Exciting day

An exciting day on Saturday. One of my friends from work, Jackie, took Vesna and I down to Atlantic City for the day. The aim was to compete in a poker tournament at the Trump Taj Mahal Casino. Vesna came along for the site seeing and the shopping.

The tournament went really well and I was on a bit of a chip rollercoaster - swinging from chip leader on the table to wounded zebra (waiting for the final lion kill). However, I hung in long enough and eventually got to the final table with a decent stack of chips. Keeping my head down, I picked the moment and scored 2 back to back big hands to take the chip lead (one of them on a monstrous bluff!). I then kept quiet and watched the other players take each other out until there were only 3 of us left.

At this point, Tom (who had started the tournament on the same table as me) made a good play to knock out third place. So, 121 eliminations later, and Tom and I were playing heads up. He suggested a split pot, but I declined and thought we should go for it. A couple of hands later was the all in moment. I was leading with pocket 2s against Ace-7 unsuited. The flop was 3-4-King. So far, so good. My hand was still leading. Next came the 6 - this spelled trouble, but I was still in front. The river came out as a 5, giving us both straights, but Tom was 7 high. I had lost.

However, second place in the tournament gave me a cool $1400 payout - so it was my shout at the bar.

Jackie (who had been unlucky to walk into pocket bullets with pocket 9s early in the tournament) was gracious (although she is a far better poker player than me) and happily let me shout dinner and cocktails.

We then came home tired, but excited after a great day.