…and it ended horribly. I don’t know, I guess perhaps I’m being a little too hard on myself. I’ve been playing poker for less than a year and the only live games I’ve played have been 6-man home games. When I got the email a couple of weeks ago about a charity poker tournament with a $40 buy-in I thought ‘this is it’. In theory, I had nothing to lose except the buy-in of course. I didn’t take into account one thing… me. Between my nervous and lack of experience, I was very far behind before I even stepped into the room. I don’t think I have ever felt as nervous as I did when I started playing (except for maybe when I took my road test). One thing I have to make clear, I wasn’t nervous about the people around me (if that makes sense) – what had me nervous was the playing. Like I said before, I have never played in a live event before. I’m very easily intimidated in person which obvious isn’t going to take me very far in poker if I don’t shake it off. But the women there were so unbelievable bitchy and snobby. It was actually surprising to find mostly all the men to be nice and social – even veterans whom were no strangers to live poker before were nicer than the old bitches.

I have to say even though I ended up winning a good amount of hands, I’m far from proud of the way I played. All the rules I set in my mind were tossed out the window as soon as I sat down – NOT A GOOD THING! I was calling and re-raising with Ace/Rag only to have my ass handed to me by AQ. So stupid! Even my rule with AK went out the window! Though to my defense I didn’t think the lady was gonna call my re-raise preflop with 67 off suit (she hit 2-pair on the flop). The one thing I hadn’t accounted for was the feel of the chips and I think that messed me up more than anything else. Let me explain – with few actual chips in front of me I get the sense that I’m behind even though I have 8k in front of me and the blinds are at 500/1000. Sure I’m not doing great but there was no reason for me to throw the tournament with AK and only hitting an A. The moment the blinds went up though, I think that’s when I started panicking the most. A small part of me also got… bored.. kind of. Not really. I don’t know. It was just sitting there for over three hours kind of got to me. There was a turn out of 65 people so it was a long game, even when I got knocked out three hours in there were still about 30 people left in it. It also didn’t help that Adam got knocked out within the hour and I felt terrible making me wait there for me. Him standing over me, made me extra nervous as well. Plus when he knocked my headband off and the old ladies stared at my bald spot, it didn’t help. I cried after wards because of that bit.

Overall I can at least say that I walked out of this with at least one thing under my belt… experience. For my next live event I will be better prepared, I think.  Of course the moment in question will occur in a month. In March the same organization plans to have another tournament with more than likely the same buy-in. So I’m super anxious to go at it again. My goal would be to make the final time at the bare minimal!

I don’t think I have ever thrown up as much as I did today. It was every where! I was throwing up so violently it was even coming through my nose – very disgusting stuff so I won’t give any more details. Sick or not I couldn’t let the day go by without playing something. I played in a micro tournament for a $0.10/$0.01 buy-in with a total of 4402 players. It was a rather uneventful tournament, a lot of grinding. At first I was sucking out pretty bad and ended up being card dead for like an hour. But I ended up placing in 57th and made 0.87 so I made a small profit. Wish I had made it to an actual dollar figure though. Still in the red and just about to break even on my ten bucks I invested.

I’m probably going to bed now as I’ve been up early for work and stuff. Don’t think I’m going to be in for the next few days since I’m still not feeling well. Hopefully no more vomiting will occur but I highly doubt it since I haven’t had anything other than ginger ale since this morning. Keeping hope and off to sleep.