No more qualifiers!

Finally! Well, ok, maybe just a little bit of an ish. I didn't win.

But, I did come in 2nd place at the Full Tilt 60k this evening. It's finally that score I've been getting so close to for so long. I was fortunate in many cases, but not so much in others.

I broke the bubble 4th in chips. I then went on my standard cold dead stretch, being forced to play tight due to having zero cards. A key hand came up when we were down to 30 or so. On the SB with A8, I pushed following a button raise. The BB called the rest of her final 2 BB, and the button folded. The BB had JT. The flop came 884. Turn J. River J. Online poker is rigged.

I am incredibly proud of holding it together after this. Unfortunately, I was no longer able to play poker, but I made the proper adjustment in my game - I was now That All In Guy. My table was beginning to get pissed off about it, but it worked. I slowly crawled back from 4 big blinds to having over average. I was forced to play this way until just before the final table when I took a big pot with QQ against TT and A2. Poker!

Alas, I went cold carded again. That was fine, I had enough chips to be patient and wait. I picked my spots for raising, mostly with a hand, occasionally without. It went that way until we were 4 handed. I lost a coinflip (33 to AK as the board double paired the river) to put me down under one big blind. If I wasn't able to come back to 2nd, I'd be lamenting this coinflip loss right here right now. Anyway, I picked up AJ the next hand, called all in and it held over 8T. QJ the next hand, called by 99, J on flop. Shortly thereafter, I won with K3 v. A3 as a king flopped. I moved into 2nd when my QJs busted the shortstacks K8. I felt really good, as my opposition wasn't strong. Unfortunately, I picked a bad time shortly thereafter - the 3rd stack had worked his way almost even, and I tried to come over top of him with KJ, as he called all in with KQ and the queen played. He'd raise/folded before, so I thought I had significant fold equity - enough that I eschewed the stop and go (which had worked so well all tourney).

I was back to 3 big blinds. I was back to being That Guy. It worked. Ridiculously often. The other two tangled in an all in pot (with 2nd and bottom pair!), but the 2nd stack held, giving them both very sizable stacks. So much for limping into second. Time to go back to work. So I did. All in. All in. All in. And then the other two got into it again, with A9 crippling KJ. Suddenly the score was 650k to 98k (me) to 33k at 2k/8k/16k. I folded the button the next hand and hoped the big stack could eliminate the 2nd stack. He didn't, as he doubled up. However, with both of us pretty short, it would not be long before one of us went out, and fortunately, it was the other guy.

I was heads up at a 692 to 97 disadvantage. 7-1 disadvantages are not great. I stop/went successfully for the nth time on hand one, then pushed hand 2 from the small. Q6 ran into KQ, I did not improve, and that was that.

Still. Finally! A breakthrough!

The plan: get something nice for the wife for dealing with me for all this time. Buy a laptop to take to AC with me to play in the WSOP Main Event freeroll I'm in. And jam the rest right back into winning more money.

It feels damn good to get this monkey off my back.