Oklahoma State Poker Championship

yeah baby! Everyone who plays poker knows who says that! How exciting when the casino brought him to the women's brunch as a special guest! He actually went to each and every table to shake hands with each woman....sign a few autographs and have his picture taken. As soon as I get the film developed...and if I like the photo---I'll post it! Of course, just in case you don't know who it is----Scotty Nguyen! (seen in the photo with Dottie, the winner of the tournament)

So the women from Austin rocked! I ended up not playing in the tournament---thanks to the disorganization of a brand new hotel that had just opened up. There was one mess after another, so I took it as a sign that I wasn't supposed to play. That's okay. I ended up hanging out at Susie Isaacs booth and with Hermie (won a seat to Aruba in an online tournament and had the honor of taking Phil Ivey out in Aruba), and cheering for my gang.

There were a total of 136 women--including Kathy Liebert and Susie Isaacs in the tournament. One Austinite got out around 100, the fourth got out around 30, and the third got out at 12th---which means that two women made it to the final table! The next woman came to the table shortstacked, so we were certain that she was going to end up in 10th place. Lo and behold, she managed to hang in there til 5th place ($2500 win!) It came down to the final three, and the last woman standing from Austin took out one of the women to become the new chip leader. A break was called, and the two women decided to chop the pot ($19,000), and play for the championship, and the prizes.

Within 4 hands, the game was over with a fullhouse, and Oklahoma got its First Ever Oklahoma State Ladies Poker Champion! And she's from Austin, and it was her first tournament ever (outside of local league tournaments) The prizes include a seat in the LIPS tour Grand Championship and a seat in the US Ladies Poker Championship tournaments, a leather jacket from the Cherokee Casino, and a leather jacket from Pokerhost, and a beautiful one of a kind piece of Cherokee pottery.


The women played from 2pm til 12:30am---and it was extremely exciting!

Aside from the poker, the highlight of my weekend was meeting one of my top 10 heroes (well, more accurately, a she-ro). Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would meet her---and she was a special guest of the casino. The woman is Wilma Mankiller, the only woman to ever be president of a tribal nation (Cherokee). Especially after Coretta Scott King's service on Tuesday, I found it especially poignant that I was able to meet Ms. Mankiller.

Just goes to show, poker can bring more people together peacefully from different worlds, than a peace summit! Well, okay, maybe that's going to far---but it is interesting to see how the game of poker is bringing us all closer together!

There were some neat vendors there....with cool poker jewelry and cardholders. I'll be adding links in the future.

This weekend also saw the debut of my first poker product...and I sold 5! I'm not gonna talk about it yet, cause not everyone that is in my innercircle knows what it is! Soon though!

Overall, it was a fantastic weekend....and even with the glitches at the hotel(not the Casino hotel), I can say that I will plan to play more tournaments at the Cherokee Casino in Tulsa.