It is official..
It is official now. Yesterday was the last day of the most grueling Team Up poker tournament series to date.
While I don’t have all the “official” details I can say with confidence that the Three Kings team is no doubt the most powerful combination of poker players that has teamed up in quite some time.
The tournament was...
The tournament was unlike any other before because of the number of games that were available to earn team points. Past tournaments had run eight weeks, just like this one, but with only one game per week that points were awarded. This tournament had 8 games or more each and every day that counted toward points and because of that it was grueling marathon of poker playing.
When I agreed...
When I agreed to be on a team I didn’t know the tournament format and I will never make that mistake again. One thing I have always been throughout my life is “competitive”; and I like competition. I’ve always had a self driven determination to see how I stack up against competition.
Just thinking back for a moment here is list of what comes to mind as far as competitive sports I been involved with. Baseball, football, basketball, golf, bowling, and billiards does it for sports that involve a ball.
Then we get into horses and horse competitions; I competed in halter, pleasure, reigning, team roping, cutting, barrel racing and last but not least ,rodeo; riding bareback bucking horses.
I never did try bull riding; I never liked the thought of being bucked off and then having the bull come after me while I was on the ground possibly injured already.
With bucking horses once you were ejected the horse would end up going his own way just glad to have gotten you off his back; bulls however is a different story. Sure the rodeo clowns are there to help the riders but at small rodeos those clowns don’t get paid all to well so I never was willing to gamble that they would in fact come to my aid if things got really bad. I have no regrets either in making that choice stays off the bulls.
I have also...
I also have been involved in motor sports competition both as a driver and a crew member. My driving "skillz" were limited by my funding. I never had enough money to be really competitive so I opted to work on other folks teams since I was young and had quite a bit of knowledge about setting cars up for both dirt and asphalt short tracks. A few of the associations that I raced or “wrenched” on cars are ARCA, ASA, NHRA, INDY CAR, and NASCAR.
So, as you...
So, as you can see from this list, I’ve competed in a variety of different sports and varying levels of competition. I can’t say I was ever the best at any of them but for the most part I was definitely competitive. The same holds true for my poker playing.
During the course...
During the course of Team Up tournament I played in 279 games, the most games played by any player in the tournament. I knew going into the tourney it was going to be a “numbers game” and the more games played the better your chances for scoring points.
Luckily for me this COVID shut down happened when it did because there is no way in hell I could have played that many games if I had been on the road making sales calls.
Of those 279 games I won a total of 43 of them for a winning percentage of just north of 15%. That 43 wins just happens to be the most wins for any one person in the Team Up tournament.
I also had a good percentage of “in the money” finishes and that was 48%, not the best of all the players but near the top.
Points earned though are how the tournament is scored and I did finish first in individual points with a final total of 947.693. I had said all throughout the tournament that I was in it for the team win and really didn’t care about the individual score since there isn’t any prize associated with the individual placing.
That was true every time I wrote it here in my Dash posts but as the end drew near it became harder and harder not to “not care”.
Early on in...
Early on in the tournament our team was accused of “soft playing” other team members. Something about “poker etiquette” and how it isn’t proper. What does an old man with barely a high school education know about “etiquette”? Not a guzbucking thing.
“Team play” is exactly that in my book and helping your teammates get the best possible finish in each game they play is what a good team member does in my opinion.
Poker has rules and so does Brosinopoker.com so folding pocket aces when your team member goes all in and there is an ace on the flop is frowned on. Maybe not so much in the folding the hand part; but showing the folded aces cards and showing that I was a team player was frowned on.
That brought a...
That brought a warning from “management” about soft playing and that was end of soft playing for me. (Wink.) My suggestion would be to make some incentive for individual prizes inside of the team umbrella and then it would be counterproductive to soft play.
The Three Kings...
The Three Kings led this tournament from start to finish. Eight weeks of being number one and leaving the entire field in the dust when the tournament ended last night.
Our final margin of victory was 490.895 points over the second place team. Our team total for the tournament was 2499.57 and I have to believe that is the highest team total in the history of the tournament and most likely will be for a very long time to come.
My team members...
My team members and I had a real advantage being that all three of us are in the USA and the game schedule was geared to USA times. We didn’t have to worry about being up half the night and sleeping the next day in order to play.
Some folks were actually doing that but as time went on and we continued to widen our lead those folks started falling by the wayside and missing tournaments.
I have only...
I only have two things left to do with this Dash and first is to thank my team mates for allowing me to be a part of the team. So “thank you” to 
Lastly I need to report just how much we won in HIVE for finishing in first place but as of right now I don’t have a clue. I looked to see if my account had HIVE deposited in it for winning and nothing as of yet. So I will update you later on that.
This was a marathon for sure and there is some truth to “slow and steady” wins the race; but determination and focus along with competiveness is most times unstoppable. The Three Kings were unstoppable in this Team Up tournament.
Long live the Three Kings of poker.
Until next time,
Sult