The Lucky Donut

I have never been to Barcelona. I’m told it’s very pretty, and the dogs do have noses. Quite how much of the city I’d actually get to see is debateable, but I have been trying two separate routes to get there. If either is successful you can be sure you will hear about it!

First, jumped into an EPT qualifier on PokerStars, for $36+$3 and entry into the main satellite for every $475 up for grabs this felt similar to the $36 qualifiers for the Sunday Million, but about twice as hard. I wasn’t disappointed though, staying lucky when it mattered most and soaring into the final five to win a seat.

WPT, WSOP and EPT satellites on Stars can be cashed in for W$ rather than T$, so I know I’m not going to blow this on smaller tournaments as I might do with a T$215 seat. However you can spend W$ on WCOOP events, so I might bottle out of this and put it towards the $530 No Limit event in a couple of weeks time instead. I was thinking I’d play the satellite if there were more than two seats to win, and right now there’s nearly enough for three so I probably will do that on Saturday.

The other tournament I want to get into is the Ongame Poker Classic. A few weeks ago I won a $50 ticket on PokerRoom and planned to use it to get into the Stage 2 Qualifier but it wouldn’t let me register. Their reason for this, they told me, is that you can either win a ticket to the qualifier or buy one. Which still doesn’t really explain why I can’t use a ticket for the exact value for that tournament, but I’m going to have to find another way to get through this one, as it’s fast approaching.

As my $50 ticket was about to expire – just like all money does – I decided to play a satellite for the Sunday Big Deal $300+$20. This has a guaranteed prize pool of $80,000 so you’d expect about 300-400 players – not too intimidating compared to the other sites big sunday events with 3000+ entries. Never been in it before – but I am now! This satellite also went unnaturally well and I picked up a seat by finishing in the top 2 of 18 players. This is the stuff television poker dreams are made of – I’ve parlayed $7 into $50, and now into $320. Next stop could be tens of thousands!

Oh, and I hit a royal flush too. I was so not expecting it that I didn’t manage to scramble to the print screen key in time, but here’s the hand history:

$50+$4 (real money), hand #933,398,217
Qualifier to Big Deal Multi Table Tournament, 1 Sep 2006 12:13 AM

Seat 1: Hallertauer ($5,440 in chips)
Seat 3: dosc74 ($6,420 in chips)
Seat 7: lucky_donut [QC,JC] ($4,960 in chips)
Seat 8: walkyre ($5,060 in chips)
Seat 10: bretbret ($5,120 in chips)

ANTES/BLINDS
bretbret posts blind ($100), Hallertauer posts blind ($200).

PRE-FLOP
dosc74 folds, lucky_donut bets $500, walkyre folds, bretbret calls $400, Hallertauer folds.

FLOP [board cards AC,10C,9H ]
bretbret checks, lucky_donut bets $600, bretbret bets $2,000, lucky_donut bets $3,860 and is all-in, bretbret calls $2,460.

TURN [board cards AC,10C,9H,4H ]

RIVER [board cards AC,10C,9H,4H,KC ]

SHOWDOWN
lucky_donut shows [ QC,JC ]
bretbret shows [ JS,AD ]
lucky_donut wins $10,120.

I had 15 outs (9 flush, 6 straight), so was a favourite against almost any hand with two cards to come. Nice as it is to see a royal flush, any king or any club would have done!