Dojo Royale

Yes, it's been a while since we last posted anything here at the Dojo blog. Why? Well, we've been on a little holiday, played some golf, done some gardening and generally done anything other than play or talk Ultimate. In fact, we can quickly summarise the Dojo's on-field Ultimate exploits since our last post by simply noting that the Dojo has won every game, most by a comfy margin.

So of course when yet another "training week" came around (immediately following the BPL's Uni Games no-play week) we were looking for anything other than Ultimate training to occupy our Thursday night. And what better substitute for a night of hard running and intensive skills practice than to take our places around the table at Andy "Coopers" Lankowski's place for a night of high-stakes poker - the inaugural Dojo Royale poker night.

As you can see from the image below, some were taking the event very seriously. That's Andy McLean decked out in the unbuttoned waistcoat (and newsreader-spec shorts below the table), trumped only for seriousness by the "Hustling German" Stefan Schmidt, looking like a cross between Eminem and an elderly driver with his hoodie up and dark specs on (sadly not caught on camera). Stefan also saw fit to let us know on the night that he'd previously spent 2 years as a poker dealer in some sort of travelling German poker circus. The things he can do with poker chips are truly arousing.


What you can't see in that photo is the huge stack of chips sitting in front of Mr McLean. At this point of the night he was undisputed chip leader, and it wasn't long before the final winner was decided. So in approximate order of departure from the table (we really should've posted this sooner with a fresher memory), the players on the night were:

- Andy Lankowski (great host, lots of bad hands)
- Mike Morgan (made the mistake of thinking that his trip-4 on the turn was going to be enough to beat the all-in Sensei's pair of aces in the hand and a 2 on the river giving a sensational straight)
- Stefan Rappazzo (had been duking it out all night in his own brash ultra-rapid style, opting against all common sense not to buy back in at the 9pm deadline and yet somehow hanging in there for another hour or so)
- Stefan Schmidt (can't remember how he went out, but most likely it was bluffing big time with absolutely nothing in hand)
- Stephen Cameron (unbelievably unlucky to lose out with his solid 2-pair from the flop against a big spending chip leader McLean who picked up an outrageously unlikely straight on the river, not at all similar to the the way the Sensei had knocked Morgs out earlier on)

That left the pot at the mercy of Leon McIntyre (the chap looking so relaxed in the photo) and Andy McLean. And actually it was all over the very next hand. Leon was clearly keen to wrap things up for better or worse, and went all in after the flop with nothing but maybe a king in hand, Andy (with a massive chip lead) went with him with pretty much the same hand. And as the cards came down it was the man in the white waistcoat who came out the winner.

So there you go, nothing on the Dojo blog for a couple of months and now something that has nothing to do with Ultimate at all. Or does it???

BTW - extra points for spotting the non-Dojo ring-in in the photo...