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I'm no Jerry Maguire

The Sunday Game is now 4 Seasons old and i'm yet to win a single tournament. And after winning the first 3 Seasons in KPT i'm starting to feel like it was a fluke. But in my defense, i probably won the same amount of tournaments as, say, Allan the poker Mechanic who seems to have a knack for winning in KPT even with his wild gun slinger style of play, in the last year except i couldn't win on Sunday. So fluke it isn't. I've won on Mondays, Tuesdays, Saturdays all the days and all the venues the KPT crew plays in. I finally also won a tournament at Big David's house which was the only venue i haven't conquered since the beginning of KPT, a multiple RB at that.

So imagine my dismay when i had no choice but to cancel the weeknight KPT tournament. See KPT is now 3 years old and without a comparable Sunday setup for the weeknight game it gradually turned into a crapshoot. Players attended occasionally and never on time which made it real difficult to establish a broad interest. I had to face the harsh truth of conquering my Sunday woes which is now 3 Seasons long, haplessly.

I've made it to the final two once in each of the last three seasons to no avail, always losing with a bad beat. I did win two tournaments re-scheduled to a Saturday because Sunday KPT was indisposed. And i don't think that actually counts...

And so a couple of weeks before the start of Season 7 i decided, conceding to the fact that my Sundays may be cursed, to focus on finishing in the top 5 as much as possible garnering precious championship points in the process. I figured if i can not win a tournament i could still win the Championship via consistency. Somewhat counter-productive because the 1st place purse is only double the cost of 1 Season (11 tourneys cost $275 without RB's. First place purse is $500). In Game 1 i found myself heads up against defending Season Champ Allan who finished me off fairly quickly. But more importantly he didn't garner any points because he was a Phantom player which meant i held the provisional lead for the championship.

9 Sundays later, still without a win, i found myself atop the championship points race. A comfortable 27 points ahead of Gerry (127 total) equaling Allan's total championship points from Season 6. I expected to be in the running but not leading the race for the entirety. I've led from the onset.

Well i'm not out of the woods yet so i aint going to start blowing my own trumpet. Undramatically though, i just might win the Season without winning a single tournament. Almost clockwork-esque i've finished in 4th place 6 out of the 9 tourneys thus far, one a 2nd place finish, my worse finish 9th and a 7th places. More importantly however, i've played 9 weeks without having to purchase a phantom stack and made final table in all the tournaments. Unspectacular you might say, compared to Hana's Season 5 late barrage or Allan and Scott's Season long ala Indy 500 lead change duels in Season 6 and definitely incomparable to Jee's ala Michael Schumacher runaway of Season 4, but apparently efficient enough for a chance to win it all. So if go on to win the Season in undramatic fashion, without the Jerry Maguire taking the fish exit or the Rod Tidwell back from the dead TD-dance, heck i'll take the $500 purse with a coke and a smile yo... diet coke that is!

Posted by: Marc Gabay
Thursday, June 22, 2006