Ariston's STT Challenge

Took on BadBeat's "The Ariston STT Challenge":

"On Monday 27th March between the hours of 12:00 and 16:00 GMT Ariston will play 9 seater Stt's on UncoverPoker. For every top 3 finish he will receive points :

1st 5points
2nd 3 point
3rd 1 point

During this four hour period he will keep a record of all points earnt.

The challenge is to beat Aristons score. Challengers must play on 9 seater Stt's only, with a minimum buy in of $5, speed and turbos are allowed.

Any players getting more tha 25 points will receive a free buyin to BadBeat's WSOP Tour on Wednesday 29th March. Should anyone beat Aristons score they will receive buyin to BadBeats WSOP Tour on Wednesday 05th April as well. The player with the highest score above Aristons (if any) will play Ariston heads up. Should he defeat Ariston he will get a buyin to UncoverPokers WPT final on April 8th. (Bellagio package valued at $28,000)

Players can only score between 12:00-16:00 GMT or 20:00-24:00 on Monday 25th March."

Ariston played session 1 and managed to get 40 points from 27 s&g's. (1st = 5, 2nd = 5).

I managed to start 63 s&gs in session 2, getting a total of 67 pts!.

5/3/3/6/5/3/3/4/3/6 = 5 pts
1/4/3/1/3/7/7/2/4/7 = 15 pts
4/2/5/9/3/9/4/3/5/6 = 5 pts
3/9/7/3/4/4/3/3/3/7 = 5 pts
2/1/4/6/2/3/3/2/3/3 = 18 pts
2/1/5/3/4/5/2/4/6/4 = 12 pts
3/3/1 = 7 pts

TOTAL = 67 pts

1ST = 5
2ND = 7
3RD = 21

Started off quite badly, as I was also playing a satellite on Nordic Bet which I managed to place 3/513 in, winning a $198 buyin to their Baltic Open final:

Part of the reason for taking on Ariston's challenge was that I haven't played many s&g's this year - so I thought I'd cram in as many as I could in 4 hours! As you can see, my results in the last 23 s&g's were pretty good even though I was knackered by then!!

Even managed to make a modest return overall of around 13% ROI.

**UPDATE**

Ariston convincingly beat me 2-0 in the subsequent best of 3 heads-up challenge match.

In the Nordic Bet Baltic Open Final I was card dead throughout and finished a disappointing 36/61 when my AA was busted by KK for about 23 big blinds. Top 10 qualified.

WSOP Calling

Placed in my first attempt in BetHoldem's WSOP Memphis Basketball challenge promotional tournament. My reward is a seat in the April 20th final where 24 players will battle it out for a WSOP seat. Thanks to this, my goal of making it to Vegas this year has increased by an extra couple of %.

Elsewhere, I placed in the money in the Blogger Poker Tour's inaugural event at Poker.com. Finished 7/51 but was unlucky throughout the tournament otherwise a top 4 place and a seat in the BPT Grand Final, with a WSOP package for 1st, would have been a formality.

In Bugsy's Club monthly Round 3 $10k Final, I only managed a disappointing 64/164 finish after my preflop re-raise all-in ith QQ was called by captainNdiet with AJ who had me only slightly covered. Congrats to Fuzznucket for winning a $10k buy-in of his choice.

Bad Beat, Not

I joined www.BadBeat.com today and played in their WSOP Tour event at Crazy Poker. Some of the best online players participated, and after losing half my stack when my bullets were cracked by JJ on the river, by thelodger, I recovered well to finish 2nd. Heads-Up I tried to push NordicStone off a hand at the first opportunity when I had him covered, unfortunately he had top pair and couldn't fold.

Congrats to NordicStone since this result made him the first WSOP Tour winner at BadBeat and won a WSOP seat for his efforts.

Before this result, I was already on high spirits today since I had won 2 satellites to two land based events' online finals in the next couple of weeks. $20,000 in packages up for grabs.

Fingers crossed!

Another $1k Seat

Just won a second $1k+ satellite final seat for this year's WSOP at Spin Palace Poker. This time it's the $1,078 Prima Poker 7-Card Stud WSOP qualfier to be played on June 18th for a package worth $7,936.

The package would be for Event 28 ($5,000 Seven Card Stud) at Las Vegas, Nevada on Wednesday, July 19th 2006. Last year's winner of this event was Jan Sorenson, winning over $290k.

Seat Winner

Paint People

King of Hearts - Charlemagne
King of Diamonds - Julius Caesar
King of Spades - King David
King of Clubs - Alexander the Great

Queen of Hearts - Judith (Heroine of Apocryphal Book of Judith)
Queen of Diamonds - Rachel (of the Bible)
Queen of Spades - Pallas (aka Minerva)
Queens of Clubs - Argine (anagram of Regina)

Jack of Hearts - La Hire (French warrior - aka Etienne de Vignoles)
Jack of Diamonds - Hector of Troy/Roland of France
Jack of Spades - Hogier the Dane (one of Charlemagne's paladins)
Jack of Clubs - Lancelot

Cheltenham 2006

Freeroll Grand Prix Win

My luck didn't continue on Saturday or Sunday. Had two $200+ satellites which I didn't do very well in. Winning those should have been easier than winning the weekly Freeroll Grand Prix on Stan James were I had to overcome 480 other players!

My reward? a $1,200 seat in the Prima Poker WSOP Multi Event final where the winner will walk away with a $134,000 2-month Las Vegas WSOP package! Ship it!


Freeroll GP Win

March Madness

March has been mad so far. In February I was very consistent but his month I have been very erratic - often messing about. On Wednesday I had my biggest losing day of the year (losing 1/3 of my March profit so far) but made the loss all back yesterday.

It's been up and down like that all month really - and it is only 10 days old. I feel like a poker peasant. Whilst mateyboys are playing in great live tournaments taking place all over the world, I'm grinding out a couple of $$$$ the hard way.

So, it was a relief that just now I have qualified for the Betfair City Aces Challenge Grand Final to be held in London on my first attempt. I beat 115 other players in the first of 8 freerolls.

Heads up I thought I had blown it against the very aggressive Telepe (aka GotaFancy) from PuntersLounge.com. In the final hand, all the chips went in preflop - my pocket 6s flopping a set against Telepe's AKs flush draw. The river didn't disappoint me this time as the case 6 popped up to give me quads!

Still got it!

Got a couple of cool tournaments lined up for Saturday and Sunday - touch wood my luck will continue.