Payday

Its paydirt people, paydirt. I finally cashed in.

I started the day with a few single table satellites at The Bellagio, even sat right across from that "Armenian Express" dude. I think he stole a pot from me. I just wasn't so strong as to call his re-raise. Oh well, both tables were of no great consequence, and I never got much traction.

Then, I hit up Binion's 8pm.

The first two hands, I actually misread my cards, and won both pots.

The first one, I held Q-J. The board hit 7-7-7. There was just two of us, and I put in 300 hundred. (We all had about 2k). Dude calls. The turn is a king. For some reason I thought I had a king, so I bet another 300. Dude calls. River was a 2. I bet 300, dude calls. He had J-9. My Q-J won. Stupid play. On both our parts. But I'll take the chips.

Then, very next hand, I'm in the big blind and I got 4-6. No one bets the whole way through, and in the end I thought I had 2-6, so I turned my cards over saying I paired my two's on the river. Oh snap, actually, I pulled a straight with the final duece.

Everyone thought I was a total moron. And at that moment, I could hardly argue.

But I hung in there, only playing hands when I had significant cards, and of course grabbed a few opportune situations. (I swear so many reads can be had in a live game vs. internet play)

Four hours later, I find myself at the final table, whittled down from a starting 47 players. I'm 2nd in chips with 22k, 1st only had 25k, so I was in great position.

First hand at the final and I catch cowboys. (pocket kings). I carefully raise to 5k. A guy on the other side of the table, just as carefully, goes all in (for about 10k). I call. He has rockets, and I lose that one, to be halved. But everyone was so cool, and I was having so much fun, I didn't care too much. I was still around 4th or 5th in chips.

It eventually came down to three of us, all with about 50 or 60 thousand chips. We all agree to split the 1-3 money equally, $682 a piece.

As side note, Binion's holds 2% of all prize money from all of thier daily tourneys, to be applied to a TOC (Tournament of Champions) held every couple of weeks. So, the three of us who split, needed to decide who would get the free entry into this TOC. Well, the other two guys were out of town tourists, so gosh fellas, I guess I could stick around a fews extra days!

That will be Sunday.

From now till then, I'm not sure what I'll do. If the weather cracks 60 degrees, I may check out the grand canyon and Hoover dam.