Late last night, I hopped onto Full Tilt Poker to play a little tournament. I saw a 6-max tourney in the list that was already running but had late registration available. Perfect, it's late, I don't want to wait. So I signed up for this $3 tournament with already over 100 players in it. A little later I noticed that during late registration this number had doubled to just over 200 players. Great I thought to myself, if I make it deep in this one, it's gonna be a looooong night.

And, in fact I did make it deep. I got lucky a few times early in the tournament, sucking out and tripling up. After that I just played some great poker. I payed loads of attention to the players at my table and their tendencies. I noticed a guy limping in and folding for a decent raise when he did so, later in the tournament I pounced on him with any two cards when I saw him do this. I also made some beauiful resteals when my stack was around 15 to 20 bb (a point where I normally have trouble because I try to steal and fold for the push because I'm trying it with ace-rag). I folded every ace rag I found and just played very aggressive once the antes started getting in.

24 places paid and when we got to 25, I was actually the shortest stack. I waited for a hand, and finally when I had only 5 bb left I got AA on the big blind. Almost tripled up there and got QQ the hand right after it. This brought me back in contention with about 20 big blinds left again. I kept doing the resteal against weak opponents and coasted my way to the final table without ever showing down a hand. Still around 20 bb left.

The second hand at the final table I'm on the big blind and get dealt AK of spades. It folds around to the small blind who pushes a 40 bb stack in ... I think it over for a little while and put him on something like a medium pair that rather doesn't see the flop. That's a coin flip situation most likely, but since I'm the shortstack at the table I figure its my chance to make some chips and there is a reasonable chance that I'm ahead too. I make the call and he shows me KJo, my joy turns to grief though as a J hits the flop and I'm eliminated from the tournament.

Made about $35 on it, but more importantly I have shows myself that my tournament play has massively improved. Stay tuned to hear about my future (big) wins !!!

Being back home is not all its cracked up to be. No place like home they say, well they ain't no place like Vegas either !!! So until Vegas is my home, I won't be fully satisfied. We are thinking of starting some kind of business in the States so we can make the move. It will take some time as we''ll need to arrange a lot of financials.

I've gone back to work and that's made me even more unhappy with my current situation. I moved to the security scene almost 2 years ago because it seemed like a really cool challenge. Now I've ended up in a job (after a company merge) where all I do is go to meetings and sign forms. The whole atmosphere at this company is dry, boring, hostile and cold. I don't feel very welcome here either and nobody ever seems to be ready to help you out.

So if anybody has a nice job for me in the US .. please feel free to contact me. I can do anything from basic sys admin work, to security consultancy or forensic investigations. Preferably something based in Vegas. That would be our ticket out of here.

Oh well .. one day ... one day ... we'll be where we want to be. Not just yet though.....