Flip You For It – Part 2
Alex was sat on one side of the world and Cal the other, one was losing and the other was raking in all the money. Alex was playing high stakes cash, he had stopped using the modified client some time ago, frankly having access to every move of the games elite players had quickly made the special client obsolete, he just no longer needed to see there hole cards as he now knew the significance of every deviation of there play and the meaning of almost every single bet, he knew their games better than they did.
Cal on the other hand was sat playing low stakes cash games on a competitors site under an assumed identity, his confidence which he assumed was at rock bottom found a previously unbeknownst level to slip to when the former high stakes legend reloaded for the tenth time today at the .05/.10 cent table he had been playing, Jesus, he thought to himself, I’m just clueless.
Although the two players where currently inhabiting vastly different ends of the online poker spectrum, they both received a knock on the door at the exact same moment, and just as Howard Lindeman had planned they both found a courier waiting on there doorstep with a gold envelope addressed to them,
Dear Cal,
We at FlushedOut.Com are so very grateful to have you’re continued patronage and wish to show our gratitude for your custom in a fitting manner. In light of the current interest the high stakes games have generated and as a way of saying thank you to our high stakes community we are planning to run a money added tournament.
Sixteen invitations have been sent to the best cash game players in the world, they have been invited to register for a special 2 million dollar buy in event. These sixteen players will be randomly drawn and will sit down at a cash table with 2 million dollars of there own money in front of them. A second table will then be opened and full tilt will deposit 2 million dollar onto the table for both players, yes that’s correct we are adding 32 million dollars to the prize pool!
Each player will play until they have the full 8 million on the table and then they will be randomly drawn against another successful opponent, when all but two players have been eliminated we will reconvene in Las Vegas for a live televised heads-up winner takes all 64 million dollar showdown, I ask you, are you the 64 million dollar man?
Yours in Friendship
Howard J. Lindeman
Alex smiled, he knew he was destined to win $64,000,000 and become the new world champion. On the other side of the world Cal frantically checked his FlushedOut.Com and was not sure to be happy or worried when he discovered there was barely enough left to cover the buy-in, could he really say no to this kind of value? The poker player in him reminded him this was his emergency rebuild money, the gambler in him screamed at the added 32 million dollars and the chance to be crowned world champion, who do you think won?
In the end not one of the players invited to join the tournament refused the invitation, the 32 million added to the prize pool just proved far too juicy a bone for the high stakes gambling fraternity. One week later Cal ‘Dummmm’ Mikkelsen faced off against Danny ‘Cocksmoker’ Hoàng in the first round of the worlds biggest ever poker tournament, Cal had his entire bankroll on the table and hundreds of thousand of railbirds watching, so no pressure there then.
Danny Hoàng was a fearless and successful poker player, he played almost exclusively live tournaments and cash games and he had originated from Vietnam. Danny had picked up the unfortunate ‘Cocksmoker’ nickname due to his tendency to thank vanquished foes for giving him his chips or as he so colourfully put it ‘Smoking his cock’ in his heavy Vietnamese twang.
This had recently brought him some particularly bad publicity when during a televised tournament he was broadcast saying “Man aces no good brother, I have the flush, you smoke my cock real good brother, real good, thank you brother”, it transpired that the player in question had been bought into the tournament following a charity drive by the ‘Make a dream come true foundation’ and was a war veteran who was suffering from terminal cancer, America was not happy with Danny Hoàng.
Three weeks previously Cal would have considered a first round match-up with the ‘Cocksmoker’, a renowned loser in the online game, a veritable walk into the quarter finals, but just now with is confidence at an all time low he was struggling. When the match started he quickly found himself down a ½ million on each of the table, things where looking bleak. But then a miracle happened, Cal got dealt pocket kings, he three bet Danny and the flop came king high, all the money went in and Danny’s aces where cracked as the turn and river blanked.
Danny now made the mistake of splitting his remaining chips across both tables, this gave Cal a chip advantage in both games and with the pressure now off, Cal really started to find his rhythm, and Danny ‘Cocksmoker’ Hoàng soon learned that Cal ‘Dummmm’ Mikkelsen on his game and in the groove, with chips at his disposal was an almost unstoppable force of nature.
Across the globe Alex ‘POTSHIPPER’ Smythe was having problems of his own; he was finding it very hard making the game against Johnny ‘The Gent’ Mattheson look like a genuine struggle. Jesus this guy was a big, passive, dinosaur, Still Alex had to swallow his pride and pay him off a couple of times so as not too give the game up, it almost caused Alex physical pain to gift chips to a guy playing his big hands so transparently. Alex found it hard to not believe this guy was in the poker hall of fame and he smiled when he considered that with the 64 million he was about to win he could open a ‘Hall of retards’ right next door to the hall of fame and then have this guy as the inaugural inductee.
The poker world was transfixed for the following weeks as the games raged across the internet, traffic on FlushedOut.Com tripled and the latest fluctuations in the matches where now even being reported in the general media, poker truly was going mainstream. The latest happening became almost impossible to avoid and write ups where included in the morning papers and even reports on the early evening news bulletins began to spring up.
The supposedly random draw kept the two players everyone wanted to see face off apart and Alex and Cal weaved an inexplicable path towards both each other and eventually the dream final table. When the semi finals finally concluded the final heads-up battle was scheduled for December the 3rd and would take place in a specially constructed TV studio at the Bellagio, the home of live high stakes poker.
Alex flew out a week early to acclimatise and immediately found himself in a the eye of the storm, the media spotlight had been no where near as bright in the UK where poker was much more of a minority preoccupation, here in Vegas though he was revered as a superstar and although he had presumed this was something he had wanted, when it came too him he wasn’t so sure, he hadn’t realised how debilitating it could be and was suffering from the lack of privacy and freedom of movement this kind of celebrity engendered.
Even Cal who was used to this sort of treatment was still a little taken back by the size of the media maelstrom that had been whipped up by the sheer size of the stackes. This was way beyond the normal centralised poker media attention, this was more widespread, more ragged more bizarre and altogether less controlled, this was a proper full on media tornado.
Eventually though Lindeman and his team completed the final arrangements and everything was set, not being online multi-tabling would be impossible but they had set up two replica tables and would swap from table to table every two hours. Two dealers were to be used with a deck always ready to go, this was as close to the speed of online poker as possible and the non-stop action ensure the media rights where snapped up quickly and had been sold for a rather large and as yet unspecified sum, Lindeman though ensured that everyone knew that new records had been set and every where you looked around the studio the FlushedOut.Com logo has been strategically positioned.
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[...] Go here to see the original: Flip You For It – Part 2 | Casino Texas Hold 'em [...]
[...] unknown wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptThe poker player in him reminded him this was his emergency rebuild money, the gambler in him screamed at the added 32 million dollars and the chance to be crowned world champion, who do you think won? In the end not one of the players … [...]
[...] pokerjunky wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAlex was sat on one side of the world and Cal the other, one was losing and the other was raking in all the money. Alex was playing high stakes cash, he had. [...]
[...] GTYeoh wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptAlex was sat on one side of the world and Cal the other, one was losing and the other was raking in all the money. Alex was playing high stakes cash, he had. [...]