1st place!

Or how I spent my weekend.

I started my Saturday applying an old fashioned wax job to my new car. I am not in good shape for the elbow grease required and in the shade it didn't look very different. But in the sunshine, wow, it just glowed. For a short while there, I didn't think it was worth the effort, but it made a huge difference (which means I will have to get in better shape by doing this more often - and no, I will not do any one elses cars to stay in practice).

After all that hard work, I had to drink a beer or two (I do admit I lost track) and never got around to look at my computer at all on Saturday. In fact I am not sure what happened to the rest of Saturday.

So I got up Sunday morning (stiff and slow moving) and decided my comfy chair was as far as I needed to go. I decided to crack open the laptop and see what was happening out there in poker blog land. I do have to admit the TripJax meme is certainly making it's way around. I don't normally do that kind of thing, but I found it interesting to read what everyone had to say.

I then headed over to Pokerstars to see what was happening. I noticed I missed the 5 billionth hand, so all the juicy fishness that came with that was probably dried up. I then looked for an interesting tournament or S&G to play and didn't find anything starting soon (it is the instant gratification thing coming into play).

I decided to fire up the Pokerroom client - I haven't played there in a little while and tend to switch back and forth between that and Pokerstars. Wandering through their client, I found a MTT about to start. It was a $30+3 which is normally above my bankroll, but I figured I would give it a shot.

When it started there were 178 people signed up. Because this is less than 200, they only paid out the final table. The good side of this is the prize money was higher (less to share it with), the bad side is you have to get into the top 10 to get in the money.

At the first break, I was at about 5k. Slightly better than average, but hanging in there.

At the second break, I was on a roll and in 2nd place with about 46k in chips.

The 3rd hour was very much a rollercoaster with the blinds increasing like crazy and all the short stacks going all-in. This was a juicy environment to chip up in, but you still need to be lucky to survive the suckouts. I got hit a couple times and actually went into the 3rd break at 22k. The good thing at this point was we were down to the final table (and in the money). The bad thing was I was in 7th of 7.

I managed to squeak through a couple hands, do a little blind stealing and watched number 7 and then 6 go out. The blinds were big enough and everyone was in the 30k range, so every hand, people seriously changed position. At this point I went on a mini-rush (I love these) and personally took out number 5, then 4 and was now the chip lead. With the chip lead and the momentum I had built from the mini rush, I never looked back and in the time blurred recall of the event, it seemed like seconds later, I cleared out the two remaining opponents and the game was over.

The nice thing with this was I was in first and I won a record (for me) $1602.

Wow. That was nice.

I figured that was it. I had just burned off all my poker luck for the day, week, month etc..

Now I normally play a small home game on Sunday afternoon/evening. And I mean small. It is usually 3-4 of us and we play high stakes. It is a cash game and $5 will buy you $50 of chips. Our blinds are $0.50 and $1, so we are effectly playing nickel and dime.

Unfortunately it clashed with the WPBT event (which looked interesting) but one has to do what one has to do.

We started at about 2:30 in the afternoon and other than a break for dinner, played through to 10:30 at night. I admit I was playing a little crazier than normal (well, maybe not), but at one point I was into my 4th buy-in ($20 invested). But I truely was lucky yesterday and managed to work that investment back up to end the evening with $600 in chips. After paying back my buy-in, I was up $40. Which is a great way to end your day when you are playing nickel and dime poker.

How was your weekend?