Weekend Warrior

Played in a $3 tourney on Pokerchamps the other night and took first place ($50) out of ~60 registrants. I had a mini-rush when it was down to 13 people... dealt AA off-color, one caller to my pre-flop raise. Flop is KQT, I bet out big and get called. Turn is a blank, I check and he goes all-in. One of the short stacks at the table egged me on: "CALL! YOU'RE POT COMMITTED!!!" I sighed, having lost a good chunk of my chips early on with AA against a Turned straight. I called anyways, and he showed J3 (!) and didn't complete the straight.

I fell back with a big sigh of relief, and when I looked back at the screen, I had off-color AA again. I thought maybe there was a lag I hadn't been pushed the pot from the last hand, but I saw everyone else had cards again. Pocket Rockets twice in a row!?! I raised it, got one caller, and he caught Top pair on the flop and pushed. I bust out two people in two hands! The chat lit up... someone asked if I was having intimate relations with Gus Hansen himself. In the meantime, I get dealt JTs and catch a straight on the Turn, taking out another person and bringing us to the final table. It quickly gets to heads-up and I'm a 3-1 chip leader and easily take the win.

I hope that luck holds up for the weekend. The Midway just started running a Friday night 10/20 game, which I put my name on the list for and will be taking a shot at tonight after work. I hope it's like they say it is... people less willing to chase to the river because of the stakes. No bad-beat river suckouts. I'm just going to play it like 2/4 with red chips... and if I can double up my buy-in, I'll be good!

Then on Saturday, I'm using my accumulated hours at the Cascade for another Vegas qualifier freeroll. These guys run a good set of tournaments... they just need to update their website and keep the Seattle public in the know. Every night for the past few weeks, they've been running a $50 (40+10) Sit-n-Go, a one-table satellite to the main "WPT Satellite" event sometime in early March. If they get a full field of 40 winners from the SnGs, that's $16,000 in the prize pool, and they'll give the Top Five a $3200 package that includes a buy-in to the $3000 NLHE event at the Bellagio's Five-Star World Poker Classic in April, just before the WPT Championship!

So they're holding ONE freeroll (need to have saved up 50 hours) on Saturday for an entry to the main event. I figure if I can't sweep that one, but I do okay at the 10/20 table tonight, I'll use some of those winnings and take a shot or two at the single-table entry satellites. I'm feeling awfully cocky, which I try never to be, but I've been pretty consistent with my tournament play so as long as it all holds up, then I'll ride with the cockiness for awhile!

And lastly for the weekend... we found a place closer to home, PJ Pockets, which is pretty classy. They have big comfy swivel chairs at their poker tables, and their chips are nice and shiny, as if they were just newly laquered. We don't play there often though as they only run 4/8 games. But they have a Sunday noon tournament, as well as a Monday "Moonlight Madness" tourney that starts at 1:30am Monday nights (Tuesday morning). That was one of the two I money'd in on Valentine's day... I probably would have done better than 3rd if I hadn't made a really stupid, STUPID mistake.

Anways, I'll record my idiot play here at a later date. For the time being, I have to focus on my game and try to plan on having one of my best weekends ever!