Let me tell you about a random hand...

I'm in early position, and I raise with pocket kings. Two short stacks, sitting three and four seats to my left, both go all-in. After the button and small blind fold, the big blind -- who also happens to be the overwhelming chip leader -- calls, and I call as well. Two live players see the flop, which comes Ace-6-2, with two diamonds. The chip leader checks, and I decide to go all-in. He calls.

The first short stack shows pocket aces. Ouch. The second short stack shows pocket sixes. Double-ouch. And the chip leader shows 8-7 of diamonds, for a flush draw. Naturally, he hits his diamond on the turn, busting the set of aces, the set of sixes, and my lowly pair of kings. The chip leader goes on to win the tournament, hitting flushes and quads and other monster hands all over the final table.

This is not a bad beat story; in fact, seeing as I ran into pocket aces behind me, it's more accurately a cold deck story. And, contrary to what I said in the opening sentence, it's not a "random" hand at all. No, this hand happened somewhere around the third week of June/2005. And it happened with eleven players left, in the first ever tournament I played on the Red Hot Poker Tour.

Since that hand, I've busted out of approximately 250 tournaments (give or take a gross either way), and finished 7 tournaments holding all the chips. But those numbers are meaningless when compared with the following:

- I've spent countless hours having oodles of adrenalin-fueled fun (mixed in with moments of masochistic frustration)

- I've bantered back and forth with countless worthy opponents, and sparred back and forth with countless enemies and adversaries

- I've made countless affable acquaintances

And...
... I've made a number of good, solid friends

All this in the context of a poker league.

The Red Hot Poker Tour is more than that, though. As I've written in this space before, it is a community. A large, often times dysfunctional but mostly delightful community of people all with a common interest, and all just looking to have a good time. It's a place where disparate groups of people can come together -- in ways that they wouldn't or couldn't otherwise -- to bond and gossip and chill out and congregate every night of the week. At the risk of sounding sappy (too late) it's something downright familial, and something worth believing in.

I believe in the Red Hot Poker Tour. And for that reason I want to document its history. Which, in essence, is the purpose of this blog. In future entries, you'll find tournament and event reports, news articles, strategy articles, interviews with players and Red Hot crew members, fiction pieces, humour pieces, and maybe even a poem or two (but, I promise, no limericks). Anything and everything that pops into my head, that can help turn the history of the Tour into something more permanent, more archival. There'll even be a place for reader feedback, should one of you have something to say along these very same lines.

So in between bad beats, bust-outs, and victories, swing by this blog to see how the rest of the community is doing.