Yeah baby!

Mrs. Dino went to a Jimmy Buffett concert yesterday with her mostly single friends, and some of their mostly single friends. So I stayed home with the kids, and baked in the sun at their school's fall fair. My son was completely wiped out from the heat, but he recovered, and we took a swim in the late afternoon before ordering Domino's for dinner.

After dinner, while the kids were watching TV and doing a puzzle with Granny, I was playing Omaha Hi/Lo on Full Tilt, and my cell phone buzzed. Pix message from Mrs. Dino! Pix of her friend's boobs! With a shirt on, unfortunately. So I texted her back and said to pull up the shirt. A few minutes later, another pix message! Shirt pulled up! Alas, still with a bra on. So I texted back, "Yeah baby now take it all off," but that was to be the last pic I would receive for the evening. Oh, well.

After getting the kids in bed, I entered the Full Tilt $3 + 0.30 w/ rebuys $6000 guaranteed. I have never played a non-SnG on FTP, and I expected it to be over within 4 hours. Little did I know they have this incredibly slow structure, and so I was still up when Mrs. Dino returned from the parrot-fest. I complained about the lack of follow-up pix, and she was like dream on buddy, and reminded me that the husband had been at the concert as well. My son came down for a complaint about his stomach, and Mrs. Dino took care of tucking him back in, and then went to bed.

I stayed up, playing well and getting lucky a couple of times. My M varied between about 4 and 15 for many levels. I was pushing with good hands when short-stacked, and stealing enough blinds to stay ahead of the glacial (to me) structure at Full Tilt. I suppose I should welcome it, because it does allow a lot of poker, and should reduce the luck factor a little bit. But you still need to get lucky to make it to the final table, and I don't often have 6 straight hours to devote to a tournament.

At the final table, I was about 3rd or 4th in chips to start, and kept adding to my stack as people were knocked out. I would fold my big blind to steals, but would steal blinds when in position, and finally repopped a guy who had stolen several times on me. That put me close to the chip lead. As the number of players dwindled, the payouts rose substantially. The lowest payout at the final table was about $100, and first place ws over $1100. So each time someone busted, I would do a subdued version of the RainKhan dance (lean forward on couch, pump fist, take sip of beer. Actually, it was so late that I stopped drinking beer (!) Even though Mrs. Dino was snoring away, er, getting her beauty rest already, I still had to get up in the morning with the kids.)

I crippled the third place finisher with A-n vs. A-n-1, and entered the heads-up battle with about a 3-2 chip lead. We had a good battle back and forth, and my opponent was one of the stronger heads up opponents I have faced. I played maybe a little too tight, but was observing his tendencies, especially his rule of always punishing for limping. I limp-reraised once or twice without forcing an all-in. On the final hand, he raised from the button/small blind, and I went all-in with ATo. The blinds were only 25k/50k, with a total of about 3M chips in play, so I could have reraised a smaller amount. But I was hoping he would call with a smaller ace or weak broadway cards. If he called or folded a pair smaller than tens, I was also happy. He called with pocket tens and I was out in second place for a $720 cash.

Yeah baby! After my buy-in, double rebuy, and add-on, my profit was $707.70. OK, maybe not the $8.25 million that Jerry Yang took home, or even but still my largest online cash so far. Also a much-needed infusion to the anemic bankroll after donking and tilting off quite a bit on FTP, and after a disastrous three nights at Bay 101 in San Jose a few weeks ago. We had discussed a split when we were down to three players, but FTP doesn't have that feature, and the idea was a non-starter. Second-place money was just about what a split would have been, so I am very happy. I woke up Mrs. Dino as I crawled into bed and told her the good news. This morning, she asked when my next tournament is -- yeah baby!!