Saturday night we held the first BobCon Poker Tournament fundraiser. We had 12 participants. Though we were hoping for a larger attendance, everything seem to run very smoothly and a good time was had by all. And we raised nearly $250 for this year's BobCon!

We started the evening by splitting into two tables of six, each of us with 4500 in chips. There was plenty of room in Dave's place to easily accommodate us. A big THANKS to him for hosting the event! Play remained pretty steady for the first couple of hours with the two groups remaining split. The optional rebuys helped to keep people involved and gave several of us a chance to redeem ourselves. Our most inexperienced player was the only one who had to dip into the rebuy pool twice. He also had the best hand of the evening, showing quad Jacks against two pair (AAJJ).

Once each group had lost a player for good, we combined into a single table. John Carlton and Dan Justice were the chip stack leaders from Table 1, while Dave Phillips and Terry Eldred were the leaders from Table 2 (Dave having just tripled his stack before the merge). The change from six players to ten players definitely effects the card play, but Dave quickly took advantage of a monster hand to eliminate another player. We lost another shortly after and were now at eight players. The chips were gravitating toward the leaders and the field of play began to dwindle at a steady pace. Terry's luck went south while Bob Iliff began to hit some cards. With two sets of 5's within three hands he was able to join the top four.

It wasn't long before we were down to John, Dave, Dan and Bob. One of these players would walk away empty handed while the others would take home some of the prize pool. Only Dave and Bob from Table 2 had had to post rebuys earlier in the evening. Play remained steady for a short time, with Dan using his chip lead to effectively bully the other players, but eventually he succumbed to some lucky draws by opponents. And then there were three, all with similar chip stacks. We had quite a few spectators remaining to watch the outcome (thanks for dealing, guys). The hands were going fast and some thought it would take a while to finish since all three looked strong. Once the blinds increased to 1000/2000 things started to go fast, even though those blinds were easily covered the cards began to come out. Dave's chips were flowing away at a rapid pace. A couple of times when he was short stacked he was able to double up, but it wasn't enough. He took third and walked away with 20% of the prize pool.

John Carlton and Bob Iliff were now playing heads-up poker. Both were playing aggressively, but Bob took a decisive lead when he called an all-in bid by John and took away most of his stack. The audience thought the writing was on the wall but John doubled up two hands later and was again the chip leader. John took a fatal wound when he raised the blinds then matched Bob's "all-in" re-raise. Bob's pocket Aces held on and it took only a couple more hands to end tournament. John took 30% of the prize pool while Bob won lion's share of the winnings (50%).

A new member to the BobCon community, Robert, suddenly realized why it was called Bob Con. ;)

Photo Gallery

» Check out the event photos available in our Gallery.

Thanks to everyone who was able to attend Saturday night!

Everyone who played received a custom Card Cover and Chip Magnet for participating (some of you left before they were handed out, so we will get you yours). If any of you who were unable to attend would like support the tournament by purchasing your own Card Cover or Magnet with a similar design, please send us an This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it which one(s) you want and how many. The cost of each are only $3 and would take a couple of weeks to come in.