tim00 Triumphs, Earns Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games Player of the Season (Season 3)

Yesterday the final events of Season 3 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games played out, and when the dust settled it was tim00 managing to hold off a late rush to keep the top spot in the Season 3 standings. By winning tim00 joins thejim2020 and Kevmath as HBP Season winners.

As with the first two seasons of the HBP Home Games, there were 20 events total in Season 3, and tim00 collected the most points by winning three events, taking second a couple of times, and finishing third twice as well.

I say he withstood a “late rush”... in fact, I somehow managed to win the last event (the 8-game) to creep up close to Tim in the standings, but he took second in that final tournament and thus earned a few more points in Event No. 20 to maintain the lead. (I know my challenging for the title sounds like an April Fools’ Day gag, but it’s all true!)

FBees89 finished third in the final event last night and also ended up third in the Season 3 standings thanks to four cashes and two event wins. And SmBoatDrinks ended up in the fourth spot after winning one event and finishing runner-up three other times. Like tim00, those two are due to receive prizes for their Season 3 finishes.

Meanwhile, psx120 just missed out on the prizes this time with a fifth-place finish in Season 3, although I expect he’s not feeling too badly. Just take a look at his avatar!

Michigan indeed surprised many by making the Final Four this weekend, the first time the Wolverines have made it that far since 1993. I’ve actually been spending some time over the last couple of weeks thinking about that 1993 finale to the NCAA season in which my Tar Heels won it all following a dramatic championship game with the “Fab Five.” Gonna be posting something over on Ocelot Sports this Friday (the 20th anniversary of that game), so stay tuned.

There were more than 60 entrants in my pool this year, and out of all of those brackets only one had Michigan in the Final Four. Just two had Syracuse making it that far, while unsurprisingly no one picked ninth-seeded Wichita State to make it.

Meanwhile, about two-thirds of us picked Louisville to win their region, and like just about all of the others who did that was my only correct Final Four pick, too. I was delighted to see the Cardinals crush Duke yesterday, although like everyone else I was fairly horrified by the bizarre and gruesome Kevin Ware injury. I was mentioning last week how basketball has become a much more physical game than it was even just a couple of decades ago, but Ware’s fall was kind of unrelated to that trend, just a flukey, unfortunate occurrence.

No longer in the running pool-wise and with no dog in the fight anymore, I suppose I’ll hop on the Wichita State Shockers bandwagon going forward, although I kind of doubt anyone left can match Louisville. I’ll be distracted this weekend, though, as the current plan is for me to be up at Foxwoods helping cover the next WSOP Circuit Main Event. (More on that to come.)

In fact, I’ll be busy the next couple of weekends, so I’ll probably delay starting Season 4 of the Hard-Boiled Poker Home Games until the middle of the month, from which point the season will run through the end of June. Am thinking I’ll strike the Sunday afternoon events as they aren’t really attracting many players. And it seems like the 20:00 ET and 21:00 ET events on Sunday nights work fairly well for most of the regulars, so I’ll probably keep with that same schedule going forward.

Below are the final standings for Season 3. Thanks to everyone for playing! And as I have said before, if anyone has any suggestions for Season 4 -- or prizes to donate -- let me know.