Aggressive Shark player Sempai JoAnn writes about her first live Tourney

Aussie Millions Prize Package, 2 Sharkees will play in this Satellite Main Event , click
here to see prize package and here to deposit or play Free


Once again the Fischmans (Pro Scott, Manager Beth) support our Army big time. Check out our link on his sweet new site! Lets support them this Saturday......

"Scott likes to play with the feared online check raisin' loonies from the Shark Tour" haha, he scared to play us, I asked Dutch and Gank!

http://www.scottfischman.com/sflinks.htm

Check out his site (cool radio interviews with the undisputed "hardest workin man in Poker") Scott makes Vijay Singh look lazy.

This Saturday we are sooting up at the Tank! I promised Scott 50 players in this $5 event. Beth promised radical, bad a$$ Tank Hats to all that play!

New players to the Tank click here

Fill out "real player" info here, even if you don't deposit to play with us at the Tank.

Then Go Here Shark Tour and register your screen name

Get off yer couch, monkeys. Or as my ole pal Doyle Brunson would say "shark get away from me, you already got my autograph twice ya one toofed weak/tight flounder", Saturday throw down, 10-22 at 2PM EST (great time for our worldwide members as promised). Your hat will be in mail promptly. Your hero (me) will be slingin chips in this shindig and I will offer up $25 of my own cash to anyone that can punk me and launch my firm, but large ass. Bubble boy/grrrrr gets a stunning and highly desirable Shark Tee. ya bayyyybeee (sharkism = yes baby).

Please keep in mind, I don't lose heads up (HU) so if its me and you left that ain't good.....5 bucks to take a shot at your hero and legendary land Shark and $25 bounty. Soot up Saturday ya laggs.

Many requests for a nude Philly Hellmuth pic and I am searching thru my archives. I will be disappointed in myself if I own one, but will post if found.

Okay we rollin' now kids...POKER Action below! Enjoy this hyper aggressive man slayers story.

Note on this great guest post from one of my favorite (and best) players Sempai JoAnn. JoAnn is charging hard to be our first Shark woman staked player! We will be picking one in the next few months to JOIN our 5 men pros. We will have a ladies Tourney and keep track of our chickies that cash in our events or any that are sent in to me (screenshots). Chickies (lol) I'm funny (and not a feared a bad feedback, apparently).

Important when at a table with JO. Do not throw out a minimum bet. I tried that once with her and this huge stack of chips came flying at me (I ducked) from my 21' flat screen. I had to go have a smoke (and I don't smoke). Changed me shorts and have not hit the dreaded minimum button since! Show sum weakness with this chip slingin chickie, I dare ya, donkasauruses.

Guy and JoAnn will be hosting a cool chat/question/answer/poker/karate (Jo has been an instructor) Forum on our new Shark Forum. I am working on it this week and it will be ready soon. Get your questions ready for "he said' she said" with G and J!

Jo already received her first question...."JoAnn, why does Shark call girls; grrrrs, and chickies? Whats wrong with him? (besides the obvious stuff). Hey great first question for our NEW forum! JoAnn? Please reply to this Newb....

Save this URL to favorites, it will be up in about 7 days. http://sharkpokertour.com/phpbb2/

JoAnn wrote:

Now that Guy has shared his side of the story about our first tournament, I suppose it would be only fair that I tell you about it from my perspective.

Gambling is illegal here in the state of South Carolina except of course for the state lottery which of course helps education (wink) and is heavily promoted on television and in newspaper ads. It's kind of a crazy thing in my mind how that is so supported and yet it is illegal to gamble. When Guy and I moved here we had only just watched poker on TV.

By the time we moved to South Carolina poker was becoming extremely popular with more and more players playing online. Well, that's where we got our start. We each have done relatively well online and have developed our own styles of play based on the tight-aggressive theory. We love playing in tourneys and the sit-n-goes.

Living here in South Carolina does pose problems for anyone who wants to play "live". We have tried here and there to hook up with some people but it has always been to no avail. We have found charity tourneys in places like Georgia but just have not had the time or the cash to make that trip yet.

So yes, it was a Wednesday afternoon that Guy found the ad for the tournament benefiting the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. Hey, sounds like a good cause! And a chance to play poker, in SC, we just had to do it. By the way, the macaroni and cheese was not so bad for a week! (LOL) Two weeks, might have been bad, but not one!

The tourney was on a Friday night and I had to TRY to work all day that day! I am a medical transcriptionist which does require a lot of concentration because I am listening to doctors dictate into their little machines and then I decipher it. That particular day it was very hard to concentrate. Needless to say, I stopped early, very early. I remember we ate pasta before we left because like any good athlete I wanted to have energy, figuring that it was going to be a long evening. And off we were!

The tourney was in what you might call an all-purpose room of a church in downtown Columbia, SC. There was a kitchen where they ended up making and selling hot dogs and sodas from.

The room was really very crowded. They were assigning people to tables by drawing names and for my first table I was surprised that Guy and I got seated together. Great, I'm starting out with one of the strongest players I know. Oh well. One thing that was odd was they allowed children, yes I said it, children to play since they didn’t consider this gambling (there was no cash prize but I'll get to that issue later). OK, this went over really well! NOT! But what could we do, we couldn't do too much.

