Sunday

I got an IM from Shannon on Saturday saying that we were all gonna play in the Sunday satellite for the St. Petersburg Open and try to qualify for Russia. That sounded really last minute since the tournament is in 2 weeks and I would have to leave the day after I graduate. But hey, I'm a last minute kind of a guy. So Shannon, Jon, myself and another one of Shannon's friends all agreed that we would play in the tournament and if one of us qualified we would all share the Hotel room and split the spending money to use for airfare to Russia. I think it worked out to $375 each for a plane ticket, which wouldn't cover half of it, but hey, it's Russia. So we all enter the satellite and since there are 4 of us playing in it and 1 out of 32 qualify we realistically have a 1:8 chance of going, all skill levels being even. HOWEVER, given our mad poker skillz (notice the "Z") and innate ability to read our opponents physical tells on-line, I think the final line set us as a 5.2:1 favorite to qualify at least twice. So we all hop into the tournament and I run to the take out Chinese place and grab some food for me and Alex. When I get back the tournament has already started and as soon as I sit down I flop a set with 55 and double up through some donkey who thinks his top pair would EVER be good against me. This games easy! It doesn't go so well for Shannon and Jon and they never get a chip stack going, but me and the other guy (I can't remember his name so I'll just refer to him as Jervon) start to make some moves and build up to about 12,000 chips by the second break. Jervon seems like a pretty good player and is building a stack while not even catching much, as am I, and it's looking like with 50 people left and 7 spots for Russia we should be able to get one of us in. But it turns out that I make a really, really, awful play with 33 in the BB and pay off a guy who flops trip Jacks which cripples me and leaves me almost out of the tourney. I catch a rush and build back up to 14,000 when we are down to about 25 people left and sometime in this stretch Jervon gets knocked out on a hand I didn't see, but I'm sure the dude had to go perfect perfect to catch a straight flush and bust Jervon's quads, or something similar. So it is down to me and the pressure is building, but then I make another donkey play, get crippled, build back up, and then get broke in 18th place when some guy's AK outdraws my A9 all in pre-flop. RIGGED.

So no Russia, but I did play in the big tourney on party and stars. I busted on Party and played immaculately on Stars until we were down to the last 200 and my AK got all in against QQ preflop. Flop: 6 10 K BOOOYAAAA! Turn Q........ games not so easy. Still good for almost 1,000 though. I did have 50% of my friend Mats Iremark in the 50k on Pac that he final tabled... But got 10th and won a whole $500. So many close calls, so little to show for it