So close...

I have not had a lot of time to play tournaments lately... Work, home life, kids, wife, etc., they all prevent me from having 4-5 straight hours available to play poker. Yesterday, I was not planning on playing much poker, but that all changed when I got a call from my neighbor.

He plays on Stars, but was broke. He wanted to play the $100k guaranteed $10+1 buy-in tourney that they have on Sundays, so I loaned him the $11 to get in with a 50/50 split on the return. He started playing and called me 3 hours later to tell me he was in the money, and wanted me to come over to watch/hang out. We were an unimpressive 150th out of 600 left.

By the time we widdled our way down, and after a huge river suckout for a massive pot, we were 25th with 110 people left. Holy Shit. First prize of $20k only 109 players away. It all seemed pretty attainable. A huge hand came up with about 100 people left when we tried a button steal with JT. The BB called and the flop comes AJ4. BB bets, we raise, he goes all-in. We still had some chips left, and decided to fold. Still questioning that one...

After a double-up with Aces a couple of hands later, we had an average stack when the bustout hand came up. Dealt AJ in the SB, it is folded to us, and with stack sizes and blinds, it was an auto-shove. BB had AK. We turned an OESD which never materialized, and we were out. Good for $280ish, but fuck, so close to some real money. I took my half, and now I have a little bit to play with on PS.

My weekend on FT was very much less eventful. Cash games went so-so, and was down about $80 for the weekend. I seemed to get the 2nd best hands every time. The biggest pot I lost was a $200 pot against 2 other guys all-in after a flop of 722, I had called another $1 in the BB with K2suited, when all the money went in, the 2 other guys had 82 and KK (really bad slow-play on his part). The turn was a devistating 8 to give the 82 guys a FH. Was unbelievable.

The most positive part of the weekend is finding a sit-n-go that seems easy to beat. On FT, they have a $6 6-man sit-n-go where the winner gets a $26 tourney token and the runner-up gets $10. I played 9 of them this weekend, and won 5 token. I took 2nd place in 2 other, for a total cash of $150 (cash and tokens) from an investment of $59.40. That's a pretty sweet ROI. The problem on FT is that I cannot cash those tokens in for T$, like you can on PS. I guess I will have to find some time for a few $26 tourneys.

Ending bankroll for the weekend with tokens and cash on FT and cash on Stars totals just over $1,300 which is as high as it has ever been. I am pretty stoked.

I hope everyone else is finding success at the tables, and I hope to see you there. Thanks to Loretta8 and Tony Eusebio for the inspiration to play the $6 sit-n-gos. Reading about their successes drove me to try for myself, and I found some success as well.

Thanks again guys, and thanks for reading.

Ryan