Our sponsors for the regular event were Windows Azure and Turnstone furniture.  Miranda Luna from Windows Azure and Jimmy Kwan from Turnstone are great supporters of the startup community so tell them thanks when you see them.

Legendary poker pro and Jawfish Games CEO, Phil Gordon, joined us at the regular event and (big surprise) ended up in the money and with the 2nd place trophy.  Here’s how the chips fell at the final table:

1st Place: Stephen Huson, Director, A Place for Mom

2nd Place: Phil Gordon, CEO, Jawfish Games

3rd Place: Kevin Leneway, CTO, Haiku Deck

4th Place: Geoff Simons, CTO, iHearNetwork

5th Place: Eric Anderson, CEO, Online Net-Entertainment

I love the special events we do with the Microsoft Accelerator program.   While there are always some solid players among the teams, these events are always a bit more intimate and casual.  This time was no exception.  It was terrific to meet the teams and, as lady luck would have it, take them to the cleaners.    A special shout out to Dan Todd, CEO of Affinity.IS, who put up a $100 bounty on his own head!  He ended up winning that back by placing 3rd and taking home his first trophy ever — nice work Dan!

Here’s how the money went:

1st Place: Bob Crimmins, CEO, MoonTango

2nd Place: Alex Kilpatrick, CTO, Beehive Biometrics

3rd Place: Dan Todd, CEO, Affinity.IS

4th Place: Dan, Boxella

Since everyone has to come to me to get their rebuys, I get to hear all the stories of suck outs and bad beats.  It was definitely a big night for both… and that means a bigger pot at the end of the night!

Congrats to all the money winners and thanks to everyone who came… it was a great night.

1st Place: Paul Cutsinger, Amazon

2nd: Eric Anderson, CEO, Online Net-Entertainment

3rd: Paul Simons, CEO, iHearNetwork

4th: Brandon Masterson, CEO, 2MorrowInc

5th: Ken Stanfield, CEO, Preebo

6th: Geoff Simons, CTO, iHearNetwork

We also learned a lesson about the appetites of the poker-playing PDX startup community and so we’ll plan to have plenty of food and drink on hand for future events. 

We hope to see more new faces at our April Event at ISITE Design — so all you Portland founders, execs and investors be sure to signup to be added to the invite list… then look for the invites!

Congrats to the lucky (skillful?) winners!

1st – James Tatham, VP, GreenPrint

2nd – Patrick Ezell, CEO, Copious

3rd – Jefferson Smith, Founder, The Bus Project

4th – Salih Waritu, CMO, SeeNuu

I’ll have some other exciting announcements to make as we progress through 2013.

As a TechStars mentor myself, it’s was honor to help celebrate the success of the TechStars teams.  It was also gratifying to see so many past TechStars alum having a blast.  Thanks to Andy Sack for the opportunity to host the party.

With 750+ in attendance, it was BIG party.  It was also one of the biggest Poker 2.0 tournaments ever… 67 players, a very juicy pot and professional Poker legend Phil Gordon at the tables.  And it didn’t stop there…

For this event we expanded the format of our regular monthly Poker 2.0 games and made it a full-on casino night party, complete with blackjack, craps and roulette — 27 professional casino dealers in all!

The casino games were all “play money” but the chips you won were redeemable for raffle tickets.  And with over $5,000 in raffle prizes up for grabs there was real value in those little red raffle tickets.

Even though Phil Gordon retired from pro poker to return to his roots as an entrepreneur and technologist, he always brings a level skill, excitement and good humor to every Poker 2.0 he sits down at.  And this time he stood up too!

After finishing tied for 3rd Geoff Simons of iHearNetwork, Phil grabbed the mic and called the play-by-play in true WSOP style.  As long-time Poker 2.0 supporter Erik Jansen and Ken Stanfield of iPredikt.com battled it out for 1st and 2nd place, respectively, while Phil called all the action.

