it has been a good few weeks at ye olde online poker tables.

for those of you that do not know, i play quite a bit of poker almost exclusively at poker stars.

i have cashed out more than $1100 in the past 10 days alone. which, certainly, is not a “large” sum of money, but, hey, if you are getting married — every dollar helps!

most of my “ITM” has come from multi-table sit and go tournaments. recently, i started playing 20 table tourneys (180 people). this type of tourney really “suits” my game. i am, generally, a tight aggressive player and as i am working on my other gears i have found that 20 tables is almost perfect training ground. i was getting blinded out at bigger and smaller tables and this became an excellent place for me to try a bunch of different stuff.

so i have spent a good amount of time lately playing online poker at PokerStars. i’ve been up. i’ve been down. i’ve been playing some different types of games — ring games, SNG, no limit, limit, hold ‘em, stud… the games i have enjoyed most, though, are the LARGE tournaments. i play with a certain amount of patience and that really lends itself to tournaments when 5% of the people go “all in” on the first hand.

one of the things i have been really enjoying is trying to qualify for an EPT (european poker tour) event…

using my FPP (frequent player points) from PS, i entered a bunch of different round ones for the EPT Dublin event…

well, i made it through one of ‘em!! beating, literally, hundreds of people from around the world!

round 2 was this past saturday. the top two finishers received entries to this coming weekend’s EPT dublin event plus $1100 cash. nice! there were 248 players at the start… 4 hours in, there were only 27 left. and i was one of them! 30 minutes later, i’m getting pretty short stacked. okay, really short stacked.

and here’s the hand:

PokerStars Game #775554101: Tournament #2948279, Hold’em No Limit - Level VIII (200/400) - 2004/10/16 - 18:10:17 (ET)
Table ‘2948279 1′ Seat #3 is the button
Seat 1: erock24 (9143 in chips)
Seat 3: nieuweronde (30840 in chips)
Seat 4: RomarioX (9730 in chips)
Seat 7: ercon (31789 in chips)
Seat 8: Nolan1 (27681 in chips)
Seat 9: Tbird_NY (17925 in chips)
erock24: posts the ante 25
nieuweronde: posts the ante 25
RomarioX: posts the ante 25
ercon: posts the ante 25
Nolan1: posts the ante 25
Tbird_NY: posts the ante 25
RomarioX: posts small blind 200
ercon: posts big blind 400
*** HOLE CARDS ***
Dealt to erock24 [Ad Kh]
Nolan1: folds
Tbird_NY: folds
erock24: raises 1200 to 1600
nieuweronde: folds
RomarioX: raises 8105 to 9705 and is all-in
ercon: folds
erock24: calls 7518 and is all-in
*** FLOP *** [Th Ac 2c]
*** TURN *** [Th Ac 2c] [8s]
nieuweronde said, “lol A-10″
*** RIVER *** [Th Ac 2c 8s] [Jh]
*** SHOW DOWN ***
RomarioX: shows [Qc Ks] (a straight, Ten to Ace)
erock24: shows [Ad Kh] (a pair of Aces)
RomarioX collected 18786 from pot
*** SUMMARY ***
Total pot 18786 | Rake 0
Board [Th Ac 2c 8s Jh]
Seat 1: erock24 showed [Ad Kh] and lost with a pair of Aces
Seat 3: nieuweronde (button) folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 4: RomarioX (small blind) showed [Qc Ks] and won (18786) with a straight, Ten to Ace
Seat 7: ercon (big blind) folded before Flop
Seat 8: Nolan1 folded before Flop (didn’t bet)
Seat 9: Tbird_NY folded before Flop (didn’t bet)

he caught the jack on the river for the straight. ugh. would i have played it differently? hell no. not in a million years.

so i came in 19th. which gets me…? pride. i’m looking forward to the monte carlo qualifiers…