Close, but no banana ...

Although I am disappointed at not winning the trip to the WSOP Main Event, I must say that I am pretty proud of my fourth place finish. Yeah - I am pretty sure that I could have slipped into third if I wanted to, but I really didn't want the third place prize anyway. And besides - I was playing to win this thing!

This tournament, played at Poker.com, was excellent. Long rounds with slowly increasing blinds helped a player like myself wait for those premium hands and favorite hands on which to gamble.

I was getting no cards at all and just treading water, but when I got the cards ... POW !! Pocket Queens quickly followed by pocket Aces that held moved me from the middle of the pack to the front. I was as high as second place and was sitting in good position for much of the last half of the tournament.

Unfortunately, I just didn't seem to get the right breaks when I needed them most at the end. No complaints from me, however, as I took no bad beats nor gave any.

It was great to be playing with two players I highly respect, Shark Hathaway, leader of the Shark Army, and Mike "imjusthere4thebeer," prez of checkrayz.com. These two gentlemen have been most influential in helping to rid me of any donkeyness still within me.

A special thanks to my buds at the OnlinePokerTour - SeaWeed, shaggytrav, murrythecat, and pokerbrat89, who made for one hell of an online cheering section in the OPT forum. I owe y'all a big one!

A funny side note: Due to my many hours of ring play at poker.com this past week, I qualified for another satellite to the WSOP - and barely snuck in to the top five, which qualifies me for one more shot at the WSOP on July 14. This tourney overlapped with the blogger.com tourney, so I was really intense at the computer today.

So ... for a day that started out with a trip to the doctor's office (to look at my hurting ribs), I guess you might say that things turned out okay.