Rounding out the money winners, we had Chris Kalafatis from JP Morgan Chase in 5th place and Richard Averitt of JawFish Games in 6th.  Wouldn’t you know that we’d have two JawFish Games players in the money.

There were a lot of awesome highlight moments throughout the night, but nothing beat the opening hand at table number 5.   Eight all-ins… five cards on the board… one winner… seven rebuys… and a very big stack sitting in front of Phil when it was over.  And that was just the first hand of the night!  If you were in the tournament and lucky enough NOT to be sitting at Phil’s table, feel free to add a comment to this post and tell us your favorite highlight hand or bad beat.

Pulling off an event of this size and complexity takes a lot of help.  Massive thanks to my partner in crime, Red Russak.  Red’s incredible talent for making connections in the startup community was critical to the success of the event.  And Red and I couldn’t have done it without the help of the many sponsors who generously stepped up to celebrate TechStars and to support the Seattle startup community.  Please thank them when you see them.

Gold Sponsors

Mandrill / MailChimp - Mandrill is a transactional email platform from MailChimp. If you’re a fan of MailChimp’s e-mail service, you’re going to love this!

Microsoft Outlook - Outlook.com is free modern email service from Microsoft. Get a clean clutter free inbox, easily connect with Office Web Apps and SkyDrive.

Barokas PR - The NorthWest’s leading mid-size public relations agency. Big Ideas. And a bit of Attitude. Celebrating 14 Years of PR Minus the BS!

Silver Sponsors

Microsoft SkyDrive - Enjoy 7 GB’s of Free Storage today via SkyDrive, the perfect place to store and access your files. Also, they’ve create a library of knowledge, info and resources for startups.

Cooley LLP - Cooley represents hundreds of clients in a wide range of industries from offices in eleven major commercial markets.

SideCar - SideCar is transforming the way people move and they just moved to Seattle, so get your ride-share on today.

Bronze Sponsors

Bader Martin

K&L Gates

Turnstone

Splunk

Startup Weekend

Killer Infographics

Aeon Law

Path.To

JP Morgan Chase

Additional Sponsors

WowRack

UserVoice

Fresh Consulting

Washington Partners

Twilio

Job Board Sponsors

Glympse

JawFish Games

WhitePages

EnergySavvy

CareZone

EveryMove

Zillow

Rooster Park

Media Sponsors

GeekWire

Dealmaker Media

Project Bionic

GeekPeek TV

Gear Live

Brand Buddee

Community Partners

TheHUB

Surf Incubator

UW Foster School

HN Meetup

Washington Technology

NW Entrepreneur Network

Tech Café

Startup Poker 2.0 Infographic by KillerInfographics

]]> http://startuppoker20.com/2012/04/25/poker-2-0-the-infographic/feed/ 0 bcrimmins Startup Poker 2.0 by the Numbers http://startuppoker20.com/2012/04/10/poker-2-0-by-the-numbers/ http://startuppoker20.com/2012/04/10/poker-2-0-by-the-numbers/#comments Tue, 10 Apr 2012 18:00:01 +0000 Bob Crimmins http://startuppoker20.com/?p=560 ]]> Last month, StartupCity and Startup Weekend hosted a startup summit, bring together the folks who strive to support the startup ecosystem in Seattle.  The organizer, Red Russak, ask me to put together some stats on what Startup Poker 2.0 has accomplished and what it needs help with going forward.  Here’s the highlights:

• 400+ invitees, almost all are startup founders, execs or investors.
• 50+ monthly events.
• 2,300+ poker seats fill by founders, execs and investors.
• 66,300 opportunities to meet a peer, get some help, find a resource.
• $45K+ cash and prizes — how’s the for redistribution of wealth?
• 100% of every buyin went back to the players.
• $0 spent for event admission — Poker 2.0 is always free.

What did attendees get out of Startup Poker 2.0?

