Back to Poker

After spending way too many days in Oblivion, I decided on Saturday to actually try my hand at some poker. Pokerstars has these double shootouts for seats to their $1,000,000 Sunday tournament which I have played before.

The trick to the double shootout is you play at two tables. There are 64 players, basically 8 tables of 8 players each - I am sure there are other formats (9 tables of 9 players, etc..) You play your table until you are the winner and then each winner moves on to the final table.

In this particular game, it cost $10+1 to play and everyone on the final table received $35, except the top two positions won a seat at the big game (worth $200+15).

I have played this about 5 times now with 2 early finishes, 2 bubble finishes (2nd place on the first round table) and now 1 win! Yeah!

I looked at playing the tournament on Sunday (always neat to play in a tournament with $1,000,000 in prizes - like I do it all the time), but decided my bankroll needed the money more than I needed to play in the big tournament. I can afford many more tries and perhaps one of these times I will actually play in the big game if I win.

So on that high note, I went off to play a semi-regular home game which got scheduled at the last minute for Saturday night. We started off with a S&G format for $20 each. There were only 5 of us to start with, so we made the prizes a 60/40 split for 1st and 2nd. I managed to become the first person out and played dealer for the rest of that tournament.

I should have realised that this was a sign of things to come, but when we started our cash game, I was off to a great start helping our host rebuy on two occasions. I don't know what happened after that but I managed to get into a few too many situations where the cards turned against me. My friend Jay (L0K1 of Pokerstars and WWdN fame) managed to suck out on an all-in which doubled him up and Dave (the infamous Quatloos) seemed to take his share of lucky cards (as usual). All in all, I ended up down $100 bucks for the night - it has happened before - even tho last time we played I was up about $140.

Unlike the last couple times I busted tho, this time I was ok with it. Not that I want to repeat it, but I guess winning $215 earlier in the day made it all right.

On the other hand, with my bankroll at Pokerstars $215 richer, I will have to try my hand at Iggy's blogger WSOP satellite tonight:

Blogger WSOP Satellite Tourney
PokerStars - Private Tab
April 3rd - MONDAY
9PM EST
$30 +3
No Limit
Password: socoshot