We won! I’m assuming this issue will be full of huge multi-page brags recounting how Team BLUFF won the Dream Team Poker tournament at the Hard Rock, but for those of you that haven’t seen them yet… We won!

I guess writing for BLUFF has some extra perks because Matt Parvis and Eric Morris asked me to join them to play for Team BLUFF. When they told me I would get freerolled into a $3k buy-in tournament I couldn’t say no.

The event was run mostly to promote the brand new poker room at the Hard Rock and this new format of team poker created by the guys at Dream Team Poker. Naturally, Hard Rock and Dream Team went all out. They invited a ton of celebrities and had an awesome party in their famous penthouse suite (you know… the one with a bowling lane in it, featured on that episode of The O.C.! Don’t hate. The O.C. is an awesome show, and Seth Cohen is hilarious).

The format for the tournament was interesting. There were twenty-seven teams of three players (though one team only had two), and there were individual prizes as well as team prizes. It played just like a normal tournament, except that you couldn’t be seated at the same table as a teammate unless you had more players left than tables remaining. The fi rst-place prize was $10,000. If you fi nished fi rst, you won that. The individual prizes didn’t compare to the team prizes. The fi rst-place team prize was $39,000.

The team prizes were given out based on a point system. Only your top two fi nishes counted (your worst player’s fi nish would be used only for a tiebreaker… this is called the Matt Parvis rule). If your team fi nished 5th place, 20th place, and 60th place, you would get 25 points (5 + 20). The lowest score would be the winner.

Going in we all agreed that since much more than half of the prize pool was devoted towards team prizes that we would focus on that. Also, many of the teams had random celebrities that have barely ever played poker before, so it would be very hard for some of the teams to win a team prize. Basically, that meant that survival was a priority. We didn’t want to go wire to wire with a huge chip lead to win the tournament. We just wanted to grind a medium stack, avoid marginal situations, hopefully chip up off the weak players, and survive as long as we possibly could.

Unfortunately, Matt Parvis decided to ruin that strategy. About seven seconds into the tournament, we heard the announcement that Team BLUFF had a player all in. They did their whole spiel. A bunch of people with cameras ran over and the tournament coordinator announced the action. To Matt’s credit, he did get Q-T all-in against T-6 on a Q-T-6 fl op. As you might have guessed by now, a 6 peeled off and Matt was one of the fi rst players eliminated.

Eric grinded a short stack to perfection the whole tournament. I had the good fortune of having Holly Montag from The Hills at my table with a ton of chips. She was splashing chips around trying to run over the table… and succeeding! I used a combination of some super secret techniques against her including the mega-advanced strategy of “if you fl op a pair, don’t fold it,” as well as the often talked about but rarely used strategy of “if you want action, let your opponent bluff at it.” I managed to basically quadruple up over the course of a few hours from her without once being all in. She had some very nasty things to say to me at the end of the day, including all the things she would do to me if she ever saw me in a dark alley.

The whole vibe of the tournament was awesome. Everyone was drinking and joking around. Nobody had a clue how to play poker. There were a few other pros obviously like Bobby Bellande and Maria Ho on Team Survivor, and Shawn Sheikhan who almost carried his team of amateurs to victory, but overall the fi eld was incredibly soft. It was just really, really fun for everyone.

Going into Day 2 (which started at 11am, WTF?!) Eric and I knew that of all the teams, only three other teams had two players left. I must admit we got very lucky as all three of the teams lost a player pretty quickly on day two. With about twenty players left, Eric and I did the math. As long as we could get about fi fteen points or less, we had the tournament locked up. Sure enough, we both made it to the fi nal table. We basically just let ourselves blind out of the tournament in order to outlast a few more people to lock up the team spot. Normally it sucks busting out in ninth- or eighth-place or whatever I fi nished, but for the fi rst time in my life, I knew I had won the tournament as I busted out!

As we had agreed beforehand (I’m pretty sure it was Parvis’ suggestion), we decided to split the $39,000 three ways. Not bad for a freeroll! We also got some cool gold rings which are apparently worth $5,000 each or something. I’m just happy that since we won, they basically have no option but to invite me back for every other Dream Team Poker event in the future! =) Congratulations Team BLUFF!