Remembering a Shot at a WSOP Seat Many Moons Ago

The fourth anniversary of my poker blog quietly slipped past several weeks ago. No need to make a big deal out of it since people rarely celebrate the fourth anniversary of anything. But I was reminded that one of the reasons I started a poker blog was to be able to take advantage of special online tournaments reserved for bloggers. The first big one I was in was the Blogger Poker Tour Grand Final that was sponsored by Poker.com.

Although I played a little poker in my younger years, I was really a rookie at No Limit Hold Em. I started started playing online poker due to the Moneymaker Effect, and in spring 2006 I was just starting to see the beginnings of modest success.

I was a member of several poker forums and groups. One of these, called CheckRayz, sponsored several private tounaments and gave information about a group of tournaments for poker bloggers. The top prize: a seat in the 2006 WSOP Main Event.

Playing in the preliminary events, I of course got my lunch handed to me time and time again by bloggers who had invested so much more time and were so much more skilled than I was. However, some bonus seats were added to the final preliminary event, and I was fortunate to earn one of them with a final table finish.

So, On July 1, 2006, I joined 43 other bloggers in vying for the WSOP seat. There were also some other prizes for the final table.

Being a real rookie in the field, I decided to take my time in getting in hands with the nice mega-stacks we were given. I was hanging around the middle of the pack when, in back-to-back hands, I got A-A and Q-Q. I got action on both hands and soon vaulted to the top or near the top of the leaderboard.

Looking back, I can't believe how close I came to getting a WSOP seat,especially considering I was so inexperienced:

I most likely could have roached into third place, but I didn't want that prize and decided to make a run for first place. I finished in fourth -- pretty amazing stuff for me at the time. I got an Ipod Nano for my finish, so there were no complaints from me.

Now, almost four years later, I will be playing in the BBT5 Tournament of Champions with several WSOP packages on the line. Again, the field will be loaded, and I will obviously give it my best shot. Here's hoping the poker gods look favorably on me and the Full Tilt Poker RNG is kind.