Monday, February 25, 2008

We have a WINNER!

First of all: thank you to everyone who played. Your generosity was greatly appreciated!

We ended up having 71 players playing in the tournament (there were a few more that had pre-paid but did not show). We did 9 tables of 8. This was my first tournament running more than 4 tables, and I'm happy to say: everyone was pleased with how it ran.

With 71 playing, we had enough prizes to give to the top 29. THANK YOU to everyone that donated prizes. We paid out the top 40% of the players seated! What a great response we got.

The 1st place winner of an $800 Visa Check Card was Steven Turnage. He is a cousin of the Figg Tree Foundation Founders and drove in from Kansas City specifically to play in this tournament. He was so excited after winning. And rightfully so since he beat out 70 others to finish in 1st place. He was shortstacked going into the final 3 but managed to take it all down and finish 1st. Congratulations Steven!


The 2nd place winner of a 26" HDTV was Gary Batteiger(on the left with Me on the right). I helped him carry it to his car where he informed me that he has never played in a big tournament like this and has really only played Texas Hold'em a couple of times before. He was only playing since the money went to a good cause and didn't expect to do so well. Congratulations Gary!

Congratulations to all the rest of the players. I think everyone was very pleased with the prizes they received. And we had some really good ones for everyone at the final table.

With so many fantastic prizes donated, we were able to reward a lot of people. And then we saw a lot of prize swapping and selling. Some people were selling their prizes and then donated the cash back to the Figg Tree. Everyone was so generous all evening. One person even whipped out a $100 bill at the end of the evening and donated it for the charity. What a great win for the charity! After all the costs of running the tournament, we raised right at $3,000 for colon cancer patients. What a SUCCESS!

Thank you to the players and thank you to the prize donors. What a great response we had! We are already looking forward to the next one. We hope you can be there.

Here are some more pictures:
Mike takes 3rd place and gets the "guys night out" package.

Bryan Figg wins the $100 FTP Cash
The final table. Thank you to Sean Christy (holding the card) who dealt the final table for us.

Prize table. This was only a portion of the prizes we gave away...