Pokerstars is running their annual World Championship of Online Poker. Today was the main event, $2500/100 to enter, $3M guaranteed prize pool. I satellited in Wednedsay, and have been very stoked to play since. I've been working very hard to get back to teh top of my game by today, and felt very confident. The turnout was unreal, 2510 entries for a $6.275 million prize pool. First place is scheduled to receive $1.157M, although likely will not because a deal is sure to happen.

Early on I was fortunate to get several big hands, and was able to chip up nicely. I flopped a set in hour one and took a sizable pot, though my opponent folded after putting a big chunk of chips in. In hour 2, I flopped another set with 99 on an AA9 flop, and my opponent (same one as before, actually) could not get away from his AQ. That gave me a very healthy 25k stack (we started with 10k in chips). I lost about 6k by the end of hour 2, including a hand at the end of the hour when the server skipped. I would have made a play on the river that would have worked, and it cost me 10k in chips, which sucks.

Unfortunately, from that point on, I really struggled to get hands. I was able to increase my stack steadily with an occasional hand and very good positional play. Unfortunately, around 8 or 8:15 my table broke, and I moved to a new table.

I hate table breaks. I had a very good feel for my table, and then I moved to this new table that everybody knew about everyone else and would now watch me. Ew. I ESPECIALLY hate table breaks when it's a sign that I will never ever receive another hand in the entire tournament.

I got up to 47.7k in chips after winning a pot with AK on hand 10 at that table. That would be my high water mark, as for the next 80 hands at that table I got very little service. In those 80 hands I got AJs once, JJ once, AJo once and 99 once - and the 99 was the hand I went out with.

As I just mentioned, I ultimately went out 55 spots shy of the money (330 paid, i went out in 385th) when 99 lost to AQ. It's been a while since I've whined about this, but... Yeah. I really really could have used a coinflip win there.

So, how cold was I? As I mentioned, I was dealt AK on hand 10 at that table. Here are my last 80 hands:

92s, 82o, T7o, 35o, A2o, 55, JJ, J6o, J5o, A4o, KQo, 36s, J3o, A4o, K5o, J6o, A9o, Q5o, J3o, 94o, J2o, 69s, 75o, A2o, KTo, A5o, 74o, A8o, K9s, K5o, 66, T4s, 85s, 97o, 89s, 36o, 65o, J3o, A6s, 47o, Q3s, J9o, 8Ts, Q2s, T2o, 97s, 8To, T2s, 46o, 59o, K7o, KTs, A5s, JTs, A2o, J5o, A6s, K9s, 74o, J3o, JTs, K8o, Q6o, Q4o, 49s, T5s, Q5o, Q3o, K9o, K2s, K2o, JTo, 27o, K5o, AJs, AJo, 97o, A4o, and 99

As you can imagine, those last couple of hands (AJs and 99) looked like AK and AA, respectively...