• Players got funded.  No, really.
• Players got fed… and pretty well I’d have to say.
• Players got introductions.
• Players found co-founders.
• Players found business partners.
• Players found new hires.
• Players found the right office space.
• Players found the right attorney.
• Players found help with business challenges.
• Players built friendships.

You all, the players and sponsors, have made Startup Poker 2.0 into what it has become and I’m humbled by what it has accomplished.   And Startup Poker 2.0 is done yet.  I’ll have some fun announcements to make in the coming months so stay tuned.

Introducing... THE Phil Gordon

I had read some years ago that Phil was formerly a tech entrepreneur… yada, yada.  I never really thought much about it — anyone can call themselves a tech entrepreneur… it’s a pretty low bar.   But I got to spend some time with Phil away from the tables while he was here and I’m here to tell ya… he’s the real deal.  (First one to leave a comment identifying the pun in that last paragraph gets extra chips at their next Poker 2.0 event!)

For those who don’t know, Phil is CEOing a startup gaming company called JawFish Games.  You can read more about Phil and what he was doing in Seattle in John Cook’s GeekWire article.

Here’s how things ended up at the final table.  Congrats to all of the winners!

• 1st – Josh Decker
• 2nd – Bob Crimmins
• 3rd – Ron Craswell
• 4th – Phil Gordon
• 5th – Phil Sabin
• 6th – Erik Jensen
• 7th – Ken Stanfield

Even though Phil finished 4th, he did it with a serious amount of class.  In fairness to Phil, I should say that the blind structure we’ve been using at Poker 2.0 favors luck over skill in the last half hour or so.  I have no doubt that Phil would have finished higher with a

February 2012 Money Winners (and no, Phil and I didn't coordinate wardrobe before the event.)

more-reasonable structure.

Phil runs a lot of charity tournaments and has promised to help me improve the structure so be prepared to earn your final table finishes in the future.  Personally, I was hoping Phil would take second place to my first place… but that dream will have to wait till another time.

Phil delivered an awesome talk before we got the tournament started.  The theme was the six qualities that make a great poker player… and how those qualities also make great entrepreneurs.  He talked about those qualities in the GeekWire article and you can listen to the audio of most of Phil’s talk on SoundCloud (Thanks to 1st-place winner Josh Decker for having the presence of mind to capture a recording with his cell phone!)

Phil also blended in some essential poker lessons for the crowd.  Most notably:

Be selectively aggressive — if you have a positive situation then play it aggressively to win it.  Otherwise get the hell out.

Phil rakes a pot... one of many.

Don’t limp into a pot if you’re the first one in… raise or fold.  You need a better hand to call a bet or raise than you do to be the bettor or raiser.  If your hand only justifies a limp-in with a call then you’re likely to get yourself into more trouble later… unless you get really lucky.  But luck isn’t a strategy.

The level of play this time around was markedly better than at any previous event (which may not be saying much).  The rebuys were slightly more plentiful as well.  My guess is that some folks were getting a feel for a more aggressive style and had to reload more often… and some just wanted to stay in it a little longer for the thrill of playing with Phil.

Here are a few more pics from the event.  Thanks a ton to Eugene Hsu for playing Poker 2.0 Staff Photographer!

The event will be held on February 23rd and attendance is by invitation only.

• 4:30, Networking, drinks, snacks

• 5:15, Phil takes the mic for his presentation, “Winning in Poker and Business”

• 5:45, Break for dinner

• 6:15, Tournament begins… shuffle up and deal

Please note that Startup Poker 2.0 attendance is by invitation only and is limited to technology startup founders, execs and investors.  If you are not already on the Poker 2.0 invitee list but think you should be, be sure to read the guidelines on who can play and, if you believe you are a good fit, then fill out the application form.

A huge thanks to our sponsors:

• Madrona Capital
• AEON Law Group
• Wilson Sonsini
• BlueBox Group
• WTIA
• Uber

• http://startuppoker20.com/who-can-play/
• http://startuppoker20.com/code-of-conduct/

Shuffle up and deal!