Snake Eyes Rise

The River Bottoms Don't Negotiate 😑

sighs in haunted frontier Welcome back to the booth, where the river's rising and apparently so are the stakes. Nine souls braved Snake Eyes Rise at River Bottoms under 78° of cloudy indifference, and the new house rule is simple: land OB, pay the mulligan tax. The floodplains are officially in play, and the Jordan River doesn't care about your huckster bargains — it just takes what it's owed.

Snake Eyes Don't Care About Your Feelings 😈

The RPA division was a card game nobody called correctly. Chris Fox walked in at #3 and walked out as the new sheriff, dropping a 973-rated -6 that was 52 points above his rating — a number so absurd it looks like he found a marked deck. He went wire-to-wire, but the path wasn't clean: five different players held the lead through the first six holes, a chaotic shuffle that had more twists than a snake's spine. Malachi Vazquez came in riding last week's 1021-rated high and left with a 931 and a -90 rating swing that's less a regression and more a supernatural correction. Second place at -2 is still respectable, but when your previous week was a masterpiece, a step back feels like falling into the river.

The River Takes What It Wants 🌊

Over in RAD, Kent Moos posted a wire-to-wire -1, a personal best that earned a 921 rating and the kind of clean round that makes the rest of the field wonder what they're doing wrong. His front nine was surgical — he built the lead on hole 2 when Craig Bennett stumbled, and never looked back. Bennett, last week's winner at 952-rated, finished +4 with an 869 rating and a -26 swing that suggests the river's tax is collected in strokes. He lost the lead on hole 2 and spent the rest of the round watching Moos build a gap that never closed. Two players, one division, and the river chose its favorite.

One Man Army In The Flooded Plains 🔥

Ethan Walker walked the RAH division alone and made it look like a solo act at the saloon — -2, 931-rated, and a ticket punched to the 420 Club on hole 18 with a 429-foot birdie that landed like a statement. The back nine was cleaner than a preacher's collar, and a clutch finishing birdie turned a good round into a wire-to-wire win. When you're the only player in your division, the only opponent is the course, and Walker beat it soundly.

RAF: The House Always Wins Eventually 💀

Stephen Marks took the RAF division at +12, which in any other context is a number you'd bury in the desert. But when you're the only player in the division, winning is winning, and his 785-rated round featured a front nine that was four strokes better than the back — suggesting the river's toll compounds with fatigue. The Wanted Theorem tag stays with him, for whatever that's worth in a ghost town.

The River Demands Its Mulligan Tax 💧

Cross-division chaos deserves its own paragraph. Chris Fox's +52 rating explosion was the statistical outlier of the night — a 973 when your PDGA number sits at 921 is dealing from the bottom of the deck and getting away with it. Ian Dahlen Flor posted a +20 rating jump, proving that not everyone drowned in the flood. The OB stakes claimed multiple victims: Craig Bennett scrambled after finding trouble, Flor and Jennings both took mulligan penalties, and Fox himself had to escape the white stakes on his way to glory. Personal bests from Moos (-1), Fox (-6), and Belchak (0) suggest the rising river is separating the hucksters from the house.

The Super Ace Pot Hungers For Chains 💰

No aces this week, but the Super Ace Pot keeps growing — now sitting at $2,284.00 after seven hucksters fed the beast with $14.00 in contributions. That pot is a hungry thing, and with two weeks left, someone's going to get very lucky or very frustrated trying to feed it.

Bone Talon Finds A Worthy Hunter 🦴

The #1 tag story is the kind of frontier justice that writes itself. Chris Fox snatched the Bone Talon from the dust, leaping from #3 to #1 in Pool A with that 973-rated round. The tag's lore speaks of a predator who has clawed its way to dominance through pure survival instinct, and Fox just made that literal — a +52 over his personal average, a +52 against the field, and a grip on the top spot that looks iron-tight. The tag art shows a skeletal hand gripping a curved blade, rendered in bold black linework with blood-red accents at the fingertips — visible from across the arena when challengers approach. Stephen Marks holds the #1 Wanted Theorem tag in Pool B, but the real story is Fox's ascent.

The frontier's harsh, but this leaderboard? Downright cruel.

All-In Or Fold: The Final Countdown 🃏

Two weeks remain in the Dead Man's Hand season, and the river's not done rising. The flooded OB penalty returns next week, and the culling is approaching its final showdown at the Vahe Street corral. The house always wins eventually — the question is whether you're holding the right cards when it collects. See you in the booth, partners. Try not to get buried.