Finally.....A Final Table

I had a rough start with the Mookie last night. I got tangled up with Smokkee within the first 5 minutes and took a huge hit. His full house crushed my nut flush. I'm lucky that he didn't just put me out right there. I lost a few more chips shortly after this and was down to 280 in just 10 minutes of play for a nice ranking of 41st out of 42. Go me!

Stacie came in to say good night and asked where my chips were. I told her to look across the table at Smoke and I might be in bed very soon. I told her I wanted to be patient since the blinds were still low enough for me to wait for hands and see what I can do. I channeled my inner Surf and Waffles short stack play and added the patience of Mow.

I won a coin flip shortly after this to double up and then had a good run of cards to shoot to 1st place with 4400 after doubling through trkfix with QQ and then hit another Q on the flop. trkfix was able to take some back soon after I called his all-in with the dominate hand that did not hold up. He just wouldn't go away and was able to hang around pretty well with his push bets, but ran into my 4 tits (I did this for Stacie, she had never heard QQ referred to this way) with the 3rd on the flop again and that put me back in the top 3 and I stayed that way to the final table.

At the final table, I stupidly got involved with Xanthius and managed to let myself fall to 7/7, then 6/6 with 5 places paying. With Xanthius your only hope is to have the nuts and even then I'm not sure that would be enough to beat him. I was not going to play another pot unless I had a dominating hand. I was able to survive / pick up my round of blinds and more importanly, I made it past the bubble and into the money. After we were in the money, I was hoping to double up with my flush draw on the flop, but it gave Smokkee trips and I didn't catch my club. It's the first PokerStars cash I have had in months and my last 10 days have been positive cash flow for the poker accounts. Let's see if I can continue tonight with the Titan League. Wish me luck.