Life and Times of a Poker Addict

Greetings from sunny Florida. Ten days of sunshine and relaxation is just what the doctor ordered, I think. Well, I guess as much relaxation as I'm afforded after playing hours of poker.

After the great poker debacle of Wednesday, Thursday's action showed some moderate improvement. Played in eleven tournaments and sit'n go's and I came out about $25 ahead. Suffered some more suck outs on the river to knock me out in front of the money but things were at least better than the day before.

Got on a plane Friday morning, got down here to the FLA mid-afternoon, and spent some quality time with the folks. About 1:57am I thought I'd check and see what was happening on Full Tilt. At 1:59am, I decided "what the hell", and registered for the 2am $20 tourney that I had made the final table on twice this week. Why mess with good mojo, right?

Things are pretty boring, not getting much of anything cards-wise, making a few moves here and there to pay for my blinds but not much action besides that. Finally start getting some decent hands, working my way up the ladder. Started the tournament with 85 players and work our way down to around 46 left before I finally get moved to a new table. I sit down and I'm placed behind (luckily) one of the biggest maniacs I've seen in a while.

This guy is throwing his entire stack in four out of every five hands. He's got like $3600 chips because everytime he does get called he somehow manages a win. I've laid down a couple decent starting hands to him just because I don't want to get busted out just yet. I pick up a few more chips and I've got T4670, when I get AJ hearts in the big blind. Action moves around the table and the blind gets raised up to 3x, and then maniac goes all in for his whole stack. So I'm sitting there, debating whether or not this is when I want to pop him back. This guy has been showing K6 offsuit on some of his calls, so I'm feeling like my chances are decent, so I move all-in. The other guy was shortstacked so he moved all in as well for his remaining 600 chips. Turn the cards over and shortstack has J10 and Maniac has 55. Flop comes 10 7 5, one heart. Sonuvabitch. I'm getting myself prepared for the inevitable, when heart comes turn and heart comes river and my nut flush takes it down. Karma, baby. I earned that runner runner after Tuesday.

So now I'm top three in the tournament, play for about another hour until we're down to around 23 players left and I've dropped down to around 8th. I get A10 on the button and it gets raised up a few seats in front of me. I call the raise and the flop comes KQ8, two hearts. Raiser checks, and I decide what the hell, and I make it $1500 to go. He calls. Damn, I don't like that. The turn is a blank and he checks so I bet $1500 again and he comes over the top of me all-in. It's another 6300 to call and I'll be left with T900 if I lose. There's a lot of cash in the pot and I've got no idea what I'm gonna do. Maybe my Ace is good if it hits or a Jack to make my straight, which means I've got seven outs in the deck if he doesn't have any of them. I figure he's on a King or a heart draw. My countdown starts and I still haven't made up my mind, my cursor is parked over call but I decide I'm going to fold. Well, my dad's computer is a laptop with the touchpad mouse area. I am not so good with those apparently. I move my hand up to move the cursor and the millionth of a gram of pressure I put on the pad makes the click for me and I call. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

He turns over A9 offsuit. Sweet Georgia Brown! River is a blank and I'm chip leader. Maybe my subconcious took over motor skills for that split second or something but however you slice it, I accidentally called this guy and won. One hour later, the sun is rising and I've taken down this tourney for the second time in five days, up another $520 on the week.