-15 spots higher. My computer restarted automatically last night before I could get the FULL results written down. If anyone managed to get it, please let me know in the comments.

Tournament Stats

Running time: 3hr 15min
Final blinds: 1500/3000 100 antes
Total people: 35 of the 51 registered showed up.

Next Steps

The resounding comments from the tourney, was that it was a success all the way around. Seeing the success of this tourney, I am going to be setting up a site specifically for designer/developer poker tourneys. I am thinking we will have bi-weekly tournaments, maybe less, depending on the amount of people that show up. So, for everyone that didn’t show up, forgot to sign up, or got screwed by ultimatebet (sorry majorchamp), there will be more in the future.

Earlier tonight, I decided to enter in the nightly 9:40 Ultimate Bet $1 Turbo tournament. I got online literally 2 minutes before it started. Finally get in, and my first hand I get dealt pocket 8’s. Go all in eventually and win with trip 8’s. To keep the story short, below is the result of said tournament…

Ultimate Bet 9:40 Tournament Results

1026 players later, 4 comebacks from being the shortstack, and about 45 all-in’s, here I sit with about $230 extra in my account. Great timing, as the Designer/Developer Poker Tournament is Wednesday. Best of luck everyone, muahaha (no seriously, I can barely type this I am shaking so much).

Signups are officially closed. All of those who have signed up will be recieving an email from me within the next couple days regarding info for the tourney. Thanks!

It’s my pleasure to announce the 2005 Designer/Developer Poker Tournament. It took me a while to find a place to host this tournament, but I finally found a friend who has connections at UltimateBet, to get them to host it. So, without further ado, below are the details…

The Details

When: July 13th, 2005, 9pm EST – Thats exactly 3 weeks from today
Where: UltimateBet – ( download here ) if you want to put a referrer in, use the username joshdura :D
The Game: No Limit Texas Hold Em. This will be a Multi Table tournament, with 10 people per table. You will start with 1500 in chips. No rebuys.
Who: Any Designer, Developer, etc. that wants to play. Just leave a comment in this entry, with your UltimateBet username, and I will get you signed up.
Cost: This is a Freeroll. Free to Enter, Free to Play.
Prizes: Well, as of now, the only thing I have to give is a Timbuktu Flash MX 2004 Bag, and a couple DRK CD’s. If you would like to donate a prize, please contact me
Why: Why not? It’s FREE! If you don’t know how to play, follow the links below to learn the basics of Texas Hold-Em, and then sign up. There is no reason to not try :)

Links to Hold-Em Tutorials…
Basic Hold-Em Rules
Lessons from Pros
Jeff Croft’s Beginner Tips
Andrei Herasimchuk’s Poker Articles

This will be a Freeroll, meaning it is Free to enter. We might be having a $5-10 buy-in tournament in the future, but I figured I would start this out with a Freeroll to allow people to be able to learn, etc.

Ultimate Bet

I wanted to make sure to write a section here about Ultimate Bet, as I am sure there are some people that are skeptical about the software. First things first, it is PC only. Unfortunately the only people that offer a Mac compatible software is Poker Room, and that is Java based. They don’t offer Private Freerolls, so that was a no-go. Second, Ultimate Bet is by far one of the leaders in the online poker industry and can be trusted. You don’t have to give them any personal information (other than email) to signup for a free account. So you have no excuse :) If you have any questions, please post them in the comments.

Publicity

My blog gets a decent amount of traffic, but not enough. Lets get this thing advertised, and get at least 100-150 people in this thing. If you don’t mind, post an entry on your blog linking to this post.

Well, to say this article is overdue is an understatement. I have been playing Texas Hold Em since October of last year, and probably play a good 15-20 hours a week. I kept putting this article off due to work, and the poker “hobby” getting in the way.

It All Begins

It all started, when one day Brian Monnone mentioned that he saw me on Party Poker. I had no idea what he was talking about, and it turned out, it was some guy named Josh Durham. That got me interested in the whole online poker thing, so I barraged Brian with questions about the security of these type of sites. He assured me that no personal info (Credit Card, SSN, etc) was required, and the worst that could happen was that I get a little more spam. Ppppft, 2000 spams a day… it can’t get much worse. So I downloaded Party Poker, and thats where the addiction began.

The Progression

Three months later, I found myself playing in multi-table tournaments, cash games, and poker leagues all the time, although now I only play at UltimateBet and PokerStars. I found a GREAT group of people to play with, that didn’t mind having an amateur alongside, and learned from there. While I don’t consider myself a pro, I definitely think I have advanced from amateur status. Hell, I beat Abel consistently, so I must be doing something right :)

The $$$ Lost

In February of this year, my brother, myself, and my dad, decided to take a trip to Vegas to test our poker playing abilities. The place is magical. What else can be said about it? I ended up losing about $100 in a bad streak at The Excalibur, and was up about $160 at the Alladin before my brother made me stay another hour, to only see my stack dwindle down to breaking even. Thanks Danny! Also, just last month, myself, Abel, and his fiance, decided to make the 2 hour trek to Shreveport/Bossier City to try the tables there. Lets just say things went a LOT better here. I doubled up, and Abel…. well… I’ll let him tell the story in the comments.

Gamblers Anonymous Needs Recruits

I’ve got my entire family addicted, a good amount of good friends addicted, and now, hoping to get my readers addicted as well. Who plays? Who wants to play? Anyone here interested in getting a monthly or bi-monthly tournament started? It wouldn’t involve any money (yet :D), and could be a good way to get away from the every day job.