A lot of middle-aged Asian and white men who play way too much poker. When I played last year, there were 50-70 entrants each time. That is, everyone runs out but one guy, and that guy (and at Lucky Chances, it is 99+ percent “guy”) wins the biggest piece of the real money. You play with those chips until you run out. Tournaments work like this: in effect, you pay eighty bucks and you get $2,500 in what amounts to play money chips that could almost conceivably earn you real money later on. Then Dad came to town, and the phoenix of my broken poker dreams lifted it’s charred beak once more. But I hadn’t played a tournament or really much poker at all in six months after realizing it was an education I couldn’t even begin to afford and didn’t have the time or even the interest to actively pursue. I went through that phase and was caught up in it more than some because I got to go to Vegas and look over the shoulder of my friend Annie who’s one of those poker people you see on the poker TV. I’d played in three tourneys, most recently about six months ago, toward the end of my phase that so many of us wannabe poker stars have had these past couple of years where we’ve watched too much poker TV and seen too many Chris Moneymakers and Jim McManuses and Robert Varkonyis-”regular” guys who make it to the final table or even win the Big One-and so we buy our Turbo Tournament Poker software (remember that, kids?) and all those insanely expensive books and we read and reread and memorize and then rewatch the TV stuff (because we taped it, of course) so that when we sit down at that final table with Jesus Ferguson as we know we someday will, we’ll know just what it means when he tugs at his beard just so.

My dad’s one of those guys who’s beaten the tar out of his local kitchen game for thirty years (or so he tells me) but hasn’t played much in casinos and had never played in a tournament before. no-limit hold ’em tournament at Lucky Chances in Colma, CA, famed city of cemeteries, knowing full well that not a dime of that $160 is likely to see the dark of his wallet ever again.

So my dad was in town last week, and while he’s not a rich dad, he’s not a poor one either(This was back in the day when the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books were big)-he’s the kind of dad who can afford to stake his son and himself eighty bucks apiece to play in the Monday 10:30 a.m.

Lucky chances poker tournament results