And so, at 4 hours from the Eve of Christmas, 68 of APAT's finest folk did enter "The Rigged Room", to contest the Fandango Christmas freeroll, whilst Father Ger-mas and the Wizard Paulie D, did watch from a distant land known as "Vegas", together with the newly arrived Logie.
Fandango was rightly very pleased with the donations totalling £1319.27 and the buxom cockney wench gave him a cuddle.
Almost at once there was a faller at the first, going by the name of ZozzyApat, who did dare to tangle with the weaker half of Jaxie and came acrashing down, tail between his legs.
Jockeying for position continued apace, with merriment, tears and laughter in large supply, with all targeting the reindeer "Santino" who had been given some headgear by Fandango, in the shape of a bullseye. Should Santino be slayed by another APATer, then they shall receive a handsome reward in return, not to mention a huge round of applause from the other members!
And then another faller.
This time teaulcsg1, coming a cropper, when the "River Gods" did deem it appropriate to provide bobbymouse with a Knave, usurping the two tens held by Alan, bringing an early end to his evening.
And then the first shock of the event occurred, when supernaz exited in 66th place, which is incidentally one of his better finished of 2012, when he mistakenly took the contest to be the next instalment of Fish-o Mania.
At the first of several breaks, thirteen intrepid APATers had fallen by the wayside, leaving 55 less fishy players to fight it out.
Just before the second break, LombBomb72 made a brave bid to win the bounty from the head of "Santino" when he called an all-in with 5s3s. Santino was holding a miserly AcQh and the flop came down 7 5 5. Santino whelped and whined, as he has been known to do from time to time, and was rewarded when Freddie Mercury and George Michael appeared from out of nowhere on the turn and river. The bounty lives on.
At the second break 30 players more had be removed from the game leaving just 25 to fight for the spoils.
Eventually the bounty on santino's head proved too much of a burden with LombBomb relieving him of it, winning a nice APAT hoodie for himself.
Others did fall on their swords with regularity, and after 2 1/2hrs play, the following had found their way onto the table of finality. Daveyb1471, Kohan1947, SolarPoker, GFC_Fan, Curlarge, Z1m3r, amcgrath1, LombBomb72 and Luthee13. LombBomb held a significant advantage at this point.
With just 3 runners left it was LombBomb72 (Tom Clark), Luthee13 (Lucy Amos) and Zim3r (Glenn Laming) remaining to play for the title. LombBomb still held a sizeable advantage over Luthee13 with the very dangerous Z1m3r a little adrift of the other two.
There was ebbing and flowing and more ebbing and more flowing and eventually we were down to just 2.
Tom v Glenn.
England v Scotland.
Game on!!!
Tom had a 2-1 chip lead at this point.
Things have evened up a little at the 3rd break with Tom on 188.5k and Glenn on 151.4k
Eventually Tom's pocket 7's proving good enough to take it down with Glenn finishing a very creditable 2nd.
Curlarge (a quite large reindeer) was inspired by Fandango's efforts and thought unto himself how he might be able to help.
More to follow
