Finally, A Final Table

  For those who know me, I'm somewhat of a poker fanatic. I've been playing off and on for a while and have even tried to invest a little cash. However, I was way to liberal with most of my calls, so I decided to drop back to freerolls. I played one tonight and finally made the final table. It's been a while since I seen one.
  There were 554 people in the tourney. It was the fastest freeroll I've ever seen mainly because of the format. All but 13 were gone before the first break (55 minutes of play). Everyone started with 300 chips and blinds went up every 2 minutes. I got AQ of hearts on my very first hand and pushed. I got called and spiked an Ace on the turn. Nice, double up. And that's pretty much how most of this tourney was played. One person would push and another would call.
  The pivotal moment in the match was a hand that was against the ordinary play. There was a raise to 480 from UTG. The small blind (who had a fairly big stack) and the big blind (me with a decent stack) called. I had 98 of diamonds and hit a diamond draw on the flop. Small blind leads out with a bet, I call, and UTG folds. My diamond draw connected on the turn and the small blind led out again with a bet and I called. The river paired the board which meant potentially the small blind could have connected with a full house. However, given the format I had to make the most out of this opportunity. I pushed and got called. Luckily, no boat. Flush wins and I more than double up.
  I made it to the final table and played extremely carefully. I had about 8K in chips with the blinds at 500/1000 when we started final table play. I doubled up once with AQ and hit a nice hand with another A. Down to 4 people and the blinds were at 3000/6000 and I got dealt A9 off. I figured I'm still happy with 4th (6th was where I wanted, anything above 6th was bonus) and went all in. I got called with A7 off. We both avoided cards until the river card hit, boom, the 7...4th place money.
  Keep in mind that this is a freeroll. 4th place didn't pay some ridiculous amount of money, but it's an extra $2.19 I can play with. Maybe I can win some big money and pay it back like some really nice people have done for me.
  Thank for checking me out. Special thanks over to the railbird community. As always, please click a link here so I can pay some bills!


  Currently Playing: Your Favorite Martian - Bottles of Beer