SOM 2 Poker in the Front...Liquor Everywhere

Every sport has them. They're what makes us watch, cheer, brag and curse. ESPN wouldn't know what to do without them. It's what makes the sporting world go round.

Great rivalries.

Yankees/Sox, Bears/Packers, Celtics/Lakers, Duke/UNC.

With them you have storylines. You have rabid fan bases that spend millions of dollars to be a part of a club, a nation, a team. Without them you have meaningless matchups. Who wants to watch the a Bucks/Timberwolves game?

Up to this point in Summer of Man we've had all the typical sporting storylines. The Underdog vs. The Favorite. The Darkhorse (we literally have nicknames because of this). The Upset (Bing losing bowling last year). The Cinderella (zVirus making a deep run in the pool tournament that nobody saw coming). But the one vital storyline that was missing from an otherwise perfect competition was The Hated Rivalry.

Although you may be able to make the case that Jantz or Pete could be considered hated each time they battled anyone, a specific concrete head to head hatred between two competitors never arose.

Until now.

SOM 2 was a Texas Hold 'Em Tourney replete with dark shades, cocktails galore and a short skirted wench to serve them. The tournament also featured a bit of controversy but we'll get to that soon enough.

The night began innocently. Jantz was **gasp** late and so by the time he arrived the bottled of Jameson had already been put to bed. The metaphorical chip leader Couls showed up 13 shots (so says he) deep and by the end of the competition had relinquished his first place status after holding it for all of three days. Jeff took the unfavorable position of being bounced out first and had to shuffle cards until we let him slink out the back door to go make questionable moral decisions in PB. Our cocktail waitress finally arrived (blacked) and Jameson turned to Jack turned to Jerry. All in all a terrible metamorphosis. Jantz was next on the killing floor, followed by Sean. It was here that emotions began to run hot.

Getting bounced out of a competition will piss a person off. Add to the mix that the person doing the bouncing isn't technically in the competition and simply being pissed off revs up to outright f@#ing angry real quickly. In the beginning of the competition Timbo (the owner of the makeshift casino we staged SOM 2 in) wanted in. We are competitive but we are gentlemen and who is going to deny a man the right to play poker in his own house. No big deal right? Maybe he gets a couple good hands but really how much was he going to affect the outcome of the game? We were naive.

Who bounced Jeff? You guessed it....the celebrity contestant, Timbo.

Who bounced Couls? Yep. Jantz next? Uhuh.

And down the list we go. Every single time somebody was pushed out, on the wrong end of a bad beat, bounced from the game, the person doing the beating was Timbo. Irony doesn't capture it but comes close.

So one can imagine why the rage level in the room went from yellow to red in a flash. From what I'm told (Caz, the fellow who takes over for me when I've decided to check in early, was in control at this point) Bing was going all Hulk slamming chips down, Sean was yelling at us to stop yelling and Johnson was yelling about Sean yelling about us yelling. Alot of yelling going on. What happened was unclear but things were said and what resulted was Sean calling Johnson to the front yard to throw some fists around. When Johnson took the bait a heated rivalry was born and thus our competition feels a bit more complete. A fight did not follow, but I can only imagine there is no love lost between the two. The only thing that I'm upset about is neither one of these turds have a cool nickname so calling it Sean vs. Johnson sounds real fucking lame. But I couldn't be happier that a full fledged Rivalry has emerged. ESPN cue up the tape. I'm gathering footage of Sean and Johnson staring angrily at each other and dubbing over sound bytes of Sean mocking Johnson's hair and Johnson calling Sean a gay. We can only hope that one of them bites off the other's ear and threatens to eat each other's unborn children and I can die a happy man.

THE OFFICIAL RESULTS

1st place Johnson

2nd place Zach

3rd place Bing

4th place Pete

5th place Sean

6th place Couls

7th place Jantz

8th place Jeff