How I Spent My Night After Being Censored...

And yes, I was, but I'm going to wait a day or two to make the post telling the story. Let's just say that some major Bodog-ish corporate pressure was placed upon the owners of the other site that I write, meaning that one of my posts was deleted, sent into oblivion, stomped like a bug. The words "inaccurate statements" and "slanderous" content were mentioned, among other things. Untrue, of course. But that post, in its original content, is no more.

I'll offer the full story in a day or two, after I've had the chance to simmer down and present things a bit more clearly. I've had two tall beers already (and am contemplating a third), and it's not the right moment for me to go off half-cocked. Please bear with me.

So what did I do, other than stew in my juices? You guessed it --- I played poker. So I donked my way out of the weekly WWdN tourney. So what. Running TP/TK into a short-stacked set of twos, followed by running top two pair into bottom set, won't qualify as my worst play(s) ever. Besides, the poker gods were rewarding me elsewhere.

Dammit, I almost pulled off a Spaceman. I'm always playing two or more tables, since I have two computers side-by-side, and as I was excusing myself from Wil's tourney I was in the early stages of the $1,500 Guarantee Tourney I over at Poker.com, a site you'll see now has a banner over on the left. (It will be joined by another in just a day or so, but Poker.com is the first affiliate deal I'm trying.) If fish like me can do well there, then you need to sign up. Here's the proof:



The image is from the rotating animated banner on the site's main table menu, offering a continuing stream of congrats to players for winning everything from big tourneys to fifty-cent-pot hands with a pair of threes. It's the first time I even entered one of these $1.5K events, despite the guarantee and small overlay (there were about 90 entrants, each ponying up the $15-plus-juice fee). As to why I never played this before, I just don't know. I'm usually playing SNGs and grinding away at the limit tables.

Back to the tourney. Here's the proper order of finish:



So what did I do? I opened a self-congratulatory beer, of course!

But the night was still young, and as I pondered my good fortune, I noticed that the $1,500 Guarantee II event was about to start. Same buy-in, same minimal overlay. Not quite the same result, though:



I had a chance, despite the fact that when we reached head-to-head time the eventual winner had me by about 12:1 in chips. That chance went away moments earlier when I had the would-be fourth-place finisher all-in, his A-J against my K-K, and I picked up a flush draw on the turn. He hit his two-out ace on the river to double through me, then gave away all my his chips two hands later. But it's okay. In a way, what he took from me he gave right back, in payout if not in chips.

And note that I am not bad-beat crying, since I had a strong run of luck here all night. With the slightly awkward payout structure at the top --- the difference between second and third being larger than that between first and second --- second was a very good payday, anyway.

Neither of these ranks in my top five or ten tourney wins, but I've never done a back-to-back of this nature before. Some days are bad, some good.

And sometimes, you just can't tell.

I'm getting closer, friends. I'd like to make a trip to Vegas for the festivities happen, and I'm within a grand of pulling it off. We will see.