First Place Finish!

Ever since I was a child, playing cards was something I always enjoyed doing, especially when growing up with three other siblings. Crazy eights was probably the first card game I learned followed by Go Fish. Soon after, I lost all interest in cards games and found myself playing games on the computer such as Doom95 and Quake. As the years flew by, my interest in card games grew once more, and thats when I learned about poker.

I spent about two years learning about the game and how people have made thousands of dollars online. At a young age, I was influenced into the game by my brother. I started to play online for fun and of course, from time to time, he'd come and join me at a sit & go. Of course I was young, so I only was playing for play money. As my knowledge of the game increased, I started to wonder what it would be like playing for money. If you saying to yourself, wow, that kid had balls to take his parents credit card to fund his account, guess again.

I started registering a various poker sites such as Absolute Poker for there daily free-rolls. After playing my first free roll, I noticed how much I terrible of a player I was. So what happened? I continued to play more and more free-rolls. At first, I was finishing in the 2000's, then the 1000's and eventually the 500's. Weekend after weekend I would continue to play hoping to reach the payout. All I had to do was get to 63rd place to get my 44 cents for about 4 hours worth of game play.

One weekend, I played for five hours until I got fed up. I was getting junk cards, and the blinds were killing me. I had about 75K in chips and I was 80th for chips. I miraculously got pocket aces in a pot over 100K with antes and blinds so I pushed. Three others called and the total pot was just under 400K. Fortunately, I won the hand knocking out several other players and I bumped my way up to 40th place with 77 players remaining. I managed to get a few more hands that night until I reached the final table.

I was down to about 200K in chips, the chip leader was at over 1.4 million in chips, and the blinds were raping everyone. The chip leader was being a bully stealing the blinds and antes and everyone was scared to take action. Fortunately I had pocket kings and decided to push all in, only to be called by the chip leader and four other people. This was a monstrous pot! It could make or break the chip leader, plus if the chip leader wins, half the table is pretty much wiped out. With a pot worth more then 800K, everyone was anxious to see the flop. My hand was KK, vs AK, QQ, QJ. These hands were pretty scary because I only had one out for a set, plus the chip leader had an ace. The flop showed As Jd 8c. I was really pissed because the AK was currently in the lead and the odds of me winning the hand were slim. The next card was a 7s and I knew at the moment, it was game over. The river turned a KING!

I couldn't believe that I made trips on the river and that I took down a pot of over 700K in chips. I played for another hour until I was up against the former chip leader. After winning another a big pot against him, he pretty much done for the night. I told him I was done for the night to, so I told him that I would go all in next hand, no strings attached, and I would also tell him the cards. After recieving my cards, I kind of laughed because I had the worst hand in poker, or was it? He called with AK suited and we saw the flop.

I took home my first place finish and I pocketed $26.77 in six hours and twenty minutes of game play. Not to forget, I was also entered into the $1000 AP Sunday free roll. I placed 29th that night.