Poker news from http://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/
ESSEX JUNCTION — Doug Massey was on his way to play a round of golf Sunday afternoon when he stopped by Back Stage Restaurant to see if he could get lucky.
Lucky, at that moment, meant playing in the U.S. Bar Poker Vermont State Championship Texas Hold¤’Em tournament as an alternate. Massey, of Essex Junction, wasn’t in the top 100 for point standings and hoped that, by chance, some of the top players didn’t show up.
Lucky, he was. Really lucky.
Not only did Massey get to play in the tournament, he went on to win it, too, securing himself a spot in a qualifying round of the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas and becoming the envy of the 94 other players in Sunday’s game.
He won the final hand with a pair of 4s, beating out second-place finisher Tom Rudick of South Burlington. Rudick was forced to go “all in” on the hand because all he had left for chips was enough to cover his blind — the mandatory minimum bet.
“I took a spin by just to see if maybe, maybe, I could get in as an alternate,” Massey said just moments after claiming victory. “And sure enough ... .”
With that kind of luck, who knows what would have happened had Massey hit the links. A hole in one? Two, perhaps?
He didn’t seem bothered not to have found out.
“I got a trip to Vegas in my future,” said Massey, a designer at IBM. “That’s enough to trade a round of golf for.”
U.S. Bar Poker is a company that holds free poker tournaments around the state. Contestants play for prizes instead of money and earn points by winning, being dealt certain cards and for ordering food at the restaurants where the events are held. The restaurants pay US Bar to bring the tournaments to their establishments. Their payoff is the business the events generate.
The final table — the tourney’s last eight contestants — were closely watched by the rest of the competitors. The crowd didn’t hold back throwing out advice and asking the two finalists to hurry it up. They even threatened to start singing karaoke.
Patty Koonz, one of the onlookers, headed into the tournament as the series point leader. Her husband and two children all were in the top 10. Though she didn’t win, Koonz took a solid 22nd-place finish.
“I feel great,” she said. “I think I did O.K. The cards just didn’t come. But it was a great tournament and the tournament was run very well.”
Koonz laughed off the idea that the family helped each other out along the way.
“I’ve taken my son and my daughter out in the same hand,” the 45-year-old Essex Junction woman said. “There are no friends at the poker table, and no family members at the poker table. It’s everybody for themselves.”
Left with a bigger grin was her daughter, Tamara Tobin. She placed sixth.
“I was happy with it,” she said as she clutched her prize, a cooler-stereo combo. “I felt really good about it.”
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