As the tournament got underway it was clear who had played, who had not, and I learned that kids will say "all-in" just to sound like the guys on TV! Some players were like us, only having played online and then there were others who had never played at all! And the dealers - yikes! It took awhile for things to settle down and we eventually got down to serious play.

One hand that I remember at the first table was an interesting one. Only a couple of the kids were still in (one got really lucky and one a HUGE pot early). I ended up with two clubs in my hand, one of them being the ace! OK, time to do something. With only $1000 in chips to start, I really wanted to get something rolling. This fellow sitting next to Guy (who was to my left) called, I raised. The flop had two clubs. I had to decide how to play this to extract as much as I could out of him! He bets again. OK, I raise. Fourth street, the final club I needed comes out. I felt very confident in my hand, knowing that I could not be beat. The guy bets again, once again I had to do it, I heard my voice say "all-in". I had this twisting feeling in my stomach as the words left my mouth, it was like someone else was saying it. It felt weird. Oh yeah, then you had to tell them how much you had! I forgot about that part, I got really used to just clicking a button! Once we figured all that figured out and the guy turned over his cards, my flush was the winner and he actually had to ask "does that beat my hand?" As I said earlier YIKES! What a rush that was! I did like having that nice pile of chips!

I don't remember much else about that table except I was glad that it was broken up. The youngins didn't make it through and the dealer didn’t want to deal and he let us know "I'd rather play", and it showed, he wasn't that good of a dealer. Hmmm, I wonder if he was a better player! LOL.

At the first break Guy and I were separated which was good and in another way it made me nervous but I thought, OK, now it's time to get down to it! The people were very nice helping me navigate my chips and the wheelchair to wherever I had to go.

On to my next table, that was where I met Jennifer. Now, Jennifer did not know what she was doing - AT ALL. She was just extremely lucky (not to mention extremely blond, but I digress). Anyway, she was one of these, what I call "card wavers", with no concept of keeping her hole cards private. Hmmm… Once again, I was looking at my chip stack and was becoming the master of folding (I haven't seen that much folding in a Chinese laundry), I just kept being patient.. eventually it HAD to pay off… Right? Finally, a pair of aces just happened to come my way… Jennifer kept batting her eyelashes and winning hands, I just had to STOP HER! I felt lucky at this point and said those two words, "ALL IN" (I was getting used to it - LOL) and of course, she called (was there any doubt). Everyone was shocked that I beat her (by now she had a bunch of fans behind her), and I was happy as could be! YES, another big win!

The tables got narrowed down some more and Guy and I were both still in this thing! I knew he was doing well because I could hear all the commotion when we got down to two tables. The Final Table was in sight. At my next table it was getting tougher with the blinds and antes I was just trying to be as patient as possible and hang in there. I took a couple of small pots at this table and it was enough to survive.

After the next break we were down to one table. I made it to the final table and I was so proud of myself! First live tournament and made it to the final table. Now I realize this was not the WPT or WSOP, it wasn't even for much really, just a fun night out to help a good cause! But.. It is a start to what I hope to be a great poker career!

The strange part about this whole thing was that the only person who would win ANYTHING would be the first place finisher - the first place finisher would get a beautiful chip set and a really nice looking glass trophy. Nothing for anyone else! YIKES!

I remember pulling my wheelchair up to the final table and some guy saying to me, "wow, what are chances that you and your husband would make the final table?".. My first thought was, "well when you play like us, the chances are pretty good.. duh…"

Ok, so here's the final table. We started out with 10 people…

By the way, Jennifer made it to this table….. arrrggghhhh. One guy, the one who asked me that stupid question by the way, went out first, he was really down to nothing. Then another fellow made a move as he was getting down to nothing as well. By now Guy was really playing aggressively, I was just looking to survive. Finally, the blinds and antes were becoming increasingly hard for me to not do anything. In fact, the last hand that I played I didn't even have enough to cover the blinds. And then there was Jennifer… AGAIN! I think I got like 8 5 way off suit as my hole cards and Jennifer was in the pot as was Guy, everyone else stepped aside. The flop then gave me two pairs and now I was so very happy. And then IT happened. Jennifer bets and Guy says something to the effect of.. and he says it very sheepishly…. "well I guess that would put me all-in…" So I'm figuring, I will at least be able to survive a little longer. Then he turned over his hole cards which happened to be two ACES!

At that moment I was in shock! Jennifer had enough chips to survive losing that hand but I did not! Eighth place! Everyone shook my hand except one player, the one who was raking in HIS chips, the one that I married!

I had two choices here, I could roll around on the floor and do a Phil Hellmuth or I could just push the wheelchair back into a corner and watch from the rails. As I looked at the floor I realized it was pretty disgusting and dirty, so I opted just to sit and watch!

It seemed like a long time but my husband came in second place and even though I HAVE to give him a HARD TIME FOR TAKING ME OUT, I was actually very proud of him!

All in all it was a good first experience at live play and of course it was for a good cause! Problem now is, I can't wait to do it again!… Look out VEGAS!