Well, sometimes you just need a break....

After my week long hiatus from poker, (which included sitting the beach in the sun, watching the Apprentice finale with friends and watching Kurosawa's classic "Ikiru" - I was ready to put 100 bucks back into Pokerstars and do the Sun. night NL at 11pm..

first off, a bit of stupidity here - I had to be up at 8am for a job interview at 10, and was hurting from a bit of a vodka binge - (me bad...still working on it) - and anyone who signs up for a tourney not expecting to play 4 hrs...well, it would make sense to just not play...but that's the way it goes sometimes -

First hr. was a dead land - down to 800 in chips with nothing coming in... - about 80-90 min. into the game in the 2nd hr, I got hit with KK, started raising and calling raises vs. JJ - and the dough started coming in - hands held up for once, basically - - and I did more then my share of calling all-in short stacks with hands like A/10 - I figure they got A/rag and I got em down to 3 outs

anyway, we make the money at 45 people shortly after the 2nd hr break - at this point, I'm popping Aleve, lying down for 5 min. breaks - and just generally sitting in my chair with my eyes closed till I hear the beep saying it's my bet - again, I got a couple biggies vs people with smaller hands (QQ vs 99 - KK vs JJ) - and I was lucky enough to have them hold up -

3rd hr, we're down to 18 players - now I'm wired - I want to win, obviously, but it gets to be worth my time a bit after the top two tables - Generally, I've gotten to the point where IF I can get into the money, and IF I have a decent amount of chips, I can usually carry it to the last two tables - a combo of blind stealing and using my big stack to bully the BB with 1/5 of what I've got works well for me. At this point, althouhg the blinds weren't that Big (1500/3000) - anyone who raised or called was going all-in on principle -

once we were at 10 players, I really got my work cut out for me cause the other table was REALLY slow - taking 2-3 min. per hand, and I was just dying to get to the top 9, get my money and get out. Once it happened, things started moving just a bit -

it's at this point (about 7-8 players left) - that I make my one major blunder - raise with AQ suited and get reraised by the next player over - I can cover him and still have a few chips left over to fight, so I call - and he's got AA - after congratulating him on his nice hand, I flopped a Q and turned another one to run him down with two of my three necessary outs - I SORTA felt bad about that one -

By the 4th hr break, we're down to 3 and we discuss deals - Now, normally, I'm not so scared of my abilities that I'll do one, but we three were fairly close stacked, and I was SO ready to take anything and get out that I had no problem to agreeing that everyone got 2nd place money, and we played for the $400 extra that went to the firstplace guy

after sitting out for 10 min. while waiting for PS support to arrive - we were down to 250,000/200,000/189,000 - I was the biggest stack - but once that deal arrived, my game collapsed - I didn't reraise or call enough raises - and with blinds of 10000/20000, I was getting chipped away - at 120000, I pushed allin with KQ and got called by AJ, and that's all she wrote -

no doubt I'd have played better had I enough sleep and energy, but at 1400 for my place, that would be the highest money finish I've ever made online , and at a 20 buck game with 400 people no less - I'm back in the Black again for the year, and I've got a bit more confidence and the BR to last a while now - (just the same, I want another big win before I withdraw any - LOL) -

and I did the job interview - found out how to tie a tie on the internet, went thru two hrs of questions on things I did when I found myself in a situation - finished it, came home, and slept for 6 hrs....man....

not sure how that's gonna go, but worst case scenario, I still have my main job to fall back on - and who knows....maybe I can make this poker thing work after all...LOL

RB