National Deaf Poker Tour

November 10-11 Weekend
By Anthony LoBue

I had been waiting the NDPT Atlantic City weekend to come all year, as I had previously attended the NDPT tournament in March 2007. Due to previous obligations I was unable to attend the Midwest Regional Poker tournament at Harrah’s, and the NDPT at Las Vegas. I was thrilled when NDPT came back to the East coast once again for November 10-11, 2007.

On Friday night, I arrived at Atlantic City about 6:30 pm, checked in my bags into the room that I reserved in the Taj Mahal. My roommates and I went over to this hamburger place which they had great Kobe Beef hamburgers. Stuffed and ready to play we then went to the Poker room afterwards. We saw that 40 ladies played in the ladies tournament, with Lori Hower winning the Championship. Later in the evening the ASL madness began, about 8:30-9 PM, 83 Players participated in the tournament including myself. I was excited to be there, as there was so many deafies from all over the United States. I saw old friends from Chicago, California, not surprised to see the poker freaks from New York <who I play with almost every weekend in New York>, and DC poker heads. To me this was a warm-up for the Main Event which would take place at 11:45 on Saturday. There were about 8 tables to begin with, and I lasted well into the final 3 tables then my cards just fell apart. Brad Gibson won the Madness tournament, congratulations goes to him. Afterwards I stuck around the poker room, primarily playing cash game, which I did pretty well in. My friend Alex did far better than me, raking in over $600 in profit. That lucky bastard! We stayed well up till 6:30 in the morning playing and we realized we needed to get some sleep in order to be mentally sharp for the Main Event. When we left the poker room, there were still several deaf players still playing in the cash game. Alex pointed to me that there was an actress who was playing poker, Michelle Yeoh <credits include Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon movie>, who was in the same poker room with us. She had like a massive chip stack in front of her, well over 7,000 in cash chips. We noticed her at 3 in the morning, and when we returned to the poker room the next day for the 11:45 AM tournament, she was still playing well into the late afternoon!

Saturday woke up and had breakfast, and headed over to the Trump poker room, where there were 162 players participating in the Main Event. There were more than 40-50 spectators on hand watching the tournament. I was seated on the same table as the eventual NDPT champion, Jonathan Barnes. He played some excellent poker, and took a few hands off me. Unfortunately the table that I was on, knocked off at least 7 people off the table while I was there. I commented to the player next to me “this table kills poker players”, and the person next to me agreed. I kept hoping that I would get moved or the table split up because of the frequency of eliminating players. All the players played tough and loose. Eventually my chips and luck ran out, and I left the tournament unranked. That was a big disappointment for me, because I had been playing local Texas hold em’ games for the whole year with a few championships myself, and felt mentally & physically prepared. Guess that the cards and fate just did not go my way, and shows that Texas Hold Em’ is anyone’s game to win. I want to extend my congratulations to Johnathan Barnes for winning the NDPT Main event.

Saturday night, came the ASL tournament, and here, 102 players participated in the tournament with Kat Brockway winning the ASL tournament. A congratulations goes out to Kat for winning the ASL tournament. I would never forget this hand that I had in this particular tournament, I was running low on my chip stack, and flopped an ace high flush. I had slow played this hand till the turn, and went all in. This other fellow called me, and showed a two pair. The river came, a 10, he hit his full house. It was the sickest loss for me of the tournament. I quickly exited the tournament, and jumped onto one of the cash table games. Ended up playing until 10:30 PM, and then had to head back to New York. The weekend was over for me then, and I’m thinking….there’s always March, which will be the next NDPT tournament in Atlantic City and I am ALL